History

Short History

Although Daoyin has a written record of over two thousand five hundred years, one of the greatest innovation in the field of therapeutic Daoyin occurred in 610 when Chao Yuanfang (550-630), a doctor of the Imperial Medical Academy, published his Zhubingyuan Houlun (Treatise on the Causes and Symptoms of Diseases) in fifty volumes containing 1,739 medical discussions in 67 categories including some 213 Daoyin exercises classified in accordance with the origins and symptoms of given medical conditions.

Later, in the Tang Dynasty, Daoyin became an official part of the Court Medicine and was generally in the hands of the massage specialist.

Sima Chengzhen (655-735) wrote the Xiuzhen Jingyi Zalun (Miscellaneous Discourses on the Essential Meaning of Cultivating Perfection) which gave exercises to be practised daily and required them to be performed in the correct sequence if they were to be effective in curing disease and maintaining health. This was a new development in Daoyin.

The only work in the Daozang (Collection of Daoist texts) to deal exclusively with Daoyin is the Taiqing Daoyin Yangsheng Jing (Great Purity Classic of Gymnastics and Nourishing Life) and contains exercises that can be dated from before the late Sixth Century. This is one of the main texts for students of Daoyin tradition in China and contains a wide range of information about a number of different schools within the tradition.

Daoyin is based on the theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine such as the concept of holism, the theory of diagnosis and treatment based on differential analysis of symptoms and signs, the ancient theories of Yin and Yang and the Five Phases and Energy Circulation through Channels, and the aetiology and pathology of diseases and related studies of modern medicine.