CTM Center at Songshan Shaolin Temple - Photo by G. Brundage

Some herbs growing at the Songshan Shaolin medical center - Photo by G. Brundage

Welcome! There are 81 million or so "traditional Chinese medicine" sites on the web. This one is a little different because I focus on those things I find to be most interesting and scientifically sound. I was raised to be a scientist, a critical thinker and have had a lifelong interest in health, martial arts and Chinese medicine. So, I'm looking for optimal performance and Chinese medical systems that can enhance performace above and beyond the ordinary. Also, I'm interested in longevity and ways Chinese medicine can help promote long life, health (strength, agility, speed, and physical and mental awareness and acuity) throughout that life. In this site I present a lot of information about CTM and also add a lot of my own thinking and research from experience and modern science. I hope I can be forgiven for this syncratic/fusion approach, but I think it's potentially useful to help me organize my own ideas and possibly help others too. So, this site isn't simply a re-telling of CTM, but hopefully includes some possible modern scientifically based extensions that can grow into the future. This site if far from finished so please don't judge it yet. At this time I'm still just collecting ideas and playing with them. 

The Emperor asked Uncle Qu: "I was told all the remote ancients lived over a hundred years, yet their movements were still vigorous. However, nowadays people become debilitated in their movements when they are only fifty. Have the times changed? Or, do people fail to exercise proper health care?"

Uncle Qu answered: "The remote ancients who had the knowledge of health care followed the cannons of the yin and yang, practiced physical excercises appropriately and had temperate diets. They led regular lives and did not work against the routine. Therefore their body forms co-existed with the spirits and they could enjoy their natural ages and only died after there were a hundred."

"However, nowadays people do not behave like that. They take wine as beverage, lead an abmormal life as routine and make love with being drunken. Their essence is exhausted by desires and their genuine qi is dissipated by thier favorite things. They do not know how to keep the essential qi full, and are not good at regulating their spirits. Yet they hanker after a moment's pleasure against the more real fun of health care, and lead irregular lives. Therefore these people are feeble in their fifties."

8.1 First Article - Discussion of Heavenly Truth in Ancient Times
The Medical Classic of the Yellow Emperor
Adapted from translation by Zhu Ming - Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 2001/2005

The above Compendium of Materia Medica is a pharmaceutical text written by Li Shizhen (1518–1593 AD) during the Ming Dynasty of China. This edition was published in 1593 (Wiki file)

Source: Wikipedia