The Turning Year: Taoist Qigong, the Five Elements, and the Seasons of Chinese Medicine (The Living Taoist Canon)

Twelve centuries ago a Daoist woman named Hu Yin drew a chart for each organ of the body. For each one she wrote down where it lies, what it governs, how it fails, the breath that corrects it, the movement that restores it, and the foods that harm it. Her charts survive in the Ming Daoist canon, alongside a physician's handbook on how every year acquires its phase and its weather, early named exercise sequences, Hua Tuo's five animal frolics, and the six healing breaths.

The Turning Year brings sixteen of these texts together as the single system they were meant to be: Chinese astrology, the five elements, qigong and seasonal living, read as one.

The Reckoning: the ten stems and twelve branches, the sixty-year cycle, the five circuits and six qi, and what each year does to the body
The Five Treasuries: liver, heart, spleen, lung, kidney and gallbladder, each with its season, its signs of disorder and its healing breath
The Work: the daoyin sequences of Chisongzi and Pengzu, the five animal frolics, the six healing sounds, embryonic breathing and self-massage
The Round: the precepts, then spring, summer, the earth months, autumn and winter, closing at the winter solstice

Every instruction is given exactly as the canon gives it: the hour, the direction to face, the posture, the count of breaths, what the practice is said to clear. The original Chinese is printed beside the English so that every line can be checked against its source.

For practitioners of qigong and tai chi, students of Chinese medicine and the five elements, readers of Chinese astrology, and anyone who wants to live the year the way the old Daoist physicians did.