As practitioners of life cultivation, we try to live to one hundred years old without illnesses and medication until we die. In order to do that, we must have a healthy body constitution. In order to have a healthy body, we must adjust our lifestyle in such a way that our body will return to homeostasis. Here is some general advice on lifestyle changes to achieve a balanced body constitution.

01 Eating

01 Do not eat raw or cold food

The purpose is to protect the spleen and stomach in the middle section of the body.

If you have a very strong spleen and stomach and there is nothing wrong with your digestive system, then you can ignore this advice.

If your spleen and stomach are very weak with some stomach problems, then you should follow this advice for a few days or weeks to see whether it has improved. Once you have a functional digestive system, you can discontinue this advice or continue to follow it.

In the practice of this rule, do not be overly concerned if you break the rule once in a while. Our body actually is very resilient, it can bear your mistakes once or twice. Do not produce anxiety for the breaking of the rule because anxiety will bring more harm than breaking the rule.

02 Follow a low sodium diet

The purpose is to reduce stasis inside your body.

If you have a very strong body with reddish complexion, and after eating a big meal, you start to have a watery mouth, or poop smelly stool, or fart smelly gas, or sweat smelly sweat, then you start on a low sodium diet in order to lessen the effect of high sodium in your diet to produce such smelly wastes.

This rule is a must. If you do not follow the rule, you will suffer from stasis of waste in the future. Then you will have to worry about cancer and so on. Bad!

02 Sleeping

03 Go to bed before ten at night

The purpose is to preserve our energy and mentality to aid in our sleep.

Say you are a fast sleeper. You go to bed at ten and fall into sleep right away. Then you start to sleep at ten and wake up at five the next morning. That is good.

Say you are a slow sleeper. You go to bed at ten but you talk in your bed for half-an-hour with your online social media, and then you try to sleep with your phone on, hoping that someone will call you or chat with you. Hooray, someone calls and you talk. By the time you finish talking, it is way past eleven.

It is too bad that nobody calls you, but you play games on your phone. By the time you finish the game, it is way past eleven. You are so excited by the game that you cannot sleep right away. By the time you are in sleeping mode, it is way past twelve.

Bear in mind that sleeping is very important for your health. You must be in deep sleep from eleven to three the next morning. Therefore, plan your bedtime so that you are in deep sleep before eleven, preferably before ten. That is, if you are in control of your sleeping time.

For some reasons, for some jobs, you are not in control of your sleeping time. If sleeping late does not interfere with your health, then stay with the job. However, if the bad sleeping time will destroy your health, then you should quit the job and change your whole profession.

You need to work to make money in order to live the life that you want, but think! If you are currently working in a profession that is not very suitable for you, or your body and mental state cannot support your long-term development in this profession, then it is better for you to change your profession as soon as possible.

You need energy to perform well in any profession that you are in. If you do not have sufficient energy to sustain you in a profession that requires a lot of energy, you have to evaluate the situation to see whether you should quit and change to a less demanding situation before you are dragged down by your job or profession.

We have heard a lot about people who die young because of hard work. Have you?

03 Labor and Leisure

04 Harmonize labor and leisure

In order to stay healthy, you must have both labor and leisure in good balance. Sitting on a sofa watching television programs or playing video games all day is not a healthy lifestyle. Quit doing it now. Otherwise, you will be forced to quit with bad health.

Meanwhile, do the easy and simple things like soaking your feet in warm water and taking a walk to keep healthy. The purpose is to increase blood and energy circulation and to relieve stasis.

05 Soak your feet

Herbal medicine advises:

Foot bath in Spring enhances yang-energy and prevents visceral sagging. Foot bath in Summer dispels the heat. Foot bath in Autumn moistens the intestines and stomach. Foot bath in Winter warms the Dantian (pubic) area.

Taking a foot bath, or soaking the feet in warm water, is beneficial for health throughout the year. So DO it.

For more information, search the resources section of the website under the Mustang Tuina Technique category.

06 Take a walk

To activate your body, walking is the simplest, most economical, most effective, and the most suitable way for you to prevent and treat diseases, keep fit and keep healthy.

For more information, search the resources section of the website under the Mustang Shenzhan Technique category.

04 Traditional stretching exercises and meditation

07 Do traditional stretching exercises

The purpose is to dredge the meridians with the least energy.

Our meridians (energy-paths) need to be cleared so that our flow of energy is not blocked. Blocking of energy-paths will lead to all kinds of illnesses. As older people, we do not have much energy left, so we want to conserve as much energy as possible, thus we prefer to do some traditional stretching exercises that will clear our energy-paths without wasting a lot of our precious energy.

Modern exercise such as playing tennis and badminton is based on the fact that the player has enough resources at the mid-section and low-section. All he has to do is just to open it up again with the exercise.

However, as practitioners of life cultivation, most of us do not have enough resources at mid-section and low-section. It is not enough for us to just do this kind of modern exercise. The most suitable exercise for us is to let the blood and energy circulate to bring the energy back and to calm the mind down. That is the reason why traditional stretching exercises are more suitable for older people like us.

Moreover, most of the traditional stretching exercises combine deep breathing with the movement, so we are killing two birds with one stone.

08 Do meditation our ways

Meditation is also integrated into some stretching exercises to calm our mind.

For more information, search the resources section of the website under the Mustang Shenzhan Technique category and the Mustang Tuna Technique category.

05 Return to Nature

09 Get in touch with nature

The purpose of getting in touch with nature is to engage in natural energy exchange, to maintain high spirit, and to improve our mood.

In order to have time with nature, we must cut down our time with the television set, the computer, the video game PlayStation, the mobile phone, and so on. Right?

Entertainment will put us in a good mood, that is why we go for entertainment in its various forms, but getting our entertainment from only the artificial world is not good for us at all. We need to return to the real world, Nature.

We need to fully devote ourselves to the real world to establish our unique relationship with this world with feelings and perceptions. Then we are not restricted by concepts imposed on us. We will strengthen our creativity. We will cultivate our spontaneous behavior and spontaneous activities.

There are some things in life that must be done. For example, travel around the world, or visit some snow-capped mountains. Some books must be read. Some foods must be tasted. Some sports, some arts, and some fun things must be played.

These things can expand our horizon and our mind, and help to heal us. They will help us to adjust and nourish us unconsciously.

06 Peace of Mind

10 Be calm

The purpose is to conserve our energy and to calm down our mind.

There are more ways to keep our peace than there are ways to disturb our mind, if we set our mind to it.

First of all, do not watch horror movies or something akin to horror movies. Do you like to read news about mass killings? Do you like to read news about politicians who spend your tax money like there is no tomorrow? If they make your heart jump up and down, quit watching them. Go back to something that makes you happy and calm.

Do you think that people are very impetuous nowadays? On the road, if the driver in front drives slowly, the driver behind may start yelling. Why? Where does politeness go? We think it is a result of too many artificial games that we have engaged in.

We really need to cultivate our mind. Being restless doesn’t do our body any good.

Herbal medicine teaches that:

The heart governs the blood vessels and stores the spirit. A shaking heart will induce a shaking mind.

To achieve peace of mind, learn and practice meditation.

For more information, search the resources section of the website under the Mustang Tuna Technique category, the Mustang Jingzuo Technique category, and the Mustang Ruding Technique category.

07 Perfect health the easy way

To sum up, if we want to improve our body constitution, then we must

• eat well
• sleep well
• harmonize labor and leisure
• do traditional stretching exercises
• return to nature
• meditate for a peaceful mind

Hooray!

Call to Action

Folks, that is all for now. If you think this article may be beneficial to your friends and loved-ones, feel free to forward this article to them. Life cultivation is mostly for older people with declining body health. If you are young and energetic, this may not be your cup of tea. However, if you have family members or friends who are middle-aged or older, they may want to practice life cultivation to maintain a life without pain or medication.

This is an extract of the full treatise published in the Mustang BodyWorks Series, a paid-subscription. You may buy this full treatise for the price of US$10.00, using your PayPal account.

Stay tuned for the next episode: This is the end of the series on body constitution.

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