Yang Sheng: The art of Chinese self-healing

The concept of self-care is, in fact, thousands of years old. This buzzword is rooted in a 2,500-year old Chinese philosophy. `Yang sheng' means to nourish life - fostering your own health and wellbeing by nurturing body, mind and spirit. In this book, Katie Brindle teaches readers how to harness this powerful natural healing system to improve every aspect of their life. Yang Sheng fits and works brilliantly in modern life. Some of the techniques may seem unusual, but they are all simple, quick and effective. Even more appealing, a key principle of Chinese medicine is balance; that means not being perfect or excluding foods or having too many rules or pushing yourself to exhaustion with overwork or over-exercise. And so, Yang Sheng encourages you to have the green juice and the glass of wine, a full-on day at work and a night out dancing. For people who are overtired and overtaxed, stressed, lacking a sex drive, or who feel anxious or hopeless, the practice of Yang sheng restores balance. Our bodies are designed to self-heal - Yang Sheng knows the mechanics of how to activate this.

Katie Brindle has been a Chinese medicine practitioner since 2002, after graduating from the UK's Integrated College of Chinese Medicine. She specializes in a combination of detailed diagnosis and self-treatment drawing upon the extraordinary legacy of Yang Sheng. Two years ago, she launched beauty and wellness business Hayo'u, selling products and techniques based on Yang Sheng principles. Her work is also the culmination of her personal health journey. After a car accident that ended her dreams of becoming an opera singer, followed by complications around fertility, weight, stress, depression, and fatigue, Katie adopted Yang Sheng to solve her own health problems. She now feels privileged to help others master their health using the same transformative techniques.