On Chinese Body Thinking

On Chinese Body Thinking

Author: Kuang Min Wu

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 9789004101500

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This book uses Western philosophical tradition to make a case for a form of thinking properly associated with ancient China. The book's thesis is that Chinese thinking is concrete rather than formal and abstract, and this is gathered in a variety of ways under the symbol "body thinking." The root of the metaphor is that the human body has a kind of intelligence in its most basic functions. When hungry the body gets food and eats, when tired it sleeps, when amused it laughs. In free people these things happen instinctively but not automatically. The metaphor of body thinking is extended far beyond bodily functions in the ordinary sense to personal and communal life, to social functions and to cultivation of the arts of civilization. As the metaphor is extended, the way to stay concrete in thinking with subtlety becomes a kind of ironic play, a natural adeptness at saying things with silences. Play and indirection are the roads around formalism and abstraction. Western formal thinking, it is argued, can be sharpened by Chinese body thinking to exhibit spontaneity and to produce healthy human thought in a community of cultural variety.


Mind and Body in Early China

Mind and Body in Early China

Author: Edward Slingerland

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 019084230X

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Mind and Body in Early China critiques Orientalist accounts of early China as a radical "holistic" other, which saw no qualitative difference between mind and body. Drawing on knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Edward Slingerland demonstrates that seeing a difference between mind and body is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. This book has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.


Anticipating China

Anticipating China

Author: David L. Hall

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1995-08-17

Total Pages: 362

ISBN-13: 1438405510

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By providing parallel accounts of the contrasting developments of classical Chinese and Western traditions, Anticipating China offers a means of avoiding the implicit cultural biases which so often distort Western understanding of Chinese intellectual culture. The book shows that failure to assess the significant cultural differences between China and the West has seriously affected our understanding of both classical and contemporary China, and makes the translation of attitudes, concepts, and issues extremely problematic.


The Chinese HEART in a Cognitive Perspective

The Chinese HEART in a Cognitive Perspective

Author: Ning Yu

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2009-02-26

Total Pages: 487

ISBN-13: 3110213346

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This book is a cognitive semantic study of the Chinese conceptualization of the heart, traditionally seen as the central faculty of cognition. The Chinese word xin, which primarily denotes the heart organ, covers the meanings of both "heart" and "mind" as understood in English, which upholds a heart-head dichotomy. In contrast to the Western dualist view, Chinese takes on a more holistic view that sees the heart as the center of both emotions and thought. The contrast characterizes two cultural traditions that have developed different conceptualizations of person, self, and agent of cognition. The concept of "heart" lies at the core of Chinese thought and medicine, and its importance to Chinese culture is extensively manifested in the Chinese language. Diachronically, this book traces the roots of its conception in ancient Chinese philosophy and traditional Chinese medicine. Along the synchronic dimension, it not only makes a systematic analysis of conventionalized expressions that reflect the underlying cultural models and conceptualizations, as well as underlying conceptual metaphors and metonymies, but also attempts a textual analysis of an essay and a number of poems for their metaphoric and metonymic images and imports contributing to the cultural models and conceptualizations. It also takes up a comparative perspective that sheds light on similarities and differences between Western and Chinese cultures in the understanding of the heart, brain, body, mind, self, and person. The book contributes to the understanding of the embodied nature of human cognition situated in its cultural context, and the relationship between language, culture, and cognition.


Hsing-I

Hsing-I

Author: Robert W. Smith

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Published: 2003-05-01

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 9781556434556

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Harmoniously merging the mind and the body, Hsing-I Ch'uan is simultaneously one of the most simple and most complex of the Chinese martial arts. The five forms, based on the Chinese concept of the five elements, provide a toolbox of techniques that the skillful Hsing-I practitioner uses to box with himself, channeling ch'i into spirit and spirit into mindful stillness. From this synthesis of external and internal forces springs new energy and true ability. Engagingly written and amply illustrated with black and white photographs, Robert W. Smith's primer includes the history and meaning of Hsing-I, detailed instruction in the five forms and twelve animal styles, and cogent advice from the masters. First published almost 30 years ago, Hsing-I: Chinese Mind-Body Boxing was among the first books on Hsing-I and remains one of the best.


The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine

The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine

Author: Shigehisa Kuriyama

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-10-17

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 0942299930

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An illuminating account of how early medicine in Greece and China perceived the human body Winner of the William H. Welch Medal, American Association for the History of Medicine The true structure and workings of the human body are, we casually assume, everywhere the same, a universal reality. But when we look into the past, our sense of reality wavers: accounts of the body in diverse medical traditions often seem to describe mutually alien, almost unrelated worlds. How can perceptions of something as basic and intimate as the body differ so? In this book, Shigehisa Kuriyama explores this fundamental question, elucidating the fascinating contrasts between the human body described in classical Greek medicine and the body as envisaged by physicians in ancient China. Revealing how perceptions of the body and conceptions of personhood are intimately linked, his comparative inquiry invites us, indeed compels us, to reassess our own habits of feeling and perceiving.


Transforming Emotions with Chinese Medicine

Transforming Emotions with Chinese Medicine

Author: Yanhua Zhang

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2012-02-01

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0791480593

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Chinese medicine approaches emotions and emotional disorders differently than the Western biomedical model. Transforming Emotions with Chinese Medicine offers an ethnographic account of emotion-related disorders as they are conceived, talked about, experienced, and treated in clinics of Chinese medicine in contemporary China. While Chinese medicine (zhongyi) has been predominantly categorized as herbal therapy that treats physical disorders, it is also well known that Chinese patients routinely go to zhongyi clinics for treatment of illness that might be diagnosed as psychological or emotional in the West. Through participant observation, interviews, case studies, and zhongyi publications, both classic and modern, the author explores the Chinese notion of "body-person," unravels cultural constructions of emotion, and examines the way Chinese medicine manipulates body-mind connections.


The Body Clock in Traditional Chinese Medicine

The Body Clock in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Author: Lothar Ursinus

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-03-03

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13: 1644110377

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A reference guide to understanding the natural rhythm of our organs and learning to support them in a holistic way • Explains the Organ Body Clock from Traditional Chinese Medicine and which organs and meridians are dominant during different hours of the day • Describes exactly what happens inside the body during each organ’s active time and shows what we can do to support the organs with plant medicine, homeopathy, our behavior, and simple daily practices • Explores the mental and emotional states each organ is related to and their connections to the teeth, the other organs, and the Five Elements of TCM All of our organs are energetically interconnected. They each have regular rest and active cycles throughout the day, with different organs becoming dominant at different hours. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, this is known as the Organ Body Clock. In this accessible guide to the body clock in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the author shows how to support the body’s natural rhythms of activity, recognize the body’s signals of imbalance and find their sources, and achieve healing on the physical and energetic levels. He explains how the body clock can provide deep insight into our physical and energetic health. For example, if we always wake up at a certain time at night, we should look up which organ is associated with that time, which will lead us to discover the part of our body that needs special attention and help. The author explores the 12 major organs of the body, describing their active and rest hours, their function inside the body, the mental and emotional states they are related to, and their connections to the teeth, the other organs, and the Five Elements of TCM. The author describes exactly what happens inside the body during each organ’s active time and shows what we can do to support the organs with plant medicine, homeopathy, our behavior, and simple daily practices. By working with the body clock and better understanding our bodies’ rhythms, we more easily trace our ailments and conditions to their source for faster relief, sustainable healing, and energetic balance.


Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body

Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body

Author: Xing Wang

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-03-23

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 9004429557

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In Physiognomy in Ming China: Fortune and the Body, Xing Wang investigates the intellectual and technical contexts in which the knowledge of physiognomy (xiangshu) was produced and transformed in Ming China (1368-1644 C.E.). Known as a fortune-telling technique via examining the human body and material objects, Xing Wang shows how the construction of the physiognomic body in many Ming texts represent a unique, unprecedented ‘somatic cosmology’. Applying an anthropological reading to these texts and providing detailed analysis of this technique, the author proves that this physiognomic cosmology in Ming China emerged as a part of a new body discourse which differs from the modern scholarly discourse on the body.