🌿 Folk Prescriptions

Chinese ancient medicine distinguishes between "external influences" and "internal injuries." "External influences" refer to "wind, cold, summer heat, warmth, dryness, fire"—modern terms also include microbial infections. "Internal injuries" refer to the "seven emotions": joy, anger, worry, thought, grief, fear, and shock—essentially human emotions. People react psychologically to their surroundings—either favorably or unfavorably. Such psychological activities are called emotions.
Regulating adverse emotions to prevent them from spiraling out of control is a crucial aspect of health preservation. Traditional Chinese health preservation holds that life activities originate from yin and yang. Only by balancing yin and yang to maintain harmony can longevity and health be achieved. Yin-yang theory posits that all natural phenomena contain yin and yang aspects, and their generation, development, and change always involve the interaction of yin and yang energies. Life activities are based on yin essence and yang qi. Though complex and variable, physiological functions can be summarized as the contradictory movement of yin essence and yang qi. Thus, all life processes are outcomes of dynamic balance between yin essence and yang qi. The entire life cycle—from birth, growth, strength, aging to death—is driven by yang qi’s propelling and warming functions and yin essence’s nourishing and moisturizing roles. Balanced yin-yang in zang-fu organs, meridians, qi, and blood ensures health, resistance to aging, and longevity. Therefore, unbalanced or uncontrollable seven emotions lead to mental instability, disrupting yin-yang balance and causing various diseases. Thus, Qing Dynasty health expert Shi Chengjin advocated "discussing the seven emotions, harmonizing life" to prevent emotional imbalance before it occurs. "Discussing the seven emotions" means not letting external stimuli trigger emotional fluctuations, keeping emotions consistently calm. "Harmonizing life" means maintaining a calm, joyful attitude toward life’s circumstances and relationships, ensuring emotions remain balanced and preventing internal yin-yang disruption. Thus, appropriately regulating emotions to keep them balanced is a vital health preservation method.
China’s health preservation tradition has created many effective emotion-regulating techniques over thousands of years. These not only include modern psychological therapies but also unique methods of mutual emotional regulation. Jin-Yuan dynasty physician Zhang Zihe believed: "Use sorrow to treat anger, using mournful and sorrowful music; use joy to treat sorrow, using playful and humorous words; use fear to treat joy, using words about sudden death; use anger to treat overthinking, using humiliating and deceitful situations; use overthinking to treat fear, using words that distract from one concern to another. All these methods must be cunning, bizarre, and extreme to move and alter people’s minds." Actual medical cases of mutual emotional regulation appear in historical medical records. By different emotional stimuli, internal yin-yang balance can be restored, achieving healing.
By moderating the seven emotions and maintaining a harmonious, joyful life, one avoids diseases caused by excessive emotions, benefiting health and longevity. This is a core element of Chinese health preservation. Sun Simiao in *Qian Jin Yao Fang* (Essential Formulas for Emergencies) proposed the "Twelve Fewer": fewer thoughts, fewer worries, fewer desires, fewer ambitions, fewer words, fewer laughs, fewer sorrows, fewer joys, fewer pleasures, fewer anger, fewer preferences, fewer aversions. He said, "These twelve fewer are the essentials of health preservation." Among these twelve, emotional regulation occupies the majority, highlighting the paramount importance and role of emotional regulation in health preservation.