🌿 Folk Prescriptions

Emotion refers to the seven human feelings: joy, anger, worry, thought, sorrow, fear, and shock. Every change has dual aspects—beneficial and harmful. Similarly, emotional fluctuations can benefit or harm. As *Yanxing Yanshou Lu* states: “Frequent joy and anger bring harm.” *San Yin Ji Yi Bing Zheng Fang Lun* formally lists joy, anger, worry, thought, sorrow, fear, and shock as internal causes of disease. Yet normally, emotional activities coordinate physiological functions and do not cause illness. Everyone experiences emotions and desires—emotional expression is a normal physiological phenomenon, a protective response to external and internal stimuli, beneficial to health.
Human mental activity is collectively termed emotion or sentiment in TCM—an innate, comprehensive reaction to encountering and understanding objective reality. Rational mental health care is a crucial aspect of overall health, holding great value in life. Since ancient times, philosophers and scholars have offered insightful views. Among them, *Guanzi*'s *Nei Ye* chapter is the earliest dedicated treatise on mental hygiene. “Nei” means heart; “Ye” means skill. Nei Ye means the art of nurturing the heart. *Guanzi* regarded benevolent heart, stable heart, complete heart, and expansive heart as ideal mental states, using these as standards for inner cultivation. Specifically, three principles: first, “correct and still”—body upright, mind tranquil; this benefits body and mind. Second, “peaceful and balanced”—the opposite of “joy, anger, sorrow, worry.” Third, “focus on one”—concentrate solely, unaffected by external affairs, ensuring peace of body and mind.
Notably, *The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon* offers far richer and more mature psychological health concepts than the ancient Greek *Hippocratic Collection*. Reviewing the *Inner Canon*, it provides profound insights into social-psychological factors in disease causation, mechanisms, diagnosis, and treatment, forming a systematic theory. On the relationship between form and spirit, it recognizes that form gives rise to spirit, and spirit governs form—only when form and spirit are unified can one achieve health and longevity. It urges self-control of spirit, resisting interference from negative societal trends. Furthermore, it comprehensively addresses the close link between mind and body, categorizes personality traits, emphasizes the role of psychological factors in disease onset and progression, highlights the significance of psychological treatment, and summarizes principles of spirit regulation and health preservation—offering invaluable insights for studying emotional health.
Han Dynasty physician Zhang Zhongjing, in the preface to *Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases*, passionately emphasized the importance of health preservation. He criticized contemporary doctors and people for ignoring health, calling them “completely blind,” “unconcerned about life,” obsessed with “pursuing fame and power,” “chasing authority,” and “devoting themselves solely to profit.” He accused them of “adorning the superficial while neglecting the fundamental,” urging people to value life and safeguard the root—truly “reasoning with clarity, moving with conviction.” This shows Zhang Zhongjing had a deeper understanding of emotional impacts on health than the authors of the *Inner Canon*.
During the Three Kingdoms period, renowned physician Hua Tuo famously cured a governor’s severe illness by provoking anger, a story recorded in *Book of the Later Han* and widely known. He also “understood the art of nourishing life,” valuing mental hygiene.
Tang Dynasty physician Sun Simiao, in his *Qianjin Yaofang*, dedicated a section to “Nourishing Life,” compiling prior discussions on spirit and heart regulation, adding unique insights—such as the “Twelve Fews and Twelve Excesses” in “Dao Lin Yangsheng”—further developing emotional health theory.
Song Dynasty physician Chen Wuzhe, in *San Yin Ji Yi Bing Zheng Fang Lun*, identified emotional stimuli as one of three major disease categories, strongly emphasizing the critical role of psychological factors in disease development.
Zhang Zihe, one of the Four Great Masters of the Jin-Yuan period, in *Rumen Shiren*, placed great emphasis on psychological treatment. He deeply studied the *Inner Canon*'s “subduing emotion with emotion” therapy and created methods like “habituation to calm.”
In Ming and Qing dynasties, psychological health theory saw new developments and distinctive features. *She Sheng Ji Lan* advocated “nourishing spirit first”—though countless preservation methods exist, nourishing spirit is paramount. On sleep and mental state, it pointed out insomnia relates to emotions, advocating “first clear the heart” for falling asleep. *Zunsheng Bajian* promoted appreciating calligraphy, paintings, stationery, flowers, and hiking to cultivate the spirit—this is the theoretical origin of today’s travel and mountain climbing for mental and physical health, offering valuable methodological inspiration.
In recent years, TCM’s psychological health ideas are gaining increasing attention. The World Health Organization defines health as “not merely the absence of disease, but a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.” Given humanity now lives in an era of heavy emotional burden, psychosomatic illnesses caused by mental factors have become widespread, common diseases and epidemics. The shift in disease patterns clearly demonstrates the extensive impact of mental factors—cardiovascular diseases and malignant tumors now pose the greatest threats to public health and life, closely tied to social and psychological factors. Thus, emotional health preservation must be taken seriously and not treated lightly.