section_path: Practices/Longevity practices
section_name: Longevity practices
paragraph_text: Longevity practices
  
  Taoist longevity methods are closely related to ancient Chinese medicine. Many of these methods date back to Tang dynasty figures like alchemist Sun Simiao (582–683) and the Highest Clarity Patriarch Sima Chengzhen (647–735). The goal of these methods range from better health and longevity to immortality. Key elements of these "nourishing life" (yangsheng) methods include: moderation in all things (drink, food, etc.), adapting to the cycles of the seasons by following injunctions regarding healing exercises (daoyin), and breathwork.
  
  A number of physical practices, like modern forms of qigong, as well as modern internal martial arts (neijia) like Taijiquan, Baguazhang, Xingyiquan, and Liuhebafa, are practiced by Taoists as methods of cultivating health and longevity as well as eliciting internal alchemical transformations. However, these methods are not specifically Taoist and are often practiced outside of Taoist contexts.
  
  Another key longevity method is "ingestion", which focuses on what one absorbs or consumes from one's environment and is seen as affecting what one becomes. Diatectics, closely influenced by Chinese medicine, is a key element of ingestion practice, and there are numerous Taoist diet regimens for different effects (such as ascetic diets, monastic diets, therapeutic diets, and alchemical diets that use herbs and minerals). One common practice is the avoidance of grains (bigu). In certain cases, practices like vegetarianism and true fasting is also adopted (which may also be termed bigu).
  
  Some Taoists thought of the human body as a spiritual nexus with thousands of shen (often 36,000), gods who were likely thought of as at least somewhat mental in nature because of the word's other meaning of consciousness, that could be communed with by doing various methods to manipulate the yin and yang of the body, as well as its qi. These Taoists also thought of the human body as a metaphorical existence where three " cinnabar fields" that represented a higher level of reality or a spiritual kind of cinnabar that does not exist in normal reality. A method of meditation used by these Taoists was "visualizing light" that was thought to be qi or another kind of life energy a Taoist substituted for qi or believed in the existence of instead. The light was then channeled through the three cinnabar fields, forming a "microcosmic orbit" or through the hands and feet for a "macrocosmic orbit".
  
  The 36,000 shen regulated the body and bodily functions through a bureaucratic system "modeled after the Chinese system of government". Death occurs only when these gods leave, but life can be extended by meditating while visualizing them, doing good deeds, and avoiding meat and wine.