 There's a famous historical man named Li Qingyun who apparently lived to be 250 years old. Now Li Qingyun did all kinds of specific health practices from consuming medicinal herbs from traditional Chinese medicine to Taoist alchemical and esoteric medical and mystical practices to just general good lifestyle advice. Now in this video I thought I would talk about his story a little bit more because there is some great longevity advice here from both a medical, Taoist and traditional Chinese medicine point of view. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hein, author of the health book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump into this video there are two very important links right below. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine you can reach out to my private practice right below this video and the second is I've put together a free guide which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So check those links out right below this video. Now Li Qingyun is actually a real historical person. Now whether or not he lived to 250 is what we are going to debate here today but there's an entire Wikipedia entry on him, several famous historical figures have met him and there's a New York Times article written about his death in the year 1933. So we know this human was a real human being. What we don't know and I don't believe is whether or not he made it to 250 but his story is fascinating nonetheless. Now lots of what we know about this guy come from a famous Taiwanese general named Yang Sen who hosted Li to come and basically interview him about his life and about these practices. Now what's fascinating is that General Yang Sen, again a real verified historical person, used a lot of these practices and actually lived to be pretty old himself. So that's maybe a testament to some of these practices on their own. But Li's biography is pretty interesting. So Li Qingyun worked as an herbalist selling lingjur, reishi mushrooms, goji berry, wild ginseng, huoshouwu and gozu cola along with other Chinese herbs and he lived off of a diet of herbs and rice wine. Now in this book there are some of the interviews supposedly taken with him and he talks a lot about basically for a long time in his life he did eat meat and vegetables and rice sort of a traditional Chinese kind of diet at that time but as he got older he preferred primarily using meat as a secondary portion and was primarily vegetarian. For a long time he was harvesting herbs and learning about medicinal herbs and consuming them in his own life. Supposedly around the first hundred years of his life were in this sort of business. Along that time he came across other Taoist initiates, people who were monks or people who were just purely regular day to day people in that religious and spiritual tradition. Now he died from natural causes on May 6th 1933 in Sichuan province. Now the claim is that he produced over 200 descendants during his lifespan surviving 24 wives. But after his death this general yang sen wrote this report about him called a factual account of the 250 year old good luck man. He described his appearance where he said he has good eyesight and a brisk stride. Lee stands seven feet tall, has very long fingernails and a ready complexion. And finally the New York Times actually has a real verified article about his death when they said in May 3rd 1933 Li Qingyun dead. So this guy to some degree was a real human being. We know that to be true. And even this picture is probably an actual real picture of him and you can see in a center there what I thought was him holding an herb is him holding one of his extremely long fingernails. So he said that his fingernails would grow to be 9, 10, 11, 12 inches long. Fall off naturally and he would save them in a kind of a special ornamental case. Ultimate question is what was this guy doing, right? Now this book is filled with lots of other interesting practices that he had shared. My free guide, the free PDF that I've put down, you know it's really the first link right below this video. It's about these four practices because I think they are a good intersection of both medical, pragmatic, mystical and Taoism meets traditional Chinese medicine sort of practices that anyone can do on a day-to-day basis from an inner perspective, a habit perspective that will make their life better and healthier. But there were a few things he did that I found interesting. One of them is just sitting meditation, right? This is something that is pretty common in the Taoist traditions. Some degree of seated meditation where you settle the mind, you calm the spirit, that kind of thing. But Lee actually had mentioned many quotes from traditional Taoist practices like Qigong that I've talked about here. He also mentions conversations with some Taoists where they directly quote the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, the most important and most famous book in traditional Chinese medicine. The very first chapter talks a lot about basically how to live out your allotted lifespan, live to be 100 and be in good health during that time and why most people these days by 50 are already old and gray and what those habits are that made them that way. So his second point here about settling the mind talks a lot about this. He talks a lot about on life desire, about how many country people at his time live longer than city people because they lack the desire to eat these extravagant amounts of food. Whereas country people just eat simply. Basically, they eat to live as opposed to they eat for the successive pleasure of the newest restaurant in Los Angeles, the hottest new fine dining in New York. And on top of that, city people are often caught up in the pursuit of fame and riches. You know, I can think even for myself, why did I move to Los Angeles instead of just staying a quiet little suburban area? Drive because I'm driven and I want to see how far everything can go and I want to be around people who are hungry and driven. But in many cases, that same quality, that restless spirit is both a disease producing habit, as well as a success producing habit, and that is the dual ledged sword of being driven. But Lee says, you know, a lot of these principles and Taoism are around simplicity and around keeping the heart peaceful and quiet. One of Lee's actual quotes, his four or five practices that he's quoted in the New York Times article from 1933 is keep a quiet heart. And a lot of what this is as a reference to Taoist and Buddhist practices about not lusting after fame or desire or trying to grasp at too many things and just being peaceful and being content. You can of course work on your life and improve yourself, but not having basically desires tire out the heart, tire out the spirit. Think of that feeling you have internally where you're always trying to get your goal, trying to get that person to date and get that promotion. Think about how exhausting that can be and how stressful it can become. So in terms of maintaining perfect peace, in terms of your health and your nervous system, minimizing excessive desires is one of those practices. Now there were two other things he did. One was consuming medicinal herbs. Lingjur is the spirit mushroom, reishi, right? Goji is goji berries and many others, right? We've talked about ginseng here in my videos, one of the most famous and expensive herbs in history. But adding medicinal herbs to his diet, a lot like how famous physicians in our profession through history have utilized these compounds to protect their own health and to not get sick themselves and to treat their own illnesses from lifestyle. And finally, Lee talks a lot about specific Taoist practices he did, like qigong. So some of these were famous practices that you see in other Taoist adepts, right? The eight brocades, qigong, varying kinds of qigong, little practices that you see in snippets of other lineages. But breathing exercises and physical exercise were a deep part of his daily practice. But I think a lot of it was one piece, the material side, the physical practices, the herbs, the diet, the lifestyle, of course. And the other part is basically keeping a quiet heart, as he said. Now do I think this guy really lived to be 250? No, I don't. I think he's like a lot of these other unsubstantiated claims of centenarians, where it was probably multiple generations of people, maybe with the same name, father, a son, a grandson. And that's what led to this sort of mystique. I think also the East Asian culture, sometimes in India, China, Tibet, Nepal, can be susceptible to these kinds of extreme longevity claims, because that's something they want to believe in. But regardless, we know this guy was a real person, we have a picture of him, and we have a famous general that interviewed him. So regardless, some of his practices for his longevity are general, no-nonsense, good advice from a TCM Taoist in a longevity point of view. But I thought I would share the fascinating story of this guy Li Qingyun, because regardless of this claim that I don't think is true, there are some very valid gems here from my profession on how to live a longer life than you will probably not hear very often in conventional medicine. So my two cents about Li Qingyun here, guys, check out those links right below this video. Again, that free guide is basically on Li Qingyun's four or five pieces of advice. So I would check those out, and I'll see you soon.