Staying Flexible

When a man is living, he is soft and supple.

When he is dead, he becomes hard and rigid.

When a plant is living, it is soft and tender.

When it is dead, it becomes withered and dry.

Hence, the hard and rigid belongs to the company of the dead;

The soft and supple belongs to the company of the living.


Tao Te Ching Chapter 78 (John C. H. Wu Translation)

This gong fu master demonstrating Tai Yi Qigong certainly took that message seriously:

This older Taoist martial arts master at Wudang Mountain also displays suppleness defying age:

 What kind of diet supports this flexibility in advanced age?

All the temple-dwelling Wudang Taoists adhere to a vegetarian diet (link).

For me, 14 years of meat-based "paleo diet" coincided with increased stiffness; now, about two months after I resumed experimenting with a vegetarian diet, I'm experiencing a gradual release of muscle tension.

I had the same thing happen in my late 20s when settling into a vegetarian diet after years of omnivory including 3 or 4 years of meat-based high protein diet.

In my experience, diet is not the only influence on flexibilty, but it does have a profound influence in my case.   Experiment.



Don