Shaolin Chan Medicine & Pharmacy
Shaolin Temple Chan Medicine & Pharmacy
Chinese Shaolin medicine has a long history, broad and profound, and is a precious heritage in the traditional Chinese culture. It has a complete theory, rich practice, and a thousand-year history. It has been passed down in ancient times through the secret recipes of Shaolin Temple monks.
Shaolin Chan Medicine can be traced back to the time when Shaolin Temple was founded. With a large number of monks in the temple, they sat in meditation all daylong without motion, which affected their blood circulation and led to many diseases. Then the monks began to practice martial arts except meditation and accumulate medical experience by taking advantages of abundant herbal resources in the Song Mountain and benefitting from the folk medical approaches.
They studied many secret recipes and developed the Qigong therapy, massage therapy and acupuncture / acupressure therapy which have the effects of physical fitness and medical treatment.
Shaolin Medicine can combat various kinds of diseases, specialized in treating traumatic injuries, and has many divisions such as surgery and internal departments, which forms the featured culture of Shaolin Chan Medicine.
Shaolin Temple had been the homes of the largest population of prominent medical monks in history; passing down their knowledge and herbal medicine recipes from one generation to the next for over a thousand years.
As Shaolin monks are inevitable to suffer physical injuries during the physical training of Shaolin Kungfu and the actual use of armed forces, the corresponding injury department in the Shaolin Kungfu martial arts system has been in the Jin Dynasty (13th century) at the latest. form. During the period when Zen Master Zhilong was abbot of Shaolin Temple (1217-1223), Shaolin Temple opened a pharmacy so as to serve Shaolin monks and the general public with Shaolin Medicine.
It enjoyed great reputation and was called “Buddhist Medicine Origin”. At the meantime, the secret recipes of Shaolin Medicine were opened to outsiders to benefit all people.
Shaolin Chan Medicine is a medicine school with more than one thousand years’ practice and integration, taking the basis of the Indian medicine culture and the Chinese medicine culture. Combining traditional Shaolin Medicine with modern medicine, it takes “meditation” as the basic means, employs the doctrines of respiration, Daoyin, Qixue, meridians and collaterals and viscera-state as main theories, and adopts the approaches of “contemplation”, “aeration”, “massage” to diagnose, treat and nurse the patient. It also applies diet therapy and makes use of all kinds of medical herbs.
