Breathing Spaces

Qigong, Psychiatry, and Healing in China

By: Nancy N. Chen

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Paperback | 13 June 2003 | Edition Number 1

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256 Pages

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22+

Dimensions(cm)
22.81 x 15.28 x 1.38

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The charismatic form of healing called qigong, based on meditative breathing exercises, has achieved enormous popularity in China during the last two decades. Qigong served a critical social organizational function, as practitioners formed new informal networks, sometimes on an international scale, at a time when China was shifting from state-subsidized medical care to for-profit market medicine. The emergence of new psychological states deemed to be deviant led the Chinese state to "medicalize" certain forms while championing scientific versions of qigong. By contrast, qigong continues to be promoted outside China as a traditional healing practice. Breathing Spaces brings to life the narratives of numerous practitioners, healers, psychiatric patients, doctors, and bureaucrats, revealing the varied and often dramatic ways they cope with market reform and social changes in China.

Industry Reviews

For readers sometimes puzzled by recent mind-body movements in China and responses by central and regional governments, Chen's clear and scholarly presentation will prove most helpful. This book becomes even more important now that the movement and others like it have spread globally, including to Europe, the New World, and the US. Highly recommended. Choice The book's originality lies both in its focus on the medicalization process and psychiatry, and in a theoretically innovative approach based on the medicalization process and psychiatry, and in a theoretically innovative approach based on the concepts of body politics and spaces...Breathing Spaces is incontestably a very valuable contribution to medical anthropology and religious studies in the context of Chinese culture, and to global cultural studies. -- Evelyne Micollier Journal of Chinese Religions

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Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Introduction	p. 1
Fever	p. 35
Riding the Tiger	p. 61
Qigong Deviation or Psychosis	p. 77
Chinese Psychiatry and the Search for Order	p. 107
Mandate of Science	p. 139
Transnational Qigong	p. 159
Suffering and Healing	p. 185
Glossary	p. 189
Notes	p. 193
Bibliography	p. 199
Index	p. 233
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Breathing Spaces

Qigong, Psychiatry, and Healing in China

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

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