Breathing Spaces

by Nancy N. Chen

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.

Genres: Anthropology

238 pages, Paperback

First published August 5, 2003

About the author

Nancy N. Chen is Professor of Anthropology at Scripps College. She is the author of Food, Medicine, and the Quest for Good Health and Breathing Spaces: Qigong, Psychiatry, and Healing in China.

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book in my Sophmore year in college, it was a great look into Chinese beliefs about health and their practices. This was a great book, any anthropology student would love it! I met the author and she is a very sweet and interetsing person who is in love with her work.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nancy N. Chen's book Breathing Spaces, qigong, psychiatry, and healing in China, was published in 2003, by Columbia University Press. Before Chen's book there was nothing available about the history of Qigong in the 20th century that would satisfy a curious 12 year old, much less a scholar.

I have at least 45 post-it notes in my book. Why do I love this book so much?

Here is a brief biography form the back cover: "Nancy N. Chen is associate professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A medical anthropologist, she also teaches courses on food, ethnographic film, urban anthropology, China, and Asian Americans."

She grew up in the US studying gongfu, and like me, heard about this thing called qigong sometime in the late 80's. It turned out to be, at least partly, what we had all been practicing and referring to as martial arts warm-ups. But there where also lots of claims being attached to this new "qigong" that didn't seem to fit our experiences. There was a lot of religious feeling and parlor tricks too. There were strange and sometimes very specific claims made about healing powers associated with both the practice of doing qigong and these new "Masters" themselves.

Being a lover of history, the biographies various masters would pull out from the underside of their 'inner cauldrons,' were particularly irksome to me. Nancy N. Chen deals with all this beautifully.
So the only real question now is, why haven't you read it yet?

[Kara Rowley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting

[Daniel Burton-Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid introduction to the qigong movement that snowballed in China throughout the late '80s and '90s and increasingly went global. David Palmer covers much of the same terrain in Qigong Fever, though Chen concentrates more on medical institutions and gender dynamics. Chen is careless in her pinyin transliteration, which is particularly irritating as she doesn't provide a character index.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an in depth study of Qigong within the environment where it developed. It is important to keep in mind that Qigong Deviancy occurred in a repressive environment. I'm curious to find out if there have been any occurrence within the USA or Europe.

[Jenni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating content, but repetitive and longer than it needed to be.