Breathing Spaces: Qigong, Psychiatry, and Healing in China (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780231128049)

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.

Author: Nancy Chen
ISBN-10: 0231128045
ISBN-13: 9780231128049
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 06/04/2003
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 9.38h x 6.04w x 0.73d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2004 pg. 1118