The Qigong Way — 3 by James Lin — book cover

Non-fiction

The Qigong Way — 3

Legends Behind the Practice

James Lin

Every qigong practice has a lineage.

Where did qigong come from? Not from a single teacher or a single text, but from a lineage of remarkable figures whose stories have been carried forward — sometimes faithfully, sometimes transformed by legend — for thousands of years.

The Qigong Way: Legends Behind the Practice profiles eight of those figures: Huangdi, the mythic Yellow Emperor whose name appears on the oldest canon of Chinese medicine; Lao Tzu, the archivist who composed a civilization's most enduring text at a border crossing before disappearing west; Zhuangzi, the philosopher who gave inner cultivation its language of transformation; Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who sat facing a cave wall for nine years and restored the body to the spiritual path; Hua Tuo, the physician whose most enduring gift survived because it lived in the body, not on paper; Sun Simiao, the King of Medicine who understood that true cultivation governs the whole of life; Yue Fei, the loyal general whose character shaped a practice millions still perform each morning; and Zhang Sanfeng, the wandering Daoist whom emperors sought for decades and never found.

Each chapter illuminates not only the legend but the qigong principle it carries — showing why these stories endured and what they continue to teach.

The third book in The Qigong Way series, Legends stands fully on its own for new readers while offering series readers the historical and mythological roots of the philosophy and practice explored throughout the series.

James Lin lives in Taipei where he has practiced Qigong since childhood, learning from his grandfather. He is the author of The Qigong Way Series.

PublisherSummer Books Publishers (2026)

Length119 pages

ISBN978-1-0666927-4-3

GenreNon-fiction

FormatPaperback · Ebook

LanguageEnglish