Five animal frolics are taught by fourseas.

The five animal frolics are a set of well known dao yin exercises practiced throughout China. The exercises were developed and first introduced by a Chinese doctor called Hua Tuo (2nd century A.D.) The animal frolics are one of the most practiced forms of dao yin exercises and are constantly used to help practitioners to recover from serious illnesses all over china. Chinese doctors have followed and documented the good effects that the five animal movements have had on their patients and promote the learning of them in hospitals all over China. Hou Tuo had a philosophy about how to be healthy. This famous commentary taken from the book The Annals of the Three Kingdoms tells us the reasons of the development of the five animal frolics;

A person's body has an innate desire and need to work and exercise, however it should not be pushed to extremes. A degree of activity causes food energy to be efficiently dispersed, making the blood flow freely, so illness cannot take hold. Thus, the body could be compared to a door hinge, which, through use, never gets rusty. This is why the sages of old practiced dao yin such as the "strolling bear" and "owl looking back" leading yin and maneuvering the waist and limbs, manipulating all of the joints to prevent the onset of old age. I have a method which is a form of dao yin, called "the frolics of five animals," namely the tiger, deer, ape and bird, to remove illness and benefit the hands and feet. If one has an ailment, then practice a relevant "frolic" until one sweats freely, making the body comfortable and stimulating the appetite.

The Dao Yin exercises and the Dao Yin five animal frolics shown here are a representation of embroidery from a silk book that was in a military generals tomb, the tomb was excavated at Mawangdui in 1979. The silk brocades are dated from the
Han dynasty (206 B.C. - A.d. 24).

CURATIVE EFFECTS OF THE FIVE ANIMAL FROLICS

TIGER		FROLICS
DEER FROLIC	MONKEY	FROLICS	BEAR FROLIC
CRANE		FROLICS