Don’t you just want to scream? Do it in Hangzhou
If you’re looking for the next fad workout, yelling is it … except it isn’t anything new.
“Chinese people have passed on the practice from generation to generation as a part of traditional medicine,” says Mrs He, a 60-year-old retiree out for a morning yell. “My parents taught me. It’s a part of our folk culture.”
Mrs He and four friends go to Hangzhou’s Baoshi Hill every morning to stretch their limbs and their lungs. “We expel the bad air from the lungs and let in the clean air,” she explains. “It’s cleansing the lungs out. It’s like yoga.”
Mrs Gu, a retiree in her 50s, always includes a few yells in her daily exercise regimen.
“It’s best if you stand up to yell, and do it from a hilltop,” she advises. We hear yells from a distance. “Sometimes I yell out and others yell back. It makes you happy. You laugh and then you’re in a good mood.”
“This is the most basic form of qi gong,” explains He Wei, a 61-year-old artist whose bellows we heard long before we found him in a sheltered spot off the path.
He climbs the hills a few times a week for exercise. “It’s a way of venting. At school or work when things get you down you can’t scream, but here you can -- [screams] -- and you feel much better.”
Mr Huang never misses a chance for a yell when he's in Hangzhou.
A Shanghai transplant
The youngest yeller we encounter is Huang Yao Huang, a 36-year-old IT exec based in Shanghai. When he travels to Hangzhou for business, he makes sure to stay the weekend so he can head to the hills to practice qi gong, play his flute and let out a throaty yell or two.
“Not many people do this [in Shanghai]. Maybe if you continue to do it bad air will get into [your lungs],” he says. “Another problem is it’s too crowded. If you yell [in Shanghai] people might think you‘re crazy. In Hangzhou nobody cares.”
To an outsider, the cries are a bit jarring at first -- they begin around daybreak and peter out sometime after 10am. But they make you smile and finally you start to get an itch to join in.
So, you’ve got something to get off your chest? Start your day off right. Find a good spot, open up and let it all out!
What the experts say
Dr Greg Livingston, American doctor of Chinese Medicine at Shanghai East International Medical Center:
“It looks a little strange admittedly.” But there’s a logic he says. “The lung in TCM includes the lung, throat, vocal cord and nose -- the entire respiratory tract. [The lung] is commander of dissemination of qi (source behind all bodily functions) in the body. You’re strengthening the lungs. People with respiratory illness, asthma, colds -- when they’re not sick, they can exercise their lungs. If you want to prevent the lung from weakening, this is what you do.”
Dr Peter Calafiura, American psychiatrist at Parkway Health Center:
“[Yelling] might trigger some endorphins, a natural high. They might feel calm and it might even be a little addictive,” he suggests. “It’s really similar to a runner’s high. They’re getting the same effect in a different way.” He adds that “there’s probably a benefit to doing this in the morning, probably some stimulating effect. The evidence that it works is that people are doing it.”
read most
commented