In religious Daoism and traditional Chinese medicine, yangsheng refers to a range of self-cultivation practices designed to promote health and longevity. These techniques include calisthenics, self-massage, breathing exercises, meditation, internal and external Daoist alchemy, sexual practices, and dietary regimens.
Most yangsheng practices are intended to promote health and longevity, while a few are aimed at achieving "immortality" in the Daoist sense—referring to transformation into a xian ("transcendent"), a being who typically lives for several centuries before passing away. While common longevity practices, such as maintaining a healthy diet and exercising, contribute to an extended lifespan and overall well-being, some esoteric methods of transcendence can be extreme or even hazardous. These include "grain avoidance" diets, in which practitioners consume only qi (breath) instead of solid food, and the ingestion of Daoist alchemical elixirs of life, which were often poisonous and could be fatally toxic.