WHEN we are congratulating ourselves on the good life we now enjoy, we mainly focus on the myriad modern conveniences and amenities we enjoy, but rarely do we realize the high price we pay for having them.

In our relentless pursuit of the good life (read: material things), we willingly sacrifice our liberty, as we degenerate into disciplined, obedient, regimented and carefully numbered cogs in a mechanical complex.

In some sense, we are not materially different from a young lad in Anhui Province who sold his kidney to buy a iPad, or a girl who offered to sacrifice her virginity for an iPhone 4.

Unfortunately, our biology and psyche fail to keep up with demands of the machine age. Instinctively many of us still yearn for the time of the first men on earth - simple adventurers who roamed the forest gathering fruit or hunting for his next meal.

Biologically human beings are little different from other species, except for the towering human ambitions and hubris - sometimes known as intellect - that enable them to relentlessly plunder and trash the earth that continues to sustain them.

In their eagerness to respond properly to the dictates of industrialization and modernization, many human beings become lost, suffering doubts, remorse, depression and despair.

Only 30 years ago, about 80 percent of Chinese were still land-tilling peasants, who rose with the sun, worked by the sweat of their brow and retired with the sunset.

In the eyes of many office coolies today, these peasants were a poor lot. They went without modern plumbing, air-conditioning, iPads, TVs and cars.

But they enjoyed their meals, slept well and had clean air and water. A peasant, after paying his tax in grain, fears nothing, lives with a clear conscience, in security, leisure and contentment.

Thus, depression is unheard of in China, until quite recently.

Today, stress from work has been so pervasive, and can be so overwhelming, that some workers condemned to Foxconn assembly lines have been taking fatal leaps to avoid their fate.

Even some well-placed officials periodically leap to their death to escape a kind of depression some Chinese officials are particularly prone to.

Industrialized life reconfigures life in line with machine-age requirements, and progressive parents are not only adapting to these demands themselves, but also working overtime to adapt their next generation to the modern tempo.

Sadly, children are probably the only humans today still atavistically equipped with the capacity for taking delight in simple pleasures.

In their failure to equate time with money, and to see money as everything, they sometimes may stand and stare for a long time, and can be distracted by a roadside snail, bug, or flower.

On a typical weekday morning, I would shout kuai ("hurry") at least five times to my son in my eagerness to help him arrive at school on time.

Mind and body

Our superstitions about wealth lead to the cult of efficiency, and the cult of efficiency accelerates the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, and the concentration of wealth adds to the feelings of stress and despair for the majority.

Given the steady erosion of our spiritual well-being, we begin to hear more and more about psychiatrists, stress management and depression.

In his "Guide to Stress Reduction," author L. John Mason introduces some common stress-reduction approaches.

As he observes, stress is a normal part of modern life, but don't accept it as your normal condition.

If one is constantly under stress, he or she cannot replenish and heal properly.

"Your chronic stress response may include some of the characteristics of the fight-or-flight response, not necessarily the entire physiological configuration," Mason observes.

As Western medicine is strictly limited to the physical evidence of human health, until quite recently, it has fails to include emotional and spiritual welfare as relevant to health.

In contrast, in traditional Chinese medicine, the perception of health has been preeminently predicated on harmony between mind and body.

For instance, in TCM, shen (usually translated as kidney, misleadingly, for shen is much more than kidney in Western medicine) is said to be one of the five organs that is responsible for producing "fire of life," or qi (vital energy), relating to human vigor, growth and reproduction.

A man who had overexpended this qi is said to suffer from shenkui; (kidney deficiency), with symptoms including insomnia, lethargy, dizziness, back pain and ringing in the ears. If you visit a doctor trained in Western medicine, he or she would probably reassure you that you do not have an underlying medical condition.

According to TCM, however, these symptoms can be important precursors, suggesting incipient ailment not only in the kidney, but in other internal organs as well, for the kidney's prime function is to nourish other organs.

In his book, Mason observes, "Stress is related, even though seemingly indirectly, to many ... diseases. Continually triggering the stress response for inappropriate situations causes wear and tear on the body."

So in Chinese qigong and TCM, how to regulate and facilitate the flow of qi within the body is crucial to health, and the usual methods to achieve this purpose include qigong and TCM.

Many approaches

In Mason's stress management guide book, deep breathing reaching one's diaphragm is the basis of all stress-reduction techniques.

As a matter of fact, the diaphragm concerns regions known in Chinese acupuncture as dantian, which includes four acupuncture points. One basic important qigong principle is how to push the qi to the dantian.

When you succeed in doing this, you will feel pleasurably warm and heavy. Mason explains this, mundanely, as due to increased blood flow and relaxed skeletal muscles.

In addition to explaining deep breathing, the author also summarizes a number of other techniques, which may benefit anyone suffering from undue stress in their working life or at home.

Biofeedback allows you to learn to use your subconscious to relieve stress.

Visualization processes can trick your body into believing it is relaxed.

Meditation trains your mind to focus and alters your sense of time. The keys are:

1. A quiet environment.

2. An object to focus on.

3. A passive attitude.

A passive attitude contrasts sharply with the active exercises that might add stress through demands of performance or competition.

Other techniques also include gentle exercise that moves and relaxes rigid muscles, and desensitizing techniques that are meant to overcome phobias and stressful situations.

Mason believes that "stress reduction, practiced on a regular basis, can help prevent, modify or eliminate the sources and symptoms of your physical complaints."