Queen Jin's Hand Book of Pregnancy [Paperback]

Fred Seligson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 22, 2002

This practical manual draws on the teachings of Queen Tae Jin in 12th-century B.C. China. Women in China, Vietnam, Japan, and Korea still follow these rules of pregnancy to benefit the physical health, emotional stability, and spiritual nature of their children while in the womb. This handbook brings together the author's own experiences as a parent in Korea as well as over 20 years of reflection on the various ways of bearing healthy children in Asian societies. The book is divided into three main sections: Preparing Your Seed, Cultivating Your Flower, and Harvesting Your Fruit. Topics covered include exercise and diet, midwifery, after-birth care, and the cultivation of mind and heart through submerging oneself in motherhood, poetry, and the classics. The Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health has said that Queen Jin's Handbook of Pregnancy could do a lot to spiritualize the American way of birth.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is a love letter to the future parents and children of our world. It is a cultural treasure artfully conjured from the heart of a poet, illuminating a high tradition of pregnancy and birth dating back to the twelfth century B.C."
—David B. Chamberlain, Ph.D.

"Queen Jin's Handbook is more than a pleasurable read, it is a manual for deep contemplation for anyone who has children or plans to have children. Mr. Seligson presents an ancient and beautiful story of profound awareness and insight. Inspired from his own experience of fatherhood, it is especially suitable that a man tell this story for both the father and mother to read."
—Claudia B. Wolfe

About the Author

Fred Jeremy Seligson is the author of Oriental Birth Dreams and Daughters, a poetry book. He teaches English as a Second Language at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and lives in Korea with his wife and children.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: North Atlantic Books (January 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556434057
• ISBN-13: 978-1556434051
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.4 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,183,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Queen Jin's Handbook of Pregnancy, April 12, 2002

By 

david chamberlain (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Queen Jin's Hand Book of Pregnancy (Paperback)

A soft-spoken scholar, poet, and popular professor, Seligson has been fascinated with the ancient birth traditions of Asia. His last book, Oriental Birth Dreams (1990), was published in both English and Korean.
... Queen Jin's Handbook of Pregnancy, published in January, is a cultural treasure illuminating a high tradition of pregnancy and birth dating back to the 12th century B.C.Paradoxically, the illumination is needed as much in Asia as in the West. The timing of this book is surely auspicious as Western obstetrics, yet in its infancy, threatens to engulf all previous visions of pregnancy in cultures past and present everywhere in the world.
Based on three decades of living and teaching in Asia, and powerfully motivated by the adventure of two pregnancies with Young Im, his Korean wife, Seligson takes us on an enchanting journey through time where voices of Oriental men and women speak to us of their daily lives and ideals for pregnancy and birth. Young Im and her ancestors teach us by their meditations and prayers, their letters, dreams (and dream interpretations), their foods, drinks and herbal formulas, their use of music and color, and in poems and proverbs.
Seligson tells how he fell in love with the idea of nurturing, with his wife, a healthy and compassionate child inspired by the example and rules of Queen Jin-- a woman of towering influence in China, Japan, and Korea for over 3,000 years. Her explosive contribution, Embryonic Education, is a remarkably prescient set of guidelines for royals and aristocrats, for their servants, and eventually for the rest of humanity generation after generation. Her credibility was secured by the birth of her son, the sage-king Wan who wrote the enduring classic I-Ching.
... The stage is therefore set--after fourteen centuries of widespread indifference--for the convergence of intuitive wisdom from the East and scientific verification from the West allowing a full appreciation of the sentient nature of babies in the womb. I hope that Queen Jin's Handbook of Pregnancy will assist with this convergence of East and West which bodes well for the parents and babies of our future world.
Reviewed by David B. Chamberlain, Ph.D. , for the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, Volume 16(3), Spring 2002

Book Review for the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, Volume 16(3), Spring 2002

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for any woman considering having children, October 5, 2003

By 

Claudia B Wolfe, L.Ac. (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Queen Jin's Hand Book of Pregnancy (Paperback)

As a practicioner of Oriental medicine and specializing in fertility issues for American couples, I have this book in my clinic and recommend it to all my patients. Even in the busy, career oriented lives of my patients, they seem to immediately connect with this book of ancient wisdom surrounding the issue of conception. Since they are all experiencing infertility, this wonderfully written book offers up an entirely new perspective and insights into arenas that we in the West tend to overlook.

The author, Seligson, has no idea of how helpful this book has been to hundreds of women with infertility and an behalf of all my patients, we thank him for taking the time to write it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Warm Companion & Gentle Counsel during Pregnancy, August 24, 2003

By 

Frank M. Tedesco ""True Dharma"" (Tampa, Florida USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Queen Jin's Hand Book of Pregnancy (Paperback)

I recommend Queen Jin's Handbook of Pregnancy to any thoughtful mother (and would-be parents) who value the "emotional intelligence" of the miracles that are babies. The author Jeremy Seligson will lead you on an unpressured tour of personal discovery and illuminating insights into Asian thinking about procreation, pregnancy and the wider circle of natural energies around us. It is much more than a technical manual of pregnancy and child birth.
The Handbook provides information about Chinese and other Asian traditions of birth dreams, child birth and "embryonic education" we never hear about in the West. Modern mothers need to slow down and live with this volume. Please allow yourselves to relax and open to the "new" knowledge that Queen Jin provides. The author has assimilated this very old wisdom about conception, communication with life in the womb and the birth process through his own person during years of marriage and family life in East Asia. The chapters and anecdotes are a series of spiritual offerings that add up to wise and affable guidebook on how to commune more sensitively with our unborn children to whom we owe all the love we can muster.