What do Daoist's do?

Zhang DaolingWhat do daoists do? It can be divided up into three categories: Conduct, Hygiene, and Method.
An example of conduct practices are the Xiang er precepts. These are a first century C.E. summary of what the Daode jing suggests trying, like be honest, be weak, cultivate stillness, and practice wuwei. They are considered scripture for religious Daoists.(see Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures)

Hygiene practices conserve qi and make it easier to follow these suggestions, they include things like bathing practices, qi gong, and an appropriate diet.
Methods include things like zowang(sitting and forgetting), jindan(the elixir practice, internal alchemy), and ritual.

Hygiene practices can also be considered conduct practices because they are meant to have an impact on physical and qi manifestation of our daily conduct.

Qi gong, like taijiquan and baguazhang, is the practice of cultivating weakness in order to sensitize us to our impact on our environment and our environment's impact on us. For instance, I notice that my knee hurts when I walk up a bunch of stairs. If I don't know that qi gong is a 'conduct' practice, I might be inclined to think that my qi gong practice is the cause, instead of considering that the way I've been charging up stairs has been to use strength to cover-up an old knee injury, which practicing qi gong actually revealed.
Practitioners of these so called "long-life" practices, reach their peak level of performance in their 60's and 70's.

Taiji and bagua probably have their origins in ritual dances which rectify qi. That is they dance the qi (time and directionality) of the universe into a condensed moment and then dance it back out into the universe again, (wuwei). Each step containing birth and death, the rhythms of life.
Tracing taijiquan and baguazhang back to their original roots may require such a huge step backwards that it is out of our range, but it is a mistake to think they are purely martial.