Intrinsic to many forms of alternative medicine is an implicit interconnectedness. Almost any kind of pain is seen as related to some other aspect of the patients life or body.
Intrinsic to many forms of alternative medicine is an implicit interconnectedness. Almost any kind of pain is seen as related to some other aspect of the patients life or body. What appear to Western medicine as separate problems turn out, in Chinese Medicine, to be part of a single pattern. In the following we explain some of the more important parts of Traditional Chinese Medical theory.
Yin and Yang
Meridians of Acupuncture
Qi, Blood
Zang-fu organ energies
5 Elements
8 Principles
Causes of Disease - Internal and External
Yin and Yang
Although the basic idea is simple, understanding the ramifications of Yin and Yang is not so easy. Basically, Yin is something that is moved or heated, and Yang is the force or energetic means that moves or heats it. In us, yin is the body, yang the life in it. When we are formed, the two come together. They part when we die.
Yin and Yang mean something only in relation to each other, in the same way we say something is hot: the freezing point of water may be cold to most of us, but is warm to a penguin in the Antarctic winter. In our bodies, the parts that are more stable, that last longer, that are more hard to the touch, are generally more Yin in nature - for example our bones, as compared with those parts that are more quickly changed, such as the skin. Between these two extremes lie the muscles, organs, nerves, circulatory vessels, our brain and spinal tissue, and so on. Our blood is much more yang in nature than our bones, because it moves all the time around within our bodies.
In another way, the upper parts of our body are defined as being more yang, because although our legs carry us around, we do more constant movement with our hands and minds. Equally, from this logic, being further away from the Earth, which is relatively Yin, our heads and the upper portions of our bodies are nearer the sky - the Heavens - which is Yang in nature. Also, warm air rises towards the yang, whereas cold air sinks towards the earth (yin). Consequently cold is more yin, as compared with heat, which is more yang.
In good health, yin and yang work together, neither being uppermost: they interact to each others benefit. When we work, the intention is yang, and what does the work is yin, the body. Nowadays, in modern Western society, much work is done sitting, using the mind and the hands and the voice. These are relatively yang activities, at least compared with manual work such as making beds, or lifting, carrying, digging, pulling, pushing, hoeing etc. Illness can arise from many causes. One of them is overuse of any particular activity. Modern office work that stops us moving and makes us use only one part of our bodies can easily lead to illness, because health is maintained when energy flows around and between the different parts of us.
Office workers often suffer from tension, caused by a build-up of Yang. This affects our more Yang areas, being the upper part of the body, the head (headaches), the neck and shoulders (tight), the chest (breathing, respiration and circulation) all of which can trap Yang as tension. Conversely, those who sit too much end up with congestion and heaviness in the lower part of the body: hemorrhoid, sore back, varicose veins, painful periods and so on, which are often due to yin energy not being moved around by yang.
Those who spend all their time working with computer or television screens are using up the energy needed by their eyes. The TCM attitude to this is that the yin-like nutritional energy for their eyes, (technically called Liver Blood), gets depleted, leading to either tiredness (lack of qi) or inflammation (excess of yang because of too little yin) or both. Why would one person get tired and another get an inflammation? This usually depends on the intensity with which they work, the brightness of the light, and their basic health. A robust person tends to get inflammation, a more depleted person gets tired, unless the latter is deficient in Yin, in which case they might get inflammation (= yang, because of deficient yin).
We didnt say this was easy!
According to enhc