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 The body works in equilibrium with the mind and spirit, and always seeks balance and wellness. Our greatest achievement is to allow our body to heal itself.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is a centuries-old practice that is being successfully integrated with modern medicine. Its recognition of the linkages between the body, mind, and spirit fill a valuable gap in contemporary medical science.
To understand TCM, you need to know certain basic things. Our bodies are made up of energy that flows through meridians or pathways. When energy is out of balance, there are problems in the body. In order to understand energy, you need to understand the principles of yin and yang.
Yin and yang are essential to the understanding of Chinese medicine, because they are the basis for how energy is understood. The relationship is best represented by the well-known symbol of yin-yang, the "supreme ultimate." Yin and yang forms a unity and is complementary. Yang contains the seed of yin and yin the seed of yang. Yang changes into yin and yin into yang. Nothing is totally yin or yang. Yin cannot exist without yang and yang cannot exist without yin. The front of the body is yin in relation to the back of the body, but you can't just say the front is yin without comparing it to the back. It is a dynamic constantly changing balance.
Energetically yin is female, nighttime, dark, moist, soft, cold, moonlight, underneath, and emotional. Yang is masculine, bright, hot, sunny, daytime, dry, hard, and on top. There are 12 organ systems in the body. Six are yin and six are yang. The yin organs are solid, such as the liver, kidneys and heart. The yang organs are hollow, such as the gallbladder, urinary bladder and small intestine. Each yin organ is paired with a yang organ for balance. In addition, yin and yang are used to describe the relationship of the physical structures to each other. Each part of the body has a predominately yin or yang character. The head is yang, the feet are yin, the back is yang and the front is yin. The structure of each organ is related to yin and the function is yang.
Imagine yin and yang as two buckets of water, one is full during the day and the other is full at night. One pours into the other, and as each empties, the other fills. If the buckets don't have the right amounts of water at the right times, things go wrong.
Chinese medicine practitioners use the pulse and the appearance of the tongue to assess which imbalance is playing a part in your physical symptoms. By feeling the pulse, we can tell what is going on with 12 different internal organs - as you might imagine, it takes a lot of practice to be good at it. We feel the pulse on both wrists, in 3 positions on each wrist. Each position represents a different organ system. It isn't how fast the pulse is, it's about how it feels. The appearance of the tongue also helps with diagnosis. A healthy tongue is a robust pink with a thin white coat and no extra markings. The front represents the heart and lungs. The middle represents the stomach and spleen, the back the kidneys, and the sides represent the liver/gallbladder.
When Chinese medicine was invented 5,000 years ago, we did not have microscopes or chemistry labs, so disease was described by how the body behaves in ways that are similar to what we witness in the weather. Certain diseases are described as cold, damp, hot, windy or dry.
These are called "pernicious influences"; they affect your organs in different ways. A case of strep throat might be described as wind heat in the lungs. Hepatitis is damp heat in the liver. Bells Palsy might be caused by wind cold invading the stomach channel which rules the muscles of the face.
Disease comes from either inside or outside the body. Diseases that come from outside the body would most commonly be an infectious disease from the Western perspective. Ancient texts of Chinese medicine talk about the importance of treating an illness properly as soon as it begins. There are layers of energy that travel through the body, from outside to inside, top to bottom, and around. The outermost layer of energy is the lung/large intestine. A cold or flu invades the body through the lungs. If it isn't treated properly, it can descend through the other energy layers and cause long-term illness.
Seven basic emotions - joy, anger, melancholy, anxiety, grief, fear, and terror - cause problems with the body/mind/spirit when they are out of balance. Each spiritual and emotional function is connected to an organ system. This is the key to what makes Chinese medicine special. All disease that comes from inside the body is connected to an emotional imbalance. For example, a person with migraines might have a liver imbalance - the liver rules the emotion of anger. Thus the migraines might be due to deep internal anger. One of the many good things about using acupuncture and herbs to heal is that the emotional component is incorporated into the treatment, allowing you to heal regardless of whether you get therapy for the anger you might hold inside.
In addition, Chinese medicine alerts us to six "harmful elements" which might also be described as "unworthy thoughts and feelings," emotions and desires that lead us in the wrong directions. The harmful elements are: fame and profit; sexual desire; wealth; rich food; unrealistic fantasies; and jealousy. Chinese medicine does not insist that you give up sex, good food, wealth, or aspirations, but it does caution against unhealthy obsessions with these elements. It's like your mom told you - everything in moderation. We'll come back to that theme again and again in this book.
When you have a physical problem, there is always an emotional connection. To better understand the connection between health and emotions, it helps to start with energy.
When you walk into a room full of strangers, there are some you are drawn to and others whom you wouldn't give the time of day. Why does that occur? What determines who you feel comfortable with? In Chinese medicine theory this is explained by energy. Energy is defined as the power to act or be active. But how do you explain what energy is and how it works inside and outside of the body?
Chinese medicine is the best system I have found for explaining energy as it applies to the body. The basic idea behind Chinese medicine is that the being is made of energy, and energy travels within the body in certain patterns. When your energy is out of balance, there are problems with your body. At a cellular level, a living being is a part of all there is - there is no separation between you and all other things. So when your body is ill, there is a connection to your environment as well as the functioning of your body.
Western science defines energy as our way of looking at the world. Everything is made of tiny little particles and these particles are in constant motion. The form the particles take depends on the speed in which they move and how much they weigh. The basic laws of thermodynamics explain how energy works.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed - this is the first law of thermodynamics. When something is composed of energy, (and everything is composed of energy) then it cannot be destroyed. It can change form but the energy will remain in existence. It's the same with the creation of energy - it can change form but is not created out of nothingness.
The second law of thermodynamics states that every action is met by an equal and opposite reaction. Any movement of energy is met by another movement of energy that matches it to achieve balance.
The third law of thermodynamics states that energy works to achieve a certain state of entropy. Entropy is defined as the natural tendency of matter to move toward chaos. Chaos is the inevitable ultimate expansion of all physical things to the least organized state possible. For example, if you leave an apple on the counter for a long enough period of time, it will decompose; its structure will break down into molecules of fermented liquid. This is a less organized structure than it was originally. It explains aging, decomposition, and the return to earth of all things of the earth. Mountains become grains of sand. Massive trees become rich compost that nurtures new seedlings.
Everything in the universe is composed of the same basic structures. These structures are composed of molecules and the molecules are broken down into atoms which are broken down into smaller and smaller particles, such as electrons and protons. These energetic particles are in constant motion and need to be balanced with each other to have stability. These particles make up the structure of everything we know, and everything we know contains energy, whether it is alive or not. Rocks are made up of the same molecules we're made of. They are arranged differently and they do different things, but they are the same basic types of molecules.
Western science developed an understanding of the basic building blocks of matter long ago. But we did not transfer this knowledge to our understanding of the human body. Somehow, we lost our awareness that the human body is also made up of energy and therefore responds to the basic laws of thermodynamics.
Until the last 100 years, we only believed in what we could access with our five senses - touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight. After pioneer microbiologists like Pasteur convinced us of an unseen world of organisms, and the nuclear age demonstrated the existence of unseen particles, we began to realize there were things going on in the world that were not accessible with those five senses but were still very real. For example, we know tiny particles called quarks exist, but they have not been "seen" by anyone. Many diseases have aspects that we cannot access with the five senses. For example, cancer often starts in the body without our knowledge. Usually by the time it becomes visible through tests, it may have been there for years. A one centimeter tumor in the lung may have taken up to 10 years to develop.
How does "energy" feel? How can you tell that there is such a thing as energy? The quieter you become and the less busy you are thinking about all sorts of things, the more you become aware of things that aren't so readily noticeable in our world. Energy movement is a very soft sensation. Sort of like a tickle or thrill running down your spine. Or like "butterflies" in your stomach. The more you experience energy moving, the more you become aware of it.
When I first had acupuncture, I had no idea what energy felt like or that there was really such a thing as it pertained to the body. I too had forgotten all the basic sciences I learned when I went to medical school. During my third treatment, I was lying on my stomach with an acupuncture needle in my arm. I felt something moving and looked up. I saw the acupuncture needle rotate itself 180 degrees in my forearm. I hadn't done anything. I was amazed.
Slowly over time I became more and more aware of energy as I did things that were more connected to subtle awareness. I studied Aikido, a martial art. Through it I began to be aware that everything action has energy. I would play with people and we would throw each other around. The ability to practice Aikido was not dependent upon strength. In fact, you couldn't throw someone if you were relying on strength. It depended upon concentration and awareness of energy movement.
If we view disease from the perspective of the five senses alone, we cannot explain why each of us has a different response to the same illness. We can't explain why one person will live five years with the same disease that kills another in six months.
Physics has not been able to explain the soul, or the emotions. It has explained energy but it hasn't been able to relate that to who we are as humans. How are we different, how do our emotions affect our bodies? Chinese medicine has known the answers to these questions for thousands of years, but western medicine has just gotten serious about energy in the last couple of generations.
Energy can be described as the essence of something. It is what makes something or someone uniquely that thing. You can take six cats that are all the same breed and each cat will be uniquely different. Even if you don't like cats, you'll be able to tell the difference between them. You're experiencing the energy of each cat. Go for a hike and pick up two rocks. Or pick up ten rocks - none will be exactly alike. There is something different about each one. This is an expression of energy. The uniqueness of everything there is. In nature, there are no two of anything that are exactly the same.
Even two manmade objects that are manufactured exactly alike as possible will have small differences. In our synthetic world, many things look and act essentially the same. The differences get smaller and smaller. The more "life" a thing has, the more energy it has.
There is another aspect to energy medicine, which is that everything you say or think or believe has an energetic affect on how you feel. If you have a certain diagnosis and are told you will die of that disease, if you believe in that doctor, you will probably die. We often respond to a disease according to what we've seen happen to others. If you have a tremendous fear that you will get the same disease your parent had, you just might get it. But, who knows which came first, the disease, or the fear and emotion that created a tendency for it?
I had a patient named Betty. At 40 years old, she had hypertension, menstrual problems, headaches, chronic sinus problems, chronic neck pain, low back pain and more. Her mother died at age 42 of heart disease, and Betty believed she would also die young of a frightening disease. She was unwilling to believe anything different about herself. She refused to talk about the emotional implications of her illnesses and didn't want to change how much medication she takes. Whenever she got ill, she got terribly ill. She believed in conventional medicine for the most part, but her belief that she will die young was her biggest problem. She was not willing to make any effort to live longer. She died at age 42 of heart failure.
Some people take life more seriously when they get sick. They seek what is wrong within them and search for answers. They delve into all the possible ways they can find to heal. It may involve searching within emotionally as well as spiritually. We've all heard countless stories of people with deadly illnesses who healed themselves. Their stories always involve soul-searching and emotional depth. These stories are important, because they are about people who refuse to accept what the statistics say about them. Their illness was used to create a path to healing. They may die of that illness, but they will have gained healing on the way. You can accept your diagnosis and begin a downward spiral to death, or you can use your illness to begin a discovery process of what's going on within. This is a place where statistics don't matter. Individual process, discovery, and your own unique ability to heal are key.
The more conscious you are of energy, the more you will be able to understand the impact different forms of energy have on you, and the more aware you will become. Try a little game. Hold a can of artificially-sweetened, chemical-laden soda pop against your body and try to experience your body's reaction to its energy. Then hold something good for you - like a fresh fruit or vegetable - in the same spot, and see how your body feels. Usually you can tell that these two things have a different feeling.
Besides energy, the other primary organizing principle in TCM is the organ systems.
When getting to know the organs from the TCM viewpoint, remember that they are not the same as we understand them to be in western medicine. The best way to understand it is to let your mind be innocent, don't try to compare it to western philosophy, take it in as it is. Then add in your western understanding. Even blood is not viewed the same way in Chinese medicine. For example, besides being the fluid inside your vessels, blood is more than a physical substance; it can affect your mind, emotions, and spirit when it is not flowing smoothly. Most importantly, if I say there is an imbalance in a particular organ, such as the liver or kidney, don't assume you have a fatal disease. I'm talking about energy, not cancer cells.
Each organ has a pattern of energy movement that travels in a channel or meridian along the surface of the body. Each organ is linked to spiritual and emotional components as well, a sensory function such as smell or hearing, a time of year, a time of day, and additional physical functions. Chinese medicine states that there are 12 basic meridians of energy in the body. Below is a very brief description of what each organ does.
The kidneys are the core of all life force energy. They determine the basic constitution, strength, and vitality of all other organs. They control the energy of important life transitions, such as birth, puberty, menopause and death. If you translate all that into western medicine, the kidneys are responsible for major bodily chemistry, all the hormonal systems, including pituitary, thyroid, adrenals, testes, and ovaries. All brain chemicals such as serotonin, GABA, and other neurotransmitters. Aging itself is due to decline in kidney energy. Kidneys produce the matrix of the bones, bone marrow, spinal cord and brain. They control the low back, the knees, and overall energy level. They control the flow of water in the body. Often if you have low back pain, there is some imbalance in your kidney energy. The kidneys also regulate your hearing and your ears.
Salt is the flavor associated with the kidneys. Fear is the emotion associated with kidney function. They also house your willpower. The element ruled by the kidneys is water and the season is winter. When the kidneys are out of balance, any of the above things can create symptoms. You can have low back pain, ringing in the ears, hearing loss, severe fatigue, cravings of salt, or feelings of fear. Cora came to me with a feeling of tremendous fear that she had for several months. I worked with her kidneys but she wasn't getting better, something seemed to be more wrong. When her husband called me to say she was still having extreme fear, I ordered an MRI of her brain. It turned out that she had a malignant brain tumor. So her fear was a sign that something was indeed wrong with her. You can also have more classic symptoms consistent with western kidney problems, such as frequent urination or bladder infections.
The heart is considered to be the emperor of the internal organs. It houses the spiritual aspect of the mind, called the "shen." It encompasses the emotional, spiritual and mental aspects of all other organs. The heart is also responsible for good sleep, mental activity, consciousness, and thinking. The heart pathway ends at the tongue and rules the sense of taste, so the appearance of the tongue commonly reflects what is happening in the heart. Many women who experience anxiety and heart palpitations along with menopause are having imbalance in the heart. It rules the emotion of joy. Too much joy will lead to the classic symptoms of mania, an example that even a positive emotion can be out of balance. Shawna was a woman who after years of unhappiness finally began experiencing joy. Initially she just felt happy. Then she began not sleeping at night and talking more. Eventually she couldn't stop talking and the things she was saying no longer made sense. Her mania finally got out of hand landing her in the hospital to receive medication. The element is fire, the season is summer, and the flavor is bitter.
The pericardium is an organ not considered important in Western medicine. Physically, it can be described as a thin membrane that surrounds the heart and the roots of the large blood vessels that attach to the heart. In Chinese medicine it is responsible for the physiologic functions of the heart, such as regulation of the heartbeat, blood pressure and such. The pericardium is very similar to our understanding of the heart in the west.
The liver is like a military commander in the body, responsible for overall planning of the body's functions and ensuring a smooth flow of energy throughout. It is also the source of courage and resoluteness. It stores the blood, regulates the menstrual flow, and controls the sinews. It regulates emotions, digestion and secretion of bile. The emotion is anger/frustration, the element is wood, the season is spring and the flavor is sour. Most menstrual problems such as PMS, cramps, and migraines are connected to liver imbalances. A classic example of liver imbalance is a woman with severe PMS, who has migraines every month with her period. Another classic pattern is a woman who had a hysterectomy for fibroids, then a short time later her gallbladder was removed, and then a few years later she begins to have migraines and neck tension. Removing the organs doesn't change the pattern of imbalance, so the symptoms just move to different parts of the body.
The lungs govern qi (roughly translated as "life force" or "life energy") and respiration. They are in charge of inhaling air and as such are the intermediary between the inside and the outside world. They are the main protector of the immune system. If lung function is healthy, skin and hair will have luster. The lung meridian ends at the nose, and rules the sense of smell. The emotion is grief, the season is fall, and the flavor is spicy. Rita was sick 4 times one winter. She kept getting the flu which would turn into bronchitis. When she came to see me, she had just completed her fourth course of antibiotics and she was sick again. In taking her history I discovered that her brother had died about a year ago. She began getting sick after that. Her unresolved grief was affecting her physical health..The element is metal, which seems somewhat atypical from our western point of view. But in the system of Chinese medicine everything is about the connection of things to one another as much as to itself. Metal is generated from the earth, it cuts wood, is melted by fire, and overrun by water.
The main function of the spleen is to assist the stomach with digestion by transporting and transforming food essences, absorbing the nourishment from food and separating out the usable aspect of food. It is also one of two sources of blood, the other being the marrow produced by the kidneys. It controls the blood by making sure it stays in the vessels, controls the strength of the muscles, the movement of the limbs and ends in the mouth, where it regulates the sense of taste. The spleen rules the ability to think, concentrate and the emotion of worry. Its spiritual function has to do with being able to receive. Frank was having anxiety attacks all the time. When he came into my office he was eating muffins for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and often skipped dinner because he wanted to lose weight. He often felt light headed but thought that was due to his anxiety. He couldn't concentrate and he was worried about everything. When I saw him, I suggested that he begin to eat regular more balanced meals that included protein. Even though he did not actually have stomach problems, his anxiety was due to his unstable blood sugar. The flavor is sweet - people crave sweets when the spleen is out of balance.
TCM uses herbs, acupuncture, and nutrition to bring the body into balance. We will get into herbs and nutrition later in this book, so let's spend time here with acupuncture, which has been used effectively for more than 2,000 years. During the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, studies were conducted to determine whether Traditional Chinese Medicine would continue to be used as the preferred method of healing. The results led to the decision to integrate the best of both Chinese and Western methods.
The FDA and the World Health Organization have determined that acupuncture is an effective method of treatment for many conditions. Amongst them are joint pain, headaches, digestive problems, menstrual problems (including infertility, menopause, and PMS), digestive problems (including ulcers, gastritis, colitis, constipation and irritable bowel syndrome) and nervous system disorders, such as neuropathy or stroke.
The physical practice of acupuncture involves inserting small, thin needles into certain points on the body in order to change energy movement. There are more than 300 acupuncture points on the body. Each has a different effect on the body. When the energy movement of the body is balanced, it will heal itself naturally. It first came to the United States in the 1970s after Richard Nixon visited China and has since become one of the most popular alternative medicine techniques in our country.
Most needles used in conventional medicine are hollow and beveled, so they cut your tissues as they go through, which is why they hurt. They have to cut, so they can be used to extract blood or deliver medication. Acupuncture needles don't hurt when inserted because they are designed more like pins, to slide through the tissues without cutting them.
When energy is balanced, the cells will restore themselves to their natural state. Studies show that when acupuncture is used for pain, endorphins are released, allowing the body to feel less pain. For infertility, acupuncture seems to help the body produce more hormones. For bronchitis or flu symptoms it has been found to increase the immune cells needed to fight the virus. In studies of people with ulcers, it seems to help the stomach balance acid production.
While acupuncture can also be helpful for mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and mania, it is not used for this in China, where mentally ill people are placed in institutions.
Some conditions respond better to acupuncture than to western modalities. There are areas in which western medicine can not provide a diagnosis, yet in Chinese medicine, the symptoms fit into a pattern. One such condition is fibromyalgia, a condition that western medicine doesn't really recognize. In Chinese medicine, it can happen after you've had the flu or some other viral illness. If a viral syndrome doesn't clear through your body completely, it will cause a low grade chronic imbalance that can interfere with sleep, cause hormones to become imbalanced, and lead to pain in the body. You may know people who say they have never been completely well since they had a certain illness.
For those who have had complicated illnesses, such as cancer, autoimmune disease or heart disease, acupuncture can enhance other treatments and help the body respond better, with fewer side effects. When you need surgery, acupuncture can often be used to decrease swelling, pain and complications. In Japan, acupuncture is routinely used for postoperative care after plastic surgery because it decreases swelling.
With the recent controversy about hormone replacement therapy, Chinese medicine can be a very useful alternative. Sometimes hot flashes can be treated with acupuncture alone, and when it isn't adequate there's a wide variety of Chinese herbs that can be used to balance your body so symptoms of menopause are decreased.
Many of us are afraid of needles and are reluctant to consider acupuncture for fear of pain. Acupuncture is mostly painless. The next time you have a problem that isn't easily helped by medical treatment, consider having an evaluation from a Chinese medicine specialist.
Patients ask me if they have to be a "believer" in order for acupuncture to work. I always say that my favorite clients are those who don't believe. Often people come to me for treatment even if they don't believe in acupuncture, because they're desperate for help or frustrated over taking too many medications. I enjoy seeing them experience a new way of healing as they come to realize that acupuncture is effective. After their initial skepticism, they often become my best referral sources.
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