Chinese Medicine for Health and Wellness

The "Roots" and "Branches" of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Chinese Medicine is a 4000-year-old sophisticated system of medicine that, at its essence, seeks to understand and facilitate homeostasis and harmony in human life. It is based on the simple principle:

"Any system that is in harmony lends itself to health, wellbeing and sustainability. A system that is in disharmony falls into illness, disease, suffering and collapse".

Chinese Medicine has always looked at the body as being rooted and inseparable from nature and in fact, often uses nature analogies to describe health and disease. Long ago, the ancients already knew what modern scientist have recently proven:

"Human life, nature and the universe are all governed by the same laws of quantum physics and energy and that at the deepest level, everything that creates and sustains our life is interconnected and interdependent".

Two concepts are unique and fundamental to Chinese Medicine:

1. Qi (usually translated as "vital energy" or "life force energy"), and
2. Yin and Yang (the harmony of all the opposite elements and forces that make up existence).

Practitioners of Chinese Medicine use different modalities to help find the root cause and provides the necessary tools to tailor treatments to effect real change. Acupuncture, Acupressure, Moxibustion, Gua sha (scraping), Herbal Medicine, Nutritional Supplementation, IMS (Intra-muscular Stimulation), Cupping, Electric Stimulation, Auriculartherapy, Diet Therapy, Meditation and Exercise are some of the therapeutic methods employed to ensure the smooth flow of energy in your physical, mental and emotional life.

What Health and Wellbeing means to me: Health and wellbeing are not just the absence of disease but includes the pursuit of 'Best Quality of Life', or, "Ensuring you are healthy and comfortable so as to participate fully in and enjoy all life's events".

Some Tools for living your 'Best Quality of Life':

• Legs of the Table: Water, clean food, exercise and sleep are the legs. The table top is your purpose and connection to life.

• 'Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food' – Hippocrates

  According to Chinese Medicine, medicine and food are of the same source. Dietary recommendations are made according to the patient's individual condition in relation to Chinese Medicine theory. A balanced diet, which leads to health, is when the five healing flavours are in balance (bitter, sour, sweet, salty and pungent). When a person is unbalanced, certain foods and herbs are prescribed to restore balance to the body.

• Mental health – Meditation – 'The single most vital step to enlightenment is to learn to dis-identify with your mind' – Eckart Tolle. Acupuncture is a great tool to help balance mental health.

• Investing in YOU: Scheduling time for YOU, morning/afternoon quiet beverage, exercise, hobbies, meditation, personal hygiene.

• Matching your personal vibration to the life you want: "Everything is energy, and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy, this is physics" – Albert Einstein.

• "Energy flows where attention goes" – Grateful journal, Affirmations: "I am blessed with happiness, peace of mind, good vibrant health, wealth and prosperity and success in all areas of my life now and forever". I am a fan of Vision boards: the Universe will not give you what you want if you don't know what you want.

• Things that Raise your Vibration: Gratitude, bucket filling (kindness), love, joy, passion, forgiveness, acceptance, sunshine, walking in nature, breathing deeply, yoga, exercise, laughing, smiling, hugging, singing, dancing, Earthing, raw whole foods, greens, fruits and nuts, relaxing music and creativity.

• Bucket filling and Connection: 'What you learn teach, what you get, give' – Maya Angelou, The Five Love Languages – www.5lovelanguages.com

• Letting go of perfection and sharing the load: "Never mind I will do it", the 'emotional load' woman bear in a house, 'The gift of imperfection' – Brene Brown

References:

• www.mercola.com

• www.drax.com

• www.5lovelanguages.com

• www.eckharttolle.com

• www.brenebrown.com