The Chinese Medicine Companion

A Modern Guide to Ancient Healing

Misha Ruth Cohen

• Publisher: Fair Winds Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781631599774
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Alternative & Complementary Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine is one of the most ancient healing systems, yet modern science is showing that it endures as a powerful healing modality for today's world. A condensed version of The NewChinese Medicine Handbook, The Chinese Medicine Companion explains the key principles of this holistic healing method. Written by Dr. Misha Ruth Cohen, an internationally-recognized practitioner, lecturer, and mentor in the field of Chinese medicine, this essential volume explains the most common treatments of Traditional Chinese Medicine including:

• Acupuncture
• Qi Gong
• Herbal therapy
• Dietary practices
• Nutrition

The Chinese Medicine Companion keeps esoteric information to "need to know" basics giving you a practical guide to achieving total health in body, mind, and spirit.

CHAPTER 1

THE PHYSIOLOGY AND ANATOMY OF CHINESE MEDICINE

Chinese medicine is a system of preserving health and curing disease that treats the mind/body/spirit as a whole. Its goal is to maintain or restore harmony and balance in all parts of the human being and also between the human being and the environment.

Each of Chinese medicine’s healing arts—from dietary therapy to acupuncture—is designed to be integrated into daily life. Together, they offer the opportunity to live in harmony and to maintain wholeness. In fact, for all of Chinese medicine’s power to heal the body, its focus is on preventive care. In ancient China, doctors were paid only when their patients were healthy. When patients became ill, obviously the doctors hadn’t done their job.

The Role of the Tao

Chinese medicine’s focus on maintaining wholeness and harmony of the mind/body/spirit emerges from the philosophy of the Tao, which is sometimes translated as “the infinite origin” or the “unnameable.”

The guiding principles of the Tao are:

• Everything in the universe is part of the whole.

• Everything has its opposite.

• Everything is evolving into its opposite.

• The extremes of one condition are equal to its opposite.

• All antagonisms are complementary.

• There is no beginning and no end, yet whatever has a beginning has an end.

• Everything changes; nothing is absolute.

This dynamic balance between opposing forces, known as Yin/Yang, is the ongoing process of creation and destruction. It is the natural order of the universe and of each person’s inner being.

To Westerners, Yin/Yang is most easily understood as a symbol for equilibrium, but in Chinese philosophy and medicine, it is not symbolic. It is as concrete as flesh and blood. It exists as an entity, a force, a quality, and a characteristic. It lives within the body, in the life force (Qi), in each Organ System.

The Forms of Qi

When the dynamic balance of Yin/Yang is disturbed, disharmony afflicts the mind/body/spirit, and disease can take root. Each symptom of Yin/Yang disharmony tells the trained practitioner about what’s going on in the inner workings of a person’s body. Once a disharmony is identified, the Chinese medicine practitioner addresses the entire web of interconnected responses in mind/body/spirit that are triggered by the presence of disharmony. Healing is achieved by rebalancing Yin and Yang and restoring harmony in the whole person.

Chinese medicine conceives of wellness and disease differently than Western medicine does, and it also describes the internal workings of the body in ways you may not be used to. In place of individual organs, blood vessels, and nerves, Chinese medicine identifies the body’s Essential Substances, Organ Systems, and Channels.

Essential Substances

The Essential Substances, which have an impact on and are impacted by both the Organ Systems and the Channels, are called Qi, Shen, Jing, Xue, and Jin-Ye.

QI

Qi (chee) is the basic life force that pulses through everything in the universe. Organic and inorganic matter are composed of and defined by Qi. Within each person, Qi warms the body, retains the body’s fluids and organs, fuels the transformation of food into other substances such as Xue, protects the body from disease, and empowers movement.

We use the Chinese word for this substance because there is no precise English translation for the word or the concepts it contains. If you want to think of Qi as the energy that creates and animates material and spiritual being, you will come close to understanding Qi. As you delve more deeply into Chinese medicine, you will begin to identify how Qi lives within you and fuels your very existence. You’ll find Qi is most accurately defined by its function and its impact.

Where does Qi come from and where does it go? We are all born with Qi. We can preserve, create, or deplete it by the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the way in which we live within our mind/body/spirit. There are many forms of Qi, which all work together.

SHEN

Shen (shen) is consciousness, thoughts, emotions, and senses, which make us uniquely human. Its harmonious flow is essential to good health. Originally transmitted into a fetus from both parents, Shen must be continuously nourished after birth.

JING

Jing (jing) is often translated as essence, the fluid that nurtures ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Physiology and Anatomy of Chinese Medicine
• Chapter 2: Causes of Disharmony and Disease
• Chapter 3: Dietary Therapy
• Chapter 4: Herbal Therapy
• Chapter 5: Acupuncture and Moxibustion
• Chapter 6: Exercise and Meditation
• Chapter 7: Massage and Other forms of Body Therapy
• Conclusion
• About the Author
• Index
• Copyright