Chinese Medicine & Treating the Whole Person

I have worked in health care my entire life, and because I'm no longer a spring chicken, that means it has been a good LONG time.  But recently I’ve gone back to college to learn about Chinese Medicine.  Chinese Medicine is very different from Western Medicine.  It’s not only the language that is different, but how the human body is viewed. It has been a tough transition but there are a couple of aspects in this new paradigm I just love.  For example, I love how Chinese Medicine looks at a patient as a whole person.  I mean, everything is inter-related and important when it comes to health.  In Chinese Medicine you assess and treat the whole person and with this focus, you treat more than just an organ.

Let me give you an example.  

If I go to see my Western Medicine doctor because I have a cold, my doctor will primarily ask me only things related to my lungs. The entire focus of this visit will be on whether or not to give me antibiotics.  She doesn’t ask me anything about what I’ve been eating.  She doesn't ask me about how I feel or my emotional state.  She doesn’t inquire about my sleep habits or family life, or the type of work I do. The focus is strictly on "is this a bacterium or virus?" Her desire is to quickly diagnose, give me the right medication, and get me out the door.

But,

If I were to go to a Chinese Doctor (an Acupuncturist) with my cold, I would be asked more than just the state of my lungs. I would be asked about how and when I became ill and to describe it in detail.  I would be asked if I am feeling hot or cold.  I would also be asked about sweating and chills, along with questions about my cough, sputum, and tongue. I would be asked about what I was eating and drinking, when I sleep, and for how long. I would be asked about my exercise habits, my emotional well being, and if I was grieving.  I would be asked about my environment at home and where I work to discover if it is damp or dry, if it is air conditioned, or has blowing air.  There would be a myriad of other questions asked that would seem to have little to do with a virus, but in Chinese Medicine, all of these factors are important.  The focus at my Chinese Medicine doctor will be on assessing all the relationships in my whole body that could be impacting and playing a role in this cold.  After that, the focus will be on getting me to feel better NOW, and then getting me on a path to sustain harmony and balance.  

In my Western Medicine medical experience, I would probably have left the doctors office with a prescription for a cough medicine and still probably felt pretty crappy.  I would probably think of myself as a victim with little control over my health.  

In my Chinese Medicine medical experience, I would leave feeling somewhat better because I would have received an acupuncture or moxibustion treatment.  I may have a prescription for some herbs, a recommendation for different foods to now be included in my diet that could help my lungs (like chicken soups with marrow and probably some persimmons).  I would perhaps be given some new movements or  exercises to do which would help strengthen my lungs (with posture and deep breaths).  I would have been advised on some meditation or visualization practices to help me guide my internal energies (qi/chee) to tonify my heart and lungs.  It may also have had the opportunity to talk about some sadness I was feeling because my Acupuncturist would know how sensitive the lungs are to grief and would have encouraged me to purge these feelings of grief. I would leave the Chinese Doctor's office feeling empowered because I would probably have new ways to help me take charge of returning to a state of balance and well being.  

I think there is merit in both Western and Chinese Medicine systems, but the thing I like most about Chinese Medicine is the broader focus on a person's whole being.   I like how a patient is more than just a failed body part or two.  

I also like the way Chinese Medicine practitioners will partner with a patient to help guide them back into balance and alignment.  This can help a person feel empowered and in charge of their own state of wellness. I like that. I think this is what we are missing in Western Medicine and desperately need.

Chinese Medicine & Treating the Whole Person

Healing a Broken Heart

I had a volunteer patient come to my home for a Qigong treatment.  I asked her if there was anything in particular she wanted me to focus on in with her healing treatment.   She shared how her husband had suddenly died about a year ago and she was still very broken hearted over this experience.  She loved him very much and he had been her best friend.  She had been sad a long time.

I had her lay down on the table and during the assessment phase of the treatment, I did indeed feel heat surrounding her heart, which can be a symptom of sorrow and pain. I started to share what I was assessing but I felt someone in the room with us.  I stopped, looked around, but no one was there.

I continued on with the assessment and once again had that same feeling return. I again stopped and looked around.  No one was there.  

Chills then came running through my body as if to validate there was another energy and presence with us.  

I said to her, "it feels like your husband is here with us."

Blue birds came flying past the window and calling out, and then I had chills once again go down my spine.  Then a strong warm feeling of comfort enveloped me and a message popped into my mind that it indeed was her husband who was in the room with us.  

I once again shared that I felt a presence that seemed to be her husband. She said "No, he is gone.  I know he is not around."  So I started the Qigong medical treatment.

I cleared some of the stagnant energy and feelings within her heart and then went on to the next step, which is to direct and focus Qi energy into the heart to help tonify it.  As I started this process, I started to see pink, red, and white valentine hearts starting to move with this focused energy.  These valentines and hearts seemed to be enveloping the directed Qi energy and encapsulating it with love while it was moving towards her heart.

More and more valentines came pouring in and now started to spill out and around her heart.  It started to cover much of her body and was now covering her body, the table, and started to pile up on the floor.  I knew her husband was sending these valentines as if to share his love with her.  He wanted desperately to comfort her. 

After the treatment, I shared what I had sensed and seen during her treatment.  She did not believe the message could be from her husband.  She also did not see or feel the valentines and did not share what I had experienced during this treatment.  At the end of the treatment, she felt good as well as relaxed, but not much more.

She then said "Perhaps the valentines are from my preschoolers.  I am a teacher."

She then went on to say the preschoolers had been her primary source of comfort since her husband died and they did make cutout out objects of paper in school.  Perhaps the image was a representation of her preschoolers.

I have no doubt at all her husband was present in that room and trying to send her a message.  I feel regret the message was not received or translated in a way she could accept and receive.  

This experience for me was so profound and the feelings so intense the experience still lingers with me. My volunteer patient seemed to have a nice and relaxing treatment, but nothing remarkable as far as I know.    

Even now, when I go into my Qigong treatment room, I can still feel those unclaimed valentines still scattered on the floor.  I am still hopeful she will come to accept and feel gift of healing and the love that was being poured within her heart.    

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Healing a Broken Heart

Qigong Is the Practice of Cultivating and Using Life Force Energy

Qigong is the practice of using and directing life force energy.

• QI = Life force energy
• Gong = Skill and cultivation

There are different types of Qigong.   Martial Arts Qigong which uses life force energy for fighting.  Spiritual Qigong which uses life force energy for spiritual development and spiritual growth.  Medical Qigong which uses life force energy for healing and medicinal affects.

Our bodies are designed for self-healing and Qigong is a tool that can help with your self healing.

Qigong provides a method to help you maintain your bodies’ health and when it gets out of balance or when you experience disease or pain, you can go to a Qigong practitioner to help purge pathogens and toxins from your body, help you tonify and strengthen your body’s functions, as well as help circulate and balance your body’s energy.

How does Qigong work?
Qi is bioelectrical energy and your body is a living electromagnetic field. The cells in your body are almost like machines, driven by energy. Qigong is a method that reduces the resistance in the channels within your body and allows an increase in your bioelectrical or magnetic field.

Sometimes a person goes to a Medical Qigong practitioner to help you heal and strengthen your body. The practitioner is usually able to identify and sense the areas in your body that may be blocked. The practitioner helps to purge and cleanse those areas and then direct and move energy to those areas to help them heal.

However, usually if the condition is of a chronic nature, it will take multiple treatments to help reverse the affects of that long-term disease and stagnation. In addition to the Qigong treatments given by a practitioner, you will need to take responsibility and commit to making some life changes to help your body heal and stay on the path for healing. Often this means engaging in daily Qigong exercises and eating foods that are known to help improve your body’s balance. Qigong exercises help keep things circulating and keep things in balance and there will be certain foods prescribed that are known to help keep certain organs functioning as they should.

Qigong Is the Practice of Cultivating and Using Life Force Energy

An Experience in Healing

In Acupuncture school, part of the program includes being in the clinic and caring for patients. This semester I am signed up for the evening Qigong clinic, so once a week after my regular work in an office, I go the night clinic to provide Qigong treatments to patients who are willing to have an acupuncture student be their caregiver.

If there are no patients, we sometimes practice Qigong treatments on each other. This week there there were not enough patients to go around, so I volunteered to be the patient because I had one doozey of a headache and no matter what I had done over the last 3 days to try and relieve the pain, it still lingered. It was becoming disabling and I rated it about an 8 on the pain scale (migraines I usually rate as a 10).

My fellow student, who is also a fellow nurse, led me into her treatment room. I laid down on my back, closed my eyes, and she then started the Qigong treatment.  She followed the usual protocol but then seemed to stay at my head, focusing and directing energy into my head.  I could feel her hands on my head with her hands spread across my scalp on specific energy points on my head. I started to feel the energy change in my head and my throat and could actual feel the Qi moving.

She stayed in this position at my head for a long, long time, and then moved to my feet. At my feet she began to touch the pressure points on my feet that are associated with the head.  I knew these were the points our instructor had directed her to focus her attention on and direct energy into those points.  But with this awareness, I came to realize it felt as if there was someone still at my head and directing energy there. I could feel their fingers on my head and I continued to sense the healing energy being directed into my head from someone perched there.

I thought we were alone in the room, so I opened my eyes to see who was now at my perched and continually to hold my head. There wasn't anyone there, but I continued to feel that same pressure being applied to 10 different points surrounding my skull. I closed my eyes again and just assumed this was additional unseen help being provided for this healing.

My fellow student finished the treatment and I told her my headache was now a "2". I then shared my experience of feeling the treatment on my head continue, as if someone was there. She related how she felt like she should have stayed at my head as if this is what my body needed, but she knew she had to follow the protocol of the instructor so changed and started working on my feet.

We discussed how part of using and directing energy to heal is being sensitive to listen to what the patient’s body needs and is trying to communicate to the practitioner. Listening to those messages is an art of the healing process. The better practitioners learn to listen to those communications and act on those impressions. A big part of Qigong is learning to recognize the messages and to trust your impressions.

We both left the treatment room and by the time I walked out the door, my headache was totally gone. I was absolutely amazed.

This experience felt rather remarkable to me. It also was a great lesson on the power of healing energy. It was also a good reminder to trust impressions which can guide you to improve the healing experience for a patient.

An Experience in Healing

Metal Becomes Water

In Chinese Medicine, one of the foundations is understanding the 5 Elements Theory. The 5 elements include Fire, Water, Wood, Earth, and Metal. The 5 elements can be places in a cycle to help understand the connection and relationship of all the relationships. It is this relationship that is used to help a practitioner translate how the organs relate to each other in the human body.

One of the relationships is called the “Generating Cycle” and it connects the five elements together in a circle. In this model,

• Wood is the fuel of Fire
• Fire creates ashes that become Earth
• Earth yields metal ore
• From the refinement of metal (water boiling) we get steam
• Water becomes wood which grows

Each of these are easy to understand except how metal becomes water. Every student struggles with this one.   How does metal become water????

At a workshop, Dr. Suzanne Friendman explained the history of where this concept originated:

“In ancient days, water was thought to come from metal. Now days we know this is not true, but long ago people would see condensation forming on their swords or metal cups and believe that water could come from metal”.

Ah hah!

It wasn’t until after she explained the roots of how this concept originated that it made sense to me how metal fit into this generating cycle; condensation appearing on metal.

Metal Becomes Water

Healing and the Mind - The Mystery of Qi (Chi)

A friend sent me this information about a visit Bill Moyers took to China where he was exposed to Chinese Medicine.


Amazing video of a Qigong Master using Qi.

Healing and the Mind - The Mystery of Qi (Chi)

Protecting Your Personal Energy when Interacting with Draining People or Situations

I went to a Qigong workshop and learned a nifty trick I wish I knew when I first became a nurse.  I, along with many nurses, ended getting burned out and ended up leaving the profession.  I was at my limit in how much caring and giving I could do.  I had no more energy left so switched careers.

I was not aware there were ways to safeguard your own personal energy and keep others from sucking you dry.  But in the Qigong training, protecting your own energy is considered step number uno.  Qigong caregivers learn how to protect themselves before they interact with patients.

Here is a modified version of the exercise we learned to keep our own energy safe and secure.  It iss called the “Column of Light” preparation exercise.

Column of Light
1. Stand with the left and right pinkies touching and the left and right thumbs touching.  The hands are held in front of the lower abdomen.
2. Energetically sink and root your energy into the earth.  Visualize yourself sinking into the earth’s core as all stress melts out of the body deep into the earth.
3. Once you are rooted, visualize a column of energy or light coming up from the earth and surrounding you completely.
4. While surrounded by the column, see yourself growing so tall that your head reaches the stars and the column of light that surrounds you ascends and connects to the heavens above.
5. Sink your focus back down and root your energy into your abdomen.  At this point you are surrounded by a column of dense energy (or Qi) that strengthens you and acts as a boundary between the earth and heaven to prevent the patient’s energy (or Qi) from invading your own tissues.
6. Next, expand the column of light around you as if it were a bubble around you.  This bubble will be your portable protection as you interact with patients or those who may be drains on your energy.  You are now secure in a bubble of protective energy.

You may release the bubble of energy by taking some deep focused releasing breaths and / or brushing your shoulders and abdomen with your hands and visualizing the stuff you may have picked up from day, along with the bubble, being released and cleaned along with returning and being reabsorbed by the earth.

Or the process can be automatically relaxed and the energy released with sleep (unless you visualize the continuation of the bubble while you sleep).

You can do this little visualization each day as well as several times through the day as needed.  In fact for Qigong, the recommendation is to do this exercise before each and every patient (along with some visualization for the treatment room).

What is so cool about this process is how you can also use it for every day interactions, too. For example,  I tried this exercise the other day prior to going to one of my dreaded meetings at work, so before going to the office I did this column of light visualization.  When I got home later that day, I was surprised how much energy I had and how I wasn't drained.  This exercise worked even for my everyday office interactions.

You may want to also try it for yourself and see if it changes how you feel that day.  If you feel better, try making it part of your daily routine and see if things start to improve even more..

(Special thanks to Dr. Suzanne Friedman who taught this visualization exercise to our class).

Protecting Your Personal Energy when Interacting with Draining People or Situations

The Human Body is Microcosm of the Universe

Chinese Medicine views the human body as if it is a microcosm of the universe.  What is happening outside our body affects inside our body.

In Chinese Medicine, everything is connected and has a relationship to everything else.  The earth, water, wind, fire, and metal are a part of nature.  They are also a part of ourselves.  We observe the affects these elements have on each other and based on these observations, we can understand how these elements interact within ourselves.

The Human Body is Microcosm of the Universe

Food Flavors are Part of Good Health

In Chinese Medicine, food is often considered medicine.  Food is the primary means of providing us with the energy and a key source to help our bodies function correctly.

What I find rather interesting in the Chinese medicine way of thinking is that even the flavors of the foods are important in considering a prescription for good health.

There are five different flavors identified as having different purposes in maintaining and contributing to ones health.

• Sour
• Bitter
• Sweet
• Pungent
• Salty

Each of these different flavors have different functions in contributing to balancing or providing good health.

Sour flavor, for example, is an astringent and can generate liquid. You use this flavor when there is a fluid deficiency.

The bitter flavor is used for purging or reducing excess.  It is indicated for fever or when there is damp retention, like edema.

The sweet flavor is for relaxing, toning, and harmonizing.  It is used if there is a deficiency pattern and is also used to help relieve pain as well as calm the mind.

The pungent flavor helps stimulate digestion and gets things moving.  This flavor is used for phlegm as well as to stimulate Qi, get food to move, as well as help blood stagnation.

Salty flavors are used to soften and is used to help goiters, cysts, lymph nodes, and abdominal masses.

I find this aspect of food flavors being part of maintaining good health rather fascinating

Food Flavors are Part of Good Health