What is Traditional Chinese Medicine?
What is traditional Chinese medicine? To answer this question take a look at your body starting with the top of your head, down to the tip of your toes. Now take a moment to feel the energy flowing in your body, the blood coursing through your veins. Take a deep breath and feel the air filling your body, and the gases escaping as you exhale. Take a couple seconds to feel the effects of your thoughts and feelings on your body. Stop and do an inventory of every one of your body parts, examining every part for good feelings, pain, or discomfort. Now that you have examined yourself completely, and fully, you have a small idea of what traditional Chinese medicine views as important.
Traditional Chinese medicine encompasses a wide array of treatment forms ranging from acupuncture to herbal medications. The Chinese have been practicing, researching, documenting, and having formal means of treatment for over 30 centuries. Many of these treatments have remained in use and viable during all of these centuries.
In the tradition of Eastern thought the body is not considered as a separate entity, it is synchronous organism intertwined with our spirit, our life energy, and the environment in which we live. Your body, spirit, and environment of course do not match anyone else in all of creation, so your treatment is going to be slightly different from anyone else. With traditional Chinese medicine the specialists look at you as a complete person, then will work with you using a variety of techniques to fill your needs.
While in most practices they only recommend a certain kind of massage, some form of medication, or physical therapy, traditional Chinese medicine may give you recommendations from one, a combination, or all of these disciplines to aid in balancing your life energy.
What kind of treatments will you potentially receive? You could be receiving a treatment in acupuncture to unblock energy flow which is stuck in your energy meridians. You may be receiving one of several different forms of massage to align your body and energy. If the diagnosis calls for it you may be treated with a formulation made of many different kinds of Chinese herbs and substances. You could even be instructed to practice a technique like Tai Chi, to help you meditate, align and strenghten your body through the rhythmic exercise.
What is traditional Chinese medicine’s comparison to Western medicine? There is not much of a good correlation. Western medicine looks at the health and body as only a physical organism separate from the spirit and life energy. Eastern medicine looks at the body as a reflection of the spirit and the flow of life’s energy. When the life energy is blocked through physical challenges, mental stress, or spiritual unrest it is reflected in the body. By healing the unrest, stress, and restoring the energies proper flow, the body is allowed to heal itself naturally.
While Western medicine has many times criticized the ideas from Eastern medicine, it is amazing how often they then discover the herbs being used, the stress relief methods, and forms of exercise do give significant results. If you are feeling a disconnect from traditional medical solutions, you should give traditional Chinese medicine a chance, and see how it can benefit your life.
