Chinese Medicine

Chinese healing modalities focus on the principle of movement. When energy is stuck in the body it is due to blockages of Qi in the meridians, resulting in patterns of dysfunction. The three main factors that lead to imbalance are emotions, climate, and life-style. Once the conditions disappear, so do the causes of the illness. However, the best cure is always prevention. There is an old saying that a man is not sick because he has an illness, but has an illness because he is sick. This implies that a disease-state exists prior to illness, allowing the illness to take hold of the body. 

A TCM practitioner obtains a detailed clinical observation of a client to discern the overall patterns of disharmony or imbalance in the individual. On one hand, sometimes people with very different symptoms but the same pattern of disharmony can have similar treatments. On the other hand, some clients with very similar symptoms need to be treated with very different regimens. She must discern the effect of a person’s social, environmental, and seasonal factors. Thus, the practitioner’s skill is crucial in a diagnosis because he uses his own judgment, intuition, and experience.
In conclusion, Chinese Medicine is a modality whose magnitude and ability to heal the human body is still not fully uncovered here in the West. The future shows great promise for increasing Chinese Medicine education and therapy in the West. It is not only education about a modality, but also a philosophy, a way of life. The greatest strength of TCM lies in the fact that its approach includes and moves beyond issues of just physical health.