Chinese Medicine Thinking In A Nutshell

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At the root of Chinese medicine is a connection to nature. To understand what it means to be a healthy human, the practitioners of old looked to the patterns of nature. Humans (and all living creatures in the material world) were understood to be reflections of larger, more universal patterns that could be “read” through attentive consideration of the world and nature. Seasonal change is a good example. By recognizing the repetitive, cyclic nature of the seasons, we are able to describe a pattern that characterizes that particular time of the year.

The idea is that by taking these universal patterns as models for our lives, we can more easily maintain our health. Not many people would wear a bathing suit outdoors in the winter, for example. We automatically dress warmly without thinking much about it because we know that exposing ourselves to extreme cold will give us a chill, weaken us and, eventually, sap our vitality. While this example may be an obvious one, in truth, all of nature’s patterns can inform us about how to stay healthy.

Another key element of Chinese medicine takes into account our surroundings. The health we try to preserve in this tradition is not just our own personal health, but the health of those around us — our community — as well as the environment.

As the ancient scholars observed the world around them for clues, one of the first things they realized was that nothing in nature is static. Rather, the world and its patterns are constantly changing in order to maintain balance. A recognition of this foundational truth helps us adapt in a healthy way.

The ancient Chinese understood that we are intimately connected to the land we inhabit, and if it is out of balance, we also become out of balance.

Qi

Qi is a uniquely Chinese concept that is difficult to define. For our purposes here, we will call qi the vital force that flows through all matter in the universe, including our bodies. In Chinese medicine, all disease starts at the root, as an imbalance of qi. In a nutshell, the basis of Chinese medicine thinking can be defined as assessing imbalances in the flow of qi. These imbalances, if left untreated, will eventually lead to other, more overt problems we label “diseases.”

So, what leads to imbalances in the flow? As mentioned earlier, one of the primary causes is not patterning our lives after the larger universal patterns we observe in the rest of nature. As modern life takes us further and further from these patterns, we see greater and more troubling imbalances.

Chinese medicine can help with imbalances brought about by our disconnection from nature, and the negative influences of modern life, such as pollution. Most importantly, it can educate a patient about how to reconnect with natural cycles.

Acupuncture and herbs are the primary modalities of Chinese medicine, although bodywork therapies, such as shiatsu and tui na, also play a large role. Chinese medicine practitioners, using acupuncture and acupressure, work to bring fluctuating patterns back into alignment with the patterns that we originally followed naturally.

Yin and Yang

When we say we are “balancing the flow,” what we really mean is that we are attempting to correct the interaction between yin and yang. The concept of yin and yang is at the root of Chinese medicine. Yin and yang are complements that work together to maintain balance, as all life needs both matter (the more yin aspect) and energy (the more yang aspect) to function. All the classical texts are basically a long survey of everything as seen through the lens of yin and yang.

All things in the material world can be defined as containing differing proportions of yin and yang. As doctors, when we take a patient’s history, we evaluate if the condition is more yin or yang. If the patient complains, for example, of edema — a condition marked by improper fluid metabolism — we would immediately think, “More yin than yang, because yin represents the more material aspects, such as flesh and fluids, and we are seeing fluid buildup. Still, this is about yang as well, as metabolism, or function, is the yang aspect. Therefore, more yin than yang.”

The tendency these days is to see yin and yang as absolutes, to start dividing the world up into this/that: dark is yin, light is yang; male is yang, woman is yin. A better way of stating this would be to say that woman is more yin than man, who is more yang. In very broad terms, yin is dense matter and yang is diffusive energy. Yin cannot function without yang, and yang cannot be contained without yin to hold it. A living thing in which function and matter are separating is by definition dying.

In the material world, nothing is pure yin or pure yang; by definition, any material object is a blending of the two and living matter is impossible without this blending.

The Five Elements

When we move beyond the (seeming) duality of yin and yang, it quickly becomes apparent that nature is easily divided into larger patterns as well. Throughout time and across all human experiences, these same ideas have been explored, of course, because they are so basic to life, but each tradition saw the divisions of nature slightly differently. In the European and Western Asian tradition, for example, the four elements were understood as earth, air, fire and water. In China, the idea developed into five elements — wood, fire, earth, metal and water.

The five‑element system, like the idea of yin and yang, is crucial to Chinese medicine. It is one of the earliest systems for categorizing the material world. Combining the ideas of yin and yang with five elements further refines and clarifies the qualities of yin and yang in specific instances. While the five elements are easy to understand as elements alone, the same characteristics we ascribe to them can be used to understand human physiology and pathology.

Fire, for example, by its very nature is more yang — it is hot, it moves, it is necessary to maintain life. We see the metabolic processes of the body as fire‑like. Digestion is understood to be a type of “cooking” within the body that liberates the nutrients in the foods we eat. If we apply the thinking behind yin and yang onto five elements, we see that yang fire implies doubled fire — yang is diffusive energy and enables metabolism — and brings to mind a roaring bonfire that can easily get out of control. This could be at the root of a condition like acid reflux, for example — a digestive fire grown out of control.

The qualities of each element are assigned to all aspects of being alive, both material as well as physiological functions. Wood, for example, is flexible. It moves up primarily, but also out, yet it is also rooted. Anything occurring in nature that moves up from a rooted place will have some association with wood, although the association may not be immediately apparent. Fighting for one’s beliefs even in the face of opposition, for example, is a wood quality.

The opposite is also true — inflexibility in any capacity can be viewed as a wood pathology, in other words, a lack of the essential quality of wood. If someone is experiencing inflexibility in their life, working with acupoints on the wood channels can be very effective.

Channel Theory

Channels are described as the places where the qi, vital energy, flows through the body; that is, the riverways that move vitality to all corners of the body. For acupressure, we use acupuncture points to reach these riverways of vitality.

To speak metaphorically, acupuncture points (acupoints) on the channels can be compared to regions along a river. For example, at junctions of the body with similar features (such as ankles and wrists), the acupoints often have parallel functions, in much the same way that the ports of rivers always occur where the river is wide, deep and calm. Rivers are used to move resources, and we want that to occur as seamlessly as possible, at the safest point along the river. It does not make sense to have a port at some rapids, an area defined by fierce and often unpredictable or surprising movement — that region is obviously better for moving swiftly.

Disease = Imbalance

Acupressure is based on acupuncture, a treatment in which filiform (hair‑like) needles are inserted into acupuncture points (acupoints) to stimulate a number of different responses. From a purely biomedical perspective, acupuncture is known to stimulate the immune response that occurs any time we insert something foreign into the body. There may be changes in the tissues at the site of the insertion, among other things. Hormonal changes can take place, for example, leading to a sense of calm and relaxation.

From a Chinese medicine perspective, the needle is a conduit for the qi (energy, or life force) in the universe to interact with the qi of both the practitioner and the patient. The patterns of nature guide the patterns within our bodies, and sometimes we need to reconnect with those universal blueprints to maintain a sense of well‑being and restore order to the system. In other words, such treatments help the body remember the pattern of health by removing the blocks to health.

In most cases, it takes many years to attain both proficiency at needling and a license to practice acupuncture. For practitioners attempting to work with the root pattern, or source of the imbalance, it makes sense that we would need a great deal of training. The ability to address the symptoms, however, is something everyone should be able to achieve. Reducing discomfort or improving digestion, for example, can greatly improve the quality of life as we work through the process of returning the body to a place of balance.

Chinese medicine theory recognizes that most symptoms of disease are the body’s attempt to bring itself back into balance. Disease is recognized as a part of oneself, and not an enemy to be conquered. Keep in mind that the success of treatment relies on a commitment to self-care — adopting the changes suggested by the practitioner and supporting the treatment with practices such as acupressure at home.

Reprinted with permission. The Beginner’s Guide to Acupressure by Karin Parramore. Robert Rose Inc., ©2024.  www.robertrose.ca. Available where books are sold.

Karin Parramore, MSOM, LAc, CH, has been a Chinese medicine practitioner since 2012 and is the Dean of the Master of Science in Traditional Chinese Medicine (MSTCM) program in Oakland, CA. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.

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