As we begin the New Year, many of us may have made resolutions to improve our health – whether it was to eat a healthier diet, get more regular exercise, or lose some excess weight.
As summer holidays come to an end, most people probably aren’t looking forward to returning back to office drudgery and their regular work routine. Besides the typical mental and emotional stresses that our work environments can create, Traditional Oriental Medicine has recognized for thousands of years that our day to day work activities can also have an effect on our physical health as well.
As the trees begin to blossom and spring is just around the corner, it’s a good opportunity to take some time to look after our health for the year ahead.
In one of the oldest writings of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the acupuncture textbook Huang Di Nei Jing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine) states that:
With the relaxing days of summer drawing to a close, most of us probably find our lives busier than ever. Back to school. Back to work. Back to our everyday routines.
It can be easy to get caught up in the stress and busyness of life and forget about looking after our own health. However, in the 2,000 year old acupuncture textbook the Huang Di Nei Jing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine), the Emperor’s court doctor gave some simple and practical advice in maintaining a healthy lifestyle:
In Traditional Oriental Medicine, all of the practitioner’s senses are used during diagnosis in order to help determine patterns of imbalance which may be causing sickness and symptoms in a person’s health.
As previously seen in Part 1, visual diagnosis was the first of four diagnostic examination methods described in the earliest textbooks of acupuncture written 2,000 years ago.
It’s not a secret that many of the herbs used in Traditional Oriental Medicine are valued more for their medicinal properties than for their taste.
However, there are exceptions and fresh ginger root, or Sheng Jiang as it’s known in Chinese, is one of the most commonly used herbs in both TCM as well as the kitchen.
Traditional Oriental Medicine is unique in that it is not just disease or sickness which is looked at during diagnosis, but also the underlying imbalances within a person’s body which may have contributed to the symptoms in the first place.
Looking, or visual diagnosis, is the first of four main diagnostic methods described in the earliest textbooks. For example, the Huang Di Nei Jing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine), written over 2,000 years ago, mentions about observing both the patient’s colour as well as their Shin, or spirit.
Burdock – although sometimes regarded as a nuisance weed (the spiked burrs on the seeds can get trapped onto clothing or pet’s fur if walking through a patch of burdock plants and were the original inspiration for the invention of Velcro), it’s a valuable herb in both Western and Eastern herbal medicine.
The following is a guest blog article by Shirley Garrett and Dr. Owen Garrett, Reg’d Psychologist, of Leaps & Bounds Fitness
For many of us, making a resolution is an annual rite of passage that marks our entry into the New Year with a fresh start and a clear point of departure from the past – for a few days and weeks, there is hope that this is the year our resolutions will produce a lasting change.
The healing art of KoKoDo Shiatsu, like other methods of Traditional Oriental Medicine such as acupuncture and moxibustion, seeks to regulate and correct imbalances within the body, helping to restore a person to a healthier state of balance.