Cinnamon – it’s one of the most familiar spices in our kitchens, especially this time of year as the weather turns colder. It is also one of the most commonly used herbs in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
The outer bark of cinnamon is called Rou Gui in Chinese and is the form most people are familiar with. In TCM, the inner part of the branches is also used and is known as Gui Zhi.
Although stress seems to be just an accepted part of everyday living in our modern society, it certainly is nothing new. In fact, one of the oldest Chinese medical textbooks, written over 2,000 years ago, was advising people on how to lower their stress levels so that they could live healthier and better lives.
In Eastern medicine, stress can be roughly categorized into 2 types – physical and emotional – although there is quite a bit of overlap between them because Traditional Oriental Medicine views the body, mind, and spirit as being inter-related to each other.
In Traditional Oriental Medicine, the understanding of the organs is different than that of Western medicine. The physical organs, along with their corresponding energetic meridian pathways are never regarded as independent systems but instead, are always viewed in relation to the rest of the body.
