Misha Ruth Cohen - The Chinese Medicine Companion

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Text 2015, 2020 Fair Winds Press

First Published in 2020 by Fair Winds Press, an imprint of The Quarto Group,

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Digital edition: 978-1-63159-977-4
Softcover edition: 978-1-59233-989-1

Digital edition published in 2020

eISBN: 978-1-63159-977-4

The information in this book previously appeared in The New Chinese Medicine Handbook by Misha Ruth Cohen (Fair Winds Press, 2015).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data under The New Chinese Medicine Handbook.

Design: Merideth Harte

Page Layout: Merideth Harte

Illustration: William Michael Wanke and Shutterstock

A MODERN GUIDE TO ANCIENT HEALING

MISHA RUTH COHEN, O.M.D., L.Ac.

W hat is new in Integrated Chinese Medicine?

At first glance, there is nothing new. Chinese medicine has developed continuously over thousands of years. Chinese medicine philosophy states that everything constantly changes. Yin becomes Yang, and Yang becomes Yin. However, Integrated Chinese Medicine takes this concept of constant change and distinguishes it by incorporating modern medicine within the ancient philosophy of Chinese medicine.

First, Integrated Chinese Medicine is a partnership between ancient Chinese medicine wisdom and the insight of Western medicine. Second, with expanded access to all kinds of research and information due to the Internet, apps, and other modern technological advances, there is much more readily available knowledge. Within this overabundance of information, there is good and bad, true and false, and at times, it is hard to tell the difference. With Integrated Chinese Medicine, I can help you make sense of this morass of information and help you choose what actually works and what is safe. Third, you are in charge of your own healing process. Integrated Chinese Medicine, as shown in this book, gives you tools to make your own decisions and become supported as the captain of your healing team, with practitioners as your facilitators and catalysts.

You dont need to see a Chinese medicine practitioner or come to our clinic to reap the benefits of Integrated Chinese Medicine. You can use many self-care techniques to help you get started along your path to wholeness today.

Self-care practices can make a dramatic and immediate difference in the quality of your life even before you have explored the Chinese medicine concepts on which Integrated Chinese Medicine is based. Self-care therapies are not second best. I believe that they should be 80 percent of all care. Theyre the most important part of any journey toward wholeness. You cant arrive there unless you bring yourself along.

C hinese medicine is a system of preserving health and curing disease that treats the mind/body/spirit as a whole. Its goal is to maintain or restore harmony and balance in all parts of the human being and also between the human being and the environment.

Each of Chinese medicines healing artsfrom dietary therapy to acupunctureis designed to be integrated into daily life. Together, they offer the opportunity to live in harmony and to maintain wholeness. In fact, for all of Chinese medicines power to heal the body, its focus is on preventive care. In ancient China, doctors were paid only when their patients were healthy. When patients became ill, obviously the doctors hadnt done their job.

The Role of the Tao

Chinese medicines focus on maintaining wholeness and harmony of the mind/body/spirit emerges from the philosophy of the Tao, which is sometimes translated as the infinite origin or the unnameable.

The guiding principles of the Tao are:

Everything in the universe is part of the whole.

Everything has its opposite.

Everything is evolving into its opposite.

The extremes of one condition are equal to its opposite.

All antagonisms are complementary.

There is no beginning and no end, yet whatever has a beginning has an end.

Everything changes; nothing is absolute.

This dynamic balance between opposing forces, known as Yin/Yang, is the ongoing process of creation and destruction. It is the natural order of the universe and of each persons inner being.

To Westerners, Yin/Yang is most easily understood as a symbol for equilibrium, but in Chinese philosophy and medicine, it is not symbolic. It is as concrete as flesh and blood. It exists as an entity, a force, a quality, and a characteristic. It lives within the body, in the life force (Qi), in each Organ System.

The Forms of Qi

When the dynamic balance of Yin/Yang is disturbed, disharmony afflicts the mind/body/spirit, and disease can take root. Each symptom of Yin/Yang disharmony tells the trained practitioner about whats going on in the inner workings of a persons body. Once a disharmony is identified, the Chinese medicine practitioner addresses the entire web of interconnected responses in mind/body/spirit that are triggered by the presence of disharmony. Healing is achieved by rebalancing Yin and Yang and restoring harmony in the whole person.