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The Shambhala Guide to Traditional Chinese Medicine

Introduction

In traditional Chinese medicine, the human system is viewed as a microcosmic mirror of the macrocosmic universe, a whole inner world composed of the same elements and energies, and subject to the same natural laws, as the external world and cosmos (fig. 1). The universal principles that govern "everything under Heaven" (tien hsia) are simply known as the "Way" (Tao), and they apply equally to stars and planets, molecules and atoms, operating exactly the same way in the human system as they do in the solar system. Because nature is the most obvious and enduring manifestation of Tao on earth, much of the traditional terminology of Chinese medicine is derived directly from natural phenomena (fire and water, wind and heat, dryness and dampness, etc.), and a traditional Chinese diagnosis often sounds more like a weather report than a medical analysis. In Chinese medicine, manifest nature is the master template by which the physician understands and manipulates the internal elements and energies of the human system.

When the elemental energies within the human system remain in a natural state of dynamic balance and functional harmony, "fair weather" prevails inside the body, and the garden of human health flourishes, both mentally and physically. But when organic balance

Introduction

Figure 1. An ancient Chinese depiction of the human system as a microcosm of nature and the cosmos.

Introduction 3

is upset and aberrant energies invade the system, flood and drought, wind and rain, heat and cold, and other types of "stormy weather" may occur, causing damage to the internal landscape. Because the microcosmic energy system of humans (yen) stands midway between the cosmic powers of Heaven (tien) and the natural forces of Earth (di), drawing power from both sources, human health depends not only on internal energy balance within the system, but also on harmony with the macrocosmic powers of Heaven (the cosmos) and Earth (nature).

Two key concepts in traditional Chinese medicine are that the occurrence of disease represents a failure in preventive health care, and that health is a responsibility shared equally by doctor and patient. In the Chinese medical tradition, the doctor serves mainly as advisor and guide, the coach who teaches the patient the basic ground rules and winning strategies in the game of health, but it is up to each individual to play the game and win or lose the prize of health. The key tactic in the game of health is timing and preventive intervention. As the classic verse of the Tao Teh Ching states,

Before an omen arises, It's easy to take preventive measures . . . Deal with things in their formative state; Put things in order before they grow confused.

The traditional Chinese approach to health is summarized in the old English adage, "A stitch in time saves nine." The Chinese have always realized the wisdom of spending time and money on a preventive stitch now, rather than having to pay the pain and cost of nine curative stitches later. That is one reason that Chinese in all walks of life rarely stint on expenditures for food: they learned long ago that you are what you eat, and they know that wholesome food is always the best preventive medicine. In the Western world today, people tend to take health for granted until it breaks down, then run

to the doctor looking for a quick fix or a spare part. "Such an approach," states The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, "is comparable to the behavior of a person who starts digging a well only after he is thirsty, or who begins to forge weapons after he is already engaged in battle. Would these actions not be too late?"

"The superior physician," says an old Chinese medical axiom, "teaches his patients how to stay healthy." In traditional Chinese households, the family doctor was retained not just to treat the sick but to keep everyone in the family, including the servants, healthy. The physician visited the household regularly, checking everyone's pulse and other vital signs and dispensing timely advice and remedies as required in order to deal with things in their formative state. As long as everyone in the household remained healthy, the doctor received a regular monthly fee, but if anyone fell ill, all payments stopped until the doctor restored the patient to health, at the doctor's own expense! Not only was this system an excellent preventive against disease, it was also a very effective preventive against malpractice and a strong incentive to creative progress in health care, for the income of physicians depended entirely on keeping their clients healthy, not on treating them for diseases that could easily have been prevented with "a stitch in time," as is all too often the case in modern Western medicine.

Traditional Chinese doctors diagnose and treat the whole human system, rather than dealing only with its separate parts, as the specialists of modern Western medicine do. Western medicine tends to focus on the overt symptoms of disease in the part of the body where they occur, treating each condition in the same way in every patient, as though the symptom were an independent phenomenon unrelated to other parts of the body and the external environment. The Chinese describe this sort of medical care as suppressing the superficial symptoms while failing to cure the root cause. By contrast, Chinese medicine diagnoses and treats all symptoms of disease in terms of their functional relationships to the whole human system,

as well as to external factors in the environment in which the symptoms developed. Primary attention is always focused on the subtle governing energies that operate decisively below the surface, not on the obvious external symptoms they create outside. This is called "curing the root, not treating the surface."

The Chinese view the human body as an organic system whose parts are all functionally interrelated by virtue of the same fundamental forces that govern nature and the cosmos, of which the human system is a microcosmic but complete reflection. As Ted Kaptchuk explains in The Web That Has No Weaver,

To Western medicine, understanding an illness means uncovering a distinct entity that is separate from the patient's being; to Chinese medicine, understanding means perceiving the relationships between all the patient's signs and symptoms. . . . The Chinese method is thus holistic, based on the idea that no single part can be understood except in its relation to the whole. ... If a person has a symptom, Chinese medicine wants to know how the svmptom fits into the patient's entire bodily pattern. . . . Understanding that overall pattern, with the symptom as part of it, is the challenge of Chinese medicine.

In Western medicine, the human body is seen as a machine consisting of many separate, often replaceable parts, and the doctor is a specialized mechanic who fixes the machine when it stalls, or replaces worn-out parts when it breaks down. Prior to the actual onset of disease, modern Western medicine doesn't tend to emphasize regular preventive health care. And some modern Western therapies, such as surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and chemical drugs, are highly intrusive and sometimes toxic to the human system, often doing damage to the body that only manifests years later, when it is diagnosed and treated as an entirely different disease. Chinese medicine views the human body as a flourishing living garden and the

doctor as a gardener who periodically trims, prunes, weeds, waters, fertilizes, and takes care of the various organisms to prevent the whole garden from withering and going to seed. The doctor uses wholesome foods, herbs, acupuncture, massage, exercise, and other natural, nonintrusive methods to cultivate the whole human garden and protect it from damage by the aberrant forces of nature. While modern Western medicine employs technology as a weapon of war against the forces of nature involved in human disease, with the body as a battlefield, Chinese medicine tries to harness, harmonize, and deflect malevolent energies to rebalance and retune the whole human system. The Chinese way slowly but surely restores the human system to a state of equilibrium, thereby eliminating the symptoms that inevitably arise whenever human energies lose their internal balance and fall out of harmony with the environmental forces of Heaven and Earth.

One of the problems with modern Western medicine is that it developed largely on the basis of dissection and study of cadavers, and this research has been literally applied to living human beings, without taking adequate account for the dynamic energies that govern the physical organs and other parts of living human bodies. This has led to a strong mechanical and chemical bias in modern Western medical practice, and insufficient attention to the vital roles played by the invisible but decisive forces of energy within the human system. In Chinese medicine, however, the human energy system has always been regarded as the key factor in health and healing.

The eighteenth-century Japanese medical commentator Mitani Kolu tellingly observed: "As Western medicine studies more and more detail, it moves further away from the real aim of its research. ... Its studies of the human body concern only the cadaver. They do not inform us about the living, the only true aim of medical studies."

The Chinese view human beings in terms of three inseparable, interpenetrating dimensions of existence, called the Three Treasures (san bad): these are jing (essence, body), chee (energy, breath), and

shen (spirit, mind). These distinctly different but totally interdependent aspects of human life are equivalent to the Tibetan Buddhist concept of the three kaya: dharmakaya (dimension of mind), sam-bhogakaya (dimension of energy), and nirmanakaya (dimension of body). The Three Treasures compose the framework of human existence, the foundation of human life, and the basic ingredients in the "internal alchemy" {nei-gung) of traditional Taoist meditation, medicine, and martial arts. An ancient Taoist text entitled Classification of Therapies states, "Essence transforms into energy, and energy transforms into spirit/' This process of transformation and sublimation of energy is the basis of Taoist internal alchemy and is achieved by applying the corollary to the above equation, "Spirit commands energy, and energy commands essence." Known as the Triplex Unity, this formula means that the mind controls energy and energy controls the body to ensure that the body produces energy and energy sustains the mind (fig. 2).

]ing refers to the physical body, particularly its "vital essence,"

spirit

energy

Figure 2. Taoist internal alchemy of the Triplex Unity of Essence, Energy, and Spirit, with the nurture and command cycles for internal balance and harmony.

such as blood, hormones, enzymes, lymph, immune factors, and other essential bodily components. Chee refers to the sum total of all the vital energies within the human system, and also to the constituent energies of each internal organ, gland, tissue, and other functional part. Shen refers to pure primordial spirit as well as to the temporal aspects of spirit that define the human mind in all its various facets and functions. The Three Treasures of life are only one aspect of a basic dimensional trinity—along with the Three Powers (Heaven, Earth, Humanity) and the Three Elixir Fields (navel, solar plexus, head)—that runs throughout traditional Chinese philosophy, fusing the three major Taoist practices of meditation, medicine, and martial arts into one unified system. Internal balance on each level of existence—physical, energetic, and mental—and harmony among all three are the keys to human health and longevity.

Western medicine recognizes only soma (the body, or jing) and psyche (the mind, or shen), dividing them into two separate and often antagonistic departments of health care (physiology and psychology), then further fragmenting various aspects of each into even more specialized subdepartments, with little or no cross-referencing. In the Western view, the physical body reigns supreme, with energy seen as a mere byproduct of physiological metabolism and consciousness as an outgrowth of the brain. To the Chinese, however, the spirit and its various facets of awareness and volition are the primary governing factors in human life, whereas energy is regarded as the basic self-existing fuel of the universe, which spirit harnesses to accomplish its purposes, and the body is simply condensed energy organized by the human mind to form a physical vehicle for manifest life on earth. Not only are these two views of human life fundamentally different in philosophy, they also give rise to very different approaches to human health and disease in medical practice.

According to the Chinese view, the mind may be engaged to control and guide energy to heal and repair the body. Western medical science has recently confirmed this view with the discovery of the

so-called psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) response, through which positive states of mind such as compassion, love, faith, calm, happiness, and so forth generate specific healing responses in the body. Thev are thought to do this by stimulating secretions of the particular hormones and neurochemicals involved in immunitv and healing. Conversely, negative thoughts and emotions like anger, grief, jealousy, hatred, and stress generate essences and energies that inhibit immune response, unbalance the system, and fling open the gates to disease and degeneration.

Conventional Western medicine separates ailments of body and mind, turning physical problems over to physicians and surgeons and mental and emotional problems to psvchologists and psvchiatrists. Neither one deals with nor even understands the underlying human energies that link physical and mental symptoms in a unified, organi-callv integrated svstem, and therefore neither can provide a cure that heals both body and mind and restores a healthy equilibrium to the whole human svstem. Chinese medicine deals directlv with the un-derlving imbalances and dysfunctions of energy that lie at the root of both physiological and psychological symptoms of disease, thereby curing the whole svstem with the same therapies. An interesting and beneficial side effect of traditional Chinese therapy is that, in balancing and healing the mind as well as the body, it often leaves the patient at the doorstep of spiritual discoverv, and many patients go on to take up meditation, chee-gung (also spelled qigong or ch'i-kung) and other traditional Chinese methods of total self-health cultivation.

Both in theory and in practice, chee, and its various roles in the human svstem, lies at the very heart of traditional Chinese medicine. Invisible and immaterial, chee is nevertheless the most basic component of life, the formative force behind all manifest existence, and the motive power that drives all activities and catalyzes all transformations, mental and emotional as well as physical. The essential nature of this vital energy remains one of life's great mysteries, yet

its effects are apparent and tangible, and its powers and properties are easily perceived and understood by what it does in nature and within the human system. Miraculous in its infinite potency and pervasive presence throughout all realms of nature and the universe, chee manifests its decisive power over matter in everything from the formation and dissolution of stars and galaxies down to the most mundane phenomena of nature on earth—a falling leaf, a rotting apple, a self-replicating cell, a waterfall, a burp, or a sneeze. It is the beat in the heart, the warmth in the blood, the rhythmic expansion and contraction of breath. Chee is both the cause and the effect of every activity and phenomenon in atoms, molecules, cells, organs, bodies, planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe as a whole.

In The Web That Has No Weaver, Ted Kaptchuk writes, 'The tendency of Chinese thought is to seek out dynamic functional activity rather than to look for fixed somatic structures that perform activities/' The primacy of energy over matter, function over form, is one of the most distinctive hallmarks of traditional Chinese medicine. For all the detailed precision of Western anatomical and physiological science, modern Western medicine still lacks a comprehensive and systematic view of the vital forces that forge matter, shape form, and drive all functions in the human body, weaving the invisible web of energy that constitutes the master blueprint for all physical structures in the body and controls the activities of the whole system and all its parts. The patterns of the human energy system are woven by both Heaven (cosmic energies) and Earth (natural forces), and they are permanently encoded in the filaments of DNA within each and every cell of the body. Distortions in human energy patterns are always the primary cause of disease and degeneration, and such distortions are in turn caused by exposure to aberrant external or unbalanced internal energies.

Chinese medicine views physical disease as being the final symptomatic manifestation of long-standing imbalances, deficiencies, obstructions, and other chronic abnormalities in the flow and patterns

of the human energy system, and it cures disease by restoring and rebalancing disordered internal energies and reestablishing energetic harmony with the environment. As soon as normal balance and harmony are restored to the energy system, it immediately goes to work repairing physical damage, eliminating toxins, replacing cells, and rebuilding tissues—all according to the master plan contained in DNA, the body's most effective prescription for health and longevity. One of the keys to Chinese preventive medicine is to detect and correct abnormal patterns in the human energy system before they become somatically rooted in the body and cause permanent physical damage.

A major reason for the megacrisis in human health throughout the world today is the fact that modern urban lifestyles and industrial technology have isolated and alienated humanity from the powers of nature and the cosmos, the context in which human life has evolved in harmony for millions of years. A basic tenet of the holistic organic view of humanity, nature, and the cosmos is that whatever benefits the whole also benefits all its constituent parts. Although modern American medicine does not share the holistic view of Chinese medicine, traditional Native American views on human health show remarkable similarities to the Chinese approach, as evidenced in this memorable statement by Chief Seattle in 1854:

The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. All things are connected. . . . What befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

When humanity pollutes the air with toxic smog and fills the sky with microwaves, artificial electromagnetic fields, and other abnormal energies, and when we poison the soil and waters with toxic chemicals and foul wastes, we also distort the energies, poison the fluids, and pollute the tissues of our own internal worlds. Humanity

simply cannot have it both ways: we cannot derange and denature the macrocosm of our living environment without deranging and destroying the microcosm of life within ourselves.

By promoting and protecting the primordial purity, natural balance, and inherent harmony of the Three Powers of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, and integrating them with the Three Treasures of body, energy, and mind, we can just as easily prevent disease, arrest degeneration, and prolong life as we can destroy health and hasten death through ignorance and violation of the natural laws that govern life on earth. All that life really requires to accomplish the goals of health and longevity is to synchronize its energies with the natural pulses of the planet and the rhythms of the cosmos from which life springs. Traditional Chinese medicine endeavors to facilitate this harmonic balance on all three levels of body, energy, and mind with nutrition, herbs, acupuncture, massage, chee-gung, meditation, and other holistic methods that restore nature's patterns to the human energy system and weave it back into its proper position in the great web of life on earth.

Historical Milestones in Chinese Medicine

Iraditional Chinese Medicine is rooted in the very foundations of Chinese civilization, the cornerstones of which were laid in the Central Plain of the Yellow River Basin in northern China at least five thousand years ago. While Western scholars still tend to discount this formative period of Chinese history as "mythical," and refer to the founding emperor Huang Ti (the Yellow Emperor) as "legendary," recent archeological excavations in China have finally confirmed the existence of a major civilization that flourished in the Yellow River basin around 3000 bce, governed by an emperor named Huang Ti. Virtually every historical record and archeological discovery in China dating from this early formative period down to the present time has testified to the central importance of medicine in Chinese civilization.

Prior to the advent of professional physicians during the early Chou dynasty (1122-249 bce), Chinese medicine was the exclusive domain of tribal shamans (wu). These "medicine men" collected the wild herbs brought down from the mountains of ancient China by wandering Taoist hermits, tested and categorized them, and used them for healing. This was the era of the emperor Shen Nung (the "Divine Farmer"), who, according to the authoritative Han dynasty

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historian Ssu Ma-chien, "tasted the myriad herbs, and so the art of medicine was born." References to thirty-six different diseases and their herbal cures have been found inscribed on some of the 160,000 tortoise shells and oracle bones excavated during the twentieth century in the Central Plain region, dating mainly from the ancient Yin dynasty, circa 1500 bce. This proves that disease and medicine had already become a systematic field of study in China, if not an actual profession, as long as thirty-five hundred years ago.

During the Chou dynasty, which replaced the Yin in 1122 bce, Chinese language and civilization underwent rapid development, and the art of medicine began to detach itself from its former association with sorcery and superstition. The ancient Chinese ideogram for "doctor" (yi) first appeared in written records dating from the early Chou era, indicating that medicine had already become an independent profession, no longer a branch of shamanism. The ideogram for "medicine" (yao) also made its first appearance in classical records of the early Chou period.

The terms yi and yao appear frequently in the I-Ching (Book of Change), the world's oldest extant book. This ancient Chinese canon of philosophy and divination was written during the twelfth century bce by the duke of Chou and represents the earliest recorded codification of the ancient edifice of Taoist philosophy on which all the traditional Chinese arts and sciences are founded. The terms yin and yang also made their first appearance in written form in the beguiling text of the I-Ching, as in the following passage:

The ceaseless interplay of Heaven [cosmos] and Earth [nature] gives forms to all things. The sexual union of male and female gives life to all things. This interaction of yin and yang is called Tao [the Way], and the resulting creative process is called change.

In 218 bce, the militant kingdom of Chin, from which the West derived the name China, swept down from the northwest and con-

quered all the warring kingdoms and squabbling principalities that had arisen to fill the vacuum left by the decline and fall of the ancient Chou dynasty, uniting the entire empire under a single centralized government for the first time in Chinese history. In his ruthless drive to eradicate all vestiges of the past, the first Chin emperor ordered the infamous Fires of Chin, a mass book-burning campaign in which virtually all written records of ancient China's classical heritage went up in flames. The only exceptions to this wholesale destruction of recorded knowledge were books on agriculture, divination (including the I-Ching), and medicine.

After enduring the cruelty of Chin rule for fifteen years, the Chinese people revolted and passed the Mandate of Heaven to the great Han dvnastv (206 bce-220 Ce), under which Chinese civilization as we know it today took on its distinctive form and character. The early Han and the preceding Warring States periods were times of great intellectual ferment in China, and many of the most important Chinese philosophers, from Confucius and Mencius to Lao Tze and Chuang Tze, appeared during these centuries, along with the classical texts written by or attributed to them. Early Han authors wrote three important medical texts that for the first time organized the vast body of medical experience accumulated in China during the previous three millennia, and these became the first classic canons of traditional Chinese medicine.

The most important of these early Han medical texts was entitled The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine (Huang Ti Nei Ching), and today it remains an indispensable text in the studv of traditional Chinese medicine. Like many other Han classics, this title carries the name of one of China's most venerated ancient emperors to enhance its aura of authority, as though the text had flowed directly from the brush of that august source, but in fact it was compiled during the early Han. This book sifted science from superstition and elucidated the essential guiding principles of traditional Chinese medicine, establishing a svstematic theoretical frame-

work for the study and practice of medicine as a profession. The text explains the practical medical applications of the Great Principle of Yin and Yang, the Five Elemental" Energies, and other primordial principles of Taoist philosophy, and many of the therapeutics it introduced are still applied in clinical practice today. (There are two English translations of this medical canon, listed in the bibliography.)

Another famous Han medical classic is The Pharmacopeia ofShen Nung (Shen Nung Pen Tsao Ching), which recorded all the knowledge on medicinal herbs handed down in China from previous eras, separating fact from fancy and including only clinically proven claims. Shen Nung was the ancient Chinese emperor to whom the Han historian Ssu Ma-chien attributed the birth of Chinese medicine. The Han pharmacopeia that carries his name divides all known medicinal herbs into three functional categories: the "upper" class nurtures life and promotes longevity; the "middle" group nurtures nature and bestows vitality; the "lower" category was labeled "poison" and included all toxic herbs used to combat the most virulent infectious diseases. These categories still stand in Chinese herbal medicine today.

The third great medical treatise of the early Han was called Discussion of Fevers and Plus (Shang Han Lun), written by Chang Chung-ching around 200 bce. Over half of Dr. Chang's own clan had died of various types of fevers, prompting him to devote his life to the study of cures for these ailments. He divided all diseases into six types—three yin and three yang—and his prescriptions were formulated to correct imbalances in the polar yin/yang forces of the human system, thereby curing the root causes of disease in the body. Dr. Chang also wrote another milestone medical treatise entitled Essential Prescriptions of the Golden Chest. Originally this and Shang Han Lun were combined into one book, but later they were divided into two separate volumes. In addition, he produced and published the first map of the energy meridians and vital points used in acu-

puncture. His book, which today is still respected as an authoritative classic reference manual for preparing herbal formulas, lists 113 medical prescriptions employing 100 herbs. Some of his formulas have long been used as tried-and-true folk remedies handed down from generation to generation in Chinese families, such as Cinnamon Sap Soup, which contains cinnamon, ginger, licorice, jujubes, and peony, and is still used as a remedy for fevers with chills in Chinese medicine. (An English translation of and commentary on Shang Han Lun is listed in the bibliography.)

During the late Han (25-220 Ce), there appeared another great physician who left his permanent personal imprint on traditional Chinese medicine. His name was Hua To (140-208 ce), and he was the first to use toxic herbs such as Datura metel, Rhododendron si-nense, and Aconitum to induce local anesthesia prior to topical surgery. There is a famous painting depicting Hua To performing surgery to remove a poisoned arrowhead embedded in the arm of the great historical hero General Kuan Yu, who was later deified as the Chinese god of war. Thanks to the doctor's herbal painkiller, the stoic general was able calmly to play chess with a fellow officer while Hua To scraped away the infected flesh in his arm, right down to the bone. Hua To is also well remembered for the set of therapeutic exercises called dao-yin, which he developed and prescribed for various illnesses, based on the movements of animals. Dao-yin, which means "to induce and guide" (as to induce and guide energy through the body), is still taught and practiced as health therapy in China today.

In 629 ce, the founding emperor of the great Tang dynasty (618— 906 ce), known as China's Golden Age, issued a decree commanding that all medical knowledge in the empire should henceforth be collected and codified in the capital of Chang An (present-day Sian), where he established China's first school of medicine. The Tang produced a number of famous physicians, some of whom recorded their knowledge in texts that have since joined the ranks of Chinese medi-

cal classics. The Tang herbalist Tao Hung-ching wrote two books entitled Herbs as Studied by Shen Nung (Shen Nung Tsao Yao Hsueh) and Anecdotes of Celebrated Physicians (Ming Yi Ku Shih), in which he compiled and commented on medical data handed down from previous eras.

By far the most renowned physician of the Tang era, and one of the most important figures in the history of Chinese medicine, was Sun Ssu-miao (590-692 ce). Dr. Sun turned down requests by two Tang emperors to become their personal physician so that he could continue his private practice and medical research among the common people. He lived to the age of 101 by practicing what he preached, and he preached what he practiced by writing the great medical compendium entitled Precious Recipes (Chian Chin Fang), which contains valuable information and commentary on every aspect of traditional Chinese health care, including herbs and acupuncture, diet and exercise, breathing, and sexual yoga. This book contains the earliest Chinese references to diseases of nutritional deficiency, such as beri beri and scurvy, which he correctly diagnosed and successfully treated with nutrient remedies. He identified goiter, for example, as being caused by lack of a vital nutrient (iodine) in the diets of those who live far from the sea, and he cured the condition by prescribing seaweed and extracts of deer and lamb thyroid, all of which are rich dietary sources of iodine. Precious Recipes constitutes one of the most comprehensive practical handbooks of traditional Chinese medicine and includes chapters on Taoist sexual yoga and longevity practices as well.

During the ensuing Sung dynasty (960-1279 ce), Chinese medicine continued to advance rapidly, and several new medical schools were established in China. Medical students were now required to treat ailing faculty members, government officials, and military officers as part of their training, and the results were included in their final examination scores for graduation. All herbal prescriptions throughout the empire were standardized, and new forms of herbal

medicine, such as poultices, pills, and patent formulas, appeared in practice. The official imperial pharmacopeia of medical herbs was revised and expanded four times, the last edition listing almost one thousand items.

After a brief period of dormancy during the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1260-1368 Ce), Chinese medicine once again took a great leap forward under the native Ming (1368-1644), during which classical Chinese culture enjoyed a flourishing renaissance. The Ming produced another great master of Chinese herbal medicine, Li Shih-chen (1517-1593), who spent twenty-seven years of his life compiling and writing the book that has become the single most authoritative pharmacopeia of Chinese herbal medicine, Outlines and Divisions of Herbal Medicine (Pen Tsao Kang Mu). Contained in fifty-two book-scrolls listing 1,892 medicinal plants, minerals, and animal products, this great materia medica has become the bible of Chinese herbalists throughout the world and remains an indispensable reference in the study and practice of Chinese medicine. It has also been translated in its entirety into Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, French, German, Russian, and English, and was the first Chinese medical text to be seriously accepted and studied in the West, where it is said to have had an important influence on Charles Darwin's theories of evolution. An English translation, by G. A. Stuart and B. E. Read, was published in three volumes in Shanghai in 1911 and has been reprinted in Taiwan (see bibliography).

Li Shih-chen was the last great giant in the classical history of Chinese medicine. During the following Manchu Ching dynasty (1644-1911), the study and practice of the Chinese healing arts continued unabated and enjoyed particularly generous imperial patronage, and many important texts on specific branches of Chinese medicine were written and published, but very few have been fully translated into English. This period, which first brought China and the West into close contact, also saw many Chinese medicinal herbs find their way into British, American, and European pharmacopeias,

where they sowed the first seeds of the hybrid "New Medicine'' that is now fusing traditional Eastern and modern Western medical practices in many parts of the world today.

While many traditional medical systems have long since fallen into disuse because of competition from modern Western medical technology, traditional Chinese medicine still dominates the field of health in China, where it now continues to evolve and expand in conjunction rather than competition with modern medical science. The inevitable showdown between Chinese and Western medicine took place in Shanghai back in 1929, but unlike so many other conflicts between past and present ways, the traditionalists won the day in Chinese medicine, much to the everlasting benefit of China's national health.

At that time, young Chinese doctors newly trained in Japan in the wonders of modern Western medicine had just returned to China and were loudly clamoring for traditional medicine to be legally banned as an archaic and superstitious remnant of the past. This provoked such adamant opposition from all quarters of Chinese society that an extraordinary meeting of the most renowned traditional physicians in China was convened in Shanghai, and they elected a delegation to plead their case to the Nationalist government in nearby Nanking. After due consideration (no doubt many elder Nationalist leaders had personally experienced the benefits of Chinese medicine), the government declared its full support for traditional Chinese medicine on March 17, and ever since that milestone decision, which saved Chinese medicine from extinction in the dustbin of history, this date has been celebrated in China as Chinese Doctor Day. Two years later, in 1931, the League of Nations established a special committee in Geneva to undertake a comprehensive study of traditional Chinese medicine, thereby bringing the ancient healing arts of China under modern scientific investigation in the laboratories of the Western world.

Since then, Western medical science has confirmed many of the

theories and validated many of the practices of traditional Chinese medicine, and numerous Western scholars and scientists have devoted their entire professional careers to the study and practice of this ancient health system. (A selection of the more important books written by Western scholars and practitioners of Chinese medicine are included in the bibliography.)

Meanwhile, in the medical clinics and scientific laboratories of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, as well as in Western countries where Chinese medicine has been accepted, traditional Chinese therapeutics are being submitted to rigorous scientific testing, and exciting new discoveries are being made every year, including safe and effective herbal birth control, cures for AIDS and cancer, electronically enhanced acupuncture, new herbal cures for drug-resistant strains of malaria and other deadly diseases, and much more. These discoveries are all being incorporated in the New Medicine, which blends the best of East and West in human health and healing and offers new hope for resolution of medical mysteries that neither traditional nor modern medicine alone has been able to solve.

When it comes to medicine, what really counts is how well it works in practice, not how well it accords with this or that theory, and this is something only patients can testify to with certainty. It was the spontaneous testimony of millions of patients in China that saved traditional medicine from being abolished by its modern detractors in 1929, and it remains the trust and confidence of hundreds of millions of patients throughout the world that allows this ancient way of health to continue developing today.

The Human Energy System

The human energy system is like an electric power plant that runs in patterned circuits through each and every functional part of a complex machine or factory, delivering and regulating the current which controls each part and linking the entire system together in a whole harmoniously functioning organism. This energy system forms a microcosm of the universal energy patterns that run like templates throughout nature and the cosmos, from the galactic and solar systems down to the cellular, molecular, and atomic levels of existence. Containing multiple subsystems, such as organs, tissues, and cells, and contained within multiple supersystems, such as environmental, ecological, planetary, and solar systems, the human energy system shares the same basic elements and energies that constitute the entire universe, and human health depends entirely on the degree to which the energy system functions in resonant synchronicity with all its sub- and supersystems.

To continue functioning, all energy systems must achieve a balanced state of equilibrium between input and output. According to the Taoist paradigm of the Three Powers of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity, the human energy system stands midway between the forces of the cosmos (Heaven) and the forces of nature (Earth), assimilat-

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ing energies from both sources and transforming them into the types of energy required by the human organism. Above, the human body acts as a superconductor for the subtle wave energies of Heaven constantly raining down on our heads from the sky, converting them into electromagnetic energy pulses that the human system can utilize. Below, the body extracts and assimilates the elemental energies of Earth contained in food, fluids, herbs, and air, transforming and refining them into the basic organic energies required by the human system. The more efficient the human system becomes at conducting and transducing the pure potent energies of the cosmos, such as light, color, and invisible rays, the less it must depend on grosser sources of energy such as food, herbs, and nutritional supplements. On the human balance sheet of income and expenditure, energy is always the bottom line.

Modern Western physics has clearly established a fact of life that traditional Eastern mystics discovered many millennia ago—that matter is nothing more nor less than condensed, highly organized energy. Einstein proposed this view half a century ago with his famous equation E = mc 2 , but Western medicine has failed to realize the implications of this scientific fact for human health and medical care. "Science tells us that everything is energy and that matter is nothing more than energy in different form," explains energy therapist John Veltheim. "Our bodies are a composite of many different energy patterns and vibrations." As the "glue" that binds together all molecules, cells, tissues, and organs, the fuel that powers all vital functions, and the agent that executes the mind's commands, energy-is by far the single most important constituent in the human system and the most vital factor in human health and longevity. It is the true "staff of life" and the bridge that links body and mind.

The Dynamics of Yin and Yang

Human energy is an electromagnetic force that functions by virtue of its dynamic polarity. In Chinese tradition, this polarity, which

manifests itself throughout the material universe, is called The Great Principle of Yin and Yang, and it explains the polar nature of all events and phenomena from the galactic and planetary macrocosms down to the organic, cellular, and molecular microcosms of the human energy system. Owing to the polarity of yin and yang, human energy, like all natural forces, is always moving, constantly transforming, ever active.

It is important to bear in mind that yin and yang are not two different types of energy, but rather opposite and complementary qualities of the same basic energies. The terms yin and yang, which first appeared in the Book of Change (I-Ching) around 1250 bce, originally meant "the shady side of a hill" and "the sunny side of a hill" respectively, indicating that they are simply opposite sides of the same coin. Not only does this definition reflect the basic polar nature of yin and yang, it also indicates their mutually transmutable relationship, for as the sun (i.e., energy) moves across the sky, the shady side of the hill becomes sunny and the sunny side grows shady, just as water (yin) transforms into its own opposite element, steam (yang), when exposed to the Fire energy of heat. As the l-Ching states, "The interaction of yin and yang is called the Way [Tao], and the resulting creative process is called change/' All creation and change are therefore prompted by the dynamic polarity of yin and yang, which are properties of active energy, not static matter.

Yin and yang manifest their complementary polarity in every aspect of the human system (see table 1). There are yin organs functionally coupled by energy with yang organs, "hot" energies and "cold" energies, expanding and contracting energies, "evil" (disease-causing) and "true" (healing) energies. The front of the body is yin relative to the back, which is yang; the external surface is yang vis-avis the yin interior; acid pH is yang while alkaline is yin; and so forth. Thus the essential nature of yin and yang is complementary polarity, their essential relationship is one of constant interaction and mutual

Table 1. Aspects of Yin-Yang Polarity Aspects Yin

Yang

transformation, and the dynamic balance between the two determines the state of health of the whole and of all its constituent parts. Chinese philosophy cites five basic laws governing the ways in which the Great Principle of Yin and Yang functions in nature and throughout the cosmos, and Chinese medicine applies the same principles to the microcosmic universe within the human energy system.

1. All events and phenomena have two complementary polar aspects, called yin and yang, and this polarity is the basis of all organic structures and their functions.

2. Every yin-yang system contains myriad constituent subsystems and also is contained within myriad yin-yang supersystems.

3. Yin and yang mutually give rise to one another and are functionally dependent on one another. Their activities are always relative and their qualities complementary.

4. Yin and yang naturally balance and regulate each other. Their relative balance determines the equilibrium, stability, and functional viability of the whole human energy system and each of its organic subsystems.

5. Yin and yang are transmutable and mutually transform into each other. Their transformations initiate all creation, growth, change, and decline.

In the practice of Chinese medicine, the principle of yin and yang provides a convenient scale by which to gauge the overall equilibrium of the human energy system as well as the relative balance of all its constituent organ-energy subsystems. In diagnosis, it serves as a tool for determining the basic nature of specific ailments and monitoring their progression within the whole system. In therapy, it indicates the type of medical treatment required to rebalance ailing organ-energy systems and restore their synchronicity within the whole system. Hot and cold, full and empty, external and internal,

ascending and descending, and many other terms used in traditional Chinese diagnosis and therapy are simply different ways of describing various manifestations of yin and yang polarity in different parts of the human system.

The Five Elemental Energies

The Five Elemental Energies (wu hsing), also translated as the Five Phases, are fundamental forces of nature created by the interplay of yin and yang on earth. An ancient Chinese treatise on energy states:

By the transformation of yang and its union with yin, the Five Elemental Energies of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water arise, each with its own specific nature according to its share of yin and yang. . . . The Five Elemental Energies combine and recombine in countless ways to create manifest existence. All things contain all Five Elemental Energies in various proportions.

As part of manifest nature on earth, the human system also evolved from various combinations of the Five Elemental Energies. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine states, "It is a paradigm that applies equally to humans."

The activities, transformations, and cyclic phases mediated by the Five Elemental Energies in nature and in humans are all governed by a dynamic system of mutual checks and balances known as creative (sheng) and control (keh) cycles, or Mother/Son and Victor/ Vanquished relationships. These complementary cycles automatically adjust the overall balance and functional harmony of the whole system according to the relative polarities of yin and yang in various interactions of the Five Elemental Energies. Whenever a condition of imbalance arises between two energies and their respective functions, the creative and control cycles compensate and correct the imbalance, restoring functional harmony to the whole system.

In the creative cycle, each energy generates and increases the one that follows, while in the control cycle, each energy subjugates and decreases the next one (fig. 3). Whenever a particular energy in the creative cycle flares up and exerts an excessively stimulating influence over the following energy, the control cycle automatically counteracts that excess influence by sugjugating the flaring energy with its controlling element. If this natural balancing mechanism fails to function because of obstructions or other problems in the human energy system, the uncompensated imbalance of energies will soon manifest somatically and give rise to physiological disease, in which case a physician must step in to correct the problem with herbs, acupuncture, and/or other therapies that rebalance the human energy system. For example, an overactive heart (Fire) will eventually overstimulate the spleen (Earth) by virtue of the creative relationship of Fire to Earth, and if this condition of imbalance continues uncorrected, serious digestive problems might occur. The Chinese physician may correct this condition in two ways: either directly sedate the heart's Fire to take pressure off the spleen's Earth, or else stimulate the kidneys' Water to subjugate the heart's Fire through the control cycle of Water over Fire, thereby also relieving the spleen's Earth energy of excess Fire influence. In Chinese medicine, human health always boils down to the basic balance and harmony of energies within the system.

Fire

Water < Metal

Figure 3. The creative cycle (solid lines) and control cycle (dotted lines) of the Five Elemental Energies of nature.

Chinese medicine defines the vital organs not in terms of their forms, locations, and biochemical constituents, but rather in terms of the energies that govern them and the vital functions they operate within the whole system. Those organ energies and their functions are viewed in terms of the polar balance between yin and yang and the cyclic harmony among the Five Elemental Energies. The universal laws governing the activities of yin and yang and the Five Elemental Energies in nature thus form a master template by which the physician may understand the internal workings of the human system and trace the root imbalances of energy responsible for particular symptoms of physiological disease. These laws and the organic relationships thev control also provide the physician with a vehicle for regulating the patient's energies to restore balance and harmony to the whole system, thereby eliminating the root causes of disease in the body.

The Five Elemental Energies permeate every realm of nature and function ceaselessly on all three levels of human existence—bodv (jing), energy (chee), and mind (shen), the Three Treasures of life. In the physical body, they manage the functions and determine the conditions of all the vital organs, glands and tissues. In the energy system, or "auric body," they manifest as emotions and feelings and mediate the myriad energy transformations within the system and between the system and the external environment. On the level of mind, the Five Energies are related to various mental faculties such as will, intuition, and creativity. Chinese medicine also distinguishes various constitutional energy types based on which of these five forces prevails in an individual's system, such as the hot, hyperactive Fire constitution, the expansive and creative Wood type, the cool, conserving Water system, and so forth. These designations may be determined according to various external signs, such as complexion, physique, tone of hair, skin, and nails, color and texture of tongue, and so forth, and they assist the physician in diagnosis as well as therapy.

Each human being is endowed by nature and genetics with various different proportions and relative strengths of the Five Elemental Energies. Any inherent deficiencies'and imbalances may be supplemented and replenished during the course of life by tapping various external sources of these energies, such as food, herbs, aromas, sunlight, atmospheric elements, and so on. Energy from such external sources may be cultivated and assimilated either by personal practices such as diet, exercise, sexual yoga, chee-gung, and meditation, or else by holistic medical therapies like herbs, acupuncture, massage, and so forth. In each case, a specific external energy is brought into the system by virtue of its resonance or "natural affinity" (gui jing) with a particular internal organ-energy, with one of the Five Elemental Energies serving as a common denominator between the external source and the internal organ. Sweet herbs, for example, replenish spleen and stomach energy, because sweet is an Earth-energy flavor while the spleen and stomach are Earth-energy organ:. By the same principle, sour herbs and foods (Wood energy) boost liver and gallbladder functions (Wood organs), pungent (Metal) flavors influence the lungs and large intestine (Metal organs), and so forth. Acupuncture works by directly modulating the flow and potential of the various internal organ-energies running through the meridian network, increasing or decreasing their strength according to the physician's purposes. Therefore, all Chinese therapies are basically methods of energy transfer and energy control achieved by establishing resonance between various external sources of healing energy and the internal organ-energies for which those particular sources have natural affinities. The goal of all these therapies is to restore natural balance and harmony within the human energy system and establish synchronicity between the whole system and the energy cycles of nature and the cosmos.

Ultimately, all matter is created and controlled by the Five Elemental Energies, and eventually all matter returns to these energies in their pure primordial form as colored rays of light. According to

Taoist as well as Buddhist thought, the ultimate fundamental nature of mind and all reality is the radiant luminosity of primordial Clear Light. From the Clear Light of primordial spirit, which is eternal and infinite, the mind refracts the five colored rays and uses them to condense and organize the free self-existent energy of the universe into the various forms of matter and organic energy that compose our physical bodies and material world. Yellow rays of light possess the unique capacity to organize the elemental energy of Earth, which constitutes the "meat and bones" of our bodies as well as the planet we inhabit. Red controls the elemental energy of Fire, which brings heat to the earth and warmth to our bodies. Water energy creates the blood and other fluids in our bodies and gives rise to the rivers, lakes, and oceans of the earth, and so forth. During the course of life, the Five Elemental Energies flow through our systems, managing their respective tissues and functions and drawing on external sources for replenishment and balance. But when we die, our spirits withdraw these energies from our dying bodies one by one, beginning with Earth, then Water, in consecutive order, and as each energy is transformed back into the pure primordial light from which it sprang, the corresponding organs and energies of the body cease to function, until the body is dead and all its constituent energies have been reabsorbed into the original Clear Light of primordial spirit, ready to be projected into whatever realm of existence and form of life come next. The Chinese refer to this process of energy reintegration at death as Returning to the Source, and it marks the boundary where medical science ends and spiritual practice begins.

The major organs, colors, sounds, flavors, emotions, seasons, and other manifest qualities of nature are associated with each of the Five Elemental Energies in Chinese medicine and other Taoist disciplines (see table 2). Readers may consult this chart to determine their own individual energy types, based on the predilections listed, and to adjust their personal habits and lifestyles for better balance and harmony. Note that Fire governs an extra set of paired organs

Table 2. The Five Elemental Energies and Their Macrocosmic and Microcosmic Associations

Category

Wood

Fire

Earth

Metal

Water

Human Microcosm

Psychic and Personality Traits

not recognized in Western medicine—the pericardium and Triple Burner. The former is associated with cardiac function and protects the heart from aberrant energies, while the latter is involved with the three basic functions of ingestion, digestion, and excretion. Neither are organs in the strict sense of Western anatomy, and the functions of both are governed by Fire energy, which is all that need concern us here.

Types of Human Energy

Chinese medicine distinguishes two fundamental forms of energy in the human system: prenatal, or primordial (hsien-tien); and postnatal, or temporal (hou-tien), also known as Water and Fire. Prenatal energy is the basic vital force with which we are endowed at birth; it is inherited from the genetic plasma of our parents, and it is stored in the sexual glands and reproductive cells. Usually referred to as yuan-chee (primordial energy), it constitutes a sort of "bio-battery" from which we can draw energy when external sources such as food and air are insufficient, but each of us is born with a limited supply, and it cannot be replaced. Therefore, if we burn up all our reserve yuan-chee because of negligent health habits and careless lifestyles, our bodies will rapidlv deteriorate, and lifespan is shortened.

Postnatal or Fire energy is the energy we assimilate from external sources through digestion and respiration and transform into human energy. It constitutes the basic fuel of life and takes various different functional forms in the human system. The type of energy specifically required by the human system is called True Energy (jeng-chee), and it is produced in the bloodstream from the fusion of the energy extracted from food by the stomach, spleen, and pancreas, and the energy extracted from air by the lungs. True Energy then takes two basic forms in the human system, depending on function: one is called nourishing energy (ying-chee) and the other is guardian energy (wei-chee). Nourishing energy travels within the blood vessels and

energy meridians, where it works with the Five Elemental Energies of the organ systems and provides the fuel for the body's various vital processes. Guardian energy runs outside the bloodstream and meridians, along the body's surface, just below the skin, forming an aura of protective energy that prevents aberrant external energies from invading the human system and causing disease.

All these various types of energy are coordinated by the human system to sustain the health and functional integrity of the whole body and all its parts. These energies are constantly transformed and transferred throughout the system to meet the body's needs and to compensate for shifting conditions in the environment, and the overall balance and functional harmony among them determines the state of one's physical and mental health. Only when the human system achieves a stable and balanced state of physical and mental health can it produce and utilize the subtlest of all human energies— ling-chee, or spirit energy—which is transformed within the system from ordinary energies through the internal alchemy (nei-gung) of meditation and chee-gung practice. This pure, highly refined energy enhances awareness and boosts mental powers; it is also the basic component of the so-called spiritual embryo of enlightened awareness cultivated by advanced spiritual adepts, who use it as a vehicle for carrying consciousness beyond the body at death. Known in Tibetan yoga as the Rainbow Body, this subtle body of pure primordial light is the ultimate goal of those who practice the most advanced stages of Taoist and Tibetan Buddhist meditation. Although this aspect of human energy lies beyond the scope of medical science, which concerns itself only with life before death, not after, it is mentioned here to give the reader a glimpse of how the basic energies involved in physical health are related in Chinese medicine to the higher goals of spiritual practice.

The Human Energy Network

Chinese medicine recognizes three circulatory networks in the human system: the nerves, blood vessels, and energy meridians.

Western medicine acknowledges only the first two, but Chinese medicine regards the third to be by far the most important. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine states, "Energy commands blood; where energy goes, blood follows." This means that blood circulates only in tissues where energy is already flowing freely, and that the cause of insufficient blood circulation is a blockage in the energy meridians. The same principle applies to the nervous system, and that is why, in Chinese medicine, both blood circulation and nervous system disorders can be corrected by acupuncture and other therapies that stimulate and balance the flow of energy through the meridian network, which forms an invisible template that both the blood and nervous systems follow. All three circulatory systems must be properly balanced and functioning in synchronicity to sustain health, but it is the meridian network and its subtle energies that must be manipulated and restored to correct problems in all three systems. So once again we note the primacy of energy in the Chinese approach to human health.

The Chinese have known about the invisible human energy network for at least five thousand years. They discovered that human energy flows through the body through a complex grid of major channels (mai), organ meridians (jing), and minor capillaries (/i/o), along which they also found a series of sensitive energy points {hsueh) that function as transformers and relay terminals for human energy. These points, each of which has specific effects on specific organs, tissues, and related energies, are the basis of acupuncture, moxibustion, and acupressure therapies.

The most powerful channels in the human energy network, the Eight Extraordinary Channels (chi jing ba mai), serve as reservoirs of energy for the entire system and may be activated and replenished by chee-gung, meditation, and other practices. The most important of these eight are called the Governing and Conception Channels, which form what is known as the Microcosmic Orbit, from which the entire system draws energy. Next come the twelve meridians associated with the twelve vital organ-energy systems. These meridians

run like rivers throughout the system, irrigating organs, glands, and tissues with nourishing energy and managing their respective vital functions. These meridians circulate energy to the major organ systems in a specific order (fig. 4). Branching out from the eight major channels and twelve organ meridians are countless smaller capillaries, forming a finely woven web that feeds energy to every cell in the body.

The human energy network serves many purposes. It regulates blood circulation and blood pressure, maintains the body's external shell of guardian energy, mediates the nervous system, distributes

stomach

spleen, pancreas

heart

lung

small intestine

bladder

liver

kidney

gallbladder

Triple Burner

pericardium

Figure 4. The internal circulation of nourishing energy to the vital organ-energy systems, with the Governing and Conception Channels as reservoirs.

nourishing energy throughout the system, controls body heat, fuels metabolism, forms all functional links between body and mind, and much more. In Chinese medicine, all physiological pathology, as well as mental and emotional problems, are seen as symptomatic reflections of critical imbalances or malfunctions within the human energy network, which also provides the primary vehicle through which the physician may cure the patient's ailments.

The Human Energy Field

So far, we have discussed the various forms of energy in the human system and how they function and circulate, but of equal importance to health is the strength and polarity of the field in which human energy operates and from which it draws its power. All electromagnetic energies, including those of the human system, create an electromagnetic field. The human energy field is composed of many constituent subfields created by the energies of various component organs, tissues, and individual cells, and is also part of various super-fields in which it operates, such as groups, dwellings, ecosystems, geographic regions, and the electromagnetic field of the planet itself. All these systems must resonate in synchronicity to prevent the imbalances and aberrations in energy that cause disease and degeneration. In Pranayama: The Yoga of Breathing, Andre van Lysebeth writes:

The longevity of civilized man depends to a very high degree on the continual presence of a sufficiently powerful electric field. ... A great many so-called 'modern illnesses' [e.g., cancer, AIDS] can be traced to the absence or considerable reduction in intensity of the natural electric fields in big towns. Human beings who are forced to live in buildings or rooms with metal frames and which therefore have the physical properties of a Faraday cage, from which any electric field is excluded, tire and are exhausted quickly.

Richard Broeringmeyer, publisher of Bio-Energy Health Newsletter, puts it like this: "Life is not possible without electromagnetic fields, and optimum health is not possible if the electromagnetic fields are out of balance for long periods of time/' The human body generates an electromagnetic field that extends about 1 meter outward, with one pole at the head and the other at the perineum. Any force that blocks or unbalances the natural human energy field is a potential cause of disease. That is why many Chinese doctors refuse to treat patients who insist on wearing quartz crystal watches: the high-frequency oscillations from the crystal interfere with human energy pulses (which are particularly sensitive on the wrists) and distort the human energy field, thereby obstructing all therapies that deal with the human energy system, as Chinese therapies do.

The human energy field is directy influenced by, and can draw energy from, all sorts of other natural electromagnetic fields, such as those of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, as well as the earth's own field, and it can also be polluted by negative fields created by electric power lines and transformers, electrical appliances, broadcasting towers, metal-frame construction, microwave radiation, and other artificial sources. In diagnosing and treating human disease, it is therefore just as important to consider the effects of exposure to harmful external energy fields as it is to trace imbalances in internal energies. If your headaches are caused by sleeping in a room that exposes your system to the electromagnetic field created by a nearby electric power transformer or household appliance, it will not do you much good to take acupuncture, herbs, or any other therapy for headaches unless you first eliminate the root source of the problem by sleeping in a different room or removing the offending source of electromagnetic pollution from your home.

The human energy field is what Gabriel Cousens, author of Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet, calls a Subtle Organizing Energy Field (SOEF). Such fields, which are present in all forms of life, organize all the energies and elements required to maintain organic

life forms. In humans, SOEFs arrange the energies and elements of the human system according to the master template patterns contained in DNA, which choreographs all the body's vital functions in the harmonious symphony of life. By virtue of their power to organize random energies into patterned forms, SOEFs work against the life-threatening influence of the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy, which causes the eventual dissolution of all composite systems in the universe. As long as the human energy system and its SOEF remain balanced and fully charged with polar energy, they will automatically repair all damage to the physical organism, maintain all vital functions, and resist the decaying force of entropy.

Whenever the human energy field is invaded by aberrant internal or external energies or exposed to harmful artificial energy fields, the entire system is thrown off balance and loses its functional harmony. If this situation of imbalance is not promptly corrected, physiological pathology and abnormal mental and emotional symptoms will soon follow. Simply suppressing the physical and mental symptoms of disease to provide quick relief, as is the practice in Western allopathic medicine, will never effect a lasting cure as long as the underlying energy imbalances that caused the symptoms are allowed to remain. When suppressive allopathic medication is applied, the external symptoms of internal energy imbalance continue to shift, transform, and manifest elsewhere in the body, often leading the allopathic doctor to diagnose a different disease and apply a different drug to treat the "new" symptom, whereas the Chinese doctor sees the new symptom as just another manifestation of the same old problem, a clear indication that the root cause in the energy system has not been successfully corrected. In Chinese medicine, the only true cure for all disease, dysfunction, and degeneration in the human body is to restore balance to unbalanced energies and functional harmony to dysfunctional systems, and to reestablish synchronicity among all the sub- and supersystems that influence the human energy field.

Chakras and Subtle Energy Bodies

The dynamic force field enveloping the human energy system is actually composed of seven subtle energy "bodies," each of them managed by one of the seven subtle energy centers known as chakras, which radiate the wave frequency of specific colors and are functionally associated with specific glands and nerve networks (fig. 5). The colors, which the mind refracts like a prism from the Clear Light of primordial spirit, are pure forms of universal free energy, and each one regulates specific aspects of the human energy system. The subtle energy bodies, also known as auras, extend outward from the physical body as luminous energy fields, with the densest ones closest to the physical surface and the subtlest ones radiating far beyond.

Figure 5. The correspondence between the energy centers ofTao-ist internal alchemy, the chakras of Indian yoga, and the nerve centers of Western anatomy.

The chakras, known in Taoist internal alchemy as elixir fields (dan-tien), function as two-way transformers: they "step down" and transduce the cosmic energies entering our systems from the sky into forms and frequencies that can be utilized by the body; and they "step up" and refine the lower energies of earth into forms and frequencies that can be used by the mind. The upper three chakras are therefore involved mostly with higher spiritual energies, whereas the three lower ones deal mostly with the coarser physiological energies of food, sex, and other earthbound forces. The center heart chakra balances the two and controls them with human consciousness.

Invisible cosmic energies are constantly entering our systems through the crown (pineal) chakra, which immediately transfers them down to the brow (pituitary) chakra, where they are refracted into the seven colored rays. These are, in descending order, violet, indigo, sky blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. When this colored light energy reaches the heart (thymus) chakra, it is transformed into Fire (heat) energy, a denser form of energy utilized by the lower chakras. At the root (genital) chakra, the energy is further condensed into a denser form that Jack Schwartz, author of Human Energy Systems, refers to as molasses. When this type of energy, which also enters the body from the earth through the perineum, rises back up through the chakra system, it is once again transformed into progressively subtler forms, until it reaches the crown again as the pure cosmic light energy of primordial spirit. The energy centers and the transformations they mediate are important elements in Taoist internal alchemy practices.

Because the upper three centers (throat, brow, crown) are involved mainly with the mental and spiritual processes of meditation, or Heaven, Chinese medicine deals primarily with the three lower centers (root, navel, solar plexus), which regulate the functions of the physical body and its vital organs, or Earth. In this paradigm, the heart center represents the power of Humanity, whose consciousness stands between and balances the powers of Heaven above and Earth

below to sustain the overall welfare of the whole system, spiritual as well as physical. In the Chinese system of health care, the physician deals directly with the Earth energies of the three lower centers, and it remains up to the individual to cultivate the higher spiritual energies of Heaven under the guidance of a qualified spiritual master. Optimum health and longevity can be achieved when all the Three Powers (san tsai) of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity are properly cultivated and harmoniously integrated in the human system.

The Body as Cosmic Superconductor and Energy Transformer

Certain human tissues, particularly the bones, ligaments, and other connective tissues, have a distinctive crystalline structure with piezoelectric properties, which means that they, like all crystals, generate an electromagnetic field pulse whenever physically stimulated or stressed. As crystal structures, bones especially have the unique capacity to transduce vibrational wave energy such as light, sound, and physical palpation into electromagnetic energy pulses that can be assimilated and utilized by the human energy system. This explains, for example, how the sound energy of mantra and music may be used to energize and heal the human system. The body's crystalline structures absorb the vibrations and convert them into electromagnetic energy signals that directly influence the human energy system. Perhaps this is one reason that singers and dancers, barring the self-destructive behavior to which many are so prone, tend to live longer lives and enjoy more robust health than other people. The rhythmic pulses of song and dance generate healing frequencies in their bones and other crystalline tissues, which then broadcast healing electromagnetic pulses to the rest of the body, particularly organs and glands.

Conversely, it has been scientifically shown that electromagnetic pulses can affect and alter the physical structure of crystals, such as

bone and other human tissues, which explains how acupuncture can heal tissues by modulating electromagnetic signals in the meridian network. It also explains why pulsed electromagnetic fields can be used to stimulate the healing of broken bones and activate secretions of hormones and neurochemicals.

Because the crystalline structures of human tissues are so sensitive to even the subtlest changes in the ambient electromagnetic fields to which they are exposed, it should be obvious that the abnormal artificial electromagnetic fields produced by power lines, transformers, broadcasting towers, radar installations, and electrical appliances have highly deleterious effects on the human body. Evidence suggests that these artificial electromagnetic fields, which did not exist on earth prior to the twentieth century, are deeply involved as contributing factors in many of the mortal maladies that plague modern humanity, such as cancer and AIDS.*

Besides bones and other solid crystalline tissues, the human body is packed with liquid crystal structures such as blood, lymph, hormones, and intercellular fluids. These also have piezoelectric properties, constantly converting incoming vibratory wave energy into electromagnetic fields and energy pulses that stimulate and heal the human system. Certain bodily fluids, such as cell salts, also have the capacity to store and transfer energy in the form of electrically charged ions. All these crystal structures form a series of interpenetrating, oscillating energy fields and subfields, all of which must resonate in synchronicity throughout the whole system to sustain health and vitality.

As can be plainly seen from the above discussion, the body's molecular and energy structures are inseparably related, with the crystalline structures of tissues transforming and transferring energies, and the energies managing the formation and dissolution of molecules, cells, and tissues. The important point to remember is that the invis-

*See S. Becker, Cross Currents (Los Angeles: Jeremy Tarcher, 1990).

ible energies associated with cells, tissues, and organs constitute the dynamic force of human life and are always the primary factors in health and disease, whereas the physical tissues are simply material shells in which the vital energies of human life function. Disease and degeneration in the physical body always indicate serious imbalances and functional disorders in the human energy system and can therefore be successfully treated only with therapies that restore balance and harmony to the whole energy system and all its constituent organ subsystems.

Each and every organ-energy system and cellular subsystem in the body has its own unique electromagnetic frequency. Whenever the energy of a particular system is suppressed, overstimulated, chilled, heated, dampened, or otherwise distorted by aberrant energies and abnormal energy fields, the related organs and tissues suffer physiological damage and begin to malfunction, causing the whole system to feel a sense of "dis-ease." By manipulating the specific frequencies of ailing organ-energies with acupuncture, herbs, chee-gung, sound, light, massage, and other holistic energy therapies, the physician rebalances those energies and restores their synchronicity with the whole system. Once restored, these energies immediately go to work reorganizing the molecules, rebuilding the cells, and restoring the functions of the diseased organs and tissues, and all physical as well as mental symptoms of disease disappear. No doctor can actually heal a damaged or diseased body. The best he or she can do is to restore the energy balance and functional harmony on which human health depends, so that the system can heal itself.

Chinese medicine has always stressed the vital importance of bones and bodily fluids in human health. These tissues function like antennae and transducers, picking up subtle energy vibrations from Heaven (stars, planets, and the cosmos) and from Earth (the forces of nature) and transforming them into the electromagnetic field energy of "Humanity." They broadcast these healing electromagnetic pulses to organs and glands throughout the system, based on the

resonance or natural affinity between the original energy sources and specific parts of the body. This is also one reason why it is so important to keep your bones properly aligned, and why therapeutic Chinese exercises focus so much on loosening, relaxing, and aligning bones and joints, stretching and toning ligaments and tendons, and stimulating circulation of blood, bile, lymph, and other crystalline bodily fluids.

The old adage, "you can feel it in your bones," is literally true for those who have developed keen sensitivity to the energy pulses generated in their skeletal structures when listening, for example, to moving music or other mellifluous sounds, or whenever they have moving thoughts and emotions, or are exposed to strong external energy vibrations, all of which create powerful waves of energy that are immediately picked up and transformed into electromagnetic pulses by the bones.

From the solid, innermost skeletal core of the physical body all the way out to the subtlest, outermost ring of the finest auric energy body, the human energy system consists of an overlapping series of interdependent, oscillating energy fields that draw energy into the human system from many different sources, transforming it into the True Energy of the human system and organizing it to sustain the molecules, cells, tissues, and organs of the physical body. From beginning to end, energy is always the key factor in all the equations of human health, the vehicle for healing, the basis of all therapies, the bridge between physical and mental phenomena, and the medium through which mind exerts ultimate control over matter. In the human system, energy is the most basic component and fundamental fact of life, the organizing force without which the elemental building blocks of air, water, and nutrition remain inert and lifeless.

The Causes of Disease

Basically, the main cause of disease is "bad weather/' not germs. As Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Komgold put it in Between Heaven and Earth: A Guide to Traditional Chinese Medicine, "Whenever specific 'weather' starts to dominate the body milieu, it can become a pathogenic stress. This may be both the source and outcome, the root and fruit, of imbalance." Other than obvious physical trauma such as gunshot wounds or car accidents, the overwhelming majority of human health problems are caused by aberrant energies that knock the human energy system off balance, creating the sort of abnormal "climate" inside the body that permits germs and other pathogens to enter the system. It is the state of the human energy system, particularly the immune response, that determines whether the body become vulnerable or remains resistant to invasion by germs. Deadly germs and parasites are always present inside and outside the human body, which means that our systems are always exposed to them. For example, nearly 80 percent of all humans carry the pneumonia bacillus in their lungs. But the germs remain dormant and benign rather than a threat to human health as long as "favorable winds" prevail in the human energy system and the immune response remains strong. When normal energy balance is

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upset by malnutrition, toxic blood, polluted tissues, abnormal energy-fields, and other disruptive factors, the immune response is impaired, and the ever-present germs, fungi, and parasites in our internal and external environments have a field day invading and colonizing our systems. If germs themselves were the actual cause of disease, we would all be dead within minutes of being born into this toxic, germ-infested world.

In Chinese medicine, the root cause of most types of disease and degeneration is traced to a critical imbalance in various organ-energies of the body, and to the overall functional disharmony of the whole system that invariably results from organic imbalance. Owing to the interdependence of the Three Treasures of body, energy, and mind, energy imbalance always manifests in the bodv as physical disease and discomfort and in the mind as mental and emotional malaise. The corollary to this principle is that all symptoms of physical as well as mental and emotional disease can always be tracked back to specific imbalances and functional disharmonv in the energy system. The root causes of disease always occur first in the invisible web of the human energv system, and the primary causative factors are aberrant energies, not microbes. By the time svmptoms appear in the body or mind, the root causes have already become so entrenched in the energy svstem that they have critically impaired the immune response and inhibited other vital functions, thereby establishing the abnormal conditions that allow disease and degeneration to occur on the physical plane. By predicting the "weather" in the human energy svstem, the Chinese physician is able to take preventive measures to maintain optimum balance and functional harmony within the svstem, eliminating the conditions of heat, cold, damp, drvness, and other energv imbalances that give rise to the physical and mental symptoms of disease.

Owing to modern technology and contemporary urban lifestyles, the internal and external energies that decisively influence human health and longevity are far more complex and potentially harmful

today than they ever were in ancient times. The aberrant environmental and atmospheric energies of nature known in traditional Chinese medicine as the Six Evils, such as heat, cold, damp, dryness, and so forth, have now been eclipsed in magnitude and danger by the "dry-heat" of central heating, the "dry-cold" of air conditioning, the "evil winds" of microwave radiation and artificial electromagnetic fields, the internal "damp-heat" of white sugar, alcohol, and chemical drugs, and other artificial industrial sources of abnormal energies that play havoc with the natural balance and patterns of human energies. The same goes for the internal landscape of mental and emotional energies. In traditional times, the disruptive energies of the Seven Emotions (grief, anger, fear, and so forth) were regarded as the primary internal causes of disease, but today the impact of these disturbing emotions has been greatly amplified and complicated by stress, neurosis, psychosis, pananoia, angst, and other debilitating mental and emotional energies generated in response to the pace and pressure of modern urban lifestyles.

Nevertheless, regardless of how lethal and complex the energy factors influencing human health today have become, it is still the balance between positive and negative, healing and harmful, yin and yang energies, and the overall harmony of the whole system that determine whether those factors remain benign or become malignant. If imbalances in the human energy system can be detected and corrected before they cause serious physical or mental symptoms, disease and degeneration can be prevented and life prolonged, and this remains the basic approach of traditional Chinese medicine to human health and healing in the modern age.

Modern Western medicine is based on Pasteur's germ theory of disease, also known as the single-agent theory, whereby every known disease is diagnosed as being caused by a specific pathogen found in the diseased tissues, then treated with chemical agents that destroy that specific pathogen. When the pathogen is no longer found in the body, the patient is declared cured and the medication is withdrawn.

This theory fails to explain the cause of cancer, arthritis, osteoporosis, arterioscelerosis, and many other degenerative conditions unrelated to germs, nor does it really even explain the nature of infectious diseases associated with germs, because it does not explain why under precisely the same conditions of exposure to exactly the same germs, some people catch the disease and others do not.

Let us use the analogy of garbage and flies to illustrate this point. Garbage always attracts flies, but that certainly does not mean that flies cause garbage. In fact, once the flies lay their eggs in the garbage, maggots appear. The garbage itself causes more flies! Using pesticide to kill the flies will not get rid of the garbage, and as soon as the pesticide wears off, more flies will come and colonize the same garbage. If you clean up the garbage, however, the flies will disappear all by themselves, for flies cannot live and breed in a clean, antiseptic environment, any more than germs can live in normal, healthy tissues.

Precisely the same principle applies to the germs that appear in toxic human tissues. Germs do not cause the toxicity and pathology of diseased tissues; they are attracted to those tissues by toxic conditions, and by the resulting lack of immune factors there. Killing those germs does nothing whatsoever to correct the tissue toxicity and immune deficiency that host them; on the contrary, the chemical drugs, radiation, and surgery favored by modern Western medicine only further aggravate tissue toxicity and further impair the immune response, paving the way for even more severe relapses later. The bottom line is this: Pathogenic germs can live and breed only in abnormal conditions of extreme tissue toxicity and critically impaired immune response, not in normal, healthy tissues guarded by a strong immune system. It is as simple as that.

Pathogenic germs are living organisms that require very specific conditions of temperature, humidity, pH, and other environmental factors to survive. Vintners and bakers are aware of this fact, and they must maintain precisely the right "climate" in their fermenting

breads and wines to produce palatable products. Pasteur himself was well aware of the primacy of milieu over microbe, and his journals are full of references to specific conditions of internal climate that predispose tissues to infection by specific germs. Unfortunately, this aspect of Pasteur's work has been swept under the carpet by the modern medical industry, which has instead latched onto his highly tentative germ theory and has been waging "germ warfare" against diseased human bodies ever since, often with adverse effects for human health and longevity, not least of which has been the ominous appearance of mutant strains of pneumonia, malaria, tuberculosis, and other germs that are totally resistant to all drugs. Witnesses who were present at his deathbed say that Pasteur finally saw the light shortly before he died and recanted his germ theory of disease. "The microbe is nothing!" he declared. "The terrain is all!" Today, when many microbes have grown resistant to all drugs, the terrain has become more important than ever before in protecting human health.

It is the preexisting condition of the internal terrain in the human body that determines whether tissues will host or resist microbes and other pathogens, not the microbe itself. Long before Pasteur's dubious germ theory became canonized by modern Western medicine, the eighteenth-century cellular pathologist Rudolf Virchow wrote, "If I could live my life over again, I would devote it to proving that germs seek their natural habitat — diseased tissue —rather than being the cause of diseased tissue" (author's italics). Holistic healer Henry Bieler, author of Food Is Your Best Medicine, agrees. "The primary cause of disease is not germs," he writes. "Rather, I believe that disease is caused by a toxemia which results in cellular impairment and breakdown, thus paving the way for the multiplication and onslaught of germs." Yet despite such words of wisdom from within its own ranks, the entire Western medical and pharmaceutical industry, the most profitable industry in America today, remains firmly rooted in the single-agent germ theory that Pasteur himself ulti-

The Causes of Disease

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mately rejected. Consequently, instead of cleaning up the internal garbage and tissue toxemia that paves the way for the onslaught of germs, Western medicine continues to escalate its chemical and surgical blitzkrieg against germs, using a slash and burn policy that lays further waste to the internal human terrain and permits even more virulent pathogens to enter the system.

In traditional Chinese medicine, the major external causes of disease are aberrant environmental and atmospheric energies known as the Six Evils (liu shieh): these are wind, heat, damp, dryness, cold, and fire. These noxious energies have debilitating influences on the human energy system, creating the conditions of imbalance and disharmony that permit disease to take root and create somatic and/or psychic symptoms. Traditionally associated with the Five Elemental Energies and their corresponding organs, seasons, colors, and other related factors (table 3), the five "evil" energies of wind, cold, heat,

damp, and dryness take even more aggressive form because of artificial external sources of aberrant energies, such as air conditioning and central heating, industrial and automobile pollution, microwaves and power lines, and processed foods and drugs. The sixth evil, fire, develops as a result of prolonged exposure to extreme conditions of any of the other five; left uncorrected, the conditions of imbalance caused by the other five evils grow steadily worse and eventually "burn out" the affected tissues and organs, hence the term fire. The Six Evils usually invade the human system in various combinations, such as dry-wind, cold-wind, hot-damp, cold-damp, and so forth, and each combination harms specific human energies and their related organs and tissues.

The primary internal causes of disease in Chinese medicine are called the Seven Emotions (chi ching), the unbridled waves of wild energy that stampede through the whole system as a result of extreme emotional reactions to external events. Because of the mental and physical disturbance it causes, emotion is also known in Taoist alchemy as the Chief Hooligan, while the five senses through which emotional reactions are provoked are called the Five Thieves, because they steal energy and awareness away from spirit and squander them instead on petty sensory distractions.

Emotions are direct internal responses by the human energy system to external stimuli perceived through the sensory channels. The essential nature of emotion and its role in human health are best understood when emotion is viewed as energy-in-motion (e-motion), rather than as the strictly psychological phenomenon perceived in Western medicine. Psychological factors are involved for only a brief instant in emotional response, at the moment when the mind reacts to incoming sensory signals in positive terms of attraction or negative terms of aversion, depending on personal bias. The same external event may provoke joy in one person, anger in another, and grief in yet a third, with very different psychological overtones, but in all three cases the energies unleashed by emotional response run ram-

pant through the system, disrupting the delicate organic balance of the body's internal energies and impairing vital functions, particularly the immune response. The emotion immediately enters the meridian network as a powerful surge of intense energy-in-motion, charging wildly through the human energy system like a bull in a china shop, upsetting the internal organ-energies, draining glands, and disrupting the functional harmony of the whole system. By now beyond control by either body or mind, the emotion has become a rebellious aberrant energy that storms through the system and damages the internal terrain.

The Seven Emotions that cause "dis-ease" are joy, anger, anxiety, worry, grief, fear, and fright. Each is associated with a specific internal organ-energy and is governed by one of the Five Elemental Energies of nature, with corresponding relations to other energy factors. For convenience, these seven are sometimes reduced to five, with fear and fright (acute fear) listed together under Water and the kidney system, and anxiety and grief (acute anxiety) combined under Metal and the lung system.

All emotions trigger specific physiological responses throughout the entire human system by virtue of biofeedback between the endocrine and nervous systems, causing changes in pulse and blood pressure, stimulating or inhibiting respiration, and helping or hindering digestion, metabolism, immunity, and other vital functions. Normal, well-balanced emotional response runs its course through the energy system without doing any harm, while the highest, most spiritually edifying human emotions such as love, compassion, and devotion actually have positive healing effects in the body. We all know how wonderful we feel when we are in love, or devoted to a great master, or engaged in compassionate activites. Love and compassion generate very soothing, blissful energy that has the power to heal one's own body as well as others. Western scientists such as Marcel Vogel have recently been studying the remarkable healing powers of the

particular internal energy frequencies produced in the human system by love, which indeed seems to have the power to conquer all.

But when negative emotions such as anger and grief prevail, and when emotional response is allowed to become extreme or explosive, it sets off a series of physiological reactions that does great harm to the vital organs and glands, inhibits vital functions, impairs immunity, lowers resistance, and flings open the gates to disease and degeneration. Frequent and prolonged bouts of anger, for example, disrupt and inflame liver energy, which eventually gives rise to liver disease, which in turn further predisposes the individual to more bouts of anger, in a vicious cycle of self-destruction. Similarly, prolonged grief harms the lungs and causes shallow, erratic breathing patterns, which in turn disrupt the pulse, inhibit circulation, impair metabolism, and suppress the immune response, rendering the system vulnerable to disease and degeneration. In Western medical terms, the self-destructive nature of negative or extreme emotional response might be called psychoneuropathology, which represents the reverse effect of the recently discovered "mind-over-matter" healing response known as psychoneuroimmunology (PNI).

Like the Six Evils, the Seven Emotions have even more dangerous modern manifestations produced by the pace and pressure of contemporary urban lifestyles. By far the most harmful of these new forms of negative emotional response is stress, a repressed fight-or-flight response that combines elements of anger, fear, grief, and worry. Through biofeedback, stress sweeps through the whole system and impairs virtually every vital function in the body, particularly the immune response. Chronic stress therefore gives rise to chronic immune deficiency, and this is the root cause of many chronic degenerative conditions today. Recall that modern artificial forms of the Six Evils, such as microwaves, electric power fields, televisions, office equipment, and household appliances, have also been shown to particularly inhibit immune response, then add the immunosup-

pressant effects of stress, and it is no wonder that immune deficiency is so easily acquired from modern industrialized lifestyles.

While aberrant external and internal energies account for most types of human disease and degeneration in traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese physicians also recognize a third category of miscellaneous causes known as "neither external nor internal" (bu wai, bu nei). This category includes unexpected causes such as accidents and traumatic wounds, insect and animal bites, parasites and poisons, as well as negligent lifestyle factors such as gluttony, poor nutrition, alcohol and drug abuse, wrong combinations of food and drink, sexual exhaustion, and insufficient exercise. In traditional China, this category of factors was responsible for relatively few ailments, because social and environmental conditions, diet and nutrition, sexual activity, and other basic lifestyle factors were not nearly as hazardous to human health as they are today. In today's world, with all its pollution and social disorder, denatured diets and chemical additives, stress and hyperactivity, lifestyle has become a major contributing factor in all causes of disease, degeneration, and premature death, rather than a preventive bulwark against them.

The human energy system is a highly sensitive, finely tuned instrument that responds like a weather vane to the subtlest shifts in the prevailing winds of the internal and external environments, reacting instantly to any changes in the ambient energies that influence the system. Any abnormal fluctuations in the external or internal energies associated with the human system always have disturbing repercussions on both the body and the mind, and if left uncorrected, they soon manifest as symptoms of disease. The normal biorhythmic fluctuations of nature cause normal biorhythmic responses in the human system, which adapts to the new energy patterns without harm to the body or mind. However, any sudden or extreme shifts in energy—such as aberrant or unseasonal weather, a blast of microwave radiation, a temper tantrum or wave of paranoia—provoke abnormal, distressing responses that distort human

energy patterns and disrupt the whole system, creating the conditions of internal imbalance and disorder that always set the stage for the onset of disease.

Energy is the medium through which the conditions that predispose the system to disease and degeneration are established in the human body, and energy is also the vehicle through which traditional Chinese medicine works to cure disease, halt degeneration, and heal the body. If we bear in mind that all matter, including every cell and tissue in the body, is ultimately nothing more than condensed, highly organized energy, then it is easy to see that physical ailments are really nothing more than pathological reactions to the abnormal energy patterns caused by aberrant "weather" in the system. When fair weather and harmonious winds prevail in the human energy system, physical health flourishes and the mind is at ease. When storms, droughts, floods, and ill winds sweep through the internal terrain of body and mind, the garden of health inevitably suffers damage and "dis-ease." The only way to restore health and recover peace of mind is to create the conditions of internal balance that the energy system requires to heal itself and to synchronize the whole human system with the rhythms of nature and the cosmos, bringing the Three Powers of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity back into harmony.

Traditional Chinese Diagnosis

One of the most telling differences between modern Western and traditional Chinese medicine lies in their approaches to the diagnosis of disease. Western medicine focuses attention on the separate symptoms of disease, employing specialists and complex laboratory technology to pinpoint the precise location and analyze the exact pathology of each symptom, and to identify the particular microbes present in the affected area. This approach treats symptoms as though they were spontaneous, localized phenomena that occur independently from the rest of the body and it often fails to account for the hidden connections between overt symptoms in one part of the body and covert causes elsewhere, linked by the invisible webs of the human energy system. Western diagnosis often suggests the same treatment for the same symptom in all patients, overlooking critical constitutional variations among different patients' systems, and consequently, in Western therapeutics, one patient's medicine can be another's poison.

Traditional Chinese diagnosis views the external symptoms of disease as physiological reflections of internal imbalances in the energy system, and it uses them as indicators to track down the root causes of disease within the circuits of the human energy system. Chinese

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physicians utilize their own senses as diagnostic instruments, and they interpret their observations intuitively, based on clinical experience. First they diagnose the current status of the patient's whole system, looking for patterns of disharmony that might account for the pathology of the patient's various physical and mental symptoms, then they map out a strategy that corrects the conditions of imbalance responsible for the symptoms. Rather than simply suppressing separate symptoms with different drugs, as in Western allopathic medicine, Chinese medicine aims its therapies at correcting the systemic imbalance and functional disharmony that consititute the root cause of the whole condition, effecting a lasting cure and eliminating all abnormal symptoms in one therapeutic stroke.

Focusing primary attention on the unique patterns and prevailing conditions of each individual patient's whole system, rather than on the pathology and precise anatomical location of separate symptoms, is one of the most important diagnostic principles in traditional Chinese medicine, which views individual constitutional differences among patients suffering from the same ailments as being far more decisive factors in the diagnosis and treatment of disease than any superficial similarities among the symptoms they may experience in common. Everyone's internal organs may well look exactly alike in an autopsy or on the surgeon's table, but the way their vital energies and internal organs respond to external influences varies greatly from person to person, and these differences are decisive factors in the way a disease develops in a particular patient and how he or she will respond to a particular medical treatment. Chinese medicine recognizes that the same symptoms in different patients can have very different causes, and it accounts for these individual differences by prescribing "different strokes for different folks" in the application of medical therapies, rather than always using the same medicine for the same symptom in every patient, as allopathic Western doctors often do. This point is well made in the following passage from a Chinese medical treatise written in 1757, translated bv Paul

Unschuld for a lecture he gave to the International Acupuncture Symposium in 1987:

Illnesses may be identical but the persons suffering from them are different. . . . Some people may be strong and others weak as far as their energy or the condition of their body is concerned. ... If one treats all those patients who appear to suffer from one identical illness with one and the same therapy, one may hit the nature of the illness but one's approach may still be exactly contraindicated by the influences of energy that determine the condition of the individual patient's body. . . . Physicians therefore must carefully take into account the differences among the people and only then decide whether the therapeutic pattern they employ suits . . . the individual constitution.

Chinese diagnosis has two stages. The first is the initial diagnosis of the current state of the patient's whole system, which serves as a framework for diagnosing the basic nature and root causes of the patient's particular symptoms. The second stage is called differential diagnosis, and this takes place during each subsequent visit to the doctor, to chart symptomatic changes during the course of treatment and track the progress of both the disease and the cure. This enables the physician to progressively adjust the therapies along the way, as the patient's symptoms shift and transform, and the system gradually regains its balance.

Both the initial and the subsequent differential stages of diagnosis employ two basic parameters to determine the cause and prescribe the cure for disease; these are known as the Four Diagnostics and the Eight Indicators. During the patient's first visit, the physician applies the Four Diagnostics to establish a complete picture of the current state of the patient's whole system, review his or her medical history, and analyze all symptoms within the overall context of the individual's inherent constitutional energy patterns. The Four Diag-

nostics are Questioning, Observing, Listening and Smelling, and Touching.

Questioning. The doctor requests a complete and detailed account of the patient's past and recent health history, asking probing questions about diet, exercise, hygiene, sleep, bowel movements, sexual activities, emotions, and other personal habits, then listening to the patient's specific complaints in light of his or her replies to all these questions.

Observing. The doctor scans the patient's body visually, looking for any abnormal signs in the patient's complexion, eyes, hair, nails, skin tone, and especially the color and condition of the tongue and tongue fur. The Chinese have refined tongue diagnosis to a fine art, recognizing twenty-four different conditions of internal energy imbalance based on the color and texture of tongue fur. Chinese diagnosis also reads the condition of five major organ-energy systems according to their corresponding zones on the tongue (fig. 6). The way the patient walks, sits,

Figure 6. The zones of the tongue that reflect the conditions of the five yin organ-energy systems.

moves, gestures, breathes, twitches, and other subtle signs that reflect internal energy conditions are all noted. The term chee-seh y literally the ''color of energy," refers to the overall condition of a patient's energy system, as observed by the physician, as in "His energy color looks weak and pale," or "Her energy color is bright and strong." It requires many vears of clinical experience to develop an accurate eye for the signs that indicate the "color" of a patient's energy.

Listening and smelling. These two appear together because in Chinese the same ideogram is used to denote the verbs to smell and to listen, and Chinese physicians use both senses to take measure of the patient's breath, timbre of voice, strength and rhythm of pulse, intestinal rumblings, the smell of bodily secretions and excretions, and other signs of sound or smell by which to gauge how energies and vital functions are working inside the body.

Touching. This includes tactile examination of the patient's skin and flesh, palpation of the internal organs and other tissues, and pressing certain "alarm points" along the patient's meridian network to reveal disorders within the system. It also includes the most profoundly accurate, subtle, and uniquely Chinese method of diagnosis—pressing pulses {ha mai) — whereby the physician applies subtle pressures to three points along the radial arteries of both wrists, detecting twelve different pulses that reflect the precise condition of each of the twelve major organ-energy systems. It takes a very delicate touch and long years of experience to master this ancient method of pulse diagnosis, which can distinguish dozens of different energy patterns in each pulse, such as slippery, rapid, empty, full, tight, wiry, knotted, skipping, shallow, and so forth. But once the method is mastered, pulse diagnosis draws a complete and remarkablv accurate picture of the patient's entire

internal system by revealing the precise conditions of each constituent organ system.

Through the Four Diagnostics, Chinese physicians use their own bodies as instruments to measure the patient's various vital signs, and they refer to their own clinical experience rather than manuals and laboratory tests to diagnose the data recorded by their senses and to prescribe an appropriate therapy. After therapy commences, the physician continues to monitor the course of the disease and track the progress of the cure with differential diagnosis, which follows symptoms as they move through the system during progressive stages of treatment. Differential diagnosis is based on various external signs of internal energy conditions known as the Eight Indicators; these indicators are yin and yang, internal and external, cold and hot, and empty and full.

Differential diagnosis is another unique hallmark of traditional Chinese medicine. It allows the physician periodically to adjust medical therapies to fit the ever-changing energy patterns within the patient's system as disease progresses through different stages of the cure. "Chinese medicine identifies disease as disorders of relationship, not as a singular, unvarying entity," write Beinfield and Korn-gold. "Problems recognized early on can be dealt with before they develop into complex, deep seated, chronic illness." By using yin and yang, the Five Elemental Energies, and the Eight Indicators to keep track of shifting symptoms as he or she rebalances the patient's whole system, the physician is able to apply precisely the right medicine to exactly the right organ-energy system at just the right time, working in close alliance with the body's own internal energies to chase the disorder out of the system. In this scenario, the doctor simply maps out the strategy and provides the patient with timely tactical aid, but it is up to the patient's own energies to fight the actual battle.

The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine states, "The

good physician first diagnoses the condition in terms of yin and yang." Yin and yang are known in Chinese diagnosis as the Commanders of the Eight Indicators, because all the other indicators are simply different manifestations of yin and yang. External, hot, and full symptoms all indicate a basically yang condition, whereas internal, cold, and empty are signs of yin conditions. There are also many degrees and combinations in between the extremes of yin and yang. A cold symptom that manifests externally is called external-cold or yin within yang. A full symptom appearing internally is internal-full or yang within yin, and a hot symptom on the surface is external-hot or yang within yang, and so forth. Each combination of indicators calls for a particular therapeutic tactic. As The Yellow Emperor's Classic states, "If it's hot, cool it down; if it's cold, warm it up; if it's empty, fill it; if it's full, empty it." As the treatment progresses, the disease transforms through various stages and gives rise to different sets of symptomatic indicators that call for different therapeutics, until finally all indicators are balanced, all signs are normal, and a complete cure has been effected.

The Eight Indicators reflect the following basic symptomatic conditions:

Cold: depressed metabolic activity; aversion to cold; low body temperature; loose bowels; profuse light urine; lassitude and indifference

Hot: overactive metabolism; aversion to heat; high body temperature; constipation; scant, dark urine; nervous excitability and emotional instability

Empty: low resistance; impaired immune response; physical weakness; hypofunction of organ-energy systems; nervous exhaustion

Full: hyperfunction of organ-energy systems; hypersensitivity to stress and infection; high blood pressure; bloating

Internal: influencing internal organs and glands and deep tissues;

affecting the inside of body cavities; indicates serious internal stages in development of symptoms External: influencing skin, hair, peripheral nerves, muscles, and tendons; affecting external surfaces and orifices; indicates superficial symptoms in the early stages of invasion or the final stages of elimination Yin: composite conditions of cold, empty, and internal Yang: composite conditions of hot, full, and external

Let us look at a few simple examples of how the Four Diagnostics and Eight indicators are used to diagnose the symptoms of disease in terms of yin and yang and the Five Elemental Energies, and how they are used to trace root causes to functional disorders and deficiencies in various vital organ-energy systems.

Say, for example, that an otherwise healthy man in his mid-forties comes to see a Chinese doctor about the high blood pressure and heart palpitations he has recently experienced for the first time in his life. Observation of external signs reveal no heart problems; the patient eats well and gets plenty of rest and exercise, and he is not subject to stress at home or work. Pulse diagnosis, however, indicates internal-empty yin conditions in the kidney system, which is governed by the elemental energy of Water, and under questioning during the interview the patient admits that he has recently indulged in a prolonged bout of wild sexual promiscuity, causing him to emit his semen almost every day. The doctor explains, "The excessive loss of semen and vital energy due to your recent activities has weakened your kidneys, which govern sexual energy, giving rise to an empty state of depletion in kidney-energy. According to the control cycle of the Five Elemental Energies, Water controls Fire. Since the Water energy in your kidneys has grown weak, it has lost control over the Fire energy in your heart, which has consequently flared out of control with full yang symptoms of high blood pressure and heart palpitations." Rather than prescribing drugs that provide quick but

temporary relief by suppressing the symptoms of high blood pressure, as a Western physician might do, the Chinese doctor would get to the heart of the matter by prescribing herbs to tonify (i.e., "fill") the patient's empty kidney energy, while also recommending that the patient restrain his sexual activities to avoid emptying it again. When the patient's kidney energy has been fully restored, Water once again exerts its normal control over Fire, the heart calms down and recovers its natural rhythm, and all abnormal symptoms disappear.

Beinfield and Korngold give the following illustration of how the same basic symptom of headache can be diagnosed in very different ways in different patients, and traced to very different causes, depending on the "prevailing winds" in the individual patient's energy system:

For example, disturbance of the Liver Network can produce migraine or bilious headaches associated with nausea, vomit-ting, and sensitivity to light and noise. These headaches may be provoked by anger and occur more frequently in the spring. Disturbance of the Stomach and Intestines may cause headaches associated with nasal and sinus congestion, acidity, flatulence, and constipation. This type of headache may appear in the morning and improve in the evening. Especially in hot, humid weather, disturbances of the Spleen and Heart may cause headaches associated with fatigue, dizziness, perspiration, and anxiety. In winter, headaches associated with backache, chilliness, and profuse urination may suggest a disturbance of the Kidney. The headache could be a simple matter of acute indigestion or related to a complex and chronic problem such as hypertension, asthma, allergies, or premenstrual syndrome. Treatment for someone's headache will differ according to which Organ Network is disturbed.

Chinese diagnosis is a selective analytical process that determines exactly what is happening when something goes wrong in the human

energy system, how it relates to the various internal and external energies that influence the balance and harmony of the system, and why it is causing the particular symptoms in question. It employs all the principles and parameters of Chinese medicine—from yin and yang, the Three Treasures, and the Five Elemental Energies to the Six Evils, Seven Emotions, and Eight Indicators—to identify the underlying imbalance that is causing the ailment and to diagnose all symptoms within the context of the unique energy patterns prevailing in each individual patient's system. It is a dynamic process of spontaneous discovery that reveals exactly the right combination of therapeutic tactics to apply in each individual case, rather than always suggesting the same treatments for similar symptoms in all patients. By evaluating specific symptoms in light of the patient's whole system, Chinese diagnosis leaves no stone unturned in tracking down the root causes of disease, and all therapies are geared to enlist the patient's own internal energies to combat the condition and correct the imbalance. Treatment continues and therapies are periodically adjusted until all the abnormal conditions of energy imbalance that cause symptoms of disease are eliminated and functional harmony is restored to the whole system. If the course of treatment is properly followed and completed, a traditional Chinese cure will usually last for as long as the patient avoids the same mistakes and malevolent influences that caused the problem in the first place.

The Chinese Tree of Health

Ihe traditional Chinese system of human health care is like a venerable old tree that has been growing continuously for thousands of years, its ancient roots firmly planted in the fertile soil of classical Taoist philosophy, its therapeutic branches spreading their soothing shade over the parched fields of human disease and degeneration. For all their colorful variety and different approaches to healing human maladies, even branch of the Chinese healing arts remains connected to the same main trunk of medical philosophy, and the same nourishing sap runs freely throughout the entire system of human health care. That sap is chee —the energy of life—in all its myriad manifestations, from the macrocosmic forces of nature and the cosmos down to the microcosmic energies that run like electric currents throughout all the organs, tissues, and cells of the human body. Energy remains the common denominator in all the complex equations of human health and disease, and each branch of the traditional Chinese healing arts deals with the fundamental energies of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity (the Three Powers) with a holistic approach that restores their primordial harmony.

Unlike modern Western medicine, which has grown increasingly fragmented into narrowly specialized departments focused exclu-

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sively on specific parts of the body or particular categories of disease, traditional Chinese medicine offers the patient a variety of different ways to heal and rebalance the whole system in order to cure all types of ailments. All these various methods, such as herbs and nutrition, acupuncture and massage, exercise and meditation, are wholly synergistic and may be applied in harmonious conjunction with one another. By contrast, the specialists of modern Western medicine are trained to deal with only one part of the human system or one type of disease, with very little cross-reference and virtually no common ground in practical therapeutics. In traditional Chinese medical practice, the same physician is called on to handle gynecological problems, prostate conditions, childhood respiratory disorders, and the neurological dysfunctions of the old and senile. In modern Western medicine, a woman must seek the services of a gynecologist, a man with prostate problems must go to a urologist, children are sent to pediatricians, and the elderly go to gerontological neurologists.

The major difference between the traditional Eastern and modern Western approaches to health is that the traditional Eastern way deals with any and all symptoms within the organic context of the whole human system, seeking and treating root causes wherever they may lie hidden within the system in order to achieve a lasting cure, while the Western method seems to focus too often only on the part of the body where overt symptoms appear, providing swift but only temporary relief from symptomatic discomforts while overlooking hidden causes elsewhere in the body. Traditional Chinese physicians must therefore become qualified to practice all branches of the tree of Chinese therapy, and they must understand all aspects of the whole human system, while Western specialists are trained mainly to deal with isolated parts or specific conditions. The result of this difference is that Chinese therapies generally take longer to work but usually provide lasting cures, while Western therapies provide quick relief at the cost of future relapses. The latter way involves an ever-escalating cycle of complications that lead to lifelong dependence on

doctors and drugs and often end up requiring radical surgical excision of damaged parts.

The difference between the organic, holistic approach of traditional Chinese therapy and the specialized, fragmented method of modern Western treatments is clearly reflected in the preparation and training required to become a qualified practitioner. Whereas most Western medical doctors require onlv four to five years of formal training to become licensed in their chosen specialty, it takes an average of ten to twelve years of rigorous study and clinical apprenticeship to become fully qualified to practice traditional Chinese medicine in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other East Asian countries. Chinese phvsicians must become familiar with all branches of the Chinese tree of health, and, in many cases, they must be able to applv two or more tvpes of therapv to treat their patients' conditions. Patients benefit greatlv from this holistic approach because they can take all their health problems to one doctor and follow a systematic, organic healing program that corrects all their disorders at the same time. This systematic approach saves patients a lot of time, trouble, and expense; more often than not, if the patient faithfully complies with the prescribed regimen, it eventually affects a complete and lasting cure.

The tree of traditional Chinese health care is therefore an integrated svstem of synergistic therapies in which each branch stems from the same root principles and utilizes the same basic energies on which all forms of life depend. Although each branch employs different therapeutic tools to deal with various health problems and constitutional deficiencies, they all work in concert toward achieving the ultimate goal of restoring optimum energy balance and functional harmony to the whole system, as well as establishing equilibrium between the whole human system and the environmental elements and energies that shape and nurture it. "Chinese medical thinking integrates medicine, whose aim is to heal the body and mind, with philosophy, whose purpose is to guide us in living," write

Beinfield and Komgold. 'The insights of Chinese medicine can nurse our sense of ourselves, our awareness, at the same time as acupuncture and herbs can promote our direct experience of integration." It is this sense of integration between body and mind, internal and external energies, macrocosmic and microcosmic forces, experienced through a harmonious balance among all the energies of life, that constitutes traditional Chinese medicine's greatest gift to human health and happiness.

Herbal Medicine

Herbal medicine is by far the oldest and most richly foliated branch on the Chinese tree of health and healing. References to medicinal herbs appear frequently in the earliest annals of Chinese history, including the ancient Book of Change {I-Ching) and the Book of Odes (Shih Ching), two of the sacred early Chou dynasty classics annotated by Confucius. In the latter, we find poetic descriptions of young maidens singing in the hills and valleys as they gather medicinal herbs for pharmaceutical use at home. So prevalent was the daily use of medicinal herbs in the households of ancient China that to this day one of the most common ways of saying "What's wrong with you?" in Chinese is, "Did you eat the wrong medicine today?" In the strict Western definition, the word herb refers only to plants and plant-derived extracts, but in Chinese medicine it also includes minerals and animal products—that is, anything derived from nature's cornucopia. The use of medicinal minerals has a long and colorful history in China, and Chinese physicians were early to recognize the vital role that minerals play in human metabolism, particularly as conductors and catalysts for the electromagnetic currents of the human energy system. Often employed as sedatives in the Calm Spirit (ding shen) category of herbal medicine, medicinal

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minerals find frequent use in a wide range of nervous disorders. They also constitute the main active ingredients in many of the famous longevity elixirs (chang shou dan) concocted by Taoist alchemists and wizards for their imperial patrons, some of whom lost their lives prematurely while trying to prolong them with toxic mineral prescriptions. Medicinal minerals are similarly employed in the renowned "long-life pills" prepared in Ayurvedic and traditional Tibetan medicine.

Perhaps the most important mineral substance traditionally used in longevity and nervous-system formulas is cinnabar (ju sha), a highly refined extract of mercury that is still prescribed in formulas for hypertension, insomnia, anxiety, shock, and other nervous disorders. In minute doses, cinnabar acts as a powerful sedative, antispasmodic, and nerve tonic, but in higher doses or with prolonged use it can become quite toxic to the human system. Other mineral substances commonly employed for their sedative effects include oyster shell (mu li), magnetite (tse shih), and fossilized dinosaur bones (lung gu). Sea salt (hai yen) is also an excellent source of medicinal minerals, particularly magnesium and trace elements. Due to the presence of balancing trace elements, sea salt does not cause the hypertension and renal problems associated with the refined, mined table salt sold in modern markets, even when used for daily culinary purposes.*

Animal products are another class of Chinese herbal medicine rarely encountered in the Western medical tradition. Centipedes and scorpions, earthworms and snakes, praying mantises and silkworms, tortoise shell and deer horn—all play major roles in many traditional Chinese herbal formulas, and their medical efficacy ranks them among the most highly prized substances in the Chinese pharmacopeia, particularly in the tonic category.

*See Jacques de Langre, Seasalt's Hidden Powers (Magalia, Calif.: Happiness Press, 1994).

Tonics are a special category of Chinese herbal medicine that are meant primarily for preventive use by healthy individuals, not for curative purposes by the sick. Virtually all tonic herbs fall into the Superior (shang) class of medicinal herbs, which means that they have proven efficacy as protectors of health and promoters of longevity in humans, without any toxic side effects. These life-prolonging properties have made tonics the favorite herbs of emperors and generals, ministers and magistrates, and this demand has rendered them among the most expensive items in the Chinese pharmacopeia. Tonics were also well known in traditional Western medicine until the turn of the twentieth century, when chemical drugs and surgery eradicated their use as preventive medicine in health care.

Tonic animal products—such as deer horn and sea horse, tortoise shell and donkey hide—contain potent proteins and hormone residues that have strong stimulating effects on the human endocrine system, promoting glandular secretions that energize the whole system and activate flagging vital functions, particularly sexual vitality, immune response, and cerebral functions. Such well-known plant-derived tonics are ginseng, astragalus, and codonopsis are what Western herbology refers to as "adaptogens," which means that they naturally adapt the vital functions of the human system to compensate for adverse conditions such as stress, malnutrition, aberrant environmental energies, and the degenerative conditions associated with aging, thereby preventing somatic damage and prolonging the life of the whole organism. Adaptogenic tonics work primarily by tonifying blood factors, stimulating vital organ-energies, and balancing yin and yang throughout the whole system.

Another category of herbal remedy that is unique to Chinese medicine comprises the constitutional formulas, which have both preventive and curative properties. These formulas are specifically designed to correct particular problems caused by individual constitutional deficiencies and energy imbalances that are inherited prena-tally or acquired postnatally through personal lifestyles and habits.

Virtually everyone on earth has a certain degree of inherent imbalance or distortion among their vital energies and organic functions, and these constitutional disparities account for many minor aches and pains and chronic conditions that most Westerners either take for granted or try in vain to cure with allopathic drugs. However, it does little good—and often does long-term harm—to take drugs for symptomatic relief of chronic discomforts whose root causes lie in deep-seated constitutional deficiencies. On the other hand, constitutional herbal formulas that are custom-prepared to compensate for such deficiencies can rebalance one's entire organ-energy network, not only relieving the associated symptomatic discomforts, but also correcting the underlying constitutional causes. Here are a few common examples of how such formulas work.

• Chronic mental fatigue, frequent headaches, insomnia, and ab-sentmindedness are often symptomatic signs of an inherent or acquired constitutional deficiency in cerebral circulation. Rather than taking aspirin, amphetamines, sleeping pills, and other drugs for such problems, one could alleviate the entire syndrome with a single constitutional formula that enhances cerebral circulation, using such herbs as gotu kola, ginkgo, ginseng, and schisandra.

• A middle-aged man who has led an excessively promiscuous life in his youth and now suffers from chronic lumbago, frequent urination, painful, weak knees, and cold extremities has acquired a constitutional deficiency of kidney-yin and would generally benefit from taking the famous patent kidney-yin formula called Six Flavor Rehmannia Pills (liu wei di huang wan).

• A woman with chronic menstrual problems such as dysmenorrhea and PMS due to an inherent constitutional blood deficiency would find both symptomatic relief and a possible long-term cure by taking a custom-formulated prescription based on the great female blood tonic Angelica sinensis (dang gui).

All Chinese herbs act therapeutically on the targeted organs and tissues by virtue of their natural affinity (gui jing, literally "home into meridians") for the energy channels that govern those organs and tissues. The therapeutic activity of Chinese herbs thus functions more on the level of energy than chemistry, although they also have direct biochemical effects. The unique frequency and valence of molecular energy within each herbal essence determines its particular organ affinity by resonating in synchronicity with the frequency and valence of the molecules within the tissues of the particular organ targeted for treatment. Through thousands of years of continuous clinical observation, Chinese medical science has identified the specific organ-energy affinities of thousands of medicinal herbs and foods. Similar observations have been recorded in the herbal medical traditions of India, Persia, medieval Europe, and native North and South American tribes, all of which basically agree on the therapeutic properties of medicinal herbs they share in common. By combining various herbs in compound formulas, a remarkable degree of specificitv and combined effects can be achieved to deal with the particular problems of individual patients. This method is far superior to the modern allopathic practice of simply prescribing the same chemical drug for the same basic condition in all patients.

Chinese medical herbs are classified according to their basic yin-yang nature (warming, cooling, or neutral), their Five Elemental En-ergv identities as reflected in the Five Flavors (pungent, sweet, sour, bitter, or salty), and their primary therapeutic properties (tonifying, purging, concentrating, or dispersing) (table 4). These various classifications combine to determine the precise therapeutic functions and pharmacodynamic effects of each individual herb in the Chinese pharmacopeia, based on thousands of years of continuous empirical observation and clinical application, and they are matched in therapeutic practice against the symptomatic signs and constitutional requirements of each individual patient's system. Whenever a new herb comes to the attention of Chinese herbalists, such as from

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Table 4. The Five Flavors and Related Attributes of Chinese Medicinal Herbs

Europe or the Americas, it is immediately identified in terms of its fundamental Five Elemental Energy category, based on the obvious attribute of flavor, but its other pharmaceutical properties take many years of clinical practice to establish.

Traditional Chinese herbalists have developed a number of different methods of preparing both single herbs and compound formulas for internal and external application. The method of preparation used for each remedy depends on several factors, including the nature of the herb(s), the type of condition to be treated, and the therapeutic effects to be achieved. Below is a brief description of the most commonly employed modes of preparing Chinese herbs for therapeutic use.

Raw

Eating herbs in the fresh, raw state is the original and most ancient method of ingesting herbs for medicinal purposes. The emperor Shen Nung ("Divine Farmer"), legendary founder of Chinese herbal medicine, is often depicted chomping on a handful of fresh raw herbs, and it is said he thus tasted and tested seventy herbs per day until he had established the pharmacological properties of all the medicinal herbs in the Chinese empire. Many medicinal herbs are most potent when taken raw, but others require drying, cooking, soaking, washing with vinegar, and other types of processing to neutralize toxic constituents or activate pharmacological properties, so it is not a good idea to experiment on your own with freshly gathered raw herbs without the guidance of a qualified herbalist. Unless you have such guidance, or formal training in Chinese herbology, you should always purchase your medicinal herbs from a reputable Chinese pharmacy or herbal supplier and use them according to professional instructions.

Decoction

The most traditional and popular method of preparing medicinal herbs for use at home is to boil a decoction (tang, literally "broth") of dried herbs in an earthenware or heat-proof glass vessel, simmering the brew until the liquid is reduced by about half. This method ensures maximum extraction of the herbs' full medicinal properties, rapid assimilation, and quick therapeutic effects, which makes this the best method for most acute conditions. The only drawback is that it requires you to spend some time each day in the kitchen.

An adaptation of this method is steam decoction, whereby a lidded ceramic bowl containing the herb(s) and a few ounces of pure water is set on a rack inside a larger vessel, and the herbs are steamed for several hours. Also known as a ginseng cooker, this method yields a

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very pure, potent extract called medicinal dew (yao lu) and is most suitable for expensive tonic herbs such as old ginseng, prepared either singly or in simple combination, but not for complex bulk formulas.

Powder

Powders (san) can be prepared at home from dried herbs with an electric coffee grinder, or at the pharmacy, but either way they should be freshly ground in sufficient quantities for no more than two or three weeks, so they do not lose their potency. Powders act more slowly and gently than decoctions or fresh raw herbs, and their effects last longer, which makes them most suitable for chronic conditions requiring long-term therapy.

There are three ways to take powders. The simplest and most traditional way is to spoon the required dose into your mouth and wash it down with warm water or warm wine, such as Japanese sake or mild sherry. Another traditional method is to place the measured dose of powder in a cup and pour hot water over it to make an infusion (cha). The third and most modern way is to stuff the powdered herbs into gelatin capsules (jiau niang), which is highly convenient and particularly useful for taking bitter, hard-to-swallow powders.

Pastes

Pastes {gao) are prepared by blending powdered herbs with just enough honey to form an herbal dough, which is then eaten by the spoonful and chased down with warm water or wine. Pastes may be stored for many months in sealed jars in the refrigerator.

Pills

Pills (wan) are prepared from honey herbal paste by rolling small pellets between thumb and index finger, then placing them on a baking sheet and putting them in an oven at the lowest temperature for about fifteen minutes, until they begin to glaze. After they cool

completely, they may be stored in tightly sealed brown jars for many months, without refrigeration. Typical doses are five to fifteen pills taken two or three times daily with warm water or wine. Unlike Western tablets, Chinese honey pills are made without excipients, fillers, preservatives, or other nonherbal additives. Some types of pills are made with other natural bases, such as water, beeswax, or fermented flour dough.

Liquors

Herbal liquor (yao jiou) is prepared by steeping whole or roughly chopped dried herbs in strong distilled spirits such as vodka for two to four months or up to a full year, depending on the formula. This is an ancient and very efficient way of extracting full medicinal potential from expensive tonic herbs such as ginseng, deer horn, seahorse, and other potent tonics. Also known as Spring Wine, tonic herbal liquors may be prepared at home or purchased ready-made in attractive decanters, and they are renowned for their rejuvenating effects and swift energizing properties.

Ointments

Herbal ointments (yio) are prepared for external use by blending finely powdered herbs in a warm oil base, such as sesame or almond oil, yellow Vaseline, lard, lanolin, or beeswax. They may be stored long-term in well-lidded jars without refrigeration. The most popular commercial herbal ointment is Tiger Balm.

Suppositories

Herbal suppositories (sai ji) are an ancient Chinese form of medication first referred to in Chang Chung-ching's Discussion of Fevers and Flus, written during the early Han dynasty. They are prepared by blending aromatic powdered herbs in a honey base to form small herbal bullets.

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Extracts and Tinctures

Herbal extracts and tinctures (yao jing) are a more recent method of preparation using modern pharmaceutical extraction techniques. Very pure and highly concentrated, Chinese extracts and tinctures are always made from the whole plant, preferably fresh and raw, never from isolated fragments as in modern Western pharmacology. These full-spectrum extracts contain all sorts of natural synergists, many of them as yet unidentified, that balance the effects of the main active constituents and prevent the toxic reactions and other unpleasant side effects often experienced with fractional extracts and concentrates.