FIND YOUR VITAL ENERGY
An Introduction to Qigong and Traditional Chinese Medicine
If you come to my office during the Chinese New Year, which occurs in midwinter, you would notice a stunning red amaryllis plant in full bloom in a pot by the window. That in itself is not unusual, for many people force flowering bulbs to bloom out of season in order to enjoy their brilliant colors in the depths of winter. The difference here is that I have kept this particular bulb for more than twenty winters now, and I purposely use my powers of energy concentration to make it bloom for the beginning of the new year and sometimes for other special occasions as well.
That is one way of explaining the essence of qigong: it’s about connecting with the universal energy that is all around us, and using it to open channels and correct imbalances. Since I have studied and practiced qigong for so many years, beginning in childhood, I don’t expect you to be able to harness the power of your own internal energy to make flowers bloom on demand. But I am here to tell you that there are so many accessible ways for women to enhance their own physical and emotional health using the simple tools of qigong.
The secret to a long and healthy life begins with qigong. As previously noted, the word refers to the movement of vital energy, or qi, through the body to clear blockages that cause illness, pain, and discomfort. In external qigong practice, people can learn to move in ways that detoxify the body by releasing harmful substances such as gases, air, germs, and—in terms that may seem abstract to Western thinkers—illness. This displacement of the bad by the good can also be performed on a person as internal qigong, meaning that an experienced qigong practitioner such as myself gives the person a targeted acupressure bodywork treatment, acupuncture, or both, to help them detoxify and rebuild. The patient usually requires more than one treatment, and up to ten visits to clear many common conditions; in acute situations, I may treat someone every week for a year or more. Furthermore, a person can balance her own internal qi by consciously eating and drinking in a way that brings yin and yang into qi harmony. All these things constitute the healing science, art, and spirit of qigong.
Qigong has no side effects. When I perform an external qigong treatment on a patient, my goal is to increase his or her blood flow, sending oxygen to troubled areas of the body, and hasten the removal of waste products that can cause pain or sickness. These two meanings of the word “qigong”—the personal health practices you can implement in your own life, and the bodywork I practice in my office—are two sides of the same coin, promoting the same health effects with the same basic principles, just in different ways, one drawing on external energy and the other on internal energy.
First recorded in the second century BC, qigong is a practice based in Taoism and Buddhism. Both religious systems use exercise and meditation to reach a higher consciousness in which healing energy can thrive. Our Chinese ancestors have passed down lessons learned through life experience, spiritual philosophy, and culture, proving their healing theories on human beings, not on mice in a laboratory. There is a beautiful logic to this way of thinking. For 2,000 years it has provided explanations for everything on earth, including the human species, our behaviors, and the body’s responses to illness and trauma as well as to good health. In traditional Chinese medicine, the individual is seen as part of a bigger picture—a piece of the natural universe. Like the universe, we are all controlled by certain undeniable rules of nature. The body, like the rest of the natural world, can be understood, and even manipulated, once the basic concepts of the universe are understood.
Fascinating as they are, you don’t need to know all about the fundamentals and philosophies of this ancient Chinese healing system to put its power to work for you, but I will review them here briefly because they provide insight into how qigong works within your body, and to help you begin to understand your own condition, whether you have lower back pain, headaches, anxiety, a sore neck, carpal tunnel syndrome, or any other complaint that never quite goes away.
As I hope you will come to understand, the wisdom of qigong is simply a basic human intuition that most of us have lost touch with: learning to sense blockages and imbalances inside our own bodies and those of our children and others we live with. By tuning into the energies around and within us, we can learn to normalize ourselves and maximize the flow of our vital energy—our qi—for relaxation, general well-being, and, most significant, relief from pain and various kinds of physical and mental distress. This awareness and ability is as valuable for people with depression or illness as it is for athletes looking to improve their performance, or indeed anyone hoping to be the best, healthiest, most tuned-in version of themselves that they can possibly be.
Vital Energy: The Internal and the External
Qi is the powerful life energy that connects each of us to the earth below and the heavens above. In Chinese tradition we often describe qi using the term “processed air,” or essence. This does not mean “processed” in a negative sense, but rather refers to the way in which a healthy body is able to process toxins from the air. If there is a bad chemical in the air, a healthy body with strong qi can process the air and get rid of the toxins quickly. While you are performing my qigong exercises, your body becomes a machine that processes air, relieving toxins and increasing circulation. In balancing our qi, we are getting rid of the bad chemicals. Think of it this way: if three people get together for dinner and eat a dish that contains bad bacteria, one of them might get very sick right away, the other might get sick two hours later, and the third will not get sick at all because her qi is able to process the air and quickly eliminate the toxins.
Qi is circulation. It is made up of blood, which is yin, and air, which is yang. It is important to note that the two are not the same. According to Chinese medical tradition, disease, sickness, discomfort, and chronic pain occur because of a blockage in either the blood or the qi. Qi is a force that you can feel, and that can be utilized to heal. You, too, can learn to use this force for healing. When you are aware of it, you can take control of your health through diet, simple but purposeful exercises, and meditation. The sum total of those practices working in concert is qigong.
Qigong uses energy from the air to build physical vitality. There are many different forms of qigong practiced around the world, but they are all basically very similar. Think of a child who is born and given a name—she is still a human being at a fundamental level, though her name is specific to her alone. That’s how I explain why my type of qigong is slightly different. Through five generations, my family has created a unique form that accesses five unique pressure points that can quickly stop pain. These points are in addition to the standard pressure points used by all Eastern healers. My ancestors who worked as healers specialized in treating chronic diseases and traumatic injuries such as broken bones and torn ligaments. Their other specialty has always been female issues such as breast tumors, fertility, pregnancy, and disorders of the reproductive system.
As an external qigong healer, I use acupressure, acupuncture, and herbal remedies to adjust the flow of people’s essential energy, or qi. When clients come to my office, they first lie on their back on a massage table, and I run my hand through the air over their body. I don’t always need to touch people to diagnose them because I am able to summon the power of energy and use it to clear blockages of qi. Thanks to my training in medical qigong and energy healing, I can feel heat where someone is experiencing pain or discomfort even before I touch them. I can also tell what’s bothering them by vigorously palpating their lower abdomen and examining their organs that way. Then they turn onto their stomach and I work on acupressure points on their upper and lower back to move and restore energy. I finish by placing small cups on specific points on the back of the torso to remove toxins while the patient rests for 20 minutes.
Based on the same general pressure points and principles as acupuncture, the gentle exercises I recommend can be used in place of needles, which must be placed by a skilled acupuncture specialist. It’s important to differentiate between internal qigong—accessed through these self-guided movements—and external or applied qigong, the healing energy emitted by a practitioner such as myself. I have developed my healing ability through decades of study and practice, but you can learn to develop your own powers for healing by regularly practicing the simple exercise techniques starting on this page. If you’ve ever noticed a group of Asian people slowly and gracefully moving through tai chi routines in a public park, you’ll have an idea of what qigong exercises look like—each one is a moving meditation designed to stimulate a particular part of the body for optimum functioning and best health. Diet is the other major component and is one of the main reasons that I wanted to write this book: to communicate my essential advice about proper nutrition to the widest possible audience of women.
In America, qigong is gradually becoming more accepted by doctors and the medical community, as well as by the patients who have experienced its beneficial results. It has been embraced by those looking for an alternative to conventional medicine, based largely on diagnostic tests and pharmaceutical drugs. In China, qigong is backed by medical science and has always been used for health maintenance as well as healing. Americans are learning that it can be helpful to patients suffering from a wide variety of disorders, including chronic headache and migraine, allergies, asthma, inflammatory conditions, insomnia, hypertension, gastroenteritis, pneumonia, pulmonary emphysema, osteoporosis, rheumatic arthritis, accidental injuries, gynecological conditions, strokes and neurological disorders, chronic fatigue, and some non-metastasized cancers.
The techniques that make up the qigong practice help us learn to regulate body, breath, and mind. In China we’d say that qigong is exercise for your jing (essence), shen (spirit), and qi (the vital energy in all living things). Exercising these three parts of our being is the key to maintaining and restoring physical and mental vitality. Qigong provides tools to help you withstand the stresses of modern life and better resist the threats to good health that we all encounter. Working with a qigong healer, people can recover from injuries and illnesses, even the most serious of them, often with fewer of the procedures and prescriptions that are the main tools of Western medicine. Qigong principles are used in martial arts as well—for several years I treated and then gave qigong instruction to a famous American actor and martial artist—but my qigong is all about healing. Once you learn to access qi, to feel it by tuning into the natural world around you and understanding that you are part of the energy of the universe, you will begin to acquire the knowledge to adjust and balance your own vital energy.
Yin Meets Yang: Anatomy of Essential Opposites
In traditional Chinese medicine, a great emphasis is placed on the concept of balance. In fact, the entire universe may be viewed in terms of the balance between the two factors of yin (negative or passive elements) and yang (positive or active elements). The theory of yin and yang holds that all things have an opposite yet complementary aspect.
Women’s energy is yin energy. Men have yang energy. Yin is represented symbolically by water, quiet, substance, and night. Yang is represented by noise, fire, function, and daytime. Yin and yang may be opposites, but they are essential to and cannot exist without each other. That is the basic principle of balance according to qigong and traditional Chinese medicine: that every living thing is sustained by a harmonious interplay of two opposing energy forces. Nothing is totally yin or totally yang. Just as a state of complete yin is reached, yang starts to grow. They constantly exert an influence on each other in a sort of push-pull relationship. A traditional Chinese saying is, “Yin creates yang and yang activates yin.” In combination, they constitute qi, the essential energy of life that flows through the body via channels called meridians.
Yin and yang should never be thought of as opposites in the Western sense of good and bad. There is no judgment attached to this concept. To the contrary: They are dependent upon each other for their very existence. For example, there is no joy without sadness, no play without work, no hot without cold, no men without women—and vice versa. Thus, the balance between yin and yang represents a universal law of the material world. And in actuality, the words “yin” and “yang” describe intangible characteristics more than anything strictly material.
As I mentioned before, according to the qigong way of thinking, the individual is seen as part of a bigger picture, a piece of the universe. Like the universe, we are subject to certain undeniable laws of nature. Once we understand that our bodies, like the rest of nature, can be interpreted and manipulated within this framework, we can learn how to take control of our personal health and make a significant difference in our quality of life and longevity. And understanding yin and yang is essential to forming this understanding.
Yin governs one half of our essential organs and meridians, and yang the other half. Yin is strongest on your right side, and yang is strongest on your left. When these two forces are out of balance, the body’s essential qi is blocked, leading to pain and illness. Imbalances of yin and yang may be caused by stress, poor diet, unhealthy habits, emotional disturbances, inflammation, infection, hormones, and many other factors.
Yin is associated with contractions, cold, the moon, darkness, excess moisture, deficiencies, and chronic illness. Yin organs—the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, and pericardium, the fibrous sac around the heart—are constantly active and involved in the production and storage of blood and other bodily fluids. Yin dominates the front of the body and the area below the waist.
Yang is heat, and its energy predominates in the back of the body and above the waist. Your small intestine, large intestine, gallbladder, stomach, and skin are among the yang organs. Yang is associated with the sun, hyperactivity, excess, and acute illness.
Here’s a brief example to help you understand the constant interplay between these two opposing forces: excessive work (yang) without rest (yin) leads to a deficiency of energy. Here’s another: When you smoke, you are adding heat (yang) to your lungs, which is the opposite of cool (yin). A smoker’s lungs are too hot, and in addition to quitting smoking, she needs to eat cooling, yin foods and work on detoxifying her body through qigong movements that will help to restore the essential balance of her qi.
The Essential Zang Fu Organs
Like every part of the universe, the human body is a balance of yin and yang. Chinese medicine teaches us that our five major organs—the spleen, heart, liver, lungs, and kidneys—regulate and control the body’s major functions and general health. Collectively, these organs are known as zang fu, or “solid organs.” Western science does not acknowledge the power and responsibility of these organs the way traditional Chinese medicine does, so this concept is probably new to you, especially if you are new to qigong. All the remaining organs are secondary to the zang fu organs and are largely controlled by them; for example, the lungs control the skin.
In a healthy person, the dual forces of yin and yang are constantly fluctuating yet remain in continual engagement with each other. The energy flow among the zang fu organs controls that delicate yin/yang balance inside our bodies. Each solid organ contains elements of both yin and yang, although some organs are more yang and others more yin. When qi is out of balance, poor health follows, and to restore it you need to be mindful about what you eat, choosing the right foods and preparing them properly. In winter, for example, Chinese medicine suggests that we eat more nutritionally dense foods and consume more calories to maintain balance and keep the body warm. Because the other three seasons will have depleted much of our energy by the end of the year, our bodies are also in need of particular foods.
Understanding the roles and functions of these organs is essential, and each one influences how you are affected by the weather and temperature conditions of your environment, by the stresses in your life, by the food you eat, and by injury or illness. You achieve well-being by creating balanced yin and yang and a steady flow of qi. Every organ has a two-hour window of time during the day when its qi is strongest. Qi, the vital energy that connects us to heaven and earth, moves through each meridian at specific times, continuously circulating in a daily cycle. The result is a 24-hour human body clock of qi flow.
Your Essential Spleen
Chinese medicine has traditionally placed a great emphasis on the spleen. It is an organ about the size of a fist with a purpose that may seem mysterious to many people, since it is rarely mentioned in Western medicine. We never hear of anyone having a spleen disease, only rupturing it in an accident. But in Chinese medicine, a properly balanced spleen plays a critical role in health, especially for women, whose blood qi may be depleted through menstruation and as a result may suffer chronic fatigue, painful periods, and anemia.
Located on the left side of the abdomen, toward your back and below the rib cage, the spleen’s primary job is transportation: it transfers energy, or qi, to all the organs, storing energy and shifting it to organs as they require it. The spleen is close to the pancreas and stomach and works in partnership with them. The connections it maintains are critical. Anatomically, the spleen’s function is to filter blood by identifying and removing malformed, damaged, or old red blood cells. Healthy blood cells pass through a mazelike network of narrow passages in the spleen and continue circulating through your body. Unhealthy cells that don’t pass through are broken down by macrophages—large white blood cells that specialize in destroying them. The spleen also acts as a reservoir for blood, holding up to a cup of it at a time, ready to release it into circulation if you need extra, such as in the event of a traumatic injury that causes blood loss.
While the spleen is detecting faulty or failing red blood cells, it is also identifying unwelcome bacteria and viruses in your blood, then activating the macrophages to destroy them, preventing infections or diseases. Traditional Chinese healers see another critical function for the spleen, which is paired with the stomach as organs vital to digestion. After food passes through your stomach, the spleen processes and distributes the nutrients your body has extracted from the food and drink. It aids the stomach in digesting these nutrients to create qi, as well as infusing them into your blood. In addition, the spleen controls all the sensory information that comes into our bodies, including the aromas and tastes that are part of eating.
It’s very easy for a healthy spleen to get damp if you eat the wrong foods, which can make it sluggish. Ideally you want to keep it dry. Toasted bread, for example, acts like a dehumidifier, helping to absorb fat and oil in the spleen. Bad breath can originate in a spleen that is too hot, and loss of appetite can occur in a person whose spleen is too cold.
A healthy spleen is elastic, while an enlarged spleen is loose. When the spleen is functioning properly, your qi is strong, digestion is smooth, and your body is kept moist. When you overeat or don’t eat a balanced diet, the spleen’s functioning can be disrupted. Drinking alcohol impedes the organ’s ability to deliver energy where it is needed. When the spleen is weak, the liver cannot filter and purify the blood. Sensory overload, which might be caused, for example, by watching television while you eat, can also impair functioning. When that happens, appetite tends to be poor and digestion sluggish. You may feel bloated or gassy, suffer diarrhea or headaches, or simply feel fatigued and lethargic.
Doctors can replace a human body’s heart or kidneys, but successful long-term spleen transplant has not been achieved. The good news is that the spleen can be restored to healthy functioning with a few simple choices. The first step is to turn away from distractions while eating and focus on the experience. The second step is to choose foods that promote healthy spleen function. The best food for that is soup. It’s a warming food that’s very easy to digest, saving the spleen’s energy for fighting pathogens and getting you well. Beef, root vegetables such as carrots and parsnips, and warming spices, including black pepper, cinnamon, cumin, and ginger, also support healthy functioning of this essential zang fu organ.
Your Beating Heart
In Chinese medicine, we refer to the heart as the king of the body, in a sense that is as much a functioning ideal—the heart as the center of emotions and the place where joy comes from—as a flesh-and-blood organ. Tragedy can actually hurt the heart, which is governed by fire and controls the blood, blood vessels, and meridians. All other organs send energy to it. The heart is yang and associated with the small intestine, meaning that if digestion is good, the heart benefits greatly.
The tongue is the sense organ of the heart—a qigong practitioner can examine your tongue and tell you the condition of your heart. This important organ is also connected to the stomach and the liver. It is negatively affected by obesity, smoking, high blood pressure, a sedentary lifestyle, and a diet high in cholesterol. People who have bad dreams, palpitations, arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat), and memory loss need to start eating better to support their heart’s health. This organ is most active between eleven a.m. and one p.m.; at this time of day, those with heart issues may tend to experience strong emotions.
Your Hardworking Lungs
If you have a runny nose, don’t automatically blame it on your sinuses—all mucus originates from the lungs, a pair of spongy organs located on either side of the heart inside the rib cage. They extract oxygen from the air, and that oxygen is carried to all parts of the body. The lungs are yin. When they become too cold, you may expel clear mucus, and when they are too hot, your mucus will be yellow.
If the heart has a problem, the lungs cannot produce sufficient oxygen—the heart is just the pump, and blood flow slows down when the lungs are compromised. The skin is the sense organ of the lungs, which provide moisture for it. Pungent food is good for adding yang heat to the lungs, as are bamboo shoots and water chestnuts. Women who awaken between three and five a.m. often have issues with their lungs. They may be repressing feelings of sadness. They should try to fall back asleep by meditating and quietly performing my qigong breathing exercises.
Your Vital Kidneys
In traditional Chinese medicine, the kidneys are the power source for the entire body, controlling its balance of water. A pair of organs located in the back of the abdomen on either side of the body, the kidneys filter all the blood in your body several times a day. The yin element of these organs, sometimes referred to as kidney yin, promotes essential moisture in the form of blood and other bodily liquids. Worry can weaken your kidneys. Kidney dysfunction can range from frequent sinus infections to shortness of breath to sexual, urinary, and reproductive imbalances. These organs have a direct effect on proper breathing and hearing, as well as the quality of one’s bone marrow.
For longevity, women should eat foods such as root vegetables, seafood, black beans, lentils, and pearl barley to help maintain kidney health and provide organ energy. The kidneys are most active between five and seven p.m., when most people eat dinner. Try to walk a little after your meal before sitting down for the evening.
Your Essential Liver
Always sleepy or depressed? It might well be a problem with your liver and spleen. The liver’s job is to store blood and, according to traditional Chinese medicine, to work with the kidneys to regulate the flow of qi through the body. I see it all the time, especially in women past menopause age whose qi is out of balance: if their liver is not in good shape, they tend to be moody, angry, and quick to lose control of their temper. When they are calm, their liver is most likely clean. Stress comes from the liver and is also damaging to it.
Drinking alcohol prevents the liver and spleen from filtering and purifying the blood, as does taking too many over-the-counter medications or using illegal drugs. Stagnant liver qi can cause migraines, high blood pressure, menstrual cramps, and the development of fibroid tumors. The liver is yin, and it benefits from bitter greens such as dandelions, broccoli rabe, and radicchio. In traditional Chinese medicine, the eyes are the sense organ of the liver, so a healthy liver implies good eyesight. The liver is active between one and three a.m. Women who wake up during this time period might be repressing anger. Their yang energy is probably too strong.
Meridians, or Principal Channels
They’re not visible on an X-ray or an MRI, but meridians are nonetheless very real. According to traditional Chinese medicine, our bodies have twelve pathways on which qi flows through vital organs and limbs. These principal channels, or meridians, are distributed symmetrically throughout the body, like a virtual fiber-optic network, from the head and face down to the torso and out to the limbs.
Within this network, each meridian is associated with a specific organ, extremity, and yin/yang property. Of course, the meridians are interlinked, and they are in constant communication with one another. Thus, problems in one organ may point to an imbalance in another. An understanding of meridians allows a healer using acupuncture to know exactly which point to tap when placing needles for treatment. Experienced healers rely on meridians to diagnose their patients.
For example, vital energy mainly flows through the lung meridian from three to five a.m., then gathers in the large intestine meridian from five to seven a.m., moves to the stomach meridian from seven to nine a.m., and so on throughout the day.
There are three arm yin meridians (lung, pericardium, heart), three arm yang meridians (large intestine, triple burner, small intestine), three leg yang meridians (stomach, gallbladder, bladder), and three leg yin meridians (spleen, liver, kidney). The triple burner is not a specific organ, but is comparable to your metabolism, an energy passageway that controls movement of fluids through the body and is composed of the upper, middle, and lower energy fields, or dantians—similar to what is called a chakra in yoga practice. The pericardium is the sac around your heart, the fibrous, fluid-filled mass where all the body’s major blood vessels connect. The six yin meridians run along the inner side of the limbs, the chest, and the abdomen. The six yang meridians are on the outer side of the limbs and in your head, face, and trunk.
In addition to the regular meridians, there are eight “extraordinary meridians” that are not directly linked to the major organ system but that have specific, critically important functions. They act as reservoirs of qi and blood for the twelve regular channels, filling and emptying as needed.
The Principal Qigong Points
As anyone who has studied Chinese martial arts has probably learned, the spots in your body where qi or vital energy is stored are called dantians—sometimes spelled dan t’ian, dan tien, or tan t’ien and loosely translated from Chinese as “elixir field” or simply “center of energy.” Our bodies have three major dantians: lower, middle, and upper. The dantians are also referred to individually as “burners”—as in “lower burner,” “middle burner,” and “upper burner”—and we use the term “triple burner” to refer to all three of them collectively.
In addition to the dantians, which are part of the literature of traditional Chinese medical teachings, my family form of qigong identifies five other points of concentration on the body. The importance of each point is relative to the particular qigong exercise you are practicing, or to the condition I am working to heal in a patient through acupressure or acupuncture. Some will come into play more often than others. Moreover, you may feel more or less sensation at certain points, depending on the general state of health and flow of energy throughout your body.
Here are the eight principal qigong points used in the traditional Chinese healing system.
Bai Hui
This point is found at the top of the head, the location of the soft spot on a baby’s head. Loosely translated, bai hui is the “hundred meetings” point. To locate it, position your thumbs behind your ears, at the back of the earlobes, and reach your middle fingers to the top of your head. Where the fingers meet is the location of bai hui. As you practice qigong, you may begin to feel sensation, even soreness, at the bai hui point—this is excellent, and an indication that you are opening this important point. When the bai hui point is opened—and stays open—the practitioner can enjoy good, robust health.
Upper Dantian
The upper dantian is located at the center of the forehead, between the eyebrows, both between and above the eyes. In many spiritual and healing traditions, this spot is referred to as the “third eye.” It is associated with spirit (shen), consciousness, and the pineal gland, an endocrine gland that secretes the hormone melatonin, which regulates sleep. With continued practice of my qigong exercises, you may feel sensation and warmth at this point.
Shanzhoung
This point is in the center of the chest, between the nipples or breasts. The focus on this point should be in your chest, in general, and feel as though your chest has been inflated to its full capacity, so it becomes very large, like the universe.
Middle Dantian
This spot is located at the navel and surrounding area. It is the body’s main energy center and energy storage center. Energy cultivated in the middle dantian can service your own body and, when properly developed, be used to help heal others. Qigong healers are able to transmit qi through their middle dantian to other people.
Lower Dantian
This very important point is about two fingers’ width below the navel, between the pubic bone and the navel. The lower dantian receives overflow qi from the middle dantian. It is also the physical foundation of your body, keeping you erect and balanced. It is your center of body awareness, comparable to the concept of prana in yoga practice.
Hui Yin
This point is located between the genitals and anus. In Western medicine, it is called the perineum. It is not a spot I ever touch on a patient, but it is a very important point for you to try to access when meditating for relaxation. Use your mind to mentally focus on this point, which controls the general relaxation response of the entire body.
Yong Quan
This is the first point of the kidney meridian, located at the ball of the foot below the so-called big toe. Yong quan, or “gushing spring,” is the gate of energy outflow, where we connect most deeply to the earth below us, a fundamental activity in qigong practice.
Lao Gong
This point is in the middle of the palms of the hands, or sometimes encompasses the entire palm. Most qigong practitioners feel qi strongly in the hands, fingers, and palm, or lao gong point. The words translate to “palace of labor,” which is an apt way to describe the palm area of our hardworking hands.
The Nine Body Types
According to traditional Chinese medicine, everyone can be categorized into different body types meant to indicate the ways in which certain people get sick, what kinds of ailments tend to afflict them, and what direction of therapy will heal them. Excessive or deficient, damp or dry, and hot or cold are the basic categories of body type, with a few proscribed variations. Each type has its own characteristics and common conditions that result when the flow of qi is blocked and the body’s yin and yang are out of balance.
As soon as a patient walks into my treatment room, I recognize her body type, and my qigong training alerts me to the affected organs that are causing her condition, whether it be lower back pain or acid reflux. When she begins to tell me what brought her to my office, I often already know what she is going to say. Thus, with time and experience, I have greatly simplified my approach to treatment based on body type. For me the most basic question, and the one that ultimately determines the course of treatment I recommend, is whether a woman is hot and dry or cold and damp. These two extremes provide the most reliable information about her overall health.
So many women tell me they are always cold. Cold body types are usually too yin and often, but not always, damp. People who are damp as well as cold are more likely to suffer fluid-related conditions such as diarrhea and other stomach disorders, edema, and hypertension.
In winter, a woman with too much cold has icy hands and feet, sometimes to the point of discomfort. When she gets home from work, she heads to the couch and wraps up in a blanket, regardless of the season. She is rarely thirsty, sometimes anemic, has clear urine, and may retain excessive amounts of bodily fluids. Her heart is not working to capacity and her circulation is blocked, so blood cannot move properly. She has low energy and a tendency to feel run-down. This woman would benefit from starting some regular physical exercise. I would tell her to eat spicy flavors and food that is beneficial for the kidneys, such as seafood, clams, and lamb. To help relieve interior dampness, she should eat a teaspoon of minced ginger in the morning—in tea, soup, or congee—for three months, after which time her dampness will be gone and she will no longer feel sluggish.
Another category of woman is always hot. Perhaps she is an athlete, someone who runs long distances. Or maybe she’s slightly overweight and never does any purposeful exercise. Either way, her hands and feet don’t get cold. She will go outside on a winter day without wearing a coat. People with this hot body type are easily excited, often anxious, and tend to be aggressive and even quick-tempered. They are frequently thirsty and prefer cold drinks. Hot bodies have a low urine output, and the urine is normally very yellow. This woman may appear robust, and she may go years without getting sick, but ultimately she is prone to autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, conditions in which the body starts attacking its own immune system.
You may be surprised to learn that these symptoms tell me that both types of women—hot and cold—have weak kidneys. I see this so often in women from the age of thirty on. As we age, the kidneys weaken. When they are working at a diminished pace, cold cannot rise, heat loses control, and the mind can become active to the point of exhaustion.
I have summarized the essential concepts of hot/cold, damp/dry, and excessive/deficient here to give you a general idea of how particular symptoms are common among specific body types, and so that you can begin to identify and assess your own health strengths and weaknesses. However, aside from becoming aware of how you can make positive changes in your diet and exploring how my qigong exercises can help you liberate your body from chronic conditions, I must caution you against using this brief list as a definitive tool to diagnose and treat yourself with herbal remedies. That sort of diagnosis should be done by an experienced qigong practitioner. Still, you may enjoy trying to figure out which body type is most similar to your own and how you can begin to understand which foods make you feel better and how they affect your overall health.
By gaining some insight into your own body type and yin/yang balance, you can learn to assess the flow of qi through your body. Then, whether you’re at the food market or standing in front of the refrigerator at home, you will be better equipped to make food choices that enhance well-being, and begin to address any chronic mental or physical conditions.
Here is a list of all nine body types:
Neutral
This person is calm and has a qi that is close to harmonious. She has no aches or pains, and her body is strong but relaxed. She enjoys sound sleep, smooth digestion, a clear complexion, and a well-functioning immune system.
Qi Deficient
This person has a soft, slow body and a shy demeanor, and speaks quietly. She catches every cold and bug that’s going around, and takes longer to recover than her friends. She has a weak body and tends to perspire a lot.
Yang Deficient
Slow, quiet, and always needing a sweater, this type is susceptible to diarrhea and frequently needs to clear her throat or expectorate mucus. She doesn’t like to exercise and is often sleepy.
Yin Deficient
Frequently constipated, this type tends to be thin, efficient, and impatient. She probably has difficulty sleeping, is often thirsty, and carries around a big cold drink full of ice.
Damp Cold
These people are usually overweight, and easy to get along with. They have a sweet tooth and a disinclination to eat vegetables. They are prone to diabetes and often have lots of phlegm.
Damp Heat
This type is easily annoyed, often but not always thin, and feels especially bad in hot and humid weather. She may have acne and oily skin, vaginal discharge, or an unpleasant taste in her mouth.
Blood Stagnation
This person may have facial blemishes and/or darkness under the eyes. She may bruise easily, have varicose veins, and be prone to excessive bleeding. She is often cold and/or unhappy.
Qi Stagnation
Nervous and withdrawn, this type is prone to depression, anxiety, and heart palpitations. She hates cold weather. She may develop breast cysts and often has trouble sleeping.
Sensitive/Weak
These people are extremely allergic and super-sensitive to pollen, smells, and many prescription drugs. They have low immunity and often suffer from dry scaly skin, hay fever, rash, and itchiness.
The Five Elements
This theory explaining the connection between the zang fu, or “solid organs,” and the human body, as well as the relationship between the body and the natural world, has come down to us from observations of the natural world dating to the time of the Yin dynasty in the sixteenth century BC.
The “elements” refer to five categories of material found in nature: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. According to this theory, all phenomena in the universe are connected in nature to one of these substances, existing in a state of constant motion and change as they interact with one another. Each of the five elements—all considered indispensable for maintaining a productive life on earth as well as making any necessary changes in it—works with one of the zang fu organs.
The heart is warm and represents fire.
The spleen is about transformation and is connected to the earth.
The lungs are cleansing and work with metal, which also has cleansing properties.
The kidneys regulate metabolism. Metabolism controls water.
The liver regulates qi and has properties similar to those of wood.
When we eat food, we are connecting ourselves with these elements of the outside world, and the organs are affected by our choices. My advice is always to eat simple, varied meals. To maintain the best health, every meal—including breakfast—should be balanced according to the seasons as well as the flavors of food. Sickness is the result of qi imbalance. By readjusting the relationship between the organs through what we eat, we can restore that balance and feel better.
Natures and Nutrition: Eating for Yin or Yang
All food is either yin or yang. Some are both. Some, such as watermelon—which is cooling and yin in summer, but begins to turn yang and hot in early fall—change their essential properties with the seasons. Learning the philosophy and wisdom about all these properties takes time and study, but basically, when a woman eats a balanced diet with ample fruit and vegetables, grains, beans, and small amounts of high-quality protein, she should be providing enough yin and yang ingredients to set her on the path to balanced qi. Beyond that, there are a few other things to understand about qigong as it relates to food.
The Five Natures of Food
According to traditional Chinese medicine, food can be cataloged according to its nature or energy as cold, warm, cool, hot, or neutral. Many foods seem to be a natural fit into one of these categories; for example, scallions have a warm nature. Others are less obvious, such as tomatoes being neutral to cool.
This can be a challenging concept for Western people to grasp, but in Chinese medicine, it has an inarguable logic and is one small aspect of understanding and codifying the incredible variety of plants that are available to us on this earth, each of which has a specific power—and often more than one—to heal us or harm us according to the condition of our bodies. If you eat too much food of one nature, that can cause an imbalance, which can lead to illness. Understanding these food properties will make maintaining the yin and yang balance in your body an easier concept to grasp.
The Five Flavors of Food
As well as assigning natures, in the texts of traditional Chinese medicine every food item is given a taste value—salty, sour, bitter, sweet, or pungent—depending on how the tongue perceives it. After food leaves the stomach, the elements of the food you have just eaten are directed to certain organs based on their taste value.
While some of the foods belong to the particular category you might expect them to, such as potato chips (not a remedy, by the way!) in the salty category or pickled food in the sour category, you will probably be surprised by some of the foods assigned to certain properties. It is also important for you to know that, given the fact that traditional Chinese medicine has been in use for several centuries, it is inevitable that some of these categorizations differ from source to source; in fact, they provide endless material for debate and discussion among scholars and practitioners.
SALTY FOODS go to the kidneys and bladder. These foods include shrimp, oysters, crabs, seaweed, millet, barley, duck, and pork.
SOUR FOODS go to the liver and gallbladder. These foods include lemons, oranges, pineapple, peaches, olives, hawthorn fruit (see this page), grapes, mango, and apples.
BITTER FOODS go to the heart and small intestine. These foods include coffee, wine, and asparagus.
SWEET FOODS go to the spleen and stomach. These foods include peas, peanuts, pumpkins, potatoes, milk, and rice.
PUNGENT FOODS go to the lungs and large intestine. These foods include ginger, sweet and hot peppers, cilantro, mint, garlic, and onions.
This theory is quite different from the American approach to nutrition and the qualities of various foods, representing a new way of understanding the properties of the ingredients we eat every day. Once you have grasped the concept, it should become clear how extremes in diet—both too much and too little of certain foods—can disrupt the yin and yang balance of the organs of the body. Ideally, for optimum qi, the five flavors should be coordinated into balanced daily meals, and you should not eat a lot more of one taste than any of the others.
However, it’s possible to modify the taste value of any food by balancing it with complementary ingredients to give it more yin or more yang. In other words, you can make a meal more balanced by identifying a particular food’s flavor and nature and combining it mindfully with synergistic foods. For example, since beef is considered sweet in taste and cool to neutral in nature, and broccoli is bitter in taste and warm in nature, combining these two foods can neutralize the finished dish, making it easier to digest and therefore more effective in balancing your qi.
Striving for a balance of internal yin and yang through proper selection and preparation of food is vitally important to maintaining optimal qi. You are likely to feel the difference even if you begin by making just a few changes to your daily diet.
CHAPTER TAKEAWAYS
The wisdom of qigong and learning to sense blockages and imbalances inside our own bodies are basic human intuitions that most of us have lost touch with.
Extremes in diet—both too much and too little of certain foods—can disrupt the yin and yang balance of the organs of the body.
By tuning in to the energies around and within us, we can learn to normalize ourselves and maximize the flow of our vital energy—our qi—for relaxation, general well-being, and, most significant, relief from pain and various kinds of physical and mental distress.