A global approach
Although its main methods of treatment are addressed to the physical body
(massage, acupuncture, dietetics, pharmacopoeia) and that
reasons for consultation are most often physical discomfort and
somatizations (musculoskeletal pain, withdrawal, fatigue, depression,
respiratory, digestive, uro-genital disorders, etc.), Medicine
Traditional Chinese (TCM) does not envisage separation between plans
physical, emotional and spiritual. Nor can it conceive of the functioning
of the individual out of his social, geographic and even cosmological context …
We are far from a vision that compares the body to a sophisticated machine
made of separate, interchangeable and repairable parts. TCM
has always favored a global approach, it bases its diagnosis
and his treatment plan on a conception of life where any component
sees itself in a network of relationships and interdependencies.
Man and his environment
For example, Heaven and Earth, considered as the two forces
macrocosm major,
provide the microcosm
human both his original spirit and his material web (the body)
which, indivisible, allow it to exist. The organism, throughout its life,
receives from the Sky-Earth Air couple
and Food
necessary for its survival. Other aspects of the environment are
also determining for the human being, and are considered
as full-fledged elements of his physiology;
we can think of the climate, the day-night light cycle or seasonal variations
of temperature and humidity which influence the life cycles of
microorganisms, plants and animals. All of this has a major impact on
food chains and the ecosystems we depend on,
as well as on the development of pathogenic factors such as viruses
and bacteria, which TCM equates in its language to
Perverse energies.
The chemical and dynamic components of
Food, which TCM represents by the concept of Flavors, support
the activity of the Organs
and fabrics. Air assimilation
and Food constantly renews the Energies that maintain our
primary vitality and our body shape, allowing us to use,
to preserve and develop the gifts and capacities that
our parents passed on to us to design and that represent
the heritage of our lineage.
A circular vision
TCM explains that health and balance come from relationships
between three important aspects of our being:
- The Substances
that circulate in our body – constantly renewed. - The quality of the physical and mental characteristics received
from our parents. - The subtle levels that inhabit us: emotions and psychic functions.
All these constituents are interdependent:
- The state of Substances and Organs influences our perceptions and our state
emotional (if you have a stomach ache, you can become more intolerant …). - The dynamism of the emotions affects the activity of the mind,
of consciousness and psyche, as well as on the possibility of developing
our spiritual dimension (if we live in perpetual insecurity,
self-realization is our last concern). - Mental activity, consciousness and spirituality influence
in turn our perceptions and emotions, just as they determine
our way of life (the way we breathe, eat and use resources
of Heaven and Earth). - This way of life in turn influences the renewal and maintenance of
substances
organs…
Thus, the circle is closed in a spiral which maintains our health
and develops our know-how, or on the contrary which drives us
towards illness and physical and mental suffering; and this set – organic
and inextricable – depends on our daily choices, constantly repeated.
A healing step by step
TCM intervenes in small doses, case by case, step by step … by
breathing exercises and body movements a thousand times repeated
and corrected for Qi Gong, through daily meditation, diet
regular, firm and repetitive massage movements
Tui Na, acupuncture treatments that awaken the memory of a state
of balance lost or which gradually draw the map of a new order,
and decoctions or herbal teas, drunk and rejected with the same grimaces,
but the same patient determination. All of these efforts are gradually being used
to correct general condition, to stimulate functions
immune and to drive out pathogens like a slow fight
which is sometimes won in a dazzling (and easy) way, but more often
inch by inch with courage and persistence!
The curative approach to TCM is certainly not the easiest way
– she does not offer to take two pills and wait! His holistic vision
however allows the patient to be an active element in the heart
of the healing process. It offers the opportunity to appropriate
responsibility for one's own health, considering the multiples
dimensions of his being as much to assess his problem as
to choose from the countless possible healing avenues.
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