Current Evidence Regarding Conventional Drug Therapy and Acupuncture for the Management of IBS
Current drug therapy has been shown to be of limited benefit and to carry potential risks.[9, 10] In addition, a low level of patient satisfaction with care received from primary care physicians has been found among IBS patients.[11] Consequently, almost 50% of IBS patients turn to acupuncture and other complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies.[12]
Acupuncture has traditionally been utilized for the treatment of a variety of digestive complaints.
Acupuncture has traditionally been utilized for the treatment of a variety of digestive complaints. Research studies have suggested that acupuncture may be effective for certain cases of nausea, vomiting, gastroesophageal reflux disease, functional dyspepsia, bloating, abdominal pain, diarrhea, and constipation.[13, 14] Digestive symptoms could improve after acupuncture treatment partly because acupuncture affects the motility and perception of the digestive organs. Laboratory research using rats[15-19] and dogs[20] demonstrated that acupuncture stimulation significantly impacted gastrointestinal motility and visceral perception, both of which are closely associated with the development of IBS symptoms. Laboratory studies on rats also indicated that acupuncture stimulation on lower limbs (e.g., on the ST36 point) elicits gastric motility via vagal efferents, while acupuncture stimulation on the abdomen (e.g., on the ST25 point) inhibits gastric motility via sympathetic efferents.[18, 19, 21]
Clinical trials on IBS patients, however, have shown mixed results. The 2006 Cochrane Collaboration Systematic Review concluded that current evidence regarding the effectiveness of acupuncture for treating IBS is inconclusive.[22] Further rigorous clinical studies using adequate experimental design are certainly needed. However, compromised standardized acupuncture protocols that involve simply inserting needles into preselected points (often employed by previous clinical trials on acupuncture) are less likely to provide measurable benefits for the majority of IBS patients.
IBS is considered by gastroenterologists to be a “difficult” condition with significant psychological components.[23] Carefully designed, individualized, and comprehensive acupuncture programs will likely be needed to provide profound clinical benefits for many IBS patients.
Abdominal Acupuncture for IBS Treatment
At our Toronto clinic, acupuncture and moxibustion have been used to treat a variety of digestive conditions for over 20 years.
Treatment consists primarily of stimulating acupoints traditionally known to restore digestive functions by using both acupuncture and moxibustion. It also includes acupuncture and moxibustion therapy for emotional health. Our comprehensive acupuncture protocol is typically administered in three different patient positions:
Supine (facing up): Acupuncture is administered in this position primarily to stimulate points located in the legs, arms, and abdomen using our Japanese superficial needling techniques.
Prone (facing down): Acupuncture stimulation is applied on selected points along the spine, with attention to nerve segmentations associated with digestive organs. Moxibustion is applied to warm up selected acupoints.
Seated: At the end of the session, the patient is asked to sit on the treatment table so that a gentle superficial tapping acupuncture treatment can be administered on a point near his/her wrist. Studies have suggested that this particular acupuncture technique enhances autonomic nervous system (ANS) function.[24, 25] Optimal functioning of both branches of the ANS (sympathetic and parasympathetic) is crucial for proper digestion.
In addition, most patients are treated with our innovative approach, the Acupuncture and Sound-Assisted Autonomic Modulation Technique [26, 27], which involves acupuncture and moxibustion in combination with a specific HRV biofeedback breathing exercise. This specialized technique further augments the modulation functioning of the autonomic nervous system. This particular breathing exercise is utilized during acupuncture sessions; in addition, we ask patients to practice it between treatments to maintain the therapeutic benefits. This combined acupuncture and HRV biofeedback approach is currently provided only at our Toronto acupuncture clinic.
The cupping therapy is often incorporated in the traditional Chinese acupuncture and massage therapy practices. It has also been used in other parts of the world including Europe as traditional folk therapy.
During the cupping procedure, heat or mechanical vacuum devices are used to create a suction inside a glass or plastic cup. As the cup is then applied to the skin, the skin gets sucked up and rises inside the cup.
Variations of Cupping Methods:
Retained cupping
A common method of cupping in which the cup is kept at the same site for a certain period of time
Fire-insertion cupping method
A cupping procedure which involves inserting a piece of ignited alcohol-cotton into a cup and pressing the cup transversely onto the treated area of the lateral side of the body
Flash-fire cupping method
A cupping procedure which involves flashing the fire of a piece of ignited alcohol-cotton once around the cup’s interior and pressing the cup onto the treated area immediately after removing the ignited cotton
Cotton-burning cupping method
A cupping procedure performed by placing a thin layer of alcohol-cotton on the lower one third of the cup wall, and pressing the cup onto the treated area after igniting the cotton
Slide cupping
A cupping method in which the cup or jar is moved on the skin surface to extend the acting area
Medicated cupping
A form of cupping therapy in which the cup is put into boiling medicinal solution before use
Pricking-cupping bloodletting method
A combined method of pricking and cupping in which pricking with a three-edged acupuncture needle is followed by cupping to increase bloodletting
Fire Cupping Method
Fire cupping therapy
Vacuum Device Method
Cupping Device
During the Cupping Procedure
Cupping During
Reference:
WHO International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine in the Western Pacific Region. World Health Organization, 2007
Characteristics of Cupping Treatment
Relaxation *
Therapeutic ***
Intensity: Moderate to Very Strong
Lubrication: no
Undressing: Yes
Tip: Depends on facility
Original article and pictures take www.massageprocedures.com site
Cumin is popular in Indian, Mexican and Middle Eastern cuisines. According to ayurveda, it is balancing for all three doshas. It is supposed to aid digestion and help flush toxins out of the body.
Cumin can be used either as whole seeds or ground, raw or dry-roasted. Ground raw, it is a dull brown color, which is enriched by being sautéed in ghee or oil. Powdered dry-roasted cumin is a rich brown in color. Both sautéing and roasting make the aroma and flavor of cumin come alive. Cumin combines well with a wide range of other spices, including turmeric, ground fennel, ground coriander, ground dry ginger and cinnamon.
Sprinkle ground, dry-roasted cumin on fresh yogurt, add salt to taste, and enjoy at lunch. Or blend yogurt, water (50-50) with ground, dry-roasted cumin and salt to taste for a refreshing lunchtime drink. Called lassi in India, this drink is excellent for digestion. This form of cumin can also be combined with some minced ginger, lemon juice, salt and black pepper to make a dressing for a warm salad of cooked white beans or lightly-steamed shredded carrots. Whole cumin seeds, sautéed in ghee, make a flavorful addition to lentil and legume soups. Wholesome and nutritious, these soups can be meals in themselves.
Disclaimer
The sole purpose of these articles is to provide information about the tradition of ayurveda. This information is not intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, cure or prevention of any disease. If you have any serious acute or chronic health concern, please consult a trained health professional who can fully assess your needs and address them effectively. If you are seeking the medical advice of a trained ayurvedic expert, call or e-mail us for the number of a physician in your area. Check with your doctor before taking herbs or using essential oils when pregnant or nursing.
Original article and pictures take www.mapi.com site
Thirty years ago, I was one of the first nationally certified acupuncturists in the United States and went on to open two offices in New Hampshire. Was so successful that the medical board felt compelled to come after me for practicing medicine (acupuncture) without a license. We battled it out in the state legislature and because nothing was decided, I had to close my offices and leave the state.
In the end, it was a good thing because it forced me on another path, one of capitalizing on my real love of being a color and communication psychologist, which became the basis of the deeper work I cultivate with patients and anyone else who dares to get close enough to me. I am a force for change and that is probably the biggest reason few risk much in being spiritually intimate with me. I turned into an unusual therapist, a family therapist with the capacity to do my best work inside my own family, where it really counts!
Personally, though I believe in the power of acupuncture, I never liked it much for myself because of my fear of needles and the pain that application of acupuncture sometimes brings. Even though it really is never a great pain, still I am squeamish and break out into a sweat when receiving treatments. Thus, my new path was better for me, though I have no problem in administering acupuncture to others. Now I only have to deal with that resistance (squeamishness).
Recently, in the last months, out of frustration with my continued health struggles, I trained two people to give me acupuncture treatments and I am amazed at the results. How I did this is a story that acupuncturists and all other healthcare professionals, and even doctors should hear. It all starts with measuring one’s heart rate variability with an incredible machine made in Russia called the VedaPulse.
There is a new module to the VedaPulse that gives, not only a meridian diagnosis but also four layers of acupuncture treatments to the points. Not only does it give a detailed treatment plan but it also describes and shows the location of the points and what each point does according to traditional Chinese medicine. It suggests sophisticated treatments, more sophisticated that from any acupuncturist I have ever known.
The level of diagnosis and treatment is advanced; more advanced and accurate then even the best acupuncturists are probably capable of. Meaning the VedaPulse puts within reach to acupuncturists and everyone else the tremendous healing power of Chinese medicine. It does this with an advanced and incredibly accurate way of reading the pulse, measuring the changes from one heartbeat to another over the course of five minutes.
Russian scientists have created expert hardware and software solution that allows you to automate the process of compiling acupuncture prescription taking into account 3 factors – patient’s disease, his physiological constitution and the functional state of organs and systems. Moreover, this solution is so easy to use that it can be even applied by those people, who are just starting to learn and practice acupuncture, shiatsu or reflexology.
VedaPulse pulse analysis assesses person’s constitution, state of the functional systems of the body and energy channels by analyzing heart rhythm. This method reflects classical pulse analysis, transformed into modern technology. Combination of traditional and modern approaches to the analysis of cardiac rhythm gives a reflexologist an ability to use traditional approach to the analysis of the 12 main meridians and the organs belonging to them, while creating an acupuncture recipe.
The power of VedaPulse lies in the combination of traditional and scientific approaches – not the opposition of one to another, but the synthesis of those two paths provides new opportunities for practitioners of all types.
“There are doctors in India, China and Tibet that have developed the art of “listening to the music of the heart,” over thousands of years and they are very good at it. There is ongoing research in Russia where researchers are decoding the pure sound of the heart working with an unpolluted, clean signal. The ancient doctors used the pulses as the reflections of the original impulses of the heart. Pulse diagnosis is one of the most important diagnostic methods in traditional East Asian medicine. By diagnosing the pulse, trained practitioners can reveal information on the balance of Qi and blood and on the homeostasis of the body and various organ systems,” writes Sudhir Bagga.
“Pulse diagnosis has very high diagnostic importance and significance in eastern medicine, but it depends on a doctor’s subjective sensations and oral tradition. To overcome these issues, many studies have been conducted on the objectification and quantification of pulse diagnosis, and electromechanical pulse diagnostic devices have been invented. The arterial pulse waveform has been widely used to diagnose and treat various diseases,” continues Bagga.
Pulse is one of the most critical signals of human life. It comes directly from heart to the blood vessel system. As pulse transmitted, reflections will occur at different level of blood vessels. Other conditions such as resistance of blood flow, elastic of vessel wall, and blood viscosity have clear influence on pulse. Pathological changes affect pulse in different ways: the strength, reflection, and frequency,” concludes Sudhir Bagga.
A new field of medicine is emerging and my Natural Allopathic Medicine is at the front of it because I am the one behind this evolving form of medicine. In the next week, I will be adding molecular hydrogen to my work, as well as liquefied seeds for high-powered concentrated nutrition. Both of these healing medicines will boost the efficacy of the Natural Allopathic or anyone’s protocol.
Though the VedaPulse gives out remarkable information, I am not saying that it is a replacement for decades of clinic experience and experimentation. However, it does not matter if one is a beginner or a veteran the VedaPulse gives an objective and extremely descriptive diagnosis to a level unseen in today’s world of medicine. Diagnosis now means something that was lost with western medicines diagnostic philosophy, which is a simple one-dimensional system.
The VedaPulse offers a multidimensional view of the patient, a level of listening that few have ears to hear. Yet there is a beyond, a level of listening that only a physician can apply that is so deep the physician can become one with the patient. We cannot begin to flow towards another person until the psychic skin covering the heart is removed.
Perfect listening opens the heart to pure empathy. It is an intuitive space where every word is heard, the eyes looked deeply into, and the body language felt. On this plane, we become doctors of the soul and read into the meaning of a person’s life. Into the areas of internal separation, fear and doubt that destroy the connection between a person’s head and their heart.
Original article and pictures take www.corespirit.com site
Comparing Greek and Chinese Philosophy and Science
Most people are aware by now that we can find science, technology, and medicine in every culture, but the outcome of decades of research on non-European traditions has not been, as we might have hoped, a narrative of world science.1 What we find instead is a set of stories that remain largely unrelated until they end, one by one, with bodies of knowledge and practice pulverized by the impact of the West. Some bits survive, more or less, such as traditional Chinese medicine. So far as the rest of the world is concerned, they are exotic curiosities rather than parts of an understanding that hang together.
The history of science ought to be more than a collection of cultural ghettos. That is why people curious about the evolution of science as a general human phenomenon have always invested such high hopes in comparative studies.
For three hundred years historians have been forming judgments about the relations of European and other scientific traditions, and the main similarities and differences between them. But if we ask what we have learned from these three centuries of comparative studies, the answer is embarrassingly little.
Certainly no educated person today would claim that the Chinese or the Japanese had no aptitude for science, or that Islamic science depended entirely on borrowings from Greece. Every undergraduate who has taken an introductory course in the history of science knows that the centers of innovation in late-fourteenth-century mathematical astronomy were not Paris and Oxford but Seoul and Baghdad. That is not the result of comparative study, but of research by specialists on one civilization at a time.
Explicitly comparative study has called attention to a number of parallels between civilizations, and to regular contacts between their technical traditions. But has it uncovered new possibilities of human thought and practice? Has it led to substantial understanding of worldwide science? Has it helped us to a deeper comprehension of Japanese medicine, or Greek epistemology, or Indian mathematics? A certain number of facts and dates has accumulated, but the conclusions drawn in the many published comparisons seldom affect our own understanding.
Disappointment will continue to outbalance hope as long as we insist on comparing things out of context one at a time, whether they are concepts, values, machines, or groups of people. I cannot offer a ready-made formula for a more optimistic approach, but let me describe my current explorations.
They began four years ago when I met G.E.R. Lloyd, a historian of classical philosophy and science who for some time had been as worried as I had been about the need for comparisons that made sense. He had been following recent and innovative scholarship on China, as I had done with respect to Europe. We began a series of exploratory studies that we hoped would point us in revelatory directions. After three years of exchanging what turned out to be a thick stack of drafts, and meeting in the summers to argue about them, we decided that this experiment was worth continuing. It was yielding new questions that suggested new ways to look at the traditions we studied.
We decided to begin a more or less systematic collaborative study of Chinese and Greek natural philosophy and science. At present we are rereading the primary literature, led by new questions to find new things in it. We have begun drafting and rewriting parts of what will take several years to become a finished book. Our preliminary studies, not at all restricted to science, have led us to define what seem to be several useful approaches to comparison:
1. An advantage of cooperation is that it gives us approximately equal depth in the study of the two cultures.2 We do not want to add to the accumulation of comparisons that put together a substantial understanding of one with superficial generalities about the other. Mastery of the languages and the primary sources of both traditions is hardly optional.
2. We do not choose what to compare by the criteria of today’s science, but by what turn out to be important similarities or contrasts in Greece and China. We look for superficial similarities with different significances, or different means that lead to analogous ends. We are trying to learn how different cultural circumstances push ideas and institutions in different directions.
That leads us to draw on aspects of Greek thought that have no counterpart in China, at least in the period that interests us. An obvious example is Greek element theories, which claim that things are made up of minute ultimate parts that usually do not look like the parts that are big enough for us to see. Element theories build on the idea that reality is hidden, and direct experience is in some ultimate sense not real. That fundamental claim, which we usually refer to as appearance vs. reality, has no counterpart in China. Exploring the circumstances in which it developed in Greece has drawn our attention to Chinese circumstances that leave no scope for such an idea.
Equally interesting, of course, are important Chinese ideas that were not found in Europe, for instance cheng ming which used to be translated “the rectification of names.” This is actually quite a diverse group of doctrines about what should be done when names and the things that they designate do not correspond. The variations point to different social interests and political agendas. Greeks entertained vaguely similar ideas, but what we find interesting is how peripheral they were there.
Much effort has been wasted by comparativists straining to find logic in early Chinese philosophy, but no one has yet come to grips with the complementarity of Greek logic and Chinese semantics. Semantics, after all, is what the the people that historians lump together as ming-chia mostly discussed.3
More obvious comparisons are possible when concepts or assumptions turn up in both cultures. Because their settings are different, they are bound to have very different implications. Topics worth exploring range from patronage as a form of livelihood (which had very different implications in the two cultures) to the idea that the state and the human body are both miniature replicas of Nature. I will summarize below our approach to this idea of macrocosm and microcosms, to make it clear that what we are doing is more than a conventional exercise in the history of ideas.
3. There is obviously some risk in picking activities to compare from dissimilar periods, where their settings and their significances may be very different. We have looked for a single period in which both cultures seem to be passing through more or less analogous transitions and in which the literatures are comparable. There is no particular reason that there should be such a period. But we believe that there is one.
It happens that between roughly 300 B.C. and A.D. 200 both China and Greece decisively moved away from a free-for-all in philosophic innovation. By the end of that time both were obsessed instead with preserving what had already been done. This was also the period in which the sciences separated out of natural philosophy and established their own institutions and distinct literatures.
Medicine did so earlier in Greece. In the fifth century B.C., when philosophy was just developing its repertory, medicine was already a flourishing intellectual as well as practical enterprise. Still, in the Hellenistic period, from about 300 B.C.on, in medicine as well as in physics, people focussed more and more attention on the past, on what had been inherited from the ancients.
Those five hundred years give us a large and more or less commensurable literature in which to explore basic scientific issues that had not been pressing earlier. In natural science and mathematics we can confront Eudoxus, Euclid, Hipparchus and Ptolemy with the Mathematical Methods in Nine Chapters (Chiu chang suan shu the Arithmetical Canon of the Chou Gnomon (Chou pi suan ching and the astronomical treatises of the first two Standard Histories. In medicine we can set Galen and his predecessors side by side with Chinese classics from the Mawangdui manuscripts through the Canon of Eighty-one Problems (Huang-ti pa-shih-i nan ching
The period we are studying is especially significant in a sense that we did not realize when we began. It was an era of fundamental political change at both ends of Eurasia. The Hellenistic period marked the end of the independent Greek city state as a significant unit. The social order that had evolved thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle ceased to exist. The larger world that Alexander’s empire created, the world in which Rome rose and fatally overextended itself by the year 200, was bound to redefine the scope of learning and science.
In China too, changes in society and politics paralleled a change in thought and work. The same half-millennium began with rapidly shifting constellations of power as the local potentates of the Chou dynasty wiped each other out. Over those five centuries, the first universal and centrally organized imperial state first stabilized itself, then disintegrated, and finally collapsed.
Before 300, ambitious intellectuals competed in a widespread system of princely patronage. As the Han state succeeded, they became civil servants in a single bureaucracy and eventually adherents of a single state orthodoxy. But that order faded. By A.D. 200 a position in the civil service could be as dangerous as it could be profitable, and the official philosophy was no longer being taken seriously. That leaves us with the stimulating challenge to determine how these political changes are related to the emergence of natural philosophy and science. The period is the same, and to a large extent the actors are the same.
4. My colleague and I are not comparing things or concepts, but processes, evolving activity. Like most historians of science today, we have no use for the idea that science is one thing and its context another. We are looking at ideas, their use, and the social process that created and elaborated them, as a single phenomenon. How physicians or astronomers earned a living, how thinkers grouped themselves, in what ways they publicly disagreed, and what political significance they claimed for cosmology are just as revealing as concepts, forms of proof, and patterns of thought.
From this point of view it does not make sense to ask whether social change was the cause of scientific change, or whether philosophy changed politics. We see these as part of a single manifold of history. Our work is understanding what makes them one process. A prime example is the close linkages from the third century on between natural process, political process, and the vital processes of the human body.
There has been a great deal of writing on the development of cosmology in China, in connection with natural philosophy and the individual sciences. The yin-yang, Five Phases, and ch’i concepts were eventually combined to provide the framework for a new theory of resonance between Heaven and Earth on the one hand and the political realm on the other, with the body a second microcosm. A number of scholars including myself would put the final synthesis in the first century B.C., near the end of the Western Han. The document that consummated the mature synthesis of yin-yang, Five Phases, and ch’i now appears to be the Inner Canon of the Yellow Lord (Huang-ti nei ching from the third century on did not associate concepts of the state with cosmology and science because the empirical data forced them to do so. Rather, as I show in Chap. IV, the yin-yang and Five Phases concepts were moral and political from the start. In the long sweep of Chinese thought they remained at the same time moral, political, and physical.
Ideas of ch’i, yin-yang, and so on permeated all three domains because they were too politically important to pass by. What made them important is that the same people were using them to claim that the operations of the unified and centralized Ch’in-Han state were based on Nature’s processes. They were arguing that resisting a state built on the unity of Nature was bound to fail as surely as resisting the four seasons was bound to fail. They were also trying to persuade an emperor not bound by constitution or law to limit his own freedom. They argued that he and his officials could keep cosmos and state aligned only by modeling government on the regularities and disciplines that governed heaven and earth.
Let us look at the book that first systematically developed such parallels, Lü Pu-wei’s Springs and Autumns (Lü shih ch’un-ch’iu It begins with the idea that interfering with the circulation in the human body leads to illness. It goes on first to draw out parallels in Nature, and then to point out their meaning for the state. This book was written in a chaotic time (ca. 239) when there had been no Chou king for a generation, and when no one could do more than hope that China would soon be unified:
Human beings have 360 joints, nine body openings, and five yin and six yang systems of function. In the flesh tightness is desirable; in the blood vessels (hsueh-mo free flow is desirable; in the sinews and bones solidity is desirable; in the operations of the heart and mind harmony is desirable; in the essential ch’i regular motion is desirable. When [these desiderata] are realized, illness has nowhere to abide, and there is nothing from which pathology can develop. When illness lasts and pathology develops, it is because the essential ch’i has become static.
Analogously, water when stagnant becomes foul; a tree when [the circulation of its ch’i is] stagnant becomes worm-eaten; grasses when [the circulation of their ch’i is] stagnant become withered (?).
States too have their stases. When the ruler’s virtue does not flow freely [i.e., if he does not appoint good officials to keep him and his subjects in touch], and the wishes of his people do not reach him, this is the stasis of a state. When the stasis of a state lasts for a long time, a hundred pathologies arise in concert, and a myriad catastrophes swarm in. The cruelty of those above and those below toward each other arises from this. The reason that the sage kings valued heroic retainers and faithful ministers is that they dared to speak directly, breaking through such stases.
This union of politics, physics, and medicine was not temporary. It made its way into what you might call “the first Neo-Confucianism” (see Chap. IV). This promiscuous doctrine, much of it contrary to the teachings of Confucius, became conventional among the office-holding elite from the late second century on. Here is a sample from Abundant Dew on the Spring and Autumn Annals (Ch’un-ch’iu fan lu 156/130 B.C.), which designed the Han Confucian state orthodoxy:7 “the king models himself on heaven. He models himself on its seasons and consummates them. He models himself on its commands and circulates them among all men. He models himself on its constant categories and uses them when initiating affairs. He models himself on its Way and thereby makes order emerge. He models himself on its will and thus commits [his realm] to benevolence.”
The political focus continued into the literature of the distinct sciences that emerged in the first century B.C. It is common in the ancient books that came to be considered the founding canons of the various sciences. We can see it, for instance, in the dialogues between emperors and ministers in the medical Inner Canon and the cosmological Mathematical Canon. It recurs where we would most expect to find it, namely in technical writings for and by emperors, at least down to the medical Canon of Sagely Benefaction (Sheng chi ching of 1118.)
This passage from the Basic Questions (Su wen a version of the Inner Canon, is not about macrocosm and microcosm, but about the correspondence of the two microcosms, state and body. It begins as the Yellow Lord tells his minister Ch’i-po that he wants to hear “about the relative authority of the twelve systems of functions associated with the internal organs, about which is higher in rank and which lower.” A key to medicine, in other words, is the political hierarchy of the visceral systems, seen as departments in a civil service. Ch’i-po replies:
The cardiac system is the office of the monarch; consciousness issues from it. The pulmonary system is the office of the minister-mentors; oversight and supervision issue from it. The hepatic system is the office of the General; planning issues from it. The gall bladder system is the office of the rectifiers; decisions issue from itÿ20.ÿ20.ÿ20. [and so on for twelve systems of body functions associated with internal organs]. It will not do for these twelve offices to lose their coordination.
If the ruler is enlightened, all below him are secure. If one nourishes one’s vital forces in accordance with this, one will live long and pass through life without peril. If one governs all under Heaven in accordance with this, it will be greatly prosperous.
If the ruler is unenlightened, the twelve offices will be endangered, so that the thoroughfares of circulation will be closed off and movement will not be free. The body (hsing will be seriously injured. If one nourishes one’s vitalities in accordance with this, the result will be calamity. One who governs all under Heaven in accordance with this will imperil his patrimony. Take care! Take care!
There is no need to pause over the choice of civil service posts, which relate each set of functions to the ensemble of vital processes. Ch’i-po’s point is that these systems make up the body’s internal bureaucracy, and that the heart (which thinks, wills, and feels) coordinates their activities in the same way as the emperor keeps his civil service working together. Executive virtue is equally crucial in both spheres. Health is defined in terms of an ultimately political ideal.
These examples show that government depends on patterns that also hold for the cosmos and the body, and that the functional systems of the body make up a bureaucracy. To complete the schema, since the state is a little cosmos, the cosmos must be a civil service writ large. This is clear enough from the first of the astronomical treatises in the Standard Histories, which is in fact entitled The Book of Celestial Offices (“T’ien kuan shu Each of the constellations it enumerates turns out to be a department staffed by stars.
Comparisons
Let me summarize a few of the conclusions we have drawn from comparing the relations of macrocosms and microcosms in China with those we find in Greece:
1. Greek culture in the period that concerns us encouraged disagreement and disputation in natural philosophy and science as in every other field; in China the emphasis remained on consensus.
2. For Greeks, whatever other purposes it served, oral disagreement was a tool of competition. Without sinecures or even secure employment, philosophers were teachers. They depended on skill in debate for livelihood and fame. They tended to argue face to face and to expect the public to decide, just as it decided in the assembly or at trials. Even when Greeks agreed that something was the case, they seldom agreed on why or how.
In China people who lived by their knowledge, with few exceptions, expected rulers to support them–as “guests” (ke in the local courts of the Warring States and as imperial officials in the Han. They presented their ideas much of the time not to colleagues but rather to their patrons, who expected advice but did not have to act on it, or even to reply to it. This relationship hardly made for lively exchanges, and few are recorded. Disagreements with other scholars were, except for a testy few who tended to have unsatisfactory careers, unimportant by comparison. Open attacks were usually written–and one-sided. Patrons faced with political decisions encouraged parleys on concrete questions, but seldom showed patience for anything resembling intellectual debate.
On the whole, the Chinese valued consensus as much as the Greeks valued dispute. In China the relationships of masters and disciples were based on the ritual transmission of written texts. A teacher and his disciples formed an internally cohesive community that avoided attacking other communities. Quarrels were not likely to be productive when teachers aspired above all to official employment for their pupils, and when parents measured success by the same criterion.
3. Like those of China, Greek macrocosms and microcosms reflected political ideals. For the Chinese those ideals remained unifying and centripetal. From the Han on, in a social system that valued civil service above every other career, philosophers who wanted to be politically engaged, or simply respectable, understood the risk of favoring alternatives to the current dispensation of power.
In Greece, with its diverse city-states, constitutions, and political tastes, some people saw the cosmos as a single order, some as an ensemble of quite distinct orders, some as a balance of opposed powers, some as a state of strife. There was no shared ideal to build on.
4. Chinese rulers formed a loyal civil service elite by building on symbols and rituals that literati valued. But this process of alignment bound both. As an element of the new ideology, rulers to varying extents accepted limitations on their power.
The interests of Greek rulers were on the whole irrelevant to the thinkers who developed diverse cosmic metaphors for the state. Philosophers had no voice in the decisions of power-holders. Because intellectuals were not constrained by reasons of state, and because their public roles were played out in disagreement rather than consensus, their stances reflected a great range of contradictory definitions of state as well as of cosmos.
Conclusion
Because of circumstances like the ones I have summed up for this single example, the two cultures differed greatly in what one said and how one said it. The comparison throws into relief the reasons that the discourse of Chinese science was so rarely confrontational. Natural philosophers in the Western Han accepted the state’s view of itself because, unlike their Greek counterparts, they formed and maintained it. The same people shaped a view not merely of the political microcosm, but of the cosmos and the body. We intend to explore further the manifold in which the three were united, particularly to understand why it remained desirable to keep them linked as the separate sciences emerged. This sketch of one of our themes suggests that the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place.
Original article and pictures take www.corespirit.com site
Cold Laser Light Therapy and the Mind–Body Connection
Most people tend to not let go of unresolved emotions and experiences, many of which are often unconscious; this can be hazardous to your health and to your skin. Your body is full of unresolved emotions and memories that can be triggered by present day situations and stimulus, which can cause a negative reaction in emotions, thoughts, behaviors, physical health, relationships, and to your complexion.
Many illnesses are the end result of emotions that have been repressed and unacknowledged, and often covered up which can lead to physical, mental and emotional health concerns. Unexpressed emotions tend to stay in the body like emotional land mines waiting to be set off.
According to experts in mind/body medicine, our emotions have a profound effect on us because they are physically linked to our bodies by way of our immune, endocrine, and central nervous system. These experts agree that often the seeds for a person’s physical, mental and emotional problems were planted by their earlier emotional traumas.
Research has shown through the Mayo Clinic, that unresolved grief can surface years later as insomnia, memory loss, lack of focus, depression, anxiety, headaches, relationship issues, intestinal problems, mental health difficulties, eating disorders, addictions and other issues.
How Stress Affects your Skin
Healthy looking skin is a reflection of how healthy your organs are. Stress, cortisol (the stress hormone), and accumulated toxins building up in your body can negatively affect our physical, emotional, mental health and our skin. Your face can also shows how resilient you are to stress.
When you notice the signs of uneven skin tone and texture, appearances of pigmentation and dark spots, pimples, acne, rashes, and broken capillaries it is, in part, an indication of the accumulation of toxins that are building up in your body. When the immune system weakens, the effect can be seen on your face as a warning sign. It is your skin’s attempt at expelling the accumulated toxins from your body.
Light Frequencies Help Detoxify & Release Toxins
It is believed by some, that light therapy energetically stimulates unconscious and unresolved issues, and that by putting light and color frequencies into the mind/body system that stagnant areas will begin releasing. This is the detoxification of emotions, echoes physical detoxification, and is possibly the catalyst for physical detoxification. This “Energy Detox” gives the body a boost to return to a balanced body and mind, enabling it to reverse decades of accumulated toxins.
Chinese and Russian scientists have demonstrated that the acupuncture meridians transmit light, which makes it a possibility that these points are pathways where organisms most effectively absorb light. Vibrational imbalances seen as increased light emissions in cells, could be brought into balance by the application of light in complementary or balancing colors along the meridian points.
A German bio-physicist, Dr. Fitz Albert Popp’s work clarified how human cells communicate. He described a constant level of radiating light moving gently around the body, similar to the esoteric descriptions of the auric field. His experiments demonstrated that all cells communicate by light within the spectrum of visible light and microwave energy.
When a cell becomes disturbed in some way, the light vibration around that cell becomes disharmonious, which is then thought to detrimentally influence the vibrational patterns of neighboring cells.
The red Cold Laser Light adds energy and tone and stimulates, while the cool colors like blue and green decrease and sedate the life energy. Each color is associated with a particular wavelength and photon intensity. The shorter wavelengths, such as the light from the red end of the spectrum, have the lowest photon frequency but the highest intensity.
How Cold Laser Light Therapy & Meridian Massage can Affect Wellbeing
It is believed that Cold Laser Light Therapy may enhance emotional and mental wellbeing. It can help to reduce everyday stress, anxiety and depression by targeting meridian points and through the release of serotonin and endorphins.
There is an increasing body of evidence that suggests that Cold Laser Light Therapy treatments on meridian points can stimulate a similar effect as acupressure, traditional acupuncture with needles, and reflexology.
The body has an energy circulation system that is similar to the blood circulation system. The energy flows along 12 main meridians or channels with many points that are like connecting stations through which energy flows into the muscle to allow balanced activity to take place.
If this energy becomes blocked, imbalances can develop causing some connecting station points to become irritated or congested. This can result in pain or weakness in the surrounding muscles as well as causing aches, pains, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and other physical, mental and emotional concerns. Stimulating these points helps to normalize impaired conditions.
According to Traditional Chinese medicine, the main organs and their meridians are also associated with different emotions. An excessive amount of these emotions can damage the associated organs, while a disease of these organs may, in time, lead to excessive displays of these emotions.
The following are some examples of the meridian points that correlate to a particular emotion and thought process:
The Heart meridian is responsible for: excessive laughter and fear.
The Lung meridian is responsible for: grief, sorrow and negativity.
The Gallbladder meridian is responsible for: judgments, decisions, motivation, governing emotions of anger and irritability.
The Liver meridian is responsible for: planning, anger, irritability, excessive excitability, crying moods, and a compulsion to over function or under function at work or other areas of life.
The Small Intestines meridian is responsible for: filtering information and sorting out facts to make decisions.
The Spleen meridian is responsible for: thought, learning, concentration, worry and emotional tension.
The Kidney meridian is responsible for: will, sexual impulse, negativity, unease, fear, timidity, impatience, over functioning or under functioning at work or other areas of life.
Why the Face is the Perfect Area to Release Emotional & Physical Toxins
The face is a micro-map of the body’s 12 meridian energy points, representing areas and systems within the body; while also stimulating circulation in the brain and nervous system. A relaxation response may occur by releasing serotonin and endorphins and reducing some of the stress related symptoms such as: depression, anxiety and other mental and physical symptoms. Overall health and emotional wellbeing can be enhanced in this way.
Many practitioners of Reflexology, acupressure and other types of treatments working with the meridians, are concentrating more on the face, which has a large number of nerves and blood vessels, and is the closest to the brain, which is the control center of the body. So it makes sense to stimulate the meridian/energy points there, which can effect the blood circulation and the nerve supply.
Working on the face is a natural relaxing experience that can reduce stress and tension and helps to create a natural healing element. By massaging and stimulating the meridian points on the face, lymphatic drainage can flow, the glands are stimulated, the facial muscles are revitalized, and the healing process is supported. The benefit is long-term facial rejuvenation with smoother, suppler skin, reduced fine lines, improved skin elasticity, and a more radiant complexion.
Cold Laser Light Therapy, Lymphatic Drainage, and Meridian Massage, each contributes in gently releasing emotional and physical toxins as well as rejuvenating and lifting the skin.
The following conditions should not receive Cold Laser Light Therapy and/or Meridian Massage:
Epilepsy
Acute infection with a high temperature
Stroke – in the first two weeks
Allergies to the active ingredients in gels / products
Immune deficiency disease
Thyroid problems
Hepatitis
Oral blood thinners / Circulation problems
Pregnancy
Heart problems
Pace Maker
Diabetics
Cancer
Anti-coagulating drugs (i.e., Warfarin and Heparin)
People taking a variety or high dosage of drugs
Up to six months after heart surgery
Hypersensitive people (e.g., chronic fatigue)
Contagious conditions
Implanted defibrillators or stimulators
Original article and pictures take www.corespirit.com site
Menopause is the natural termination of the menstrual cycle and reproductive years, usually occurring between age 48 to 55. At this time the ovaries start making less oestrogen and progesterone, the hormones that regulate menstruation.
Ideally, this process is smooth and easy. However, when the menopausal transformation is not harmonious, a variety of symptoms may present, common among them are: ‘hot flashes’, headaches, irritability, depression, insomnia, nervousness, leg cramps, night sweats, vaginal dryness and lethargy.
During this transition, some women have a noticeable reduction in their desire for sexual activity.
Chinese medicine, which primarily comprises the practice of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine, can offer an additional or alternative method of facilitating this transition and improving libido.
How Does Acupuncture Help?
In Chinese medicine, the symptoms of menopause are often characterised as an empty heat condition. In relieving the symptoms, acupuncture may be used to:
– Clear heat (primarily characterised by feelings of heat)
– Improve libido
– Nourish the fluids of the body (which are being depleted by excessive sweating and also evidenced by vaginal dryness)
– Calm the spirit
Extremely thin needles are inserted at specific acupuncture points and gently stimulated with minimal or no discomfort. These points are selected from acupuncture points on the body and ear, based on the presenting symptoms.
Chinese Herbal Remedies
Herbal formulas may be given alongside acupuncture or by themselves. These herbs are also used to improve libido, relieve/improve vaginal dryness, clear heat, nourish the fluids of the body and calm the spirit. In creating the ideal herbal formula, a number of herbs are typically combined to address the myriad symptoms.
– To improve libido: Yin Yang Huo (Horny Goat Weed), Tu Si Zi (Dodder Seed) and Hai Ma (Sea Horse) may be combined to increase libido.
– To clear heat, nourish fluids and relieve vaginal dryness: Bai He (Lily Bulb), Sheng Di Huang (Rehmannia) and Mu Li (Oyster Shell) may be combined to address symptoms such as: hot flashes, night sweating and vaginal dryness.
– To calm the spirit/shen: To improve symptoms such as insomnia, irritability and depression, the herbs Ling Zhi (Ganoderma), Xie Cao (Valerian root) and Zhen Zhu (Pearl) may be added.
Whether the treatment given is acupuncture and/or herbal formulas, there is usually an improvement in symptoms almost immediately. Treatment will continue while symptoms are evident. For the many women who have menopausal problems, it is of some consolation to know that most symptoms are temporary and will usually pass.
Diet And Lifestyle Recommendations
As with any health-care programme, diet and lifestyle plays an important role.
Useful foods to include in the diet are:
– Black beans
– Soy products
– Saffron (stir spice into already cooked rice or vegetables)
– Aloe vera
– Wheat germ
-Mung beans
– String beans
– Seaweed
– Tofu
– Kidney beans
– Barley
– Black sesame seeds
Avoid:
– Coffee
– Alcohol
– Cigarettes
– Excess meat consumption
– Excessive amounts of stress
Additionally, useful supplements to include calcium, B complex, vitamin A, C and E.
Original article and pictures take www.corespirit.com site
