INTRODUCTION
The doctor should first correct the patient’s diet and lifestyle and only if these changes did not bring the right results should acupuncture and herbal medicine be applied
Sun si-miao of the tang dynasty (618-907 CE)
It is said that a successful cure is made up of 7 parts nursing (ie diet and lifestyle) and 3 parts medicine.
Chinese dietary therapy has been practised since before the Qin and Han dynasties more than 2000 years ago. In more modern centuries highly literate scholar doctors took empirically created Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) folk remedies and arranged and explained them according to basic underlying principles. These principles are universally applicable and can be adapted for any local or regional populations, their diseases and their ingredients. Once one understands these basic principles, one can then choose foods with which they are familiar and find appetising.
To learn these principles, first we must learn the perspective they are given in…
- The Tao
- Yin Yang
- 5 Phases
- Vital Substances
- Zang Fu (the organ systems)
Then comes the treatment Principles and then the Energetic natures of foods
THE PRINCIPLES OF ORIENTAL MEDICINE
The Tao
There was something chaotic yet complete, Which existed before the creation of Heaven and Earth
Without sound and formless
It stands alone and does not change
It pervades all and is free from danger
It can be regarded as the mother of the world
Tao Te Ching #49
The Tao is the complete totality that encompasses and harmonizes all opposites. In this primal state of Tao all things are formless, existing only as potential. The potentiality of all things is interpenetrating, as the Tao is implicit in all things and all things are implicit in one another. This state in which the Tao pervades all and everything, contains an implicit image of every other thing, is the basis of the holistic model that is foundational in the quality of thought contained in the inner tradition.
Lonny Jarrett
Returning is the motion of the Tao
Yielding is the way of the Tao ‘
The ten thousand things are born of being Being is born of not being
Tao Te Ching #40
Without going outside, you may know the whole world
Without looking through the window, you may see the ways of Heaven
The farther you go the less you know
The sage knows without traveling
He sees without looking
He works without doing
Tao Te Ching #47
Yin and Yang
The Tao, the vast sea of potentiality, gives birth to the two, heaven and earth, the active and quiescent poles of the cosmos. Heaven rises out of the primordial chaos, like a single star cast out over a boundless ocean. Radiating down upon the silent sea from which it rose, heaven extends its influence toward earth. The qualities of the two universal poles, heaven and earth, are perfectly blended by an empty whirling vortex.
Lonny Jarrett
MORE TO COME …
- 5 Phases
- Vital Substances
- Zang Fu (the organ systems)
- Treatment Principles
- Energetic natures of foods