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Viewing Health and Disease from a Different Perspective
According to Chinese medical philosophy, upon which chi kung therapeutic principles are based, there is no such a thing as an incurable disease. There are also no such diseases as cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, cancer, tubercolosis and depression. If you think this is odd, it is because you have been so conditioned to thinking in terms of the western medical paradigm that, consciously or unconsciously, you assume that this paradigmn is the only correct way of looking at health and illness. This, of course, is not true -- just as it is not true to assume that English is the only language capable of effective communicaton, or that the Arabic numerals are the only symbols to represent numbers.
The Chinese medical paradigm has been successfully used to maintain and describe health for more than 5000 years, whereas the western medical paradigm has been used for less than one tenth the time. According to this time-tested paradigm, although there may be countless symptoms which may be described in westerm terms like cardiovascular disorders, diabetes or tubercolosis, there is strictly speaking only one disease, and this it is called by the Chinese as yin-yang disharmony.
Yin, here, represents the natural abilities of our body (and mind) to adjust to constantly changing environment, and yang represents all the factors that may cause illness. Yin-yang disharmony, therefore, means that the body fails in its natural abilities to arrest disease-causing factors. Happily, yin-yang harmony is the norm; yin-yang disharmony is unnatural and temporary.
If you have yin-yang harmony, which is another way of saying if your body systems work naturally, your body will adjust itself to the changing environment in the body caused by constantly changing factors. For example, if you have eaten two pieces of cake instead of just a bite, or three teaspoonful of sugar instead of just a pinch, you body will produce just that much chemicals to change the cake and sugar into useful material for the body. But if you have taken half a cake or just a teaspoon of sugar, then the necessary chemicals produced will be proportionately less.
Chinese medical scientists and chi kung masters are not interested in such details like the types or amounts of chemicals produced, or the manner and composition of their production, simply because such information, while interesting by itself, is not necessary for maintaining health. What they are concerned is to maintain yin-yang harmony. In other words, they are concerned that if x amount of chemical y is required for z minutes, then the body will produce x amount of chemical y for z minutes -- nothing more and nothing less, otherwise there won't be yin-yang harmony. They are not concerned whether x is 500 c.c. or 2600 ppm, y is called insuline or hydrochloric acid, and z is 10 seconds or 52.8 minutes. If p, q, r are required, then their concern is that p, q, r are produced instead of x, y, z; they do not even bother to find out what actually are p, q, r, or how they are produced, as long as they are produced. In other words, Chinese medical scientists and chi kung masters are interested in practical results, and not in academic issues.
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