How are your New Year detox resolutions shaping up? Ar you still going strong? We are now at that tricky end of January time where our vows and wishes for the New Year may start to waver, despite all our good intentions.
Why is this and how can we change this pattern? After all a definition of madness is said to be doing the same thing over and over again while expecting the results to be different! Are we then all crazy?
The simple answer is that we are often trying to change things without really taking the time to understanding the problem. We may try to change one thing, perhaps our drinking habits or body shape etc. without seeing it in the context of our life as a whole. Chinese Medicine is about seeing the whole picture.
Take for example the classic post holiday detox which is often the focus of our vows. If you take the time to sit down with a health professional you may recognise that what you are really looking for is an optimisation of your health, not simply a reduction in body fat. Together with an acupuncturist you may identify the need for higher energy levels, for better ways to deal with stress, you may really be searching for more focus and clarity on the things that are important to you such as relationships, family life or work. What started out as a perennial desire to lose weight may in fact be related to a deeper need to change some fundamental issues in your life.
Having recognised the real issue it is then the role of the practitioner to help guide you towards better health and achieving your personal goals and for this, once again, they will look at the big picture. The big picture of healing starts with seeing you as an individual, assessing your physical well being and your emotional strengths and weaknesses. To facilitate change the acupuncturist will then seek to re-balance your energy levels in accordance with your lifestyle and in accordance with the natural rhythms of life.
Chinese medicine is rooted in an understanding of nature and specifically how its rhythms affect us, as individuals, physically and emotionally. We have become so divorced from nature, in our modern ways of living, that even to talk in such terms is to invite ridicule and incredulity. However, if we really want to change, we have to understand ourselves and our place in the world.
It is only when we actually stop and take time out from our hectic schedules that we realise the price we are paying by not being aware of how our body and mind is influenced by the world around us. Everything, to a greater or lesser degree, has an effect on our system; the number of hours of sunlight in the day; the warmth or cold; the amount of sleep we get and when those hours are taken. Think about the quality of the food we put into the body, the alcoholic or other poisons we consume, the amount of rest we take, the effect of exercise on us as individuals, and the quality of the air we breathe and how we breathe it. All of these things are directly related to the natural world and our individual and unique relationship to it and this is what Chinese Medicine is based on and seeks to balance.