Scholars may describe the “origins” of Chinese medicine as the process of pattern recognition over centuries, trial and error, or experimentation on the part of ancient practitioners. However, this isn’t accurate. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and its principles and theories are, first and foremost, the by-product of spiritual practice. It is not a manmade system.

How can TCM deal so effectively with functional problems—things that often defy treatment from a broad range of practitioners, sometimes over many years? How can one acupuncture needle or a course of herbal therapy, effectively eliminate what has caused patients great misery, in some cases for decades? The answer goes back to “Aha-type” discoveries. Qigong masters and TCM physicians made these discoveries as they accessed the workings of Natural Law during deep meditative, spiritual journeys through time and space.

These ancient practitioners arrived at TCM’s principles and theories through actual observation of the invisible world, including the energetic functions of the body’s organs. Through energy practice, they were able to activate their inner vision. What did they see? They saw the body’s functions and connections to the five major elements—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. In their meditative state, they could “see” and experience far more than we can now. They saw Nature’s immutable laws and experienced the oneness of the Universe. These ancient practitioners could perceive the essence of each of Nature’s elements. They observed the complementary, interpenetrating energetic frequencies of Yin and Yang. Now, thousands of years later, physicists describe this same understanding as complementarity, one of the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics.

In a distant time, far removed from the stressed-out world we live in now, gifted Qigong masters were able to enter a deep, peaceful, non-conscious meditative state where they saw the correspondences of Nature’s elements. They organized these observations into the Five Element Consciousness Framework.

Excerpted from Grand Master Nan Lu’s book, Digesting the Universe: A Revolutionary Framework for Healthy Metabolism Function. Get your copy here.

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