Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an ancient art. It’s one that believes in connectedness–nothing in the body is treated in isolation. For example, if you went to a Chinese doctor complaining of knee pain, he wouldn’t give you an ice pack (No!) and take x-rays of your knee, he would instead look at the root cause. What caused the knee pain to occur in the first place? You may explain that you twisted your knee playing football or running a race. But TCM views pain as a symptom of a larger problem. You may have “hurt” your knee playing football or running a race, but that injury would not have occurred if it had not been for a weakness in your Kidney Qi. Once the root cause of the Kidney Qi deficiency is addressed, the knee pain may just resolve itself.

The body has a miraculous way of showing us what is off-balance so that we can get ourselves back on track. The body has the power to heal itself, but in our stressed-out society, we have shut off the signals. The goal of TCM is to help you recognize that you have the best diagnostician walking around with you every day–yourself! Once you begin to see yourself as a connected whole and take away the fear associated with the symptoms that you’re experiencing, you’ll realize that you don’t need to feel pain. You can fix what is off-balance by learning to communicate with your body. Your body has intelligence. Tap into that! Learn to enhance your Qi so that it can nourish your body as a connected whole.

In a peaceful frame of mind, close your eyes and hold this Qigong posture, called The Dragon Stands Between Heaven and Earth, for as long as you can. The longer you can hold this posture, the more healing benefits you will gain. When you’re finished, open your eyes slowly and keep this good feeling with you at all times.