For over 2500 years, Oriental Medicine (OM) has utilized acupuncture and herbalism to stimulate and supplement the body’s innate pharmacopoeia in order to resolve internal imbalances in the body.

OM is founded upon a deep study of life lived amongst the raw elements – earth, water, wind, fire – and how these forces influenced health or dis-ease in the population. Is the nature of the ailment hot or cold, damp or dry, excess or deficient? The person’s state of being is interwoven into their surroundings.

By focusing on treating the person, rather than merely a disease, OM truly is holistic. Clearly, symptom relief is a crucial aim in this – and all – medicines. However, were we to neglect to address the underlying causes fueling an ailment, we would fail to prevent its return, as though we had topped the weed and left the roots to later grow (and likely with redoubled efforts!). We will then want to explore those areas in our lives which are out of balance, in order to address wellness throughout the entirety of the person (this would be the “whole” of the “holistic” approach).

A key principle of wellness in this elemental tradition is the practice of living harmoniously with nature. To live thus is to keep dis-ease at bay. Should we stray too far, our body will receive signals that may serve to reorient us back into equilibrium. This innate wisdom, if necessary, will communicate to us via symptoms of disease, which may serve to act as a compass if we are attentive and are decisive in correcting our imbalances. In this way, dis-ease and wellness juxtapose as powerful teachers for us in life. Our bodies know how to heal. We have within us innate and powerful healing systems that just need the right stimulus at the right time to activate. OM thus serves as a compass bearing us towards harmony.

How can we apply these principles to everyday life to achieve, or maintain optimal health? According to OM we must adjust our health hygiene to match seasonal rhythms. The resilient person instills changes in her lifestyle in tandem with those of the seasons and/or surrounding environments. Let’s take a look, for example, at sleep. Living in harmony with nature would dictate that in the darker months, we would want to go to bed ideally an hour earlier, though even half an hour earlier is still beneficial. If we pause and tune-in to our bodies, most of us will naturally feel moved to go to bed earlier in these times. By doing this, we invest in our wellness bank account, which later pays off with interest in the form of health, yielding a happier state of being as the holidays wax and then wane. So lets shoot for the proverbial 8-to-9-hours-a-day of sleep.

Another example of adhering to natural rhythms is modifying what we eat as the seasons shift. With colder weather, we may wish to put a focus on eating warming foods, replacing that raw salad with a hot veggie stew, perhaps throwing in some warming herbs such as curry, fresh grated ginger, scallions, garlic, (some chili peppers if you dare), and some coconut milk. All of these foods are considered warming in OM. Ginger, being a well-known anti-inflammatory in western herbology, also happens to support the lungs and stomach (in OM) during the cold months as everyone around us is getting sick. When we adapt our eating to the season’s colder shifts by incorporating warming foods, then we are increasing our internal resilience, which means stronger immunity, and increased stress-tolerance.

Through a simple study of our surroundings, and an attentiveness to our body, Oriental wisdom has much to teach us. Through helping us to adapt our daily routine, we take simple steps to approach a harmony with the changing of seasons – an important step in overall wellness.

forLoveofLife