When you are sick or injured, you just want the pain to stop. Pivotal Point Oriental Medicine can do that.  There are 56 ailments for which Traditional Chinese Medicine is approved worldwide, and pain relief is probably the number one reason people seek treatment.

Interconnection
Traditional Chinese Medicine is much more than a “quick fix” for discomfort—it’s a way of life that embraces the interconnectedness of all things as its philosophy. 
It’s about the energy that connects us with others, our environment, and the universe.  Our internal systems function in relationship to our external environment much like a mobile:  change in one part affects the harmony of the whole.

What usually upsets the balance is not primarily an injury or a microbe, but the stress we feel when something in our environment—or something in ourselves—upsets us.  A wise man once said that “behind all disease lie our fears, anxieties, greed, likes and dislikes.”  In our rapidly changing world, this resistance—otherwise known as stress—is the number one cause of dis-ease in many Western cultures.

Health is Happiness and Happiness is Health
Homeostasis—balance—is the body’s paradise, and our complex, many-faceted systems are always seeking this state of happy, harmonious simplicity. 

When we place too many forces on the body unnecessarily—through drugs, sleep deprivation, excessive or not enough exercise, too much food and drink, or inconsistent schedules—we break homeostasis with stress.

Stress disrupts the flow of our qi (pronounced “chee’), or life- force.  Pain can be seen as stuck energy:  it has been over-stimulated, blocked or stagnated by stress, causing “dis-ease” in our body, mind and spirit. 

Western medicine tends to treat by manipulating symptoms, rather than addressing the root cause of illness.  The danger of this is that while we may get a temporary release from pain, the underlying cause may only be driven deeper, lying in wait to recur in a less tractable form.  This is why Pivotal Point Oriental Medicine is often more successful than Western medicine in addressing chronic illnesses. 

Uniqueness
Pivotal Point Oriental Medicine also treats the individual, not her disease.  We are each unique in our experiences and perceptions, our genetic makeup, and how we move through the world.  Thus, a “headache” is treated differently in a quiet pale, tired person who is studying too much than for a large, loud, red-faced person who is often irritable.  Pain may be stuck energy, but how and where it’s stuck is quite individual.

Pivotal Point Medicine will teach you how to listen to your body, alert to signals and symptoms that something is out of whack, just as we as a species are learning to be alert to the signs that things may be out of balance in our environment—of which we are an inseparable part.

Lifestyle Guidance
As we come to understand the disharmonies at play in your health concerns there maybe elements in your lifestyle that could use tweaking. Rather you aer new to being conscious of your health or have already figured out and overcome serious issues, having another set of eyes on the situation and a different point of view can be very helpful.

Looking at your constitution, history and current symptoms through the framework of Chinese medicine often can shed light on what tweaks to your lifestyle will be helpful. This is especially true for monthly clients where I can help you make sense of your health and progress over time through the seasons, illnesses and stresses that come along in life.

 

Often things like eating warm cooked foods or getting to bed just a little earlier can make a big difference over time. Actually it is often the things that people already know but that got lost in all of the hacks and suggestions that will help. And that, really they just needed a little clarity about. Or needed a concrete experience in their body to become fully aware of a pattern or how something is effecting them. 

For example a person with abdominal pain caused by eating too many cold foods. It sometimes is obvious, like if it happens right after eating something ice cold. But often is subtle and hard to discern until it is pointed out and experimented with. 

 

Sometimes it is integrating an herb into the diet to strengthen your constitution. Maybe it is becoming aware of the nature of your muscle tightness to work through or prevent back spasms. Maybe it is rather or not your emotional upset is mostly circumstance or if it is being aggravated by an imbalance of your body.

 

I do not do traditional Chinese diet therapy. Mainly because the therapeutic foods are often unaccessible or unpalatable for my clients. Think yak balls and seaweed. 

However the basic tenants of Chinese medicine about the way our bodies work, are we too hot, are we too cold, are we too dry or are we too wet, what is good for us, and how to judge progress all apply to making good everyday choices.