Health Cultivation, Ⅰ
The contrasting ideas and definitions of health between the East and the West could not be further apart.
In the West, health is often thought of as something attained through physical exercise and a proper diet. In fact, many people may not even adhere to these two ideas on health and yet, they may still have a healthy Body Mass Index (BMI). They assume that they are “healthy”. Granted, these two practices on health are extremely important in the broad scheme of life. Have you ever known someone, perhaps even yourself, who meets the West’s definition of health, but still has numerous internal health issues?
What do I mean by internal health issues?
Internal problems are anything outside of a complete and harmonious daily existence.
In other words, you must be free from the daily disharmonies that plague so many of you. Disharmonies that are many times considered “normal” and “acceptable” aspects of life. For instance, they may appear as: headaches, fatigue, bloating, halitosis, skin blemishes, insomnia, neck and shoulder tension… the list could go on and on.
Should these daily disharmonies really be accepted as “the norm”?
What if I told you that they don’t have to be?
Chinese Medicine’s definition of health is quite a bit different from how health is defined in our modern Western culture. All of the above listed daily disharmonies are considered to be problems that require an immediate resolution through the process of attaining internal organ system balance.