Healthy Living
Connections Between Traditional Chinese Medicine and Feng Shui
Five main groups of study and practice, known as the Five Arts, are an integral part of Chinese philosophy, culture and tradition. These five complex Arts and their respective modalities have been a fundamental guide to Chinese life since earliest times until today. They collectively encompass the entire span of wellbeing and lifestyle practices. Each Art is complete in itself; they are however all interconnected and their commonality is the concept of Qi energetics, essentially yin and yang balance and five elements relationships.
The five Arts are: 1 Medical (Yi) ie.Traditional Chinese Medicine, includes acupuncture, herbal prescriptions and healing: 2 Observation (Xiang) includes Feng Shui, architecture, writing and appearance: 3 Philosophy (Shan) includes Inner cultivation practices and martial arts: 4 Fate (Ming) includes Bazi and Zi Wei horoscope metaphysics: 5 Prediction (Pu) includes divination and cosmic destiny.
Let us take a closer look at the fascinating similarities and inter-relationship between Feng Shui and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), because to be healthy is to achieve a harmonious balance between your body, your heart/mind and your environment. I always think of a building as being a living organism with feelings, a heart and soul. It needs to be taken care of, nurtured and loved to be able to support its occupants.
Whilst Feng Shui focuses initially on the environment and TCM addresses the human body, they have a similar therapeutic approach to a person’s individual situation - both essentially aiming to facilitate optimum well being. Their shared holistic premise is that everyone is different and supporting each person’s unique state and needs is the absolute priority.
Methodologies used to establish what can be done to help a client also have some remarkable parallels. A Feng Shui practitioner will ask the client to describe the problem/s they are having, what they like and dislike about their surroundings, their personal and work life and so on as a brief to address and will observe whether any areas are too yin or too yang and where the qi flow has obstructions or is over-active.
When taking a client’s case history, a TCM practitioner asks questions, observes the face, skin, general appearance, temperature and tongue and reads pulses to identify what is termed ‘Patterns of Disharmony’ to provide clues about underlying causes of health problems. The three basic influences are lifestyle, emotional outlook and the environment. The five elements correlate to the five paired yin and yang organs and other parts including orifices, tissues and fluids. Different qualities of qi flow through meridian channels to reach the body’s ten organ systems.
Seasonal environmental changes naturally influence whether you keep your home warm or cool and its windows and doors closed or open. The five elements have seasonal correlations in both Feng Shui and TCM. Wood element, for example, correlates to Spring and the colour green, as well as to the liver, gall bladder and various associated body parts and functions in TCM. That is one reason why every Chinese meal has a variety of dishes and colours so that it can be well balanced and responsive to seasonal changes, prioritising yin or yang foods to adapt to the body’s condition and needs throughout the year.
So whilst Feng Shui introduces remedial solutions and physical adjustments to harmonise living spaces in order to help people thrive healthily, in parallel TCM has remedial systems to re-establish a body’s balance and release blockages so that it is better able to heal itself. If you wish to explore the nuances of TCM in far greater depth than this short article can possibly cover, I can recommend reading the hardcover book ‘Encyclopaedia of Chinese Medicine’ by Dr Duo Gao.
Warmest wishes,
Sylvia