Without Freedom of Flow, There is Pain

The title above is a fundamental principle in Chinese Medicine, the other half of which is: With No Pain, There is Freedom of Flow. In this saying, "freedom of flow" refers to the free flow of Chi (our body's life force) and Blood. And "pain" is defined broadly in Chinese Medicine as anything outside the optimal functioning of the body, including discomfort, tightness, lack of ease or balance, emotional disturbances, and the list goes on. The beauty of Chinese Medicine is not only that it provides very applicable means of creating free-flow, but that there are a number of reasons why an interruption in this free-flow may occur.

This is not to say that Chinese Medicine can cure everything; depending on the person, one of a number of wonderful holistic modalities may be optimal in creating free-flow in one's life, such as massage, exercise, yoga, tai chi, qi gong, meditation, counseling, and other forms of energy work. Finding the right modality or modalities to treat what is creating the dis-ease in your life is important to discover for yourself.

In the Western model of allopathic medicine, if they can't see the problem, it doesn't exist. This presents numerous problems for people with soft-tissue injuries or other causes of pain that don't show up in X-rays, CTs, or MRIs. Furthermore, researchers are discovering that if something does show up on imaging, such as a bulging disc, then that does not necessarily mean that what they are seeing is the actual cause of pain. In other words, people with verifiable abnormalities in tissues are not necessarily in pain, and people in pain do not necessarily have verifiable or imageable abnormalities in the body. This pertains to musculoskeletal disorders, endometriosis/menstrual pains, headache, and again, the list goes on.

If you want to read more about this, go to the New York Times article here.

Hopefully, what doctors are discovering is that pain syndromes are often best approached with conservative, non-invasive treatments, and that there is no undoing the potential harm of surgery. By all means surgery can be an important and necessary intervention in a person's life. Just be sure you're comfortable with the decision and try some other forms of therapy first.