Post Series: Global Traditional Medicine Systems
In order to spread awareness about the rich living herbal traditions from around the world, this post series is intended to introduce some of the characteristics of the herbal or traditional medicine systems to which plants belong.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), is a living traditional medicine system with origins that reach back over 2,200 years. Originating from China, it is a now used all over the world, and is one of the most popular traditional medicine systems world-wide. The earliest written record is the Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon) from the 3rd century BCE, which remain a basis for practice today. Sickness is viewed as stemming from an imbalance in a person’s life force energy, known as qi, and practitioners seek to restore this balance.
Among the treatment modalities employed in TCM are acupuncture, herbal medicine, moxibustion, cupping, and tai chi. There are an estimated 6,000 herbal species used in TCM! There is also a connectedness of mind, body and spirit in TCM and balance of the yin (passive) and yang (active) forces within the body of the Functional Entities. These Functional Entities are The Five Fundamental Substances (Qi, Xue, or Blood; Jinye or Body Fluids; Jing, or Essence; and Shen, or Spirit); Zang-fu and Jing-luo which are the meridians through which qi flows in the body.
The Eight Principles (based on Confucianism) are a TCM concept, where practitioners are not looking solely at symptoms to diagnose disease, but at complex patterns of disharmony, which are determined by Yin, Yang, Interior, Exterior, Heat, Cold, Deficiency and Excess.
It is important to note that TCM is viewed by its practitioners as not just a medical system, but rather a comprehensive system of philosophy in which to view and organize all of nature.
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