Daoist Medicine Theories

In China I studied a lot of Daoist internal medicine theory. The theory comes from the idea that you can circulate Qi or Chi through your body with control in order to use your own body's energy for health. According to Daoist theory, we all store our Qi somewhere called our DanTian and although there are many parts to this and many different types of Qi, I'm going to leave it a that. Through practice and meditation, we can learn to move our Qi first through the main meridian that runs up and down the centre of our bodies, and with further practice through the rest of the 10 meridians. 

A lot of Chinese medicine practice stems from the five element theory. The five elements are like a template that divide natural phenomena into five groups or patterns.  The five groups starting with Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. In each of these groups there are other characteristics that correspond to each element. For example, Wood is representative of the liver and also of the emotion anger. The theory can become very complicated and there is a lot of depth to it. I'd like to just outline a very basic idea. 

The five major or 'yin' organs are the kidneys(water), lungs(metal), liver(wood), spleen(earth), and heart(fire). Each of them also has a corresponding yang organ, a direction, an emotion, a colour, a flavour, and I could go on and on. I have found a lot of benefit in practicing Qi Gong, where we work on opening up the twelve meridians associated with these different elements and organs. I'm hoping that over time I'll be able to share some of this theory.