HEALTHY LIFE STYLE

The season and the foods

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theory has it’s roots in Dao and acknowledges cycles in our lives. The seasons, and the weather changes they bring, affect our social behaviour, the sport we play, the way we dress, when bark falls off native gums and when leaves fall off deciduous trees.

Wind, damp, heat, cold and dry are climatic conditions that accompany the seasons during the year. They affect our bodies from the outside and, from a TCM standpoint, they can also exist inside our bodies. And in just the same way that we react to the weather by trying to dress to keep cool in summer and warm in winter, we can eat foods that keep us internally warm in winter and cool in summer. By responding to our environment, we can avoid its extremes and maintain our own internal balance.

Tai Chi

TaiChi is a way of life that has been practiced by the Chinese for thousands of years.

Tai Chi means “ the ultimate.” It means improving, and progressing toward the unlimited; it means the immense existence and the great eternal. All of the various directions in which Tai Chi influence was felt were guided by the theory of opposites: the Yin and the Yang (click here for more about yin and yang), the negative and the positive. This is sometimes called the original principle. It was also believed that all of the various influences of Tai Chi point one direction: toward the ultimate.

TaiChi emphasizes the development of the mind rather than the muscles, since the mind can be developed infinitely, beyond any limits of time and space.

How to cultivate Chi

Everyone possesses Chi and has possessed it since birth. Chi remains with the individual throughout life, dispersing only after death. There are two main steps involved in cultivating Chi within your body: meditation and movement.

Meditation

In Tai Chi practice, meditation is the only way to become aware of one’s chi. After assuming either a simple sitting posture or an upright stance, the beginner can easily achieve success in Tai Chi meditation by following these procedures:

Yin and Yang

Yin and Yang are the two opposite and interdependent forms of energy inside our bodies. The idea of yin and yang is of opposite forces countering each other to create a balanced whole. In general terms, yin is cool and cold, damp, deep, restful, lower, front and nourishing.

Yang is the opposite force and is hot and warm, dry, superficial, action, upper, back and eliminating. In medicinal and dietary terms, yin is substance and yang is function. Without substance there is no function and without function there is no reason for substance, so they are intertwined and each defines the other. For us, our physical bodies are the substance and our actions are the function. We gather new substance by function – we breath, eat and drink. Without function, we could not take in the nutrients to support substance.

At different times of our lives, the energies of yin and yang interact differently. Children generate more substance than they consume, and therefore they grow. As we get older, our organs become less efficient and we do not produce enough substance to repair ourselves, and so our reserves of yin are run down. When all yin is gone, yang collapses and we die – and vice versa.

YIN – cold, damp, deep, rest, lower, front, nourishing, chronic, deficiency, blood, fluids, female

YANG – hot, dry, superficial, activity, upper, back, eliminating, acute, excess, energy, male.