The 8 Principles
Dear Patient,
Heat and Cold
Exterior and Interior
Excess and Deficient
Yang and Yin
These are what we call the 8 Principles, a diagnostic framework used Traditional Chinese Medicine. They help us sort through a patient’s signs and symptoms to home in on the root cause of disease. For example a cough may be due to a wind-cold attack (an excess/cold/exterior condition), or it could be caused by Lung yin deficiency (a deficient/heat/interior condition). Accurate diagnosis naturally steers us to the most appropriate and effective treatment.
But many conditions aren’t so obviously one thing or another. Take the condition people often identify as “poor circulation,” manifesting as numbness and coldness of the extremities. It’s frequently due to constrained heat in the interior, restricting the flow of warming blood to the periphery. So it’s excess and deficiency, heat and cold, exterior and interior. Yang and yin.
Categorization helps us makes sense of all the information we take in, whether it’s in a diagnostic setting or just in the course of a day. It calms our anxiety in a way because it satisfies the desire to have everything fit into a neat and orderly pattern. But binary either/or thinking might not reveal the complete picture. If the goal is healing, or simply living holistically, rigid categorization doesn’t always serve us.
Because two seemingly opposite things can be true at once. Heat and cold. Joy and fear. Movement and stagnation. Health and disease. Both can exist within one body.
The 8 Principles help us sort and classify, and at the same time free us from those same constraints of sorting and classifying. They help us appreciate the fullness of our world, and our own selves.
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist
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