Dear Patient,
There’s a stage of disease in Traditional Chinese Medicine theory called the shao yang stage. It was described in the Treatise on Cold Damage Diseases, a classical TCM textbook compiled by Zhang Zhongjing around 200 AD. The shao yang stage is when a disease has penetrated beyond the body’s superficial defenses, but hasn’t yet progressed to the deepest levels. It’s the In Between.
Many health conditions that plague modern life fall into this In Between category—the things that won’t necessarily kill us, but are more than passing annoyances. Somewhere between a seasonal cold and late stage kidney failure. Things like autoimmune disorders, chronic pain, and PTSD. The shao yang is a pivotal stage, an opportunity to redirect the course of a disease.
Diseases tend to languish in this stage, not necessarily advancing to become terminal or life-threatening, but never really resolving either. Maybe the symptoms come and go. Or you get better for a while, and then feel worse. As a species we’re generally healthy enough not to be felled by things like waterborne bacterial infections or malnutrition, but we also have processed foods, environmental pollutants and sedentary lifestyles working against us. Diseases progress, but only to a certain point. We’re stuck in the In Between.
The treatment principle for a shao yang stage disease is Harmonizing, which I wrote about last week, and is all about listening and fine tuning. There’s no easy way out of the In Between, and most of us find ourselves stuck there at one time or another. But remember that this stage is also an opportunity to forge a healthier path.
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist
What a thoughtful, insightful concept. Thinking of this in relation to individual physical health and also for cultural health, illness and transition.