A Brief Introduction to
CHINESE HEALING HERBS.
While the use of Chinese Healing Herbs grew primarily to help cure illnesses, natural remedies were, and still are, also used to maintain youthful vigor and smooth flow of Chi through our physical networks.
Ideally herbs are used for prevention. There is an old saying, 'It's better to dig a well before you run out of water.'
However, the classification of Chinese Healing Herbs developed because of the need to cure illnesses with complex symptoms.
What makes these substances correct disharmonies or help revitalize the person who is using them? Human beings and herbs have one thing in common - both are of nature, which encompasses the entire material universe and its phenomena. The root of the word nature is Nasci< Latin - to be born. The cells of plants, animals and humans are in perpetual renewal, nothing ever dies, forms only change according to the movement of Chi with its myriad qualities. Being born is the essential character in all things and beings, not isolated, not even a part but the integrated whole. Being in renewal is innate - of nature!
Chinese healing herbs are of nature, not broken down into chemical components like drugs, but working in a roundabout way, holistically resonating with the same kind of Chi. Marshall McLuhan said "Matter does not matter!"
Since all Life is radiation and resonance, let us forget matter for a moment! Vibrating, resonating life includes plant, animal and mineral kingdoms as well as human life, the nature's most complex expression.
Life's very purpose is its process - to evolve naturally, to remain harmonious.
The mineral kingdom is a simple form of vibratory life fossilized into a certain frequency. In vegetation the cells breathe in and out the changes in constant continuum and each cell re-creates itself naturally in the process of life and death.
This diversified continuum is directed by Wu Chi, the Primal Creative Energy, manifesting in all and everything. It is harmonizing and creating new combinations according to two of the basic laws in Creation. . .
Motion and Attraction of Similar Radiations.
Or, 'Birds of the Feather Flock Together!' The overall harmonious co-operative is Tao - the Way, yet a still point within everything while causing movement - like an axis in the center of a wheel. It seems that herbs with a particular quality and magnetism - a particular vibratory frequency, are drawn to a similar 'milieu'. Through it the herbs' qualities affect the channel and organ functions, and through that the entire body. Therapeutic potential of an herb depends on its taste and temperature as well as its ability to move within the channel network. The herb must also be able to lead, or to harmonize and support actions of other herbs in a formula.
Variations in combinations create possibilities for different actions. The practitioner works on the basis that Chinese healing herbs do not cure, but they assist and support Nature in her ongoing endeavor to harmonize and nurture life. For a certain deficiency in the body, such as of blood (Anemia), the herbs can supply certain constituents so the body may improve its blood. This way an overall vital force is strengthened and harmonized.
Here is an example from my own experience. When I was studying Chinese Medicine in the eighties, the pressure to study day and night had built to such an extend that I was totally exhausted, began to have palpitations and chest pains.
After examining me, my teacher prescribed a common patent formula called "Gui Pi Tang'. Soon the pains were gone, and this medicine has come handy through the years whenever I am overworked and need an energy boost. Please have a look at its ingredients and indications on our Herbal Formulas page.  Also, 'Let your food be medicine and medicine be your food' is another old Chinese proverb.
A twentieth century scholar Lin Yutang wrote: "The Chinese do not draw distinction between food and medicine. What is good for the body is medicine and at the same time food."
Daily meals are often flavored and supplemented with the same herbs the herbalists use in their formulas.
Have a look at a chicken soup recipe to help boost the immune system. The essential message of this short introduction to Chinese Healing Herbs is that the wonderful nature we all share within and without, is a subtle co-operative vibrating creatively, being born in an ongoing continuity and newness.
The connections are intricate yet each part fits into the greater whole. This working together seems to be the primary aim of nature when we view its uniqueness, its harmony and its beauty. Animals search in nature for those plants that benefit their well-being.
Shouldn't we as human beings, who have been bestowed with greater co-operative intelligence also accept, that it is wisdom to look for answers in nature, of which we are the most evolved and exultant expression?
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