Putting our tools together *

If you want good health, you need to work at it. This is obvious and easy but it may seem overwhelming at first. One of the ways to look at it is to see that if we want to be well, we need to "align our behaviour to our design". The Human Condition Theory (HCT) is a good guide to what are the parts of "our design" but all common sense is welcome in this process.

The 4 Riders of Apocalypse (4RoA) can give us the focus points: they provide structure and guidelines about what to consider changing and improving.

The fundamental Laws of Chinese medicine are the tools that help us create different questions in the process of restoring and keeping good health - to get a different outcome, we need to ask different questions. This is where the Laws of Chi, Yin & Yang and Five Elements come in. They make us evaluate our energy levels, forcing us to notice when our energy is less then it used to be. This way we can catch change before any symptoms of disease develop and act to prevent them.

Our Yin & Yang questions are related to balance in the body: are we too active (as most of us are) or maybe too "quiet" in fully living our life? Are we being agressive (masculine, Yang) or maybe give in too much (when there is too much Yin)? Are we getting enough sleep (Yin) to be able to be fully active (Yang)?

The Five Elements (into which I will go far more) is the most important Law when it comes to health. It takes our "balance" conversation to a mountain top level as it can explain not just why things work the way they do but also what to do to interupt the patterns of disease.

Tha last tool we should add to this list is the good ol' common sense. We underestimate it's power and importance in helping us get to this point in history, allowing us to overcome problems long before we had any science to lean on. Common sense is not "gut sense" but a tool for making decisions based on the total of our experience and observation. It is a tool to create patterns of decision making without needing years or degrees to come to a same conclusion. Like any other ability we humans have, we need to practice and exercise it until it becomes a reliable tool in our medicine cabinet.