Calm Spirit/Ying Yu Jade China 2008
Chinese Medicine
My first trip to China in 1999 was to learn qi healing, Chinese medicine, and qigong. My Chinese doctor friend, Dr. Charles Li, teaches me more Chinese medicine each time I visit him in Beijing. Chinese medicine has been very helpful to me, relieving fibromyalgia, migraine headaches, and giving me an easy transition through menopause. My goal is to learn Chinese healing to help myself, family and friends, not to become certified as a Chinese doctor in America. I learned on my first trip to China the relationship between the body qi and jade qi, and how healing jade is to the human body. And I fell in love with jade and bought my first jade bangle bracelet on my first trip. During my third trip, I bought several pieces of jade and started selling on ebay, with the hope of making enough money to finance a trip to China each year. Between Calm Spirit web site and Ying Yu Jade web site, I have the perfect business with balance between the Chinese medicine and jade, and I love them both!
Qingping Market in Guangzhou, across the pedestrian bridge from Shamian Island, is street after street, with shop after shop of Chinese medicine. There are herbs, ginseng, tortoise shells, reptiles, mushrooms, and creatures dead and alive. I didn't see anyone buying anything, how do they make money? The Shamian Chinese Medicine Clinic buys their medicine herbs fresh and direct, and other Chinese medicine companies buy directly from merchants in Qingping market.
Shamian Chinese medicine clinic practices their own variety of Chinese medicine, a culture difference learned in the region. Local people go to the clinic, and so do foreign visitors. In fact, they advertise their service as "foot massage", 90 minutes for 68 RMB, approximately $10. I went for foot massage in 2006. 29 hours of travel time from Orlando to Guangzhou left me jet lagged, achy from fibromyalgia, and I had been treated for sinusitis before I left and still felt congested, so I went to get a consultation from the doctor. You don't have to explain what you need to the Chinese doctor. The doctor will take a pulse diagnosis reading six pulses on both wrists, then ask to see your tongue, and look at your face. The interpreter touched my nose and asked if I had congestion. Then the doctor wrote out a prescription of 14 Chinese herbs and the quantity of each, which were boiled into medicine. I returned an hour later to drink my first crock of medicine, then returned the next two days for the other two doses.
The next evening I went for foot massage. You sit in a comfortable chair while your feet soak in a tub with hot water and Chinese herbs. While you're soaking, a foot massage doctor does acupressure on your back for a few minutes, then you get about an hour of foot massage. The foot massage doctor could tell I had a lot of stuck qi and worked for an hour on the acupuncture points on my head, neck, back and arms, and used tuina massage on the points that were causing me the most problems. If you have fibromyalgia, you know it's diagnosed by certain points on the back, legs, and other parts of the body that are tender to the touch. In Chinese medicine, these tender points indicate "stagnant qi", and they are worked with either needles or tuina massage. I've had this treatment in America, but it's gentle and really not effective. But in China, it's done with as much pressure as you can stand, really is painful and I had to fight not to vomit from the pain and toxins as they were released. But, it is extremely effective and in a couple of days I had no fibromyalgia pain. I also had very little jet lag when I returned, and the terrible pollution in Guangzhou didn't affect me, while my husband was so sick from the pollution, he had to get a cortisone injection when we got home.
I think Chinese medicine is very effective for chronic conditions where western medicine and treatment don't work well, or the medicines have side effects that are difficult to tolerate. It's very helpful for my health to go for my annual "tune up" to the Chinese medicine doctor. And I believe you get a more effective treatment in China, than you do from doctors trained in America. The American Chinese medicine treatment is quite a bit diluted. It's still effective and helpful, but if you are miserable and not getting better, you might consider a medical trip to China, and I will be happy to refer you to Dr Li in Beijing, or if you are in the south, the Shamian Medical Clinic.Chinese medicine is natural body balancing at its best.
I want to feel really well and be in good physical condition for all the jade shopping we need to do!
Next: Tea Market and more Jade Shopping
Jade Bangle Bracelets web site
