Nourishing Life {Yang Sheng 养生 } for Natural Immunity: Moxibustion Therapy for Wellness
For thousands of years Chinese medicine practitioners have shared experiences in helping people heal and stay healthy. While some pearls of wisdom were passed through family lineages, over time, the tenets of Chinese medicine were made visible, shared with an attitude of critical refinement. It is this knowledge that laid the foundation for modern practitioners.
One of our integral healing modalities is moxibustion therapy. More specifically, the seasonal applications that optimize immunity and promote wellness. Nourishing life {Yang Shen} is the time of year when we potentiate the body’s natural immune system, and this year, seems like a crucial time to do just that. In this post, we dive into the beauty of the Nourishing Life moxibustion treatments for natural immunity.
Health begins with prevention
One of the tenets of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is prevention of disease. We enjoy telling our patients an ancient Chinese saying, “A good doctor has no sick patients.” This represents the cornerstone of TCM: prevention is the highest form of medicine. While it’s becoming more mainstream in health and wellness circles, prevention gets little fanfare because we simply can’t recognize what we never went through. If we don’t experience the illness, then we don’t know what to avoid. If we never get the flu we were exposed to, or never experienced pain from a herniated disc or an auto-immune affliction, then the mind says, “well, what’s there to prevent?”
Enter Chinese medicine approaches, where a skilled practitioner is not only treating what ails you on that day, but also with an eye for what may be coming and how your internal terrain {think: immunity, blood, energy} is holding up. Essentially we see the acute condition, and then look under the hood to snoop around and see if there’s anything underlying it. It is in this vain that Chinese medicine is truly precision medicine as it aims to hone in on the imbalance, whether physical or energetic, and rectify it. And although we like to see our patients regularly, we also want them to come in and simply say, “Nothing going on, just here for a tune up.”
Whether preventative or reactionary medicine, we revert to modalities that tonify and strengthen the system. Moxibustion does this like nothing else, it is a warming therapy that imbues the body with gentle fortification.
Nourishing Life (Yang Sheng 养生 ) is a term given to the practice of promoting good health and longevity. Over the past few millennia, TCM practitioners identified certain times of the month and certain times of the year that are more favorable for deep healing and graceful aging. There are two times per year that are congruent to promoting health, increasing immunity and longevity. These periods of the year align with the Chinese lunar calendar of spring and autumn.
The method to nourish one’s life in this manner is moxibustion, also referred to simply as “moxa” which is a form of heat therapy. Traditionally it involves the use of the medicinal plant Ai Ye, more commonly known as mugwort. It looks and feels like a soft moss that is rolled into varying sizes, in the shape of a cone, lit and slowly burns to create a warmth over, or on the skin. This is the simplest and most effective technique for moxibustion {applications vary}, but Nourishing Life requires a heavy therapeutic dose of moxibustion over a certain area of the low abdomen. Our preferred method for patients involves a beautiful, bamboo “moxa box” that allows us to tailor the amount of moxa according to the individual’s health and age. With this style, the moxa is warming at a safe distance above the skin, but provides a focused, therapeutic heat dosage. This technique is typically relaxing for the patient, and should the box get too toasty, they can move it as directed.
Optimal seasons to nourish life
The time for Nourishing Life moxibustion aligns with the Chinese lunar calendar. Typically either February 3rd or 4th for the spring and August 7th or 8th for autumn. However, it is widely agreed upon that there is an effective date range of about 10 days beginning five days before the official calendar date. This puts the effective date range for spring from about January 30th – February 8th, and August 2nd through the 11th for autumn. You’ll find many practitioners self-treat during these ten days by doing fewer cones of moxa consistently over these periods.
Whichever moxa technique is chosen, the points typically used are Ren 6 (Qi Hai) for the transition into spring and Ren 4 (Guan Yuan) for the transition into autumn. Some practitioners may choose to use Du 4 (Ming Men) over Ren 6 (Qi Hai) or Ren 4 (Guan Yuan) depending on the needs of the patient. Either way, the points chosen are based on a line from Chapter 2 of the classic TCM text the Su Wen, where it states that the wise person nourishes yang in the spring and yin in the winter.
While Ren 6 (Qi Hai) is used more for strengthening qi and yang and Ren 4 (Guan Yuan) is traditionally for tonifying yin, moxibustion is more yang in nature. This focused moxibustion technique on these specific points will have a building effect on one’s Yuan Qi or “Original Qi”. It is this aspect of the treatment that helps to strengthen vitality, promote long life and slow the aging process. Dou Cai, a famous ancient practitioner, was one of the first to endorse this idea of not just being able to maintain original yang but to be able to restore it with this nourishing life approach.
There’s a famous story that illustrates this idea. It tells the tale of an infamous bandit who was known, even at the age of 90 when he was eventually caught, to being impervious to heat, cold and hunger and who also had an almost insatiable appetite for sex. When asked prior to his execution of how he had maintained such health and vitality at his age it is said that he revealed his secret to be applying 1,000 cones of moxa at Ren 4 (Guan Yuan) once a year.
This concept that there are certain times of the year in which our bodies are more open to have a more profound impact on our health and healing may sound esoteric, but it makes sense from this unique perspective. Life and the world we live in is made up of cycles and the inhabitants of earth, plants, animals, and humans, are affected by those cycles. Thus, our bodies respond, sometimes extraordinarily, to these changes. This is apparent in the four seasons. Bears tend to hibernate in the winter, plants spring forth in the spring and summer. Another example is how people are affected by the daily cycle of day and night; specifically, our circadian rhythm that tells us to sleep when it’s dark and wake when it’s light. It has been well studied that night shift workers are more prone to a variety of health conditions that can affect the immune system, cardiovascular system, fertility and even mental health because going against this natural cycle disrupts the body’s natural release of chemicals and hormones. So when the ancient and modern practitioner talks about being more “in line with nature”- there are real healing benefits.
In a time when the fragility of our health is more apparent than ever, it is important that we do everything we can to not just maintain it, but to fortify. Not just when our body is robust and vital, but also when it’s weak. Moxibustion, when performed consistently and appropriately, is a surprisingly effective and easy method to support one’s immunity, as the ancients would argue, to boost the quality and length of one’s life. That is, to nourish one’s life.
