Back to Basics: Qi Cultivation

For those of you who have been following this series of articles, we are exploring the “Basics” in our approach to maintaining and restoring health.  We will be covering diet and cellular nutrition, sleep, and the use of bodywork in Integrative medicine, all with an eye to qi cultivation, preservation, and patency (smooth flow). As you already know, qi is the body’s vital energy – sort of like gasoline to a car – although it can seem more elusive in concept. I have tried to show that there is a lot to maintaining our engine - the physical body. At every level, if something is neglected there is potential for us to ‘spring a leak.’


I find it helpful to think of healing and health in terms of a pie chart – we can even give it a title. In our “Pie Chart of Self Care” every aspect must be present in order for the chart to be complete. Let’s consider the ideal first…

A Perfect World (sigh):












In our idealized view, as you can see, all the elements of self care are pretty evenly represented, with a category I like to refer to as “Sheer Luck” being the smallest of all the values at around 5 %. By ‘luck’ I mean that margin of error (or grace for the more optimistically inclined), by which we can use and abuse this balance and avoid health pitfalls or injury. You know – all those near misses on the freeway, too many Frappacino’s in the summer, not enough veggies – they draw from the ‘luck’ category.

Unfortunately, the ‘Pie Chart of Self-Care’ in the folks I see clinically usually looks more like this:

Hmmm, not enough of several elements, and far too much reliance on ‘luck.’ 

For the patients who come in with a chronic illness or acute injury, often it seems like luck has run out. And then we have an added category which I like to call “Meds’ which has with it pros and cons as well.

The reason I bring out visual aides this month is to drive home the point that all the elements of self-care are important. Far too frequently we rely on one or another and hope it is enough. Then we go to the physician (of whatever modality) and expect them to fix the deficits in our self care, preferably as quickly as possible.

For chronic conditions which have been around a long time, whether pain or internal medicine – many times there are been aspects of self-care which may have been neglected for months or years. I find this is true even with an injury that is sudden onset – an accident or a pulled muscle that is very painful and which refuses to heal. How entrenched an injury becomes is often a reflection of the care and maintenance that was given to the body prior to the onset of the problem. So even if you never had a chronic backache before, if it suddenly shows up over night, and you have not been including bodywork, nutrition, exercise, play, etc. realize that you were primed for a condition to develop.
Realize there is no blame here – these are aspects which have been ignored and minimized by western medicine for far too long. I may be dating myself here by mentioning that the sayings my grandmother used to quote (while sneaking last night’s peas into my pancakes) were true more often than not, I just had to go through 10 years of school to realize it. The good news is that the word is out – now you know too and you can use all these tools to help restore and maintain your health.

Now there are a few slices on the chart which I have not covered yet – qi cultivation, play/pray, and exercise. We will cover these as a unit because they have a common theme.  Lest we relegate this column to the realm of the ‘touchy-feely,’ let me assure you there is a medical basis to include these items in our “Chart of Self-Care.”

In our next installement:  Psycho Neuro Immunology (PNI)