There Will Be Pathogens…
One of the hardest questions I have to field is: “how many treatments will I need?” I usually respond with something like: “you know, that kind of depends,” which sounds like somebody planting a major hedge (or worse, like the chiropractor on Two and a Half Men stalling for time as he calculates his boat payments).
I don’t have a boat, but I have a few minutes here to address the question.
Take for example a patient with low immune function. We figure out what energetic imbalance is causing it and we begin correcting that at root level, and we make sure at branch level to tonify wei qi in order to keep the surface of the body impenetrable to pathogens. Should be good to go.
But, there are pathogens and then there are pathogens. Your body is always fighting off some little pest and you’re usually blissfully unaware of it. But even if you have the mother of all immune systems, one day it’s going to meet the mother of all pathogens, and there’s going to be a fight, and someone’s going to lose.
So, it really does kind of depend. There are of course other factors that influence the need for treatment—how bad is your energetic imbalance, how many organ systems are involved, how long have you had it, are you adding secondary pathogens to your system by way of your diet? So, it just depends…
And most of us hate answers like that. We are Americans. We’re logical, linear, scientific, Aristotelian thinkers (we who know for a fact that “A” cannot be “not A”).
The trouble is, energy isn’t necessarily always all that logical or linear. Or even scientific (google “string theory” for a free ride down a real rabbit hole or two).
Taoist sage Lao Tzu (600 B.C.) said:
To be bent is to become straight.
To be empty is to be full.
To be worn out is to be renewed.
To have little is to possess.
It sounds a lot like the Christian beatitudes. And in clear contradiction of the basis of Western Aristotelian thought, “A” can indeed be “not A.”
Reality is relative because everything is composed of energy (a rock, you, me) and is constantly moving and changing. Our bodies appear solid, yet science proves that little sub-atomic particles are constantly tearing through us without our awareness (nevermind permission), some no doubt whacking a few electrons out of their orbits—a bit of DNA in your brain, a hunk of carbon in your heart—but most passing through this relatively amorphous construction, our bodies, without much ado.
To my mind, all the more reason to use an energetic medicine to reset energetic imbalances.
[This meditation on relativity comes to you with thanks to Ted J. Kaptchuk, OMD on my annual revisitation of his seminal “The Web that has no Weaver.”
– Dr. Danchak