Chinese medicine's response to psychological and emotional disorders.

The Chinese tradition offers us a wonderful cartography of our psychic life and reveals the blueprints of the totality of our being. Qi, or "primordial breath", lies at the origin of physiological processes as well as of mental and emotional ones. The organic and the psychic are intimately linked and cannot be dissociated.

Each emotion has its reason for being and is useful; none is positive or negative. All are needed to help us position ourselves rightly within ourselves and within our surroundings. Tears bring us psychological relief, just as our emunctories drain our waste. They are thus a means of rebalancing.

Through a bodywork technique such as reflexology, the practitioner transforms painful experiences. They draw on the concepts of the totality of the being as presented by the Chinese tradition: somatic memories are hosted by the lung; emotional and affective memories are tied to the liver; inarticulate memories reside in the spleen; genetic and transgenerational memories take root in the kidneys; and the capacity for consciousness is held in the heart.

This reference work, richly illustrated, details each treatment according to the person's individual position, through the approach of their emotions, thoughts, desires and sensations, in the reality of their consciousness, to restore the natural flow of the life energy that animates them and give rise to the sense of union indispensable to physical and mental health.