The Center for Oriental Medicine offers within our practice, classical style Traditional Chinese Medicine and Korean Constitutional Medicine, including guidance and consultation in the areas of Acupuncture, Herbal Formulary, Dietary Therapy, Exercise, Meditation, Tui Na Massage and Feng Shui. We at the Center for Oriental Medicine strive to provide, a broad spectrum of information for our patients.  Our goal is to teach the necessary information to empower each individual with the ability to maintain and strengthen their health, to allow not only for a long life, but one that is also healthy and happy  - of the highest quality.  We address current issues of illness, and guide lifestyle changes and behavior modifications that will afford the patient control and responsibility for their own well-being. "The Doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, and in the cause and prevention of disease."  – T.A. Edison

 *These eight limbs are essential to the study and practical application of Qi (vital life force energy) in balancing and harmonizing the person and are as follows: 

1.  Meditation/Self Cultivation:  Calming and clearing the mind through deep breathing and focused mindfulness.  This includes any activity that is contemplative and stress reducing in nature, i.e. meditating, walking on the beach, praying, breathing exercises, listening to peaceful music, or sitting quietly and breathing deeply.

2.  Exercise/Chi Kung/Tai Chi:  This entails movement of the body to strengthen muscles, deepen breathing, and benefit circulation of both Qi and blood.  Examples are tai chi, qi gong, walking, yoga, and other cardio-vascular activities.

3. Nutrition (5 phase):  Food used as medicine contributes to the treatment of illness, disease and imbalance in the practice of Oriental Medicine.  Understanding the energetic nature of foods, ones own energetic tendencies, and constitutional type allows one to use diet not only to cure imbalance and disease, but also prevent it. As Hypocrates suggested, “The wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings.  Let food be your medicine.”  

 4. Bodywork/Tui Na Massage: Acumassage, Bone setting, Cupping, Gua Sha, Tui Na, Acupressure, Internal energy healing & diagnosis, are the techniques utilized in this limb. Jin Shin Do/Jin Shin Jitsu, and massage all manipulate tissue, tendons, ligaments and bones to promote flexibility and enhance circulation of Qi and blood

5. Cosmology/ Astrology:  This area utilizes Taoist concepts of time and its ebb and flow in various rhythmic cycles, i.e. the seasons and their changes, to our healthy benefit.  An awareness of the relationships between individual biorhythms and those of the cosmos from birth to death and how the 24 hour circadian cycle, the feminine (yin) 28 day lunar cycle, and the masculine (yang) 256 day solar cycle, as well as the seasons and climate affect our health.

6. Feng Shui: Promotes external balance, Environmental Qi Design-Natural arrangement and Fine Arts. It can be used to harmonize, minimize or prevent undesirable influences in our surroundings. (Geomancy-the Chinese art and science of placement – or, acupuncture for your home) Understanding the natural world based on our relationship to the environment, and the influences of the seasons, climate, directions, geo-magnetic, and electro-magnetic energy are considered in relationship to the individual in the home and work space.

7.  Herbology:  The use of natural plants, minerals and animals combined to assist the body in its striving to achieve a state of balance or homeostasis.  Herbal formulas prevent disease, treat illness and promote longevity.  These prescriptions are based on diagnosis and constitutional type.  They are distributed in the form of tablets, teas, tinctures, topical creams and liniments, or plasters.  As Edison again was quoted, “Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.  Remedies from chemicals will never stand in favour compared with the products of nature, the living cell of the plant, the final results of the rays of the sun, the mother of all life”.  When understanding the dynamics of Qi one must agree. 

8.  Acupuncture:  The use of very fine, sterile, disposable needles, inserted at specific points along defined acupuncture meridians, to regulate and balance the flow of Qi, relieve pain and assist healing in the body.  Adjunctive therapies include, moxibustion, gua sha, cupping and plum blossom needling.

All of the Eight Limbs/Branches are interconnected and interrelated forming the unified practice and philosophy of Oriental Medicine.  Oriental Medicine places special emphasis on how to prevent and heal oneself of illness, pain and emotional disharmony through the body-mind-spirit integration of the 8 limbs.  It is a rewarding lifelong practice and process. "If you break it down into its basic unit, the medical system is just two people, a doctor and a patient. When they meet, they must have a personal exchange, with the doctor playing one part and the patient the other.  If the exchange turns out well, you have the practice of medicine."- Deepak Chopra

Throughout the process of consultation and treatment, we hope to create a strong partnership of health.  The greater one understands the process of Oriental Medicine, the greater the opportunity for partnership to occur.  With this “practice of medicine” – comes a greater opportunity for health and well-being.