Phase One: Analysis
To end suffering we must delete the cause. To delete the cause we must first know what the cause is, where it came from, how it started, and why.
Humans live in more than just a physical body. Other bodies (sheaths) such as Energy body, Mental body, and Intellectual bodies are forming even deeper aspects of our being and they are interdependent on one another.
Whenever there is a problem in one level of our being, the other levels become affected.
Similarly all the phenomena in the universe is also inter-dependent; the cause of one phenomenon is the effect of another cause and so on. For example: if the cause of your chronic headache is the liver heat, then where did the liver heat come from? Lets say the heat in the liver came from your stomach (one possibility), then where did the stomach get the heat? Is it the food or is it from the emotions? If it is food, then the selection of good healthy food to suit your constitution is a must to accompany the treatment.
If it is emotional, then is it your constitution or the intellect? (The way that you see thing.) If it is constitutional, then nobody can change that except you. If it is intellectual, then no one can transform it but you. In order for you to be able to make these changes you need help. The F.P.T.M. is designed to provide you with the knowledge and techniques to overcome the problem.
Life is precious and suffering does not have to be a part of it.
Phase Two: Choosing the Appropriate Treatment
After the analyses are completed, the second phase - what should be done about it - starts. Choosing an appropriate treatment is very important. What tools do we have on hand?. It is naive to think that we have all the cures at the tips of our fingers, or at the tip of a needle or in a bottle, or in a pill. Finding the right treatment or referring to a colleague with different methods which may be more effective is an honorable thing to do.
Sometimes clients ask me what the difference is between a Shiatsu treatment performed by a human and one performed by a machine. Here is my humble answer: as mentioned earlier humans live in more than the physical body, therefore he/she communicates with more then just the physical body. When the therapist stands or sits beside her/his patient, before even the physical body comes in contact with the body of the client, the energy bodies interact. The mental bodies communicate and the divine within the patient and the divine within the therapist re-unite. As the physical bodies of the two come in contact, the Tao of healing starts. As the therapist starts his/her work by the means of the physical body, all the other aspects including the energy, the mind and the spirit join the process, and that is the difference between a machine and a therapist.
This principle applies to all holistic therapies including acupuncture, chi-kung, Tuina, Reiki and so on. Choosing not only the right therapy but also the right therapist is essential.
Phase Three: The Dietary Regime
By now we must have learned enough about the patient and we should be able to lead her/him to a diet appropriate to his/her condition and constitution. Knowing that the three substances which maintain life are coming from air, water and foods, understanding the importance of what we eat, how we eat, when we eat, how much we need to eat, and so on, is significant.
In this phase we need a sufficient understanding of the patient’s constitution and the nature of the foods and food products. I am not talking about Canada-U.S food guidelines. What I am concerned with is the nature of the foods based on their values with regards to their energy (yin and yang) and their nature (the five elements) and their suitability to the different seasons, with regards to the patient’s constitution as well as the nature of the disease.
A cooking instruction will also be available if needed to make sure that the pleasure of eating is not being compromised.
Phase Four: Exercise
There are two kinds of exercises: recreational and workaholic.
Recreational exercise is nice, and of course, beneficial. Work on the other hand is not an exercise, let’s be clear about that. But there is a third one, which I call prescription exercise. What this means is a program designed to help the patient overcome the problem at hand. The program should suit the individual’s condition and be aimed at the cause of the disease as well as recovery. The exercise is always changed as the condition of the patient changes.
The exercise could be physical, mental or the combination of the two. Just like a herbal formula developed for a certain problem but being modified to suit the condition of each individual based on his/her ability to handle it. I have developed a series of exercises to promote health and help the healing process.
Phase Five: Environment
This phase is divided into two parts:
1. Physical Environment: this deals with the external environment such as working conditions, living conditions including living for example in a cold or humid place, sleeping or working in a non-insulated basement, sitting under the air conditioning, or level of pollution in the air, water and so on. Also, the general locality of the living area is examined.
2. The Emotional Environment: this is the most difficult of the two, but by no means impossible. By this I mean unhappiness at the workplace or at home in the family and so on. Sometimes people live their whole life suffering and thinking that they have no choice. The danger is that one can get used to certain conditions so that they are no longer aware of what is happening to them and the problem manifests itself on the physical level. In this stage just getting rid of the symptoms alone is counterproductive.
Lots of diseases start at the level of the mental body, and eventually descend into energy body and down to physical body. Or, it also can start at the energy level and then descend to the physical body or even ascend to the mental body. As our blood can get polluted or the physical body can get poisoned, the energy body too can become stagnant and polluted causing many unknown diseases. Unfortunately the energy body, and to some extent the mental body, is unknown to modern medicine so that is where common terms such as “the cause unknown” came from. The western psychotherapy is too intellectual and can not understand the full spectrum of the human consciousness.
As we all know, our mental activities are far greater than the physical ones. Lots happen in our mental body that we are not aware of, the manifestations come as a surprise to us. For example, the occurrence of certain diseases, or feeling unhappy without a known reason and so on.
The Tao of Leadership (the Art of Being) program has been developed to help you understand the different level of consciousness not just intellectually but also experientially, and enable you to master your mind and to some extent your destiny.
Master Yula Sensei, (BA, ST, D.AC, D.TCM, D.CHM, Master of Chi-Kung, Zenki-do, Yoga Energetics, and Zen Way of Karate) was born and raised in Central Asia where natural and organic foods and therapies were not a choice but the only option. After he moved to Canada in the early 70’s he realized that his own health was threatened by the modern life style. It was then that he decided to dedicate his life to promoting health through the natural ways of life that he was exposed to from an early age.