Bamboo Grove: Traditional Chinese Self-care Techniques

06/05/2023

Today: How to take care of your own health at the day of “The Beginning of Summer”

Today is the day of “The Beginning of Summer” in 2023 (The 24 solar terms might not be on the exact same day for every year). Astronomically, the earth is at the 45 degrees of solar longitude meaning that we are about to say good-bye to the spring and say hi to the summer.

Summer is a season of growth. Following this regulation of the nature, we would better not hide our emotions, meaning that try to express how you feel to those you trust, especially to express your love to your beloved ones. On the other hand, we may feel cranky and irritable much more easily during summer; this would easily cause irregulate heart rate and higher blood pressure. It is suggested that trying to regulate ourselves into a calmer status is very important in summer. For instance, we could do meditation every day for some time or just sit down comfortably without thinking or doing anything. At the same time, it is also worth to pay more attention to your beloved ones’ health if they have already been diagnosed with some heart, brain and blood vein related diseases (summer is the peak season to activate symptoms of these diseases).

According to the theories of “Five Elements” in traditional Chinese medication, the key organ to dominate our body is the heart in summer, whereas our heart plays a main role between 11:00-13:00 everyday. Thus, Having a noon nap or just sitting down for a rest between 11:00-13:00 from half an hour to one hour is extremely beneficial for our heart, especially in summer. Some of you might know that people living at the coast of Mediterranean Sea traditionally to have a siesta so that they have lower probability to get heart related diseases compare with those in Nordics and North America. So worth to try, right?

Also based on the theories of “Five Elements” in traditional Chinese medication, it is good to eat more sour flavour/food for our meals (e.g., vinegar, sour cucumber), but avoiding bitter food, for example, grilled food. Eating more noodles made of wheat flour also help to protect our heart.

Let us know how you feel after you try!

29/04/2023

Giveaways: FREE 30 mins self-care consulting sessions respectively for two people!

Do you want to try traditional Chinese self-care techniques to tackle chromic symptoms in everyday life?

For celebrating the Vappu, we are currently offering TWO of you a 30 mins self-care consulting session FOR FREE respectively!!! The original price for one 30 mins session is 79 euros (inclu. VAT).

In the self-care consulting sessions, our consultant will provide you customized Chinese traditional self-care techniques/advice (e.g., suggestions for recipes, self-treatment for acupoints etc.) to help you to get rid of the those annoying frequent “small” problems and chronic symptoms (e.g., difficulties to fall asleep, low fever due to catching cold, prematurely grey hair, hair loss etc).

Giveaways for each winner: A session of 30 mins for self-care consulting FOR FREE (online or face-to-face)
Total number of winners: 2
How to participate: After you click “like” in this post, you are immediately qualified to participate in the lottery pool for 2 giveaways.
When to participate: From now until 9:00 am, May 2nd 2023 (Finnish time)
How to decide who will get the giveaways: Through Microsoft Excel
When and how to contact the winners: On May 2nd 2023 via Facebook messages
Validated period for winners to use the giveaways: May 3rd -June 2nd 2023

Good luck!

We provide traditional Chinese self-care consulting sessions in different lengths, PM us for more details. Welcome!

About our consultant: Our consultant is experienced and enthusiastic to learn and use traditional Chinese self-care techniques. She has practiced Baduanjin Qigong for more than ten years. In addition, she started to learn different recipes of Cantonese herbal soup for self-care depending on the weather since she was a teenager. She is now studying acupuncture with Qigong from a traditional Chinese medicine expert who has been working as an acupuncturist in Switzerland and Japan for a few years.

All rights reserved for us (Bamboo Grove: Traditional Chinese Self-care Techniques) in this giveaways event. This giveaway receives no sponsorship from and is not connected in any way to Facebook.

21/03/2023

Self-care techniques on the day of the Spring Equinox

TODAY is the day of the Spring Equinox, the 4th solar term of 2023. We have almost same time length for both day and night today. Meanwhile, today is in the middle of spring’s 90 days, that’s why today is called “the Spring Equinox”.

There has been a tradition for today in Chinese culture: Standing up the egg (see enclosed photo). Today the Sun shines directly on the equator; thus the stability of eggs is so good that they can stand up. Maybe you can also try it out? Remember to try more times with more attention if it can’t stand up for the first time😊

Even though Yin is currently decreasing. Yet, Yin still has ability to fight with Yang. This manifests in the temperature: We apparently feel the temperature increases lately. However, we will probably have colder weather for some period of time in the near future. Thus, preventing catching cold or wind is one of the key points in Chinese traditional self-care techniques in recent periods, especially for the legs and feet.

On the other hand, today is an important time for balancing Yin and Yang, so falling asleep earlier (at least before 23:00) assists a lot to achieve that, as well as protecting your liver. In addition, massaging your acupoints called “Xingjian” (as below pic shown, see more here: https://www.peakmassager.com/xingjian-acupoint/ ) on your TWO feet for 200 times (with thumb pressing on them while moving your thumb around) today would significantly help to regulate your Qi in liver. This method is especially good for those people whole emotions are easy to fluctuate. Try it out and enjoy the spring!

18/03/2023

How to make your vision clearer?

It appears that we have more and more screen time nowadays. Meanwhile, our eyes are getting tired and dry, even our vision sometimes becomes a bit blurry. This indicates that we have to rest our eyes by keeping away from screens, which is not easy for us. How about trying below Chinese traditional self-care technique that can be simply implemented at anytime anywhere??

As you might know, there are 6 divergent meridians in our hands. When clenching fists and stretching fingers, qi of these 6 divergent meridians starts to move, which could effectively ease the symptoms of your tired eyes.

You could follow the demonstration in the enclosed video: CLOSE your eyes, clenching fists and stretching fingers for about 30-50 times. Then open your eyes to check if your vision is clearer. If so, this method works for you!

Some feedbacks from friends after they tried this technique:
1. Useful! After some times of clenching fists and stretching fingers, I had a series of yawning. Some tears came out at the same time. And, I can see clearer and feel more energetic!
2. I did that for 30 times. Really effective.
3. Useful, I did it for 100 times and my eyes feel clearer.
4. Today I was waiting for my train at the train station, feeling blurry to see the information shown on the screen. My eyes turned to be clear after trying this technique!

It is notable that you REALLY have to take a rest if your vision is already blurry on your screens. Try to use our eyes in economical ways as much as possible!

Wish you have clear vision!

11/03/2023

Baduanjin Qigong: One of the most efficient ways for self-care

Traditional Chinese self-care techniques have a brilliant history for over 4000 years. Its fundamental philosophy on better well-being is based on taking good care of own health by establishing and maintaining inner harmony for bodies. Baduanjin Qigong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baduanjin_qigong) is one of efficient and easy-learnt traditional Chinese exercises for daily self-care to set up and keep such harmony.

Mentioned in several encyclopedias originating from the Song dynasty (around the year of 1150), Baduanjin Qigong firmly helps to improve our heath physically and mentally if we practice it for about 10-15 minutes per day. It has eight sections that can be practiced in either indoors or outdoors. Numerous modern scientific empirical research have proved that Baduanjin Qigong has significant positive effects on various health problems. For example, a review investigation (Zou et al., 2018) summaries 22 empirical studies illustrates that Baduanjin is effective as an adjunctive rehabilitation method for improving cognitive functions in addition to psychological and physiological parameters among different age groups and various clinical populations (e.g., Parkinson's disease, chronic neck pain, chronic fatigue syndrome-like illness, psychological illness).

Why not start to practice today?

Reference:
Zou, L., Pan, Z., Yeung, A., Talwar, S., Wang, C., Liu, Y., ... & Thomas, G. A. (2018). A review study on the beneficial effects of Baduanjin. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 24(4), 324-335. See in open access: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2017.0241

12/02/2023

How to prevent allergic symptoms in the coming spring?

Spring is definitely a season for new hope and more sunshine. It is time when smiling is very easy. The whole nature starts to wake up. Yet, quite many of us might regularly suffer from the allergic symptoms, e.g., due to different pollen “waking up” at different times in spring……. Very often, people are only told to take pills for temporarily controlling for these allergic symptoms.

Do we have a relatively long-term solution for these allergy symptoms caused by pollen? Luckily, YES! Theories of traditional Chinese medicine tell us that pollen allergic symptoms (e.g., sneezing, running nose, itching skin etc) are directly related to our lungs. Our lungs are mainly responsible for our skin, body hair (exclu. head hair). On the other hand, our lungs manifest themselves in our noses. Why do some of us get allergic symptoms due to pollen? Because some people’s lungs are too cold so that they are very easily irritated.

What should we do to deal with cold lungs?

First, eating and drinking warm could help a lot! It means that WARM WATER, instead of cold tap water, should be drunk. And try to eat warm food instead of cold foods like salads. DON’T eat and drink those DIRECTLY from the fridge. For example, if you really want to have a glass of juice, take it out from fridge and let it warm by itself in room temperature until it is close to that temperature.

Second, try to avoid drinking milk. Milk is very cold in nature (no matter if it is from the fridge or warm) and basically milk only perfectly fits for baby cows, but not for human adults.

It is suggested to start the above adjustments already now so that your body has enough time to regulate. If you still have pollen allergic symptoms after taking the mentioned adjustments in the coming spring, don’t give up and the next spring you will feel the differences. Good luck!

04/02/2023

Self-care techniques on the day of the Beginning of Spring

TODAY is the day of the first solar term in 2023, the Beginning of Spring. Since the Beginning of Spring, the temperature will gradually increase and all species start to revival. Meanwhile, “Yang Qi” will rise upwards from the underground. Correspondingly, “Yang Qi” inside us starts to grow. Thus, our self-care in spring should focuses on protection of our “Yang Qi” and “dredge” our liver (meaning that positive emotions are VERY essential for the liver). In particular, it’s extremely beneficial for our health if we could FALL ASLEEP between 22:00 to 24:00 TONIGHT (it means that we are asleep at that moment instead of going to lay down).

For meals, it’s suggested to have less sour food for spring since food with sour nature hinders our livers in spring. For example, hawthorn and pickles are sour food. What we could eat more often in spring then? Some food in germination like (bean sprouts) and some food with A BIT spicy like spring onion, onions and leek (purjo in Finnish).

TODAY, it is also VERY beneficial to massage the red areas of your TWO hands indicated in the below picture. Some people might fart, have hiccup or have some “gugu” sound in stomach area, which are all positive effects of this massage. Here are the specific steps:
1. Find the most painful point(s) in the red areas of your hands.
2. Press them to massage for 49 times for BOTH hands.

This massage technique is to help to “dredge” our liver and it is especially effective on the day of the Beginning of Spring. “Dredging” our liver could assist to remove the stuck in our bodies, for example, uterine fibroids, breast nodules and thyroid nodules.

Have a healthy beginning of the spring!

06/01/2023

What shouldn’t we do after waking up in winter mornings?

Morning is often the strongest moment of our bodies’ “Yang Qi” based on the traditional Chinese medication (Unfortunately, there is still not too much related to “Yang Qi” mentioned in the west). According to Huangdi Neijing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huangdi_Neijing), “Yang Qi” is the most fundamental determinant of our lives, meaning that we would pass away once our “Yang Qi” is used up. “Yang Qi” during our infancy is the strongest in our lifespan and it decreases when we get older (You might notice that babies could quite often feel hot, whereas we gradually need more clothes for warmth when getting older). Therefore, the key to be healthy is to maintain and strengthen our “Yang Qi”.

However, doing something inappropriate after waking, especially in winter mornings, would lead to long-term negative effect on our “Yang Qi”. If “Yang Qi” is damaged in winter, people would quite easily get more tired than usual and get sick in next spring. You might know, chromic diseases are often caused by long-term bad habits…

1) Don’t wash hairs or shower right after waking up, especially bath in tub.
Taking shower and/or washing hairs in morning right after waking up would decrease your “Yang Qi” so that you would feel tired or even dizzy.

2) Don’t get sweaty.
Some people like to have a morning workout or morning jogging in mornings. Yet, it is not good to do that for the whole winter, especially in winter mornings. Winter is a season to “collect” energy (i.e., ”Yang Qi”) for the next spring to “grow”. It is not suggested to do intensive excises so that you get sweaty to damage your “Yang Qi”. Some calmer excises that do not lead to getting sweat are good for winter, for instance, walking.

Here is a video that you can know more about “Yang Qi”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXdmnx7aOhg

Feel free to PM me if you want to know more about “Yang Qi”😀

My guide, "4 Daily Rituals That Can Add Years to Your Life with Chinese Medicine" is completely free, which you can download right here: ➔ http://alexheyne.c...

19/06/2022

Good to drink and eat cold?

Mid-summer is coming soon. People start to drink and eat cold more often. Yet, has one ever thought about whether having cold is better or worse than having warm to drink and eat?

It is well known that the average body temperature among adults (excluding pregnancy) approximately is lower than 37°C. This canonical standard was established in the 19th century. What’s the actual situation today? A group of researchers from Stanford University (Protsiv et al., 2020) lately found out that men born in the early 19th century had temperatures 0.59°C higher than men today and temperatures has also decreased in women by -0.32°C since the 1890s in the United States; both genders showed a similar rate of decline (-0-03°C and -0.029°C per birth decade for men and women respectively).

Is the decrease of human temperature good or not? Absolutely not a good situation! You might notice that older people generally need to dress more than younger ones for the same weather. You might also notice that people with cancer feel much colder than others for the same weather. Why? Body energy of older people and cancer patients is less than younger ones because older people have already consumed more body energy in their lifespan than younger people. Except for genetic reasons, cancer patients are diagnosed because their body temperature is too low so that cancer cells could be activated in a suitable cold environment within their body. And yes, cancer cells exist in almost everyone’s body. These cells are not activated if our inner body environment is not suitable for them, for example, when our body temperature is high enough. Once body energy of one person uses up, this person will pass away. That is, body energy for us to use is not infinite and this is why we are not able to live for ever. Consequently, people could live healthier and longer if they use their body energy in an efficient way.

Now, let’s come back to our topic: Good to drink and eat cold? If we drink and eat cold stuffs, our stomachs have to use EXTRA body energy to heat what we drink and eat into the temperature that is similar to our body which is closed to 37°C. When we drink and eat colder stuffs, we have to use more extra body energy to proceed them. Now it is clear for us that the best for our body is drink and eat those with similar temperature as our body. If we really want to have something from the fridge, for example, yogurt, I would suggest to let the yogurt at room temperature for some time before having it.

Reference:
Protsiv, M., Ley, C., Lankester, J., Hastie, T., & Parsonnet, J. (2020). Decreasing human body temperature in the United States since the industrial revolution. Elife, 9, e49555. Accessed from https://elifesciences.org/articles/49555

24/04/2022

Different meanings of ”harmful” in TCM and western medication

In TCM (traditional Chinese medication) and western medication, the meanings of “harmful” is not identical. In west, for instance, materials with metal are harmful while without metal is safe, according to the analysis on chemical tests. However, TCM depends on whether the nature of food/herbs can adjust the nature of your body back to normal functions. If the food/herb could not adjust your body nature back to normal but make your status worse, this food/herb is harmful for you.
Let’s take an example from daily life to elaborate this difference. In the views of western medication, a cup of cold drinking water is not harmful based on analyzing chemical tests. But, in the views of TCM, if your stomach is cold in nature, your stomach muscles would cramp for some time when you drink a cup of cold drinking water. In this case, a cup of cold drinking water is harmful for you in TCM because it activates/worsens your stomach problem. But in western medication this cold drinking water is not harmful for you even it made your stomach muscles cramp.
This example shows the different perspectives between TCM and western medication. Actually, the natural materials (e.g., herbs, fresh food) are much more influential for human’s health than artificial chemical materials. Because artificial chemical materials are not natural, they are hard for our bodies to absorb (Our bodies are designed to digest natural food instead of artificial ones). In contrast, after natural materials get into the body, your body could automatically to select what to absorb and what not to. Our bodies have high-level of abilities to make this kind of decisions to select what nutrition will be absorbed from a portion of natural food. Such high-level of abilities in our bodies (=the wisdom from the nature, also called “Tao”) is far beyond the intelligence in our brains.

05/04/2022

Natural and cultural solar term: Qingming (Pure brightness)

Solar term of Qingming is often in one day of April 4, 5 and 6. This year’s Qingming is today, April 5th. Qingming is a natural and cultural solar term. Today, the Sun ecliptic degree is 15 for the north half of the earth. Culturally, Chinese people have a very important tradition in Qingming, that is, going to have grave sweeping to respect our ancestors.
Historically, the Cold Food Festival (a day before Qingming) is closely related to Qingming. The Cold Food Festival, once upon a time, has been popular in northern China (Note that Chinese people get used to eat warm). Before the Cold Food Festival, people get rid of the fire of last year and later drill for new fire for the current year. However, before the new fire is made, it is not allowed to make fire to cook. Therefore, people traditionally eat cold food on the day right before Qingming (i.e., the Cold Food Festival). During Tang and Song dynasties, cold food festival has becoming less and less popular as it used to be. However, A calligraphy master piece related to the Cold Food Festival called Cold Food Observance (see its part in the enclosed pic) written by Su Shi (a Chinese scholar-official, active as a poet, essayist, calligrapher, painter and politician in Song dynasty, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_Shi?msclkid=c376d1c8b4d611ecb2325d7a252d76c9) was ranked as top three in semi-cursive script/running script of Chinese calligraphy. It is now stored in National Palace Museum (Taipei). More about Cold Food Observance see https://www.comuseum.com/calligraphy/masters/su-shi/cold-food-observance/?msclkid=5abd9e78b4d611ec9339d8f766f4a282
You might ask: why do Chinese people have tradition to respect our ancestors in spring? Why not in autumn? Well, autumn is already sad in nature. For instance, yellow leaves could easily make people feel sad. But spring is active in nature. So sweeping graves in spring can be easier for people to adjust their emotion back to positive, compared to autumn. Nowadays, there are 3 days public holidays for Qingming in China, which allows people to go back to hometown to visit and respect graves of their ancestors’.
In terms of self-care, we should pay more attention to our livers in spring because livers are the dominant organ in spring. Therefore, it is suggested to drink tea with roses for spring (roses are not for those in pregnancy and in periods). For women, black tea is more appropriate since black tea is warm in nature whereas women are cold in nature. Roses could help us to regulate our livers and emotions in spring. On the other hand, hiking in Qingming and in spring is also quite helpful for our self-care because enjoying the beautiful growing scenery in spring time will regulate our emotions into a better state. Hopefully the weather in Finland will become more spring soon😊 though today it suddenly snowed a lot with strong wind for the whole day in Helsinki…

14/03/2022

Immediate becoming vegan fits everyone?

Quite many people think that being a vegan would be helpful for their health. To conduct this idea could be true and false at the same time. In general, it is beneficial for our health to have only small amount of meat. Archaeologists identify whether a dinosaur is herbivore (those mainly ate grass) or a carnivore (those mainly ate meat) depending on the number of its particular teeth for cutting meat. In the case of human teeth, the main function of most of our teeth (i.e., 28) is for cutting non-meat, while there are only 4 canine teeth for meat. That is, one eighth (1/8) of our teeth is for meat. Therefore, one eighth of meat is pretty good amount for your body if you eat meat.

However, what many people often do nowadays is to immediately become vegan and completely stop the meat that they get used to. This way usually brings different health troubles, for instance, some young women’s periods might suddenly terminate, some might have long-term fatigue and some might have lower immunity. To avoid such problems, I suggest you who prepare to shift from eating meat to vegan as follows for reference:

1. Conduct the change as slowly as possible so that your body has enough time to adjust without problems.
2. Trust your instinct taste for the food (=eat those food and use cooking style that make your body delight) BUT make sure to diverse your food meanwhile.
3. It’s the best to have three meals at the similar time of everyday, which ensures your stomach and digestive system happy.

Feel free to comment on this post and/or PM me if you want to discuss further.