Self Healing with Chinese Medicine A Home Guide to

Treating Common Ailments, 2nd Edition

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 Self-Healing with Chinese
Medicine
“Jam-packed with practical insights, Self-Healing with
Chinese Medicine provides a clear road map to restoring and
maintaining your health and balance. This gem of a book
distills beautifully and clearly the fundamentals of Chinese
medicine and the world of nature and how we can apply them
in our everyday life on our path to self-healing. Full of dietary
recommendations, lifestyle advice, and detailed exercises and
manual therapy that you can do at home, this will be one of
those comprehensive and practical books that you will always
refer back to.”
— REBECCA BOND, L.Ac., MBAcC, classical
acupuncturist and member of the British Acupuncture
Council

“In this extensive and practical book, Clive Witham shares

with us a deep perspective of health and self-healing with the
natural world at its core. I recommend it to everyone who
wants to live according to nature’s patterns.”
— PERE GARCIA, L.Ac., N.P., naturopath and licensed
acupuncturist

“Why do I have this health problem? What can I do myself to

contribute to a solution? And what are the things I can do to
prevent more problems? If you ask yourself these questions,
then Self-Healing with Chinese Medicine is a must-read. It
shows how our body and mind are interwoven with the nature
that surrounds us and how you can empower yourself by
following the eternal and fundamental principles of nature to
lead a healthy and balanced life.”
 ELMAR PESTEL, M.D., licensed internist and doctor of
traditional Chinese medicine, manual therapy, and
hypnosystemic therapy

“Clive Witham brings a profound knowledge of Chinese

medicine to treating yourself for some of the most common
conditions we see in modern-day society. This book contains
a good amount of theory followed by lots of practical tips and
is the perfect guide to self-help for all those who do not wish
to consult the doctor with every minor ailment.”
XAVIER FRICKER, L.Ac., licensed acupuncturist and
practitioner of Chinese medicine

“In-depth knowledge beautifully balanced with an engaging

writing style, Self-Healing with Chinese Medicine is different
from other books about traditional Chinese medicine.
Complex ideas are explained in a way that’s easy to grasp,
and I feel like reading it from cover to cover and then going
back into the chapters to dig in more. Ultimately, this is a book
that you’ll return to time and again, rereading and checking
things, as you maintain your health.”
— ANETTE SELBERG, certified phytotherapist and
herbal and massage therapist
 Contents
Introduction
How to Use This Book

Part 1. What Allows Us to Thrive?

Chapter 1: When the Breath Is Moving
Chapter 2: When the Natural Circulation Is
Maximized
Chapter 3: When the Qualities of Nature Are
Balanced
Chapter 4: When the Storage Systems Are Balanced
Lung Storage System
Pancreas Storage System
Heart Storage System
Kidney Storage System
Liver Storage System
The Fu Systems
Chapter 5: When the River Systems Flow Freely
Chapter 6: When the Climates Enhance Your Life
Chapter 7: When Emotions Flow Smoothly
Chapter 8: When Obstructions Are Minimized
Chapter 9: When You Respect Your Digestion
Chapter 10: When You Live According to Your Path

Part 2. What Are the Signs of Not Thriving?

 Chapter 11: Physical Characteristics to Look Out For

Part 3. How Can You Treat Yourself?

Chapter 12: Food Therapy
Foods That Cool Down the Body
Foods That Warm the Body
Chapter 13: Manual Therapy
Acupressure
Treating a Large Surface Area
Gua Sha
Use the Microsystems
Chapter 14: Exercise Therapy
Chapter 15: Lifestyle Therapy

Part 4. How Do You Find Which Areas to Treat?

Chapter 16: Treatment Regions on Your Body
Treat the River System
Treat the Caverns, Roots, Junctions, and Sources
Treat the Areas, Zones, and Regions
Treat the Microsystems

Part 5. What Are the Main Patterns and How Do You

Treat Them?
Chapter 17: The Main Pattern Groups
Chapter 18: Patterns of Weakness
General Weakness
Yang Weakness
Yin Weakness
Blood Circulation Weakness
Chapter 19: Patterns of Overflow
 Stagnation
Damp/Phlegm
Heat
Cold
Wind

Part 6. How Do You Treat Common Medical Conditions?

Chapter 20: Head, Neck, and Shoulder Area
Headaches
Dizziness
Sleeping Disorders
Anxiety
Depression
Facial Pain
Nasal Allergies
Sinus Problems
Eye Disorders
Ear Disorders
Toothache
Sore Throat
Neck Pain
Shoulder Pain
Chapter 21: Chest Area
Colds and Flu
Cough
Asthma, Breathlessness, and Wheezing
Chest Pain
Palpitations and Irregular Heart Beat
Chapter 22: Stomach and Abdominal Area
Nausea
 Feeling Bloated
Stomach/Abdominal Pain
Constipation
Diarrhoea
Painful Urination
Chapter 23: Back Area
Backache
Sciatica/Leg Pain
Chapter 24: Upper Limbs
Elbow Pain
Wrist Pain
Pain in Your Hand and Fingers
Chapter 25: Lower Limbs
Knee Pain
Ankle Pain
Foot and Toe Pain
Chapter 26: Conditions Affecting Men
Prostate Disorders
Chapter 27: Conditions Affecting Women
Premenstrual Tension
Menstrual Flow Disorders
Period Pain
Menopausal Disorders
Chapter 28: Conditions Affecting the Whole Body
Blood Pressure Disorders
Painful or Aching Joints
Fatigue
Diabetes
Obesity and Losing Weight
Epilogue
Endnotes
About the Author
Index
 Introduction

I am not the same person who wrote the first edition of this book.
How could I be? I started it 15 years ago in the early days of my
North Africa adventure, and so much has passed since then. It is
apt, therefore, that in this new edition, I take the skeleton of the old
book and fill it afresh with ideas and approaches that better meet the
needs of where we are now in this stage of the 21st century.
And be in no doubt we are not in a good place. The world has
changed and is in danger of further change for the worse. It is time
for a new approach, one that veers from the main narrative and
brings us to where we should have been all along.
When I explain many of the concepts you will learn about in this
book to the people I help in my clinics, it is a wonder to watch their
faces. They just get it. Of course, we are built like trees. Of course,
our bodies act like rivers. Of course, we live with breath motion. I can
see that I am not talking to their intellect. They do not need to
process complicated theories in their brains. I am speaking to their
primal bodies. It is knowledge within them that has been suppressed
within the strict boundaries of what we are supposed to learn about
the world as we grow up.
This is the helplessness I referred to in the introduction to the first
edition. With the standard view of our health—the one that fits in so
well with the separation of our bodies into manageable parts so that
they can be pharmaceutically monetized—our interaction in the
process of healing is usually limited. We rarely have a deep
understanding of what is happening inside our bodies and, truth be
told, you will find that this includes many medical professionals,
especially connected to areas of your body that are still relatively
unknown, such as the brain.
 I have never hidden my opinion. If I designed a system of
healthcare, I would not entrust my wellbeing to an overworked
practitioner who is running late, with a waiting room full of people
and barely five minutes to scribble an unpronounceable drug on a
stamped piece of paper and send me off to the pharmacy.
Surely, in an ideal world, any one of us can come up with a better
plan than that. I do not want to spend a fortnight blindly taking an
antibiotic “just in case” and then return to square one for another
drug when it turns out to not, in fact, be the case. I want someone to
investigate—to investigate properly, find the problem, and resolve it.
But we do not live in an ideal world, and for many of us this is
where we find ourselves, our children, our partners, and the people
we care most about in the world. We have to follow a system, not
because it is right but because it is there and alternatives are not
often freely available.
I needed this book a long time ago, as an eight-year-old kid with
a bowl haircut and chubby cheeks living in the suburbs of London in
the 1970s. One day I woke up with small blue bruises dotted all over
my arms and legs. I remember counting them on just one arm and
the number reached well over 40. With the other limbs covered in
even more, it was quite clear to me and my parents that I was sick,
and so I was sent to be an inpatient at Great Ormond Street Hospital
in London, where the cream of Britain‘s pediatricians spent the best
part of a week doing a series of inconclusive tests on what was
going on inside my body.
In the absence of any better solution, it was decided that since I
had had an aspirin a few days before the appearance of the bruises,
it was very probably an allergic reaction. As with most families at the
time, aspirin was the go-to pill when any member showed the
slightest sign of sickness, and we had all grown up with the familiar
foil packets and the fizzy sound as the flat white pills dissolved in
water.
It was, therefore, a surprise that one of us was allergic, but when
a man with lots of letters after his name, wearing a white coat and
grasping a clipboard with scribbled numbers, tells you you are
allergic to aspirin, well, you are allergic to aspirin. And with that I was
promptly discharged and sent home.
So time moved on and the bruises gradually disappeared, and as
flared trousers and polonecks of the 70s changed to skin-tight jeans
and leg-warmers of the 80s, they ceased to appear. I then grew up
and continued to proclaim to any nurse with a sharp needle that I
had an allergy to aspirin, but other than that the whole bruising
incident was forgotten for many years.
That is, until the bruise-penny finally dropped in the brain of an
older and wiser me. With the hindsight of someone in a very different
place and time, I can now piece together what happened.
I was part of the school milk generation. And for anyone who is
not familiar with this concept, you were force-fed milk on a daily
basis for no apparent reason other than a date. My birthday hit
during the summer holidays, and I had only just made it into that
academic year, so along with the other “late” birthday people, I was
obliged to ritually sip a bottle of milk a day through a stupidly small
plastic straw. If I refused, then I could not go to playtime and waste
15 minutes trying to play soccer with a tennis ball with my friends.
The milk did not stop at school, though. My dairy consumption
continued at home with a glass of bottled pasteurized milk (back
then the milkman used to deliver them to the door) and a pile of
ginger snaps, and this, added to the milk-soaked cereal from
breakfast, and milky hot chocolate later on, meant that with just milk
alone, I was drinking like a newborn calf.
Add to this my daily buttery sandwiches and my liking for potato
chips, bananas, peanuts, tall glasses of orange juice, chocolate, and
all things sweet, and it was no wonder I had developed into a barrel
with cartoon chubby cheeks (“He’s so cute! I could just squeeze
him!”).
What I know now, but what my mother (who like any mother had
only the best intentions) did not know then, was that the food I was
eating was proving too much for me to digest. It was getting stuck
and slowly being processed through my steadily expanding body.
This was quite literal, in the form of chronic constipation, but also
meant that the other functions the digestive system would normally
do with ease started to do the opposite.
One of these functions was connected with the containment of
blood in my blood vessels. When the systems that control my
digestion (the stomach and pancreas systems) became impaired,
this had a domino effect on the liver system and the holding force to
stop the blood from spilling out from veins—capillaries and the tiny
vessels almost too small to see—was just not strong enough.
This is what was happening to me. I had bruises all over my arms
and legs because of impaired digestion, which meant that it could
not send enough strength around my body to control my blood from
leaking out of the vessel walls. It was like a river systematically
bursting its banks every few metres because they just collapsed.
Like any river system, if the flow of water is not strong enough, it
cannot adequately support the farthest parts with enough flow, hence
the symptoms specifically affected the four limbs. This was why the
bruises appeared only on my arms and legs not my body (you will
understand this better when I tell you about the root regions of your
body).
If we had had this information back in the hot summer of 1977,
the solution would have been simple: Stop the milk—and stop the
orange juice, the bananas, the potato chips, the peanuts, and all the
other food that was grinding my digestion to a halt.
If we had had this book back then, my mother could have
borrowed a Chinese soup spoon from the local takeaway, spread
Vicks Vaporub on my back, and scraped just below my shoulder
blades to help digestion. She could have pressed and massaged key
areas to help to strengthen my stomach and pancreas systems. I
could have done some stretches to help harmonize the balance of
the river systems in my body and been forced to stop playing war
with mini toy soldiers and get outside in the fresh air for some proper
exercise.
But, alas, we did not have this book. Instead, we had panic,
powerlessness, and confusion, and we were forced to rely on a
medicine that, despite the shiny scalpels and the long Latin names,
is deeply flawed. Far too much of the medicine we see and
experience, whether at the local doctor’s surgery or clinic or in a
hospital bed, is not how we would want it to be if we were the people
in charge.
I get to see one specific part of the medical process: The end
part. People usually come to see me at the tail end of a long medical
journey. They have seen a doctor, a specialist, a surgeon, a
physiotherapist, and a chiropractor. They have had a blood test, a
urine test, an X-ray, an ultrasound, a CT scan, and an MRI. They
have travelled great distances for a second opinion with another
doctor, another specialist, and then had a new round of X-rays,
ultrasounds, CTs, and MRIs. They have tried every medication the
doctors have thrown at them—antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, pain
killers, sleeping tablets, and valium. And then, and only then, do they
finally step over my clinic threshold and want me to fix them as I am
their last hope before a desperate operation to remove some
important part of their anatomy.
It would, of course, be ideal if everyone could get timely
professional help from someone who knows how to treat them using
the best of Chinese medicine, but many people do not have the
means or the opportunity. This lack of access does not have to be
such a major disadvantage if you are privy to some natural wisdom
of the ancients—knowledge that was collected thousands of years
ago, firmly anchored to a natural scientific viewpoint, and based on
an acute observation of the world around us; knowledge that is
founded on practice, testing, and refining and that has matured like a
fine wine in a dusty cellar. A fraction of this raw ecological knowledge
is included in this book.
The techniques and advice I have included in this book are all
things I tell my patients and encourage them to do away from the
clinic. We all need to do what we can to keep our bodies working
properly, and there are a variety of things all of us can do at home to
prevent disease and ill health and help our bodies to thrive. This
book, therefore, contains valuable information that can give you
some of the tools to try and rebalance your body yourself.