We all live on this very beautiful planet, and we affect each other in more ways that we can think of. So would our lives be any different if we started to treat everybody, no matter how “good” or “bad” we think they are, as if they were our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, sons and daughters – ALL AT THE SAME TIME. If you would do something to your sister or brother but would never do this to your mom or grandma – don’t do it to your sister or brother neither. Period.  And once we switch to this way of thinking – we will be able to give unconditional love to everybody. Even if a person may took a misstep or lost their way for a moment, but he or she is still a person we love and they deserve our forgiveness and unconditional love. As you probably heard – hating another person is like drinking a poison and hoping for that person to die. The other person will never die; your hate will only kill you. On the other hand – if you only spread love, that’s what you’ll get in return as well.

So what if you did wrong to the other person? Even if that person will never be able to find out what you did? Your action would bring bad karma on you, no matter if other person is aware of your doings or not. And the only correct way to deal with this situation is to get all your courage together and apologize to that person. Yes, this will bring some (and sometimes a lot) pain to you. But pain and suffering is what actually releases karma, so the sooner you apologize – the better off you’ll be.

I’m sure everybody heard a saying – “What happens in Vegas – stays in Vegas”. I really don’t like this saying as it may give somebody an excuse for doing something wrong, and not expecting to pay for it. Let’s take a hypothetical scenario where a husband goes on a business trip to Vegas, gets drunk one night, and one thing leads to another. Now he may realize in the morning that this would have never happened if he wasn’t that drunk, but it did happen. He may also think that since his wife stayed home with kids thousands of kilometers away – she will never find out, so he may be off the hook. And when he comes back home – the life seems to be the same, nothing has changed, and he relaxes even more. But then he starts to notice that his wife is not treating him as well as she used to. That would happen because on some subconscious level she may feel her husband’s bad karma, and would try to distant herself from him. The husband would start thinking if somehow his wife has figured out about that Vegas thing. This thinking along with guilt will soon bring health problems to him, starting with digestion. And the longer it goes on – the worse the situation will get. Since their kids are parts of both husband and wife – they may also start having troubles in school or with their health. Kids are given to us not to just get taught, but also to teach us a few lessons as well, and they will gladly do their part.

So what is the only correct way to do in this situation? A husband would have to collect all his courage and have a chat with his wife. Of course it is not going to be a pleasant experience for neither party, and he may get screamed at and have to spend a few days or weeks or months sleeping on the couch in the living room. But if there was a spark of love that brought them together in first place – that spark will not let anything bad happen to their family, and they will only grow closer together in the end, getting back their good health and seeing all the problems their kids had disappearing in the process. When coming from unconditional love – a wife may realize that it took a lot of courage for her husband to come clean, and would look at her husband as a stronger person than he thought him to be.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new!

Some organs have their twins, like two lungs and two kidneys. And some organs can perform functions of other organs should original “performers” of the task become unable to carry it on due to illness.

So what is all this has to do with loose stools? The thing is, large intestine can assume some of the work for water elimination from the body when kidneys are malfunctioning and unable to perform up to the requirements. In this case, instead of absorbing as much water from the remains of the food, large intestine skips this function. Thus reducing a workload required from the kidneys, and giving kidneys much needed break.

So next time you get a diarrhea, or what you think is diarrhea, after eating a watermelon or drinking a lot of water – ask yourself, are your kidneys in need of little attention?

Yours in health,
Vlad

Ok, so in 80% of all cases cancer is caused by cold energy. Now do you think a patient would react to the news differently if instead of hearing a C-word he or she was told that they have a cold disease?

I’m pretty sure they would be like – ok, that doesn’t sound too bad, so how do we fix this disease?

And the solution is also quite simple – doctor needs to remove cold energy from the body, and the body will heal itself.

Now cold here does not mean just cold air entering the body during winter time. There may be multiple reasons for cold in the body, like eating too many cold foods, some drugs (e.g. antibiotics) leave cold in the body, of course cold weather, etc.

So how do you find out if you have cold in particular part of your body? There is one simple method, that works pretty well especially on limbs, and does not need any tools and you can do it yourself at the convenience of your own home. So how does it work? All you need to do is lightly slap an area where you have some pain and suspect cold. Make sure your wrist is completely relaxed. You don’t need to slap hard, just do 10 times and watch your feelings. If there is cold in that area – the pain from slapping will be quite strong. If there is no cold – you will not feel the pain from slapping. I’ve tested this method on myself, and was really surprised with the results. I knew I had some damage to may thigh on my left foot, and slapping that foot caused pretty strong pain. Doing the same slapping to the thigh on my right foot cause no pain at all. Now if you have an area of your body where you often experience pain – try this method, you may be really surprised with the results.

Be careful when slapping lower back, as kidneys are really delicate and you don’t want to damage them.

If you found an area where you have strong pain when slapping, there must be some cold in there. What can you do to remove it? One way is to slap that area until you no longer feel the pain. This means that you lifted one layer of the cold and now body can remove it. But this is just one layer, and like with onions, you need to remove cold layer by layer. So the next day the pain during slapping will be back. You may need to do this slapping method 8 to 10 days in a row to completely remove cold from that area of your body.

The other thing you can do to remove cold is drink ginger tea. To make this tea put 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of finely chopped fresh ginger root into a pot with 3 cups (750ml) of water, bring it to boil and simmer for 15 minutes. I usually make this tea in the morning. After simmering you will have roughly 2 cups of tea, drink one cup right away and leave the other for the evening. Make this tea 10 days in a row, and you will be on the way to better health!

Yours in health,
Vlad

Then one night when I woke up from a pain in my calf, I decided I’m not going to do anything about it, I’ll hold it through this pain. I’m not going to lie to you, the pain was pretty strong and hardly manageable, I had to make every effort not to scream. But after about two minutes the pain was gone. And I felt really good.

So what happened here from the view of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Image Therapy? That pain in my calf wasn’t really a muscle cramp. You see, when we sleep at night our body recharges and gains energy to sustain us for the next day. So when energy levels get pretty high, they will start pushing on the blocks in energy channels, thus causing the pain. It looks like I had a block in Urine Bladder meridian, which affected my kidneys and bladder, making them work not that well.

So next time you wake up at night from a cramp in your leg – try not to move and just hold through the pain. And if you manage to hold till the pain is gone – that will likely be the last time that cramp will wake you up. And as an extra bonus you will also enjoy your kidneys and bladder working better then before.

Yours in health,
Vlad

So what is Image Therapy view on this? I thought you’d never ask Let’s first think of what is happening with a lady once she gets pregnant. In a lot of cases, especially if this is a first pregnancy and her parents are far away and not easily available to chat, a lady would start to worry. Is she eating right? Is the baby getting enough nutrients? What if she will be a bad mother once the baby is born? Should she breast-feed or put her baby on formula? Should the family start saving for college right away? And the million other questions go through her mind. Now if her parents are nearby, and willing to help when the baby gets here, young mom feels more confident and does not worry that much. But what if young family just moved to a new city far away from all the relatives for her husband’s job? What if husband cannot offer much help when baby is born as he has to work long hours to prove himself on that new job? All the care for a newborn will be on mom’s shoulders, and this just adds to the worries she is already having.

Now in both Traditional Chinese Medicine and Image Therapy they say that worry is affecting Spleen function the most. Excess worrying will cause blocks in the energy channels of Spleen, and hence Spleen function will be affected. And what does Spleen do? Among other things Spleen is responsible for fluid retention in the body. So if Spleen is not functioning well, body cannot get rid of extra fluids and hence the weight gain. And after giving birth, young mom may be worrying even more, so Spleen never gets a break and Spleen’s function may go down even more, hence more weight gain. And even if young mom stops worrying after child is born (maybe family wins a lottery or job moves them back to home town), Spleen function is already affected and weight loss will be a problem, even if mom eats very lightly and goes to gym a few times per week.

So how to fight that extra weight? Well, we need to restore normal function of the Spleen, and once that is taken care of – Spleen will take care of that extra weight and young mom can enjoy weight pretty close to the one before the pregnancy.

Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Vlad

While studying in China, I was told the following stories of two cancer patients.

About 10 years ago our Teacher had an advisor who was a professor of TCM, so he knew TCM in and out. A while ago he was diagnosed with cancer, I believe it was stomach cancer, but that’s beside the point. That professor got so scared, and with all the heavy advertising of Western Medicine, he decided to not go with TCM treatment but instead go with what Western Medicine has to offer. So he went with chemotherapy. Unfortunately he could not handle the pain that chemo was causing him, and committed suicide.

The other man, who is a friend of our Teacher, was also diagnosed with cancer. He also decided to go with Western Medicine’s treatment, and he actually went through four rounds of chemotherapy. While not getting the results he was expecting, he decided to switch to TMC and Image Therapy. He went through the course of new treatment, and now is cancer-free for 5 years.

Now I’m not 100% sure how Western Medicine treats this. I believe treatment options are very limited, in most cases patient will have a bladder infection in this case, so that’s what will get treated. But that’s treating the symptom and not a cause, and will bring only partial relief.

So what is the view of Chinese Image Therapy on this problem? We believe it’s a connection or communication problem between Kidneys and Heart/Brain, it can be easily treated by Image Therapy, and patient can sleep soundly with only one or 2 bathroom visits a night after just a few treatment sessions, in most cases 2 or 3, sometimes even after first session.

What exactly do I mean by communication problem here? Here is what suppose to happen at night from Image Therapy’s point of view. At night Brain should send a signal to Kidneys that body needs rest, so Kidneys should go into “night mode”, work very lightly to not fill Bladder quickly, and to make sure that Bladder is filled only by the morning, but not before that. In this mode a person can sleep soundly whole night without any bathroom calls. But what if that communication is broken and Kidneys never receive “work easy” signal? You got it, they work full power and fill Bladder quite often, hence the often bathroom visits. And when communication issue is resolved – Kidneys work on “night mode” at night, and person can get a good night sleep and wake up full of energy and look forward to another busy day.

Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Vlad

So what do we need to treat here? We need to treat bladder infection first, right? You’ll answer, “yes, of course, no doubts here!” And I’m sure if you describe this situation to your family doctor and ask him/her what needs to be done – the answer would be another round of antibiotics to treat the infection.

And guess what? You’ll be back to see your doctor again and again, you’ll hear that this was a case where bacteria developed resistance to that particular antibiotic and now you need a stronger one, and then another even stronger…

So what would Image Therapy practitioner would suggest to do here? Nope, not to treat the bladder infection (unless it’s getting really bad).  We need to find a cause of the problem, and treat the cause, not the symptoms. So practitioner would notice that pain at the left side of the body is related to Spleen. And if we look at Wu Xing Circle on the right – what do we see? (by the way, if you didn’t read that article yet – I highly advise you to do so.) From Wu Xing Circle we see that Spleen (Earth) controls (gray arrow) Kidneys (Water). As Kidneys and Bladder are part of the same system, when there is a problem with a Spleen – Kidneys and Bladder are not getting enough energy, they cannot function normally, and that is what causing bladder infections. Once function of Spleen is restored – Kidneys will start getting the energy they need to function properly and bladder infection will clear up on it’s own. Now in cases of severe bladder infections I do suggest my clients to take antibiotics, I just inform them about Dangers Of Antibiotics, and the fact that they will later have to address that as well.

For this client, I focused on getting her Spleen to start working correctly, and it turned out that the problem was not really with the Spleen, but with Spleen’s connection to Lungs (Spleen send it’s energy to Lungs, see the picture on the right, black arrow). If connection is broken, the energy of the Spleen is getting “stuck” and not moving to Lungs, hence the sense of pressure in the Spleen. Once I restored that connection, my patient felt immediate relief, the pressure in the Spleen came way down from what it was for last months. I also worked on making sure that Lungs and Kidneys work properly, and that Kidneys are getting energy from Lungs. With all connections restored and organs working correctly, the bladder infection will clear up as well.