Chinese grandmother wisdom tells us that health is our greatest treasure. We all have bills to pay and duties to fulfill, but health and recovery need to be balanced with other priorities. There is no magic formula for these adjustments, but they’re needed.

Based on Chinese healing and martial arts, my decades of teaching, and my personal healing experience from back injury, I believe that physical and mental tension, improper foot placement, and poor body alignment and mechanics can be some primary contributors to pain and frequent injury or reinjury. Just as it takes years to develop such bad habits, it takes time and effort to identify problems and retrain the body.

Chinese healing and martial arts practitioners have long believed that blockage of energy flow in our body can lead to pain. One main cause for energy blockage is physical tension. Therefore, Song, 松, a Chinese word meaning releasing tension and relaxing the body, can reduce pain.

In general, nearly 90% of back pain is non-specific. That is, we can not identify any specific disease or structural change which causes the pain.  When our pain is non-specific and it persists it can be very frustrating.  

When trying to relieve back pain, most of us follow the mantra: no pain, no gain: different modalities, many sessions, working as hard as possible.

Stress from daily life can slow the healing process. One piece of wisdom from Chinese philosophy can help nurture tranquility when dealing with social challenges.