You are a Cloud (A Very Old Interpretation of Illness)

Imagine your body as cloud made up of gases instead of a bag of liquids. That is, trillions of chemical reactions which happen faster in the cells located by acupuncture points. Now imagine that instead of grouping those chemical reactions by the organ in the vicinity of where they happen, you instead divided them into Five Phases. These Five Phases are one of the most basic concepts of TCM. Each phase has a physical and emotional aspect and encompasses hundreds of symptoms that may or may not overlap with western organ or disease categories.

The Five Phases operate like a circuit, each one leading to the next. Understanding the interaction of the phases, especially which Phase is distressed, is the key to diagnosis, especially when practicing Japanese method acupuncture.