Want to Learn Chinese Medicine But Don’t Know Where to Start? Doctor Luo Dalun’s Roadmap into the Treasure House of TCM

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Many friends ask me: I want to learn Chinese medicine — how do I learn it? Where do I start? It’s so complicated. Today let’s talk about exactly this — how to enter the world of Chinese medicine systematically and learn it well. The treasure house of TCM is extraordinarily rich and touches every aspect of life, but please don’t narrow your thinking and tell yourself, “I just want to learn a technique for treating illness.”

Part One: First, get this straight — you are not learning a “healing trick,” you are learning a way of life

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What are we actually trying to learn? We are learning a correct concept of health — a way of living that stays close to nature and follows the way of nature. This includes: how you see the world, how you see nature, how you see life, how you see friends, family and work, and how you know and manage your own body — all of this is what we are meant to learn. So it is not about picking up a single healing technique. No.

Chinese medicine is extremely broad. Every great physician of antiquity had his own sound philosophy of life and values, and a comprehensive view of nature — how to understand the body, how to live in harmony with heaven and earth (tian ren he yi), how to join yourself with nature. This view of nature, view of the body, view of health is what serves you most.

If you say, “I’ll just learn a few ways to write prescriptions,” you’ve narrowed yourself. Why? Because you haven’t yet understood where illness in the body comes from.

Part Two: Where does disease come from? — You will find the root is mostly in the “heart”

In the past we spoke of the causes of disease: the six exogenous excesses (wai gan liu yin), the seven internal emotions (nei shang qi qing), irregular diet and overexertion (yin shi lao juan) — plus external injury: being cut by a sword in war, chopped by an axe, bruises from falls — those are external wounds. But apart from these external injuries, the rest of illness usually has something to do with your own heart.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: You think, “Good heavens, is it really that serious?” It really is. The people I see whose bodies break down — it is almost always because their heart has lost control. Once the heart loses control, internal injury follows — irregular diet, overexertion, the seven emotions: all of these are tied to the heart.

How is diet tied to the heart? Greed — the greedy mind. The moment you see delicious food, your heart starts boiling, you must eat it, and you cannot hold back your appetite. You can’t control it, so after eating, the spleen and stomach are injured. The problem of diet is a problem of the heart.

Why does overexertion consume so much? Also the heart. You see beauty and cannot control yourself; you see an official’s position and your mind yearns for it; you chase fame and profit, grinding ceaselessly, determined to reach the goal. When the heart lets go, consumption naturally increases — that is why Laozi says, “Excessive love inevitably leads to great expense” — when you pursue something obsessively, what you spend is naturally great.

The seven emotions injuring internally are even more tied to the heart. All the thoughts you cannot resolve, the things you cannot let go of, the entanglements, disappointment, depression, all kinds of suppressed states — these certainly make you ill. Joy, anger, worry, thought, grief, fear, fright, plus envy, jealousy, resentment and hatred — put all these together and the body is bound to suffer.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you ever get the chance, sit beside a Chinese medicine practitioner and watch patients come in for a month or two, and you will understand completely — where did this patient’s illness come from? He has a spleen-stomach disorder — is it really a spleen-stomach problem? No, his emotions are poor, constrained liver qi is attacking the spleen earth (gan qi heng ni ke pi tu), which injures the spleen and stomach; add chaotic eating on top, and of course the spleen and stomach break down. All these problems are linked. Looking at patients from this angle, you really feel for them — how did they get stuck in there and can’t get out? It’s pitiful, they harm themselves every day. This is all connected to your worldview, your philosophy of life, your angle on things.

And when you are injured internally, the spleen and stomach’s upright qi weakens, the kidney qi weakens, and heart fire and liver fire both flare up — the internal conditions change, and only then can the external climate changes come in. That is how the six exogenous excesses arrive.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: It’s not that simple — it is not as if a normal wind blows and you catch a cold. Look at the same group of children: other kids are perfectly fine, but your child coughs at the slightest breeze, catches cold at the slightest wind. Why? The internal cause is at work. Basically something inside has broken down — the internal defense system has collapsed, and only then can the six exogenous excesses take effect. So apart from knife wounds and car accidents — external injuries — nearly all disease is tied to your heart.

Part Three: The order of study — the Dao De Jing first, the Huang Di Nei Jing second

So what do you do? What you should learn first is a sound set of values — what the ancient books teach, what we have been explaining from the Dao De Jing for so long: a good value system that accords with the Dao.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I always say that the Dao De Jing should be taught before the Huang Di Nei Jing. The Dao De Jing explains the principles — it finishes explaining the Dao. By the time you reach the Nei Jing, many of its lines are the same as the Dao De Jing, but the Nei Jing doesn’t dwell on them, because the Dao has already been explained. The Nei Jing says: given that you already understand the Dao, what do you do if problems arise? And it explains it to you layer by layer.

In ancient times, each classic taught one thing. Confucius did not teach the Dao — once you have finished explaining the Dao, once Laozi has explained it, I won’t repeat it; I’ll just tell you what you should do. So Confucius taught the code of conduct for ordinary people; the inner core of the Dao, Laozi explained. You have to read both together.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Some friends say, “Haven’t you got the order backwards? The Emperor (Huang Di) came first, Laozi came after.” But the books were written and compiled very late. The ideas of the Dao De Jing already existed in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (the silk manuscripts found at Mawangdui are from that era); the Huang Di Nei Jing was only compiled into a book in the Han dynasty. These ideas existed in high antiquity; later generations edited them into books. The Dao spoken of in the Dao De Jing was actually the guiding philosophy by which the sage-kings of high antiquity governed their states. As for the art of nurturing life in the Nei Jing: the Dao was finished being explained in the earlier text, so the Nei Jing barely discusses it and moves on to how to regulate the shen (spirit) — that is a question of worldview, which was settled in the earlier book; afterwards it explains how to adjust your psychological state. Once you understand this order, studying becomes smooth.

So to learn the healthy view of nurturing life: first, get your philosophy of life straight; second, learn more about the relationship between people and nature — your angle on the world. Don’t feel that you are supreme, that your desires matter most, that you come first — no. In nature you are tiny. Respect everything around you, understand your body objectively, understand how the body corresponds to nature, and treat your own body with the same harmonious attitude you would treat nature — your body will be far better. Once you have this grand perspective, then look at the finer details, and then adjust your psychological state.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Once you awaken to this and your values are normal — fame and profit no longer matter, you let them go; you do things calmly, doing your best for others as conditions allow, not attached to gain or loss — only in this state can you enter the condition the Huang Di Nei Jing calls “tian dan xu wu” (quiet, empty tranquility) — “In quiet emptiness, true qi follows; where then can illness come from?” When you are tranquil and empty, true qi follows, qi and blood circulate normally — where could illness come from? This is why the Nei Jing sets up the worldview in its opening pages.

Part Four: Regulating the spirit — steady the heart

Once your outlook on life is settled, you must regulate the heart — how to overcome bad emotions.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Bad emotions certainly pop up at any moment. Don’t let anyone brag — I have them too. But how to control them so they don’t burst out at any moment — that needs adjustment, and there are methods.

The method: study some classics, read and listen to them often in spare time; before sleep at night, reflect on yourself, and use the classics daily to adjust your mindset; when something happens, ask yourself what the classics would say. Once the heart is gradually adjusted, everything that follows becomes easier.

Part Five: External therapies for regulating qi and blood — channels, points, moxibustion, scraping

What do you learn next? Some content on regulating qi and blood. A vast work like the Huang Di Nei Jing mainly teaches: first regulate the shen — the cosmology, the worldview, how to see the correspondence between the world and the body; and then, what does most of the content teach? The circulation of qi and blood — needling, moxibustion and other external therapies.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The Nei Jing contains only 13 formulas in total — very few indeed. It considered that you don’t need that level yet; it isn’t important. So in learning Chinese medicine, I recommend you start with the external therapies — the channels and points. Don’t start with writing prescriptions. Press a certain point and see what it does; moxa a point and see what it does; regularly scrape (gua sha), cup, or massage — the Nei Jing devotes enormous space to these, which shows how important they are. The Nei Jing held that once your view of life is adjusted and your psychology is adjusted, for minor problems the channels are enough.

If you can master one thing — moxibustion, or gua sha — that alone is remarkable. I once saw rice-grain moxibustion — twisting moxa wool into tiny balls the size of a grain of rice, placing them on the body, lighting them with an incense stick — fizz, pop. I also watched an old Korean doctor, the team physician for the Korean Olympic squad; the old gentleman lived long, and he moxa’d himself a little every day, all his life. Those points are familiar to everyone — you just don’t have the time. Master the external therapies and your recovery rate goes way up.

Part Six: Food therapy — put the treasures of your kitchen to use

What else? Learn some food therapy (shi liao).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I have always recommended food therapy — for example, how to use huai shan yao (Chinese yam), long yan rou (dried longan), how to use chen pi (aged tangerine peel), dang shen (codonopsis), ren shen (ginseng), huang qi (astragalus), gou qi zi (wolfberry). If you can use these medicine-food dual-purpose items well, you can resolve a great many problems. The most important thing is to lay a solid foundation for the body: regularly use a little shu di huang (prepared rehmannia) — boil some water with it, add it to soups — and when the kidney qi is sufficient, any small problem becomes easy to adjust; regularly use huai shan yao and lian zi rou (lotus seeds) to regulate the spleen and stomach, tonify upright qi — then small problems are easy to adjust too. This is laying the foundation — use the things in your kitchen well, adjust the body invisibly, and since they are food itself, you can use them with complete confidence.

Part Seven: The theoretical framework — never “one disease, one formula”

Next, you can learn a little TCM knowledge and formulas. But you must master the theory first, and only then study formulas.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: You can’t say, “For this illness of mine, there is this formula.” That’s wrong. Chinese medicine is about pattern discrimination and treatment (bian zheng lun zhi). You must study the theoretical framework of Chinese medicine well and understand what TCM is about. Many people nowadays haven’t built the framework: we talked about rhinitis and used Jie Geng Yuan Shen Tang (Platycodon and Scrophularia Decoction) — for chronic rhinitis this formula works. But he never studied the qi, blood, yin and yang of TCM — when wei qi fails to protect the exterior (wei wai bu gu) or yang qi deficiency causes this kind of problem, why does Jie Geng Yuan Shen Tang work? He doesn’t know. He just thinks, “This disease gets that formula” — that’s wrong.

You must master the theoretical foundation: you need to know what wei qi (defensive qi) does, why it is produced, where it comes from, what its function is; how it relates to yang qi — it is part of yang qi; when yang qi weakens, wei qi certainly weakens too, the exterior defense fails, and external cold easily attacks. Problems of the nose have cold and heat: some are caused by yang qi deficiency with external cold invasion; some are heat-toxin stagnation, which needs clearing heat and diffusing the lung; sometimes you need to warm yang and regulate the ascending and descending of qi movement, increasing the energy of wei qi. Once you understand all this, you can use formulas well.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: The whole of Chinese medicine speaks in terms of a framework. Within that framework, within the syndromes, our formulas serve each syndrome complex — that is how you adjust the body back, and once the body is adjusted, the so-called disease gets better. The disease is only a result. What I fear most is people who study nothing about Chinese medicine and just want a formula: “My shoulder hurts — what formula do I need?” How would I know? Shoulder pain comes in many varieties: blood stasis, cold invasion, damp-heat — the situations all differ.

How do you analyze shoulder pain? You need to figure out whether it is a fascia strain, what exactly the location of the problem is; what the trigger is — its relation to external cold-damp, to damp-heat; what the relation is to the qi and blood inside; whether there is phlegm congealing or blood stasis. Analyze the syndrome clearly, resolve that syndrome, and the shoulder pain disappears.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: For example, an enormous number of people have shoulder pain now — sleeping in winter with the shoulder exposed, the room hot in the first half of the night and cold in the second, so the exposed shoulder gets hit by cold — and usually it’s one side. This kind is related to cold invasion; use a bit of Ge Gen Tang (Kudzu Root Decoction), add some formulas that disperse outward, tonify qi and blood, and it heals quickly. Look at his tongue: pale, with tooth marks on the edges — this person has insufficient qi and blood, insufficient yang qi, and as soon as the night cools, the shoulder can’t take it. Recently many people have lower-back pain — why? It’s the Major Cold solar term (da han): the channels inside aren’t flowing, yang qi is insufficient, and when the outside climate suddenly turns cold, the body can’t take it and the lower back aches. For this kind of back pain — especially if it hurts on waking in the morning — that’s a sign of insufficient upright qi: “the waist is the mansion of the kidney (yao wei shen zhi fu)” — you must tonify the kidney and strengthen the lower back, warm the kidney yang a little, and since there is bound to be some blood stasis inside, add herbs that free the channels and resolve stasis. Of course some people have damp-heat — then it’s different; you cool the blood and drain damp-heat. In short, analyze the constitution, the qi, blood, yin and yang clearly, then adjust according to the syndrome — never learn one formula for one disease. That’s not how it works.

Part Eight: How to practice — master it gradually through doing

So how do you actually study? The medical cases Doctor Luo explains every day are themselves a way of learning — through one case, showing how many possibilities exist in TCM diagnosis and how to reason — this teaches a method of thinking.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you really want to study systematically, you can read the TCM textbook “Basic Theory of Chinese Medicine” (Zhong Yi Ji Chu Li Lun) — it walks through the entire theory of Chinese medicine from start to finish, so you get a rough sense of the theoretical framework; then go on to formulas, materia medica, and the use of medicines. If I get the chance, I’ll also explain the basic theory of TCM for you. When you start learning, don’t make it too dry: for the external therapies like moxibustion and cupping, practice on yourself and your family — you master them in the course of using them; for food therapy, experience it in daily life, and you’ll gradually know which suits you — because food-therapy items are all food, safe to eat; as for specific formulas, only use them once you’ve studied well and are truly confident, and preferably under the guidance of a nearby doctor.

Part Nine: The advanced path — study the ancients privately, take the great physicians of the past as your teachers

Once you have built these foundations and want to move toward the professional level, then go and study each ancient doctor one by one — this is called si shu (studying a master privately through his writings).

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: What does si shu mean? It means we never met and studied directly under him, but privately I want to learn from him, so I read his books — one master at a time, and you will learn very deeply. Some friends say, “I just read Chen Shiduo’s books and I improved enormously” — if you read Chen Shiduo thoroughly, you are definitely an expert, even surpassing many practicing TCM doctors. So for deeper progress, take many teachers among the ancient physicians and read many books — that is the next step up.

Enter the treasure house — don’t leave empty-handed

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Today I’ve gone through the question everyone keeps asking me once again. I hope that when you enter this treasure house you don’t leave empty-handed — you walk into a mountain cave filled with treasures, dazzling and vast as the sea; don’t leave empty-handed. Learn Chinese medicine, take some treasures home with you, and you will surely protect your body well — it will benefit you enormously. The more you learn, the better you become; the more you progress, the more you gain.

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s lecture series.