Moxibustion Is Wonderful — But These Situations Demand Extra Care! Doctor Luo Dalun on How to Moxa When You Are Qi-Deficient, Yin-Deficient, or Hungry and Chilled

Patient search terms: tired after moxibustion / moxibustion made my condition worse / yin deficiency and moxibustion / qi deficiency and moxibustion / can I moxa on an empty stomach / moxibustion after a cold / Guanyuan Zusanli Zhongwan moxibustion points / how long should moxibustion last

Corresponding terms: moxibustion (ai jiu) · mugwort (ai cao) · qi deficiency (qi xu) · yin deficiency with insufficient fluids (yin xu jin ye bu zu) · congealed qi and blood · ying-wei disharmony (ying wei bu he)

Opening: the people in the news who “left without a word” — a reminder to us all

Dear friends, good morning, everyone. It has been a long time since I last recorded for you — today we continue our conversation about health. How have you all been? There is one feeling that has struck me especially hard lately — health really is everything. Doctor Luo Dalun says that almost every day he opens the news and sees someone who has left us for one reason or another: just now there was another singer, barely over thirty, gone. Have we ever seen such a stream of news before? Now it is no longer a question of “whether one can pass peacefully in old age” — young people dying early is happening one after another.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I just saw the news about the famous Taiwanese actress Hu Huizhong — as a child she starred in Huan Yan (A Love Story), and played the tough policewoman in Ba Wang Jing Hua; she was so famous. The news said she had the flu and slept at home for seven days; the moment she woke she heard that Barbie Hsu (Da S) had died — everyone was shocked. The foreign live broadcasts were even more harrowing: one anchor, mid-broadcast, pitched forward onto the desk and was gone; another swayed and toppled over as he read — and these were not isolated cases. So what are we afraid of? We are afraid of people who never take health seriously at all, who never give their bodies a single round of regulation, who roll and toss in the mundane world, battered and bruised every day, and then — “pop” — they fall and are gone.

After COVID, constitutions were “downgraded” across the board — time to intervene

Why is the body so fragile now? Doctor Luo Dalun reminds everyone: the residual problems left by COVID are actually enormous. That whole epidemic dragged everyone’s constitution down; the body’s foundation was badly damaged, and nothing is the same as before.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: At times like this we must intervene promptly and keep readjusting. Anyone with a little wisdom should see it — the body matters. We keep adjusting the body, intervening at every turn, removing unfavorable factors, and using methods that support the upright qi (zheng qi) to make it strong — that is how we reduce the danger. A great many people have not realized this at all. So I want to keep talking with everyone about this topic: there are very many ways to regulate the body — zhan zhuang (standing meditation), walking, sitting meditation; among the external therapies there are gua sha (scraping), moxibustion (ai jiu), and cupping; and on top of that, food therapy. We will take them slowly.

What shall we talk about today? — Moxibustion. As everyone knows, Doctor Luo Dalun greatly admires moxibustion — it is one of the oldest ways of regulating the body that China has.

Why mugwort of all things? — the ancients tried every kind of branch

Moxibustion already occupies a huge place in the Huang Di Nei Jing (Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon); together with needling it forms “acupuncture and moxibustion” (zhen jiu). In ancient times moxibustion was extremely widespread, and the ancients had a clear hierarchy: once the mind was settled, ordinary bodily imbalances could basically be corrected with needling and moxibustion; only when the illness had truly taken hold did they use decoctions. Later people’s minds grew more troubled, and they used needling, moxibustion, and decoctions together; still later decoctions became ever more important — which tells you how much worse the body’s condition had become.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Why do we all use moxa sticks today? Willow branches, peach branches, other grasses — set alight and used to heat the body — the ancients tried them all. Different woods, when burned, have different effects on the body; some are even harmful. In the end the ancients settled on mugwort (ai cao) as the best. Modern research has found that the infrared frequency emitted by burning mugwort is very close to that of the human body, which is why it works so well — this is what the ancients chose after a thousand trials, and it is highly effective.

What is moxibustion actually doing? — melting the congealed “oil pipe”

The principle of moxibustion is actually very plain: our bodies need qi and blood to flow, but some places stall for various reasons — the push is weak, cold congeals them, or qi and blood arrive at a spot and get blocked — and once something is blocked it becomes easier and easier to block. What to do? There are many methods: pricking to squeeze out stagnant blood, cupping to pull it out — and moxibustion works the same way.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Moxibustion is especially good at handling cold-type congelation: once lit, it slowly raises the temperature of the local skin, and the qi and blood inside move faster — just as when oil in a pipe congeals, we apply heat to melt it gradually. Once it flows, the body itself can flush the obstruction away, and once circulation returns to normal it becomes more and more normal. The precise mechanism is very complex and sets off all sorts of reactions in the body, but it is genuinely very effective. In ancient times people could not dress warmly and were exposed to a great deal of cold, so moxibustion was applied almost everywhere; modern people are not so different — cold drinks, air-conditioning drafts, thin clothing — stagnation of qi and blood is extremely common: there is cold congelation, congelation from qi deficiency that cannot push, from yin deficiency, from blood deficiency, from trauma — for all of these, moxibustion still works very well.

One thing deserves special attention: after COVID, stagnant blood is very easily produced. COVID “scans” the body — wherever you have an old injury or a blockage that resists passage, it immediately “builds a fortress” and begins to solidify; the more blocked, the worse it gets. So many people develop all sorts of blood-stasis symptoms after COVID, and moxibustion is a very good way to regulate them.

Doctor Luo Dalun often teaches these points to moxa: Guanyuan (CV4), Zusanli (ST36), Zhongwan (CV12), and the Shenshu points (BL23) on the lower back — warming the waist a little, and just a short session a day when you have time.

Pitfall No. 1: people with qi deficiency get more and more tired from moxibustion

Moxibustion is good, but there is one great principle — never look at moxibustion in isolation. Doctor Luo Dalun says we are very prone to separating oral decoctions from moxibustion: “moxibustion is moxibustion, it has nothing to do with anything else; taking herbs is taking herbs, unrelated to anything else” — that is binary, one-track thinking. Chinese medicine is comprehensive: whatever is good for the body, that is what you do.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: If you caught cold, moxibustion warms the body and lets qi and blood pass — that is the proper treatment. But sometimes the cause is complicated — for instance, congelation caused by qi deficiency: qi is too weak to push the blood along, so some part gets blocked. Which point do you moxa? Some points arouse the upright qi — moxa Guanyuan CV4, for instance, to rouse the primal qi and make it push the qi and blood along; others just dredge the local area. But you must understand: moxibustion pushing and repairing locally itself consumes upright qi. People with qi deficiency become even more deficient after moxibustion. It is like someone who is qi-deficient insisting on exercising, insisting on running — after the run he is weaker and more exhausted than before. Better to build the body up first, and then run.

So how should a qi-deficient person moxa? Doctor Luo Dalun’s advice is to combine internal and external: steep some ren shen (ginseng), huang qi (astragalus), and gou qi zi (wolfberry) in water and drink it; once you feel your strength picking up, then moxa — supplementing qi on the one hand while moving qi and freeing the collaterals on the other, twice the result with half the effort. If you feel especially tired after moxibustion, be alert: you may be qi-deficient and need to regulate yourself first before moxaing again.

Pitfall No. 2: people with yin deficiency and insufficient fluids get worse the more they moxa

Another situation Doctor Luo Dalun takes very seriously is people with yin deficiency and insufficient fluids (jin ye): the fluids inside the body are inadequate — there is no water in the pipes — and moxibustion is a warming therapy that consumes fluids even more readily. Moxaing under these conditions easily produces all kinds of adverse reactions.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: I have seen far too many of these cases — right after moxibustion, ying and wei fall out of harmony and big welts break out over the body; some people are exhausted after moxibustion; some get worse the more they moxa: they wanted to treat leg pain, so why can they walk less and less after moxibustion? Why? Yin deficiency and insufficient fluids. The body’s fluids are lacking, and you are still roasting it from outside — the pipes are dry with no water, and you keep heating the outside; how can that work? In more severe cases, people even develop skipped heartbeats (palpitations) that grow worse with moxibustion; the meridians cramp and limbs move with increasing difficulty; some people moxa until they can no longer walk. All of this is caused by insufficient fluids inside.

What should yin-deficient people with insufficient fluids do? First nourish the fluids internally: Yu Ling Gao (Jade Spirit Paste, made from longan flesh to nourish the blood), dang gui (Chinese angelica), Si Wu Tang (Four Substances Decoction), or e jiao (donkey-hide gelatin, ground into powder and taken in water) — fill up the fluids first so there is “liquid” inside, and then moxa. Only then will the effect appear, and without side effects; this kind of “unblocking” is the true unblocking.

Pitfall No. 3: don’t moxa on an empty stomach or while chilled

Insufficient fluids are also connected to the spleen and stomach: when the spleen and stomach absorb insufficient nourishment, both fluids and ying-wei qi (nutritive and defensive qi) will be deficient. That is why the ancients said: do not moxibustion when extremely hungry or extremely full.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: Some people are famished — mouth parched, light-headed with hunger — and they go moxa Guanyuan CV4 to rouse the primal qi? Only a bookworm would think that way! The fluids are insufficient, the ying-wei qi is insufficient, the body has no strength at all — do you really moxa Guanyuan and expect to feel better and better? Wrong. I have seen people like this: chilled to the bone, whole body cold, and on an empty stomach — “no, I will moxa myself through it!” But the interior is empty, the body is cold as ice, lips blue, not even a mouthful of saliva left — and you go moxibustion? At times like this first drink hot porridge, hot water, or even brown-sugar water — anything to fill the interior first; once fluids and ying-wei qi are moving, then moxa — and when the sweat comes, the cold disperses. Moxa directly and the body gets into trouble: the forced sweat will not come out, and you artificially create ying-wei disharmony, and the body surface develops problems.

Closing: combine internal and external — 20 minutes a day is enough

Doctor Luo Dalun’s summary: moxibustion is an excellent method — through natural warmth it lets the body’s qi and blood circulate, and it is especially good at dredging local obstructions; some points can themselves generate primal qi, rouse the qi and blood, and make the essence and qi more flourishing.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: But always remember — Chinese medicine looks at problems comprehensively: supplement qi for qi deficiency, nourish blood for blood deficiency, nourish fluids for fluid deficiency — when the material foundation is adequate, then use moxibustion to regulate, combining internal and external, and that is very good. Otherwise you are only straining from the outside, mishandling the relationship between inner and outer — and sometimes the result is exactly the opposite of what you wanted.

Moxibustion is simple to use: you don’t need much — 20 minutes a day is enough, and it is very good for the body — supporting the upright qi, raising the yang qi, warding off evil — dispelling the turbid, filthy qi outside the body, and it works especially well when epidemics are raging. Things like this should be kept at hand as a protective skill: carry a moxa stick with you, and wherever you go, moxa a little first.

💬 Note from Doctor Luo: There are many ways to protect our lives and build our health — take them one at a time. You say, “carry everything with me?” That won’t do — the first method may not help you, and the second may be handing your old life over to heaven. But in the same situation, if you have these methods ready, they will certainly prove useful. Let us try not to be the people in the news — let us be healthy people, take health seriously in daily life, and act with awareness — that is a good thing. Every day we chat about a small topic, a small method of self-care in daily life; I hope it helps you all, and together we protect our health. See you tomorrow!

Compiled from Doctor Luo Dalun’s health lecture on moxibustion and wellness.