Dr. Shin Min-shik

In Oriental medicine, there are many methods to cure patients. Among the most effective but rarely used is meditation. Those who practice meditation can attain a change of body and mind. But what kind of changes are they and how are they helpful?Usually, meditation calms our mind and conscience. Almost everyone has some kind of worry, complaint, grudge or bitterness. The stronger the negative emotion, the easier it is for one to develop disease or illness. Thus, it is important for people to eliminate or reduce such an emotion. A bout of depression, for example, can seriously lower one's immune power. This, for example, illustrates how the line between biology and psychology cannot be drawn with any certainty.

Most doctors recommend reducing stress as a way to live a long and healthy life.

The reduction of mental stress allows one to relieve the unnecessary stress placed on their body. The physical world, including one's own body, is a reflection of the observer. Simply put, we create our body as we create our experience in the world.

According to Oriental philosophy, our body, in it's essential state, is composed of energy and information, not solid matter. The mind and the body cannot be separated. The unity that is "I" separates into two streams of experience. One experiences the objective stream as their body. One experiences the subjective streams as thoughts, feelings, and desires in their consciousness. At a deeper level, however, the two streams meet at a single creative source. It is by drawing from this source that one is meant to live. Meditation can make one aware of this original union of their mind and body.

The original gate to life, the tanjon, is located just below one's navel. The tanjon is often called the 'ocean of chi' for it is the center of one's orbiting, internal life energy. The tanjon serves as the generator of electricity and supplies energy to all other body parts. When one focuses their consciousness on the gate to life and meditates diligently, one will feel one's energy (chi) rising from this point.

Thus, concentrating on the gate to life will also increase one's immune power by opening the internal circuits and supplying the body with energy to reorganize and circulate the stagnant energy.

Even though the patient may strive to recover his or her health, the disease affecting his or her immune system stops him or her from recovering and medicines may have little or no effect. Meditation enables the patient to improve his or her immune power and help him or her to generate healing power.

However, there is a huge difference between treatment and healing.

Treatment is the act of taking medicine, or having an operation, etc.

whereas healing uses pure, internal energy, chi, to resolve an ailment.

Those who practice meditation diligently will find their inner healing power and immunity fighting off diseases before they become ill, rather than spending a lengthy time laying in bed resting.

Updated: 05/13/1999