Positive Health Online

Treating Pain in Joints and Muscles

Listed in bodywork

As an acupuncturist I commonly see people with pain in their joints and muscles. Often pain in joints is labelled arthritis and muscular pain may be classified as fibromyalgia but i...

Menopause - A Chinese Approach

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

The author has been practising acupuncture since she qualified with The College of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture in 1984 and is a founding member of the Scottish Post Polio Networ...

Insomnia - a Chinese Approach

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Tackling the problem of insomnia from the perspective of Chinese medicine, which states that problems associated with sleeplessness are due to imbalances in The Three Treaures: Chi,...

Daoist Diary: Spring

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Outer seasonal changes seem to affect us on an inner level. In Spring, this manifests as a surge of energy and enthusiasm for new projects.

Daoist Diary: Autumn

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

To followers of the Dao the seasons can be powerful teachers and through them we learn to flow better with the circumstances of our lives. This is a time of letting go, of withdrawa...

Daoist Diary - Late Summer

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

In her Daoist Diary for late summer, Vicki McKenna looks at how we face change in our lives. At these times we often feel vulnerable and deeply uneasy. We create strategies to allow...

Daoist Diary: Summer

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Vicki McKenna continues her Daoist diary from Issue 87 (April 2003). According to the Daoist view, summer is the season of the fire element. The changing of seasons gives us the opp...

Daoist Diary: Winter

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Regular Contributor Vicki McKenna presents the winter entry to her Daoist Diary. She looks at the importance of creating a restful time for ourselves in winter to build healthy immu...

Drawing On the Dao: Less Strain, More Gain

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

This account of the principles and practice of Hydrotherapy follows a lifetime study of Naturopathic Techniques after conventional medicine had failed to improve what David calls a ...

Drawing on the Dao: Taking Action, Moving Forward

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Towards the end of a busy day, the author began to feel stressed, fuzzy-headed and anxious. As a practitioner of the art of Daoist acupuncture, she says she knew it was a message fr...

Drawing On The Dao: Responding To Shock

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

In this article the author draws on the Dao philosophy to treat those in shock. According to the Daoist classics during shock there is no home for the Shen, the Chinese name given t...

Drawing on the Dao: Tied up in Knots

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

The author draws on the philosophy of Daoism to explain and treat Liver Chi stagnation - a blockage of life energy with symptoms ranging from a sense of oppression in the chest with...

Drawing on the Dao: A Capsizing World

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

This article focuses on how to maintain balance and harmony the Daoist way in the throes of upheavals surrounding us ecologically, socially, politically and economically.

The Daoist Way of Life and Death

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

This time the author, an acupuncturist, draws on the Dao method when working with patients who are dying or need support coping with dying loved ones. She cites a couple of personal...

Drawing on the Dao: A more Flexible Approach

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

In this column the author shares her experience on how the Daoist approach helped her with her disability (she had polio as a child) and what led her down this route. She focuses on...

Drawing on the Dao: Happiness

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

The author explains that Daoist philosophy teaches us that happiness is to be found within; that the Heart is the spiritual and emotional centre of the body and on the deepest level...

Drawing on the Dao: A Rich Weave of Adventure

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

The author explains the Dao Way, of the ebbing and flowing of energy with its fluctuations, times of fullness and emptiness as well as highs and lows, by opening with a quote by Lao...

Letting Go of Being Right

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

This column focuses on letting go of our need to be in the right, and how to be empty of self in the true Daoist way. According to the author, by being in harmony with Nature, the D...

Daoist Tips for 21st Century Living

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

This column looks at the Daoist way of life, which is one of balance – somewhere between strain and over-indulgence. A life where we can be ourselves, in harmony with natureÃ...

A Balanced Way: Daoist Tips for 21st Century Living: Simplify, Simplify

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

In this column, the author looks at how we can live simply in today complex world and the attitudes we can alter within us to achieve this.

A Balanced Way; Daoist Tips for 21st Century Living: The Trick Is To Keep Swimming

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

In the face of the current credit crunch and contraction in the economy, the author, through the example/analogy of swimming, shares her thoughts on the Daoist way of meeting this ...

Get Yourself Connected

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

The topic of this article is the importance, for happiness, good health, and longevity, of being connected within loving and supportive networks.

The Discomforts of Life

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

The author uses the example of her daughter having broken her leg three weeks before her wedding to explain the Daoist principles of healing.

The Inner Moaner

Listed in personal growth

This article gives clear and humorous advice about how to deal with our Inner Moaner – the part of us that is resisting, feeling victimized by current circumstances.

All the Time in the World

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

A balanced way of living; Daoist tips for 21st century living. The author gives an example of a shift from a sense of leisure, of time spreading out before her, to suddenly, as a r...

A Balanced Way: Daoist Tips for the 21st Century: Training the Emotions

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Daoist philosophy tells us that there are two aspects within the psyche - the mind of emotion or Fire Mind which resides in the Heart and the mind of intent or Water Mind which resi...

Choosing Your Own Direction

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

When I was in my mid-twenties, in the nineteen seventies, like many others I followed a guru and was a member of a cult. My teacher gave me a sense of direction and brought a sense ...

Living In A Technological World

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Many of us are finding the digital revolution to be overwhelming. Some of us are in agreement with the novelist Jonathon Franzen when he calls Twitter “unspeakably irritating...” a...

Making Friends with Fear

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Daoism encourages us to admit and to be honest about fear - true Daoists still retain their basic innate fear and see it as an opportunity...

How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Go with the Flow

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

2012 might be remembered as the year of the damp squib ‘Mayan Apocalypse’ - the end times that never happened.

Daoist Tips For The 21st Century - Let A Tree Be Your Teacher

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

A couple of years ago I visited the giant Redwood forests in Oregon and spent several hours experiencing the quiet serenity of these massive trees. No wonder these forests are consi...

Living Well in Old Age

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

My father in law is now 87 and rapidly ageing. A month ago he could walk around town; two weeks ago he had a fall and since then has weakened and can hardly walk around his flat. Th...

A Balanced Way; Daoist Tips For The 21st Century: Trust Your Disease

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Recently I came across a well-known ‘new age’ author explaining why she thinks she got cancer; according to her it was due to fear. She described how she was afraid of everything, i...

I Am Everyone (Or How To Live Together Peacefully)

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

At the time of writing, the world had just witnessed the awful massacre of the editorial staff at the Charlie Hebdo magazine. News of the murders was greeted with shock and fear, b...

Daoist Tips for the 21st Century - Living Abundantly

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

We live in times of austerity with job losses, short term contracts, government cuts to welfare benefits and many of us wonder how we can keep our heads above water and continue to...

Nutrition the Daoist Way

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

We are constantly bombarded with dietary advice including a vast array of often ‘faddy’ diets that guarantee weight loss, good health, an increase in energy and everlasting happines...

A Healthy Dose Of Compassion

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

As I write this article the world has recently witnessed terrorist atrocities in France and in Germany along with horrendous bombing of Syria and most of us will have reacted to ...

Keeping In Touch

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Now that I am a grandmother I have the opportunity to cuddle one or other of my grandchildren on an almost daily basis; as I embrace their warm little bodies I feel a sense of deep ...

Body Rhythm Cycles Around the Clock

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

All those of us who have experienced times of instability will confirm that when our routines are no longer there to support and ground us through the day we can feel off balance.

Stop Constantly Thinking and Start Consciously Living

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Western philosophy for thousands of years has developed the belief that thinking is the foundation of existence - “I think therefore I am” according to Descartes. Thinking is certai...

A Strong and Sexual Being

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Many cultures and religions have made, and continue to make, the argument that as men and women are born with clearly different sexual characteristics so these differences determine...

Daoist Tips for the 21st Century - Harmonizing the Spirits

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

It’s easy to lose touch in our hurly-burly world with a sense of inner calm and stillness – the centre of your being. As I write, the UK seems to be at war with itself over Brexit –...

Daoist Tips For The 21st Century - The Mother of Us All

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

The woman who tucks in your label on the bus; the woman who packs up the leftovers for your lunch the next day; the woman who knits you a hat for winter; the woman who shows you whe...

Daoist Tips for the 21st Century - Transforming Emotions

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Our health suffers when we avoid our emotions. Alcohol and drug abuse, screen time or over eating – there are many ways to suppress our feelings. And when we do this we may find our...

Coronavirus: A Daoist Approach

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

So here we all are – in lock down and under the threat of infection from a virus. It’s not an easy time for any of us. Hard for most of us emotionally as we are separated from our f...

A Balanced Way: Daoist Tips for the 21st Century – Surviving Self-Isolation

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

I am writing this at a time when the first wave of the corona virus pandemic has abated and we all feel a sense of relief. Nevertheless we may well have to face a second wave of the...

Daoist Tips for the 21stCentury – Back to Nature - Learning from Long Covid

Listed in cfs me long covid

Some recover from Covid -19 in a couple of weeks whereas others experience on going issues with extreme fatigue, problems with their respiratory system, brain, cardiovascular system...

A Balanced Way Column; Daoist Tips for the 21st Century – Strength In The Time Of Covid

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

I know from personal experience, having contracted poliovirus (as a baby), the catastrophic effects a virus can have on your body and your life. The Covid 19 virus can wreak havoc f...

A Balanced Way; Daoist Tips For The 21st Century: A Balanced Way of Loving

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Worldwide, during the recent pandemic, so many of us had to deal with the trauma of loss through the death of a loved one or because we were isolating from family and friends. And i...

STAYING SUPPLE – Letting Go of Extreme Opinions

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

Several months into the first year of the Covid pandemic I was getting out of my car when a smartly dressed stranger came up to me asking for directions to a local street. Having p...

Self-Centred Or Earth-Centred?

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

The current state of the world reveals war, the climate crisis, the threatened extinction of one million animals and plants, refugees desperately seeking safe asylum, extreme pover...

Developing Healthy Resilience in Young People

Listed in personal growth

Children and young people today have to cope with a great deal of pressure in their lives –particularly at school and in further education. They are pressured to achieve specific ac...

Creating a Harmonious Home

Listed in chinese oriental medicine

After my toddler grandchildren have paid a visit, my living room looks as if I have been burgled. Toys are strewn about, a mess of paper and paints – interrupted works of art lie ab...

The Benefits Of Light And Dark

Listed in light and colour

Through exposure to sunlight and by visualizing light we can benefit body, mind and spirit.