What Is a Chi Nei Tsang / TaoTouch Treatment?
A Chi Nei Tsang/TaoTouch treatment begins with a dialogue between you and your practitioner, discussing your health history and any current health issues you wish to address via treatment. You should include all information you think might be relevant, even if you don’t fully understand how each part connects to the whole. TaoTouch practitioners are trained in a truly holistic approach, considering all aspects of your physical and emotional state of being together as one manifestation of the whole.
Plan to wear comfortable clothing and eat and drink normally before your appointment - do not fast. Your practitioner will help you to be comfortable on a massage table, using pillows and bolsters to support you, most often lying on your back with the area from your ribcage to the top of your pelvic area exposed by opening your clothing. Feel free to ask for the temperature in the room to be adjusted to your comfort, or for a blanket or more pillows.
The practitioner will begin the treatment with a short intake conversation. You stay clothed, but wear clothing where your abdominal area can be accessed (no dresses, unitards, etc.). Once you are lying on your back on the massage table, the practitioner will guide you in connecting with breath in your whole body.
Gentle and precise touches to your abdomen to discern the best way to help you feel better, as the practitioner guides you in breathing mindfully into the areas they are working with. You may experience a deep sense of relaxation and re-connection with yourself on a physical and emotional level during the treatment. The treatment will last approximately one hour; you may even fall asleep, and this too is part of the therapeutic experience. The practitioner will conclude the treatment by giving you advice and simple self-care exercises that you can do at home to support and maintain your well-being.
What has happened during the treatment will vary depending on your needs and circumstances; your experience of change, or healing, may occur during the treatment or it may occur in the days and even weeks following the treatment. In healing, we cannot separate the mind from the body. Each symptom, mental or physical, has a meaning and that meaning is emotionally charged. Emotions are carried in the body as energetic charges which need to be processed physically. They manifest in significant locations in bodily structures such as joints and muscle groups, to be expressed by bodily attitudes. These energetic charges require digestion and their level of processing can be traced throughout the length of the digestive system.
Read more about the relationship between intestinal and emotional distress in Gilles' recent article
Intestinal Distress and the Gentle Healing Power of Chi Nei Tsang.
The Chi Nei Tsang practitioner uses the healing energy of Chi, together with precise therapeutic manipulations, to bring awareness of these stored charges so digestion can happen.
The healing process takes place when there is an opportunity to recover and when awareness is present. The key to the healing process is awareness. Healing is ruled by spirit; spirit means guidance and being connected with our reason for being alive.
What conditions does Chi Nei Tsang/TaoTouch address?
It is important to emphasize that the TaoTouch practitioner does not treat symptoms, nor does Chi Nei Tsang attempt an allopathic cure for illness. Chi Nei Tsang/TaoTouch addresses the whole person, regarding no difference between the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of healing or well-being.
In that way, Chi Nei Tsang can be of particular benefit to some of the more intractable contemporary problems, such as sleep disorders, digestive disorders involving the liver, gallbladder, kidneys, pancreas, etc., challenges to fertility, nervous disorders such as anxiety and depression, musculoskeletal problems of undetermined origin, and auto-immune disorders such as Lupus and chronic fatigue. Additionally, Chi Nei Tsang can help to speed healing from injury or trauma, including obstetrical and surgical trauma.
Again, Chi Nei Tsang/TaoTouch does not attempt to treat symptoms or cure an illness; rather it is a system designed to precipitate change by bringing awareness to the internal organs of the body, thus inducing the body to heal. In that way, Chi Nei Tsang addresses every condition of a person, whether manifested physically, emotionally, or spiritually.