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Traditional Chinese Medicine

5 Element Healing

The FIVE ELEMENT MEDICINE PATH is a unique approach to the Natural Healing Arts. Developed by Jaki Daniels, whose practice is rooted in both the traditional ways of Indigenous medicine people and the science of Classical Chinese Medicine, it offers a truly holistic and functional approach to health and wellness. Patients receive a series of regularly scheduled hands-on treatments which specifically influence the innate healing capacities and animating life-force within them, serving to re-establish the intelligence of function that is the hallmark of a healthy person. Length of treatment time varies and is dependent upon the severity of the initial illness, the willingness of the patient to be alert to the subtle forces of internal change, their commitment to embracing health, and their daily support of the healing work through appropriate food choices and lifestyle practices.

 

Jaki began offering Five Element Healing to the Calgary area in 2000 and was one of the first Five Element Practitioners in Canada. Having seen the effectiveness of this system in her own practice and the need for more qualified practitioners, Jaki developed a unique training program, combining the theory and framework of this Classical System with the innate healing gifts and skills of her students.  

 

​The Foundation – Chinese Five Element Healing
 

Classical Chinese Medicine Five Element Healing is one of the world’s oldest healing traditions and has been in continuous use for approximately 2500 years. It is an extremely complex system of medicine, based in the laws of nature, the cycles of life, and the flow of life-force energy. This life-force energy (sometimes called chi or ki), which all living beings possess, flows through the body in precise pathways that are called meridians. Twelve meridians run bilaterally up and down the body, and provide the foundation of our functional support, on all levels, body, mind, and spirit. Our life-force energy is the ‘force’ that fuels and animates every aspect of who we are, from our physical organs and systems, to the clear functioning of the mind, to the joyful and compassionate nature of our spirit. We can only ‘be’ as functional and effective in our lives and relationships as the life-force energy which flows through our meridians. If there are blocks or disruptions to the flow, symptoms will appear as alarm signals to alert the patient that corrections are needed. In Five Element healing however, it is not the symptoms that are treated.


A treatment is the re-establishment of the full flow of life-force energy in ALL the meridians. This begins the process of restoring your body/being to the functionality required to activate the innate, natural healing processes, re-establishes balance throughout the systems, and begins the process of the restoration of health. In the early stages of treatment, the body/being will only be able to sustain the full flow of life force energy temporarily, soon falling back into old, established patterns. With regular treatments however, the life force energy begins to ‘remember’ this ideal, healthy state, resumes and finally maintains this natural pattern of flow, and the patient returns to wellness. Traditionally, Five Element Healing was used as preventive health care. For normal healthy people seasonal treatments can help keep their physical systems tuned, their emotions balanced, their mental health in check, and their spirits happy and at peace.
 

​There are several key features to Five Element Healing that are important to note:
 

By assessing the quality and quantity of life-force energy that flows through each meridian, via the meridian ‘pulses’ which can be felt at the wrists of the patient, a five element practitioner can detect imbalances that may not yet have reached the symptomatic level, and can therefore be corrected before the onset of illness.

Because our life-force energy powers all functions, body, mind, and spirit, this form of healing can be utilized for symptoms that are not physical, and appear at the level of the emotions, the mind, and/or the spirit. Invisible and hard-to-reach conditions such as depression, anxiety, and sleeplessness, are as available to amelioration via balancing the meridian pathways and their life-force energy as physical symptoms, thereby allowing for ‘balanced wellness’.
 

Most people are familiar with Chinese medicine through acupuncture and the use of needles. The Classical system uses an entirely different approach than the more commonly known Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Specifically, the Five Element approach does not treat symptoms but seeks out the root cause of imbalance and works to restore the underlying functions, on all levels. Diane uses a gentle touch combined with a highly developed art of subtle sensing, offering a safe, non-invasive method that not only draws upon her skills, but also her unique healing gifts.

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