Know Thyself: 5 Pillars of Self Diagnosis.

 Know Thyself: 
5 Pillars of Self Diagnosis

Shifu Andrew Miles

Daoist internal viewing meditation is simply a systems check of the five movements.  This is the ultimate do it yourself guide to health.  The body is filled with nerves and channels, these allow you the best diagnostic system available.  Even an MRI isn't as useful to doctors as a patient who can carefully observe the changes within their own body.  Every day ask yourself about the following five systems.  Feel how they become a part of you and leave you.  Feel yourself connected through air into the sky and through water to the deepest parts of the ocean.  By studying the five movements in the body, you can understand how you connect to other people, the environment and how you interconnect through your major organ systems. 

Air 

 How are you breathing?  How deeply are you breathing?  Is the breath making sound?  Is it easier to inhale or exhale?  How does the way you are breathing make you feel?  What parts of your body could use more ventilation?  How do you breathe in?  Which nostril do you primarily breathe through?  Do your cells want more or less oxygen?

Water

Water:  How thirsty are you?  How much water do you need?  Where is your body's water?  How do your kidneys feel?  Is your water in the cells or outside of them?  Try to feel  water going through your system and even evaporating off of your skin.  What color is your urine?  What temperature of liquid feels best for you?

Blood

Feel your blood flowing throughout your body.  Feel how your pulse is flowing.  If you feel an obstruction, relax and imagine the blood flowing through to the tips of your toes and fingers.

Emotions

 Emotions: Consider which emotions you are holding onto and where they originated.  Just as yawns spread unconsciously, so too do emotions.  Emotions cause chemical changes in the body and playing certain emotions in a continual loop may be poisoning the body.  Emotions serve to us to get the body's needs met.  Imagine emotions coming in like email and being deleted when the message has been dealt with.  We often wrap memories in stress to remember them.  Write it down, make a time to deal with it and move on.  The heart should be clear and open like the sky.  Serenity isn't an accident, it comes down to choices.

 Food

Where in your body is the food you last ate?  As you eat feel the food traveling all the way through.  Feel which parts of your body are most in need of this food.  Let those areas of the body signal the foods that you need to eat.  You should pay more attention to the messages your body tells you than what advertisements say.  Feel how certain food affect your body.  Which ones make you feel stronger or more relaxed.




These five methods of self diagnosis are a way to bridge meditation with daily life and ultimately lead to a healthier and happier lifestyle.