By Barbara de la Torre | Contributing Writer
You can’t run on a broken foot.
I once saw a patient whose mental health depended on daily exercise. I’m talking about someone who ran every day without ever missing a workout for two years. Three weeks before seeing me, she noticed pain in the middle of her left foot. The pain would get a little better and then worse after running. She finally checked into urgent care after the pain became suddenly worse.
I ordered an x-ray of her foot, which showed a stress fracture. It’s a tiny hairline crack in the bone that doesn’t cause a full break but is vulnerable to more injury or delayed healing. When I shared the results with my patient, she said anxiously, “I can’t stop running. That’s the only thing that helps my stress.”
I studied both Western and Chinese medicine to gain the best tools from each system. Western healthcare is good at rescuing and dealing with emergencies, but it’s bad at preventing chronic diseases and cultivating mental wellness. Chinese medicine is a culmination of thousands of years of observation of patterns and rhythms of the natural world. According to Chinese medicine, many chronic mental and physical diseases come from negative emotions—not from having them but from how long we hold on to them. It doesn’t matter how much we exercise or pay attention to healthy food trends if these emotions still linger.
I have a Master’s certification in a movement-based therapy called qigong (pronounced “chee-gong”). Qigong is a branch of Chinese medicine that focuses on movement, breathing, stretching, and mindfulness. The word qigong means “the cultivation of Qi (chee),” which is the energy that sustains life. Qigong started 5,000 years ago in China and evolved into thousands of forms to address several health conditions. It’s a way of being, living, and seeing the world.
One form of qigong is called Xi Xi Hu (“she she who”) or “walking qigong.” It consists of five easy routines to balance and release the five negative emotions of sadness, worry, overexcitement, fear, and anger.
Even though my patient’s mind wanted to continue to run on a broken foot, her body had to stop. We are a mind/body ecosystem where all the parts depend on one another for survival and vitality. The mind and body communicate with us every day if we’re listening.
Qigong, when combined with proper breathing, good sleep, and eating and living with the seasons, helps us listen a little better. Superior medicine doesn’t come from the doctor. It comes from the right to repair yourself.
Join Barbara at Concordia Commons (NE 30th and Killingsworth) for a free group qigong lesson on Sunday, September 15, from 9 to 11 a.m.
Barbara de la Torre is a Concordia resident, artist, and physician. She founded ThirdOpinionMD.org to cultivate healthy individuals and communities.