Effective Gua sha Sequence for Front Body: Boost Your Immunity and Increase Circulation

Here is Clive in the forest explaining about tree trunks, circulation, Gua sha and how to treat the front of your body for disorders like digestion, constipation, diarrhea, bloating, tight chest and your back.

Video Transcript

Okay, in this video we're going to have a look at using the techniques that I introduced in the previous video, which is about treating your arms and your legs to increase circulation and to boost your immunity and to prevent ill health.

Understanding the Importance of the Torso Area

And this time, we're going to have a look at what you can do on the front of your body, on the torso, because this is a very important area, purely because of where it is. The torso area is exactly where we've got all of our organs and all the important things. And there's a distinction between the front and the back. The back of your body, which is known as the yang part of the body, is just like the trees around here. The yang part is the outside. It's the bark. It's where the flow of, in our bodies, blood, but in the liquid that runs through this tree, it will be going on the outside. It'd be going downwards, coming up towards the leaves from the roots and it'd be going inside the tree, in the interior part. This is the yin part, and then when it reaches the terminal point of the tree, which will be the end of the branches, the flower, it then will come back down to the roots and it's this downward movement which is on the outside, which is the protective part of the tree. And it's the same with our backs. That's the protective part. This is where we've got a lot of covering of muscle and bone, however, in the front part we've got our rib cage but the rest of it, well, there's not much there really. It's just tissue, fat and organs inside. So we're having a look at the yin part, which is the front part because it's very, very useful with Gua sha. Finding the Right Gua sha Tool Now, I've been searching around and I found another tool. It looks like it's rather big but it's actually got a great soft part on the end and we're going to use that to treat the chest area and the lower abdominal area in this video. So, I've got my tool and I've got my shirt. If i didn't have my shirt, then i would need some kind of lubrication and the most important part of this section of the chest is the sternum area which will be right down the middle. It's that breast bone. It's the bone you feel right in the middle of your chest.

Treating the Sternum Area with Gua sha So, this is the sternum but just above it there's another part of the bone which is called the manubrium and that's if you bring your finger down your throat and then you're going to reach a kind of dip before the bone so that bone that you're hitting is the manubrium which is at the top of the sternum. And then the actual sternal bone is quite long and thin and then it comes down to the bottom to the xiphoid process, which sometimes you can't actually feel because it bends down into the tissue but sometimes you can, it's the pointy bit at the bottom of your sternum. So you've got three parts to the sternum. Now, for the purposes of today, we don't need to worry too much about the three different parts. We're just gonna scrape down. So it's quite important with the sternum, and when I say sternum, I mean the whole bunch of the manubrium, the sternum and the xiphoid. You're gonna just come down and you can you can put a fair amount of pressure on the actual bone itself, providing you don't have any structural problems in this area. In which case you have to be very careful. But on a 'normal' person who doesn't have any structural problems and doesn't have any issues with the chest, then you can just scrape down using the same distancing that I talked about before, which is the distance of your your hand going longitudinally and horizontally. And just scrape down the middle part. You can divide it into three separate areas, so the middle part, one side and the other side, but stay on the sternum and don't go onto the rib cage because there's a different movement on the rib cage. So you scrape down, until you feel where the xiphoid process is, when it finishes, and you can scrape a little bit further towards your rib cage and then come to the other side, further towards your ribcage as well. But not actually on the ribcage. So, once you've done that, it's quite possible that you've got 'sha' that's come on to the skin because this is an area that gets 'sha' very frequently and in Traditional Chinese Medicine, it's considered to be the area called the Ren reservoir, which is basically a reservoir of blood. Treating the Chest Area with Gua sha And then after you've done that center area here, for the rest of the chest, it's a movement going to the side. So, we're starting from the center and you've basically got to follow those ribs and I'm sure you know what direction the ribs are. They're not going down, they're coming across and it's kind of an arc, you really are following the gaps between your ribs and so you just have to find the gap and I can feel one here and I start at the sternum, and then I scrape across, and then find the next one and scrape across. And you do that over the chest area on both sides. Now, if you have breasts in this area which are affecting how you're treating then you would have to just move the breast tissue either down or up but try not to actually scrape on the breast tissue because of the presence of glands in the area. So, if you continue with that movement going across and towards the side of your body and then once you come over there come back and then start again and then come underneath, the nipple area, and come across. On either sex, just avoid actually going on the nipple itself and just scrape to the side as well. Treating the Abdominal Area with Gua sha Once you finish with the chest area, you then have to come down to the abdominal area. Now, structurally wise, there's not much here and so the pressure you're going to put on the tool depends very much on what's happening in this area here. If it's very sensitive, then you're not going to put much pressure at all, because there's all kinds of things that might be going on in this area here connected with what you ate for dinner and just about anything like that. So, the movement in the abdominal area is going downwards, just like we were doing on the sternum and the line that we had in the sternum, which is the Ren reservoir, actually continues all the way down, so you can continue down on the line of your belly button and then you can follow different lines. You don't need to be very strict about what lines you're doing, but basically this whole area here is connected with the stomach river or the stomach channel. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, there are other channels here, for example, there's the kidney and there's the spleen or pancreas, depending on which word you prefer to use, but in actual fact, it's the stomach in this area here, because the pancreas and the kidney, they're there, but if you remember about the trees. the yin is on the inside of the tree and the yang is on the outside of the tree. Now, the kidney and the pancreas are both yin and when they hit the groin area they then go deeper inside the body and from the surface it's much more difficult to to get to them. However, the stomach is yang. It's like the outside of this bark. So that means we can get to it. Now the stomach has a flow and it's coming from in between your eyebrows and it's actually coming down below your eyes and coming all the way down all over your face down your chest area, which you just covered. And then coming down your abdominal area. And so just keep scraping down, and come to the side as well which is, we're coming to the gallbladder area, which again is another yang organ, and then just keep scraping down and do the same on the other side and make sure you do the middle So, in the chest area, in the manubrium sternum and xiphoid, you're going to go down - which is the ren reservoir - and then you're going to go across the rib cage - which is actually covering the stomach channel, which is coming down, but we don't want to go down in this area, we want to follow the bone, and then when you reach to the abdominal area, you're going to go downwards in this whole area, including down the sides as well.

Benefits of the Gua sha Sequence for the Front Body Now that routine - just that routine even without the arms and the legs that we did before - just this routine, will be fantastic, especially for certain things - especially for digestive problems, for constipation, for diarrhea for bloating, for any issues at the top here which might be connected with your liver and pancreas. This technique is great. Now, don't forget also that the chest area - the lungs is in this area here - but this area here seems to be much more connected with stress and when you've got tight shoulders in this area here, your chest is tight and when you treat this area, it's much more a kind of opening of the chest and in Holographic Gua sha, the whole area of the sternum, from the manubrium to the xiphoid, actually reflects your whole back - so by doing this scraping that you're doing on the sternum, you're actually also releasing a lot of the tension that you have in your whole back from your shoulders to your lower back. So, on many many levels it's a great thing to do!

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