Facing east : ancient health and beauty secrets for the modern age

242 Pages·2016·3.6 MB·English

by  Yang

Dedication
I want to dedicate this book to my father, who envisioned what this
world would need today and prepared me for that. And to my patients
and colleagues, who constantly prove to me that the ancient wisdom of
the East is being rediscovered and appreciated by modern medicine too.
Contents
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
Part 1: Your Energy
1. Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3: What Is Your Body Telling You?
2. The Essence of Chinese Medicine: Demystifying Its Foundational Theories
3. Organ-ization: Sorting Through the Different Ways Modern and Chinese
Medicine View Our Organs
4. Health, Beauty, and Wellness by the Numbers: Using the Power of Five to
Naturally Enhance Your Vitality, Spirit, and Appearance
Part 2: Your Body
5. Getting Ahead of the Aging Process: Secrets to Healthy and Beautiful Hair
6. Doing an About-Face: Returning to a More Youthful Complexion
7. Seeing Is Believing: Secrets to Healthy and Beautiful Eyes
8. Giving Chinese Medicine a Fair Hearing: How Having Healthy Ears Is
Good for Your Whole Being
9. Common Scents Advice: Secrets to Having a Healthy and Beautiful Nose
10. Smiling Your Way to Radiance: Secrets to Healthy and Beautiful Lips
11. A Regimen for All Seasons: Caring for Yourself Year-Round
12. Weighing In on Body Issues: A Balanced Approach to Managing Diet and
Exercise
Part 3: Your Mind, Heart, and Spirit
13. Feeling Beautiful: The Role of Emotions in Our Overall Health and
Radiance
14. Body and Soul: The Role of Spirituality in Wellness and Beauty
15. Being at One with Yourself: Redefining Integrative Medicine
Acknowledgments
Appendix
About the Authors
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Preface
I
’ve always had many passions. Enhancing the lives of women and empowering
them in some way have been a big part of my endeavors. My love of fashion
design is one of my most obvious passions. But I am also deeply devoted to
finding natural, plant-based solutions and products to meet the needs of my
clients in the areas of health, wellness, and beauty. I’ve been committed to this
latter pursuit since 2002 when I established the WELLNESS CAFÉ in my
flagship store on West Fifty-Sixth Street in New York City, though my wellness
journey began long before then.
I credit my earliest health and beauty training to my mother, who I later
realized was way ahead of her times. She was a very unconventional woman
whose daily life was built around understanding the best practices for
maintaining a strong mind and body. She was already juicing, looking closely at
the ingredients on labels, taking vitamins, finding a million miracle uses for
olive oil, and exercising the Jack LaLanne way. While other mothers were on
what I call the I Love Lucy diet, consisting of a canned fruit cocktail, a scoop of
cottage cheese, and a slice of melba toast, my mother’s view was not traditional.
Her kitchen looked like a food-test laboratory. There were pots of green herbs all
over the place. The windows had shelves with different plants she nurtured and
used in our daily meals. She experimented with a wide variety of combinations.
The Mediterranean diet was part of our Lebanese heritage, and that added
another healthy factor. I never once thought of her ways as being different until I
realized other moms were not the same. However, over time, this lifestyle
simply became a part of who I am.
My mother was unorthodox in other ways too. I remember her telling me
when I was just eleven years old that I should learn how to take care of myself as
a woman so I could be free to marry the man I love rather than the man who
could best take care of me. I had no idea then how brilliant this statement was.
Life has been a quest to learn to care for myself ever since, not just
financially, but physically, emotionally, and spiritually too, which is a lot of
what beauty—and this book—is about. My mother really set me off on a
decades-long adventure to find ways to extend and improve the quality of life.
Along the way there have been countless discoveries that really do work, many
of which I am eager to share with other people, especially women. While women
are vulnerable at times, they are also very powerful in the influence they exert
over others. They have sway with their friends, their communities, and
especially their families—their husband, children, and often their aging parents
as well. Because women can change the world exponentially, it is important for
me to try to connect to as many of them as possible with as much information
about things we can do to be healthier human beings.
We all know the biggest luxury in life is health. And it just so happens that if
you are healthy you are also attractive. The two go hand-in-hand. Beauty is not
going to endure any other way. We all look our best when we are in good
condition. Our skin glows, our hair shines, our face is brighter, even our eyes
sparkle more.
For many of us, there is no better incentive to be healthy than to have the
best possible quality of life and to spend more time with our loved ones . . . and,
of course, to look good too.
I’ve been in fashion for nearly my whole life. Feeling and looking one’s best
is an integral part of that culture. So finding people who have knowledge to
share about achieving health and beauty is something I have been doing and will
do for the rest of my life.
I receive and read at least ten different wellness newsletters every week, so I
am aware of how rapidly the medical community’s understanding of health and
well-being is shifting. Things we once thought were reliable and dependable are
in question, and things we thought we’d never do are all of a sudden looking like
safe and appealing alternatives. In the midst of all this change, acupuncture and
other age-old practices seem to make all the sense in the world. They have
withstood the test of time. Various cultures would not have relied on these
practices for centuries if they didn’t believe they were effective. People simply
don’t continue to do things that don’t work. Timeless style is my approach to
fashion, so my search for the best acupuncturist I could find grew from this
reasoning.
My interest intensified in 2010 while I was visiting Beijing on business.
When my friends in China told me I could enjoy all the benefits of a face-lift
naturally through acupuncture, vanity kicked in and I began an extensive search
for a qualified doctor who could give me an acupuncture face-lift. I contacted
people who were in the know, and there was one name that kept coming up—Dr.
Jingduan Yang. Dr. Yang is an international expert in acupuncture and classical
forms of Chinese medicine, as well as a specialist in integrative medicine,
psychiatry, and human behavior. Although his offices were some distance away
—in South Jersey and Philadelphia—I made the commitment to drive two hours
to the New Jersey location and back every Thursday to meet with him. The first
meeting was eye opening. He explained to me that before I could have an
acupuncture face-lift, I needed to know more about acupuncture and that he
would decide when I was ready. Immediately I knew I was with someone I could
learn from. I asked if I could tape our meetings, and he agreed.
I instantly respected Dr. Yang for his caution. I loved and appreciated his
authenticity and sincerity. He was determined to make me feel both informed
and safe before proceeding in a world where I had no prior knowledge. I had
been to an acupuncturist two or three times in my life before meeting him and
sadly the experiences were less than satisfying, which is why I was so adamant
about finding someone reliable and well recommended. So it wasn’t until Dr.
Yang felt I was absolutely ready that we began my treatment. He wanted me to
truly comprehend what acupuncture was about, what would happen in the weeks
and months ahead, and how I would ultimately be affected by the experience. To
be fully renewed on the outside, you must first be renewed on the inside, organ
by organ, system by system, function by function. I had a million questions for
him and I loved listening to every one of his answers. There is something very
comforting about talking with knowledgeable people. It’s like reading a great
book—one you don’t want to end anytime soon.
Naturally, I learned a tremendous amount in those months. I even had
opportunities to tour Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, where the
integrative medicine department is situated next to the oncology department. So
much valuable collaborative research on our immune system and its effect on
our cells, particularly cancer cells, is being done there. Because Dr. Yang knew
my mother had Parkinson’s before she died, he also showed me what he was
doing to help treat patients with that disease. It was remarkable how he was able
to help reduce their tremors week after week. It was profound to listen to one
patient who had progressed from having a weak, shaky, Katharine Hepburn–type
tremble to having a vibrant and robust voice once again. The benefits of the
integrative medicine Dr. Yang and others are practicing at the teaching hospital
are amazing. The key to helping prevent and fight serious disease is keeping our
immune system intact. It’s about maintaining the balance of our body’s own
healing energies. This is also the key to achieving the healthy glow I was
looking for. Basically, an acupuncture face-lift is designed to help improve
the body’s ability to heal itself, regenerating some of our tired and
overworked cells in the process. If we care for our bodies proactively, we can
hopefully avoid getting sick and can even slow or reverse the aging process.
I was very fortunate that my search led me to a master who has a great sense
of the mind, body, and soul of each patient. Through the historical perspective
on Chinese medicine he provides, the ancient tools he uses, and the innate skills
he draws upon, Dr. Yang performs a great service for modern times. To this day,
the wise counsel, time-honored healing practices, and deep sleep I experience
under his care are as valuable to me as any other aspect of the acupuncture face-
lift, including the remarkable, revitalizing effect it has on my overall appearance.
I realize that not everyone has access to such an extraordinary practitioner,
and those who do may still be hesitant about trying this or other similar
techniques without the kind of education and understanding I was afforded
beforehand. For these reasons, I encouraged Dr. Yang to write this book and was
happy to collaborate with him on it. Together we want to help you learn some of
the same things about classical Chinese medicine, acupuncture, acupressure,
diet, exercise, seasonality, and sleep that I discovered in advance of my
treatment. This book was designed specifically to introduce you to exercises
and practices you can do at home. We’ve placed an emphasis on
acupressure for those of you who would like to prepare for and supplement
your acupuncture treatment, as well as for those of you who wish to achieve
some of the same rejuvenating effects without needles. Our goal was to create
a practical tool that you could use every day to achieve noticeable results.
I am absolutely thrilled that you picked up this book. While I don’t believe
that pursuing youth is necessarily a good thing (I am too much of a believer in
forward motion for that, and I am comfortable with how I’ve evolved over time),
I think doing all that you can to look and feel good is important. It means you are
putting your best face forward every day. You are healthy, fit, fueled by the
energy of all you have learned in life so far and empowered with endless
potential for the present and future. Attention to your health makes you feel
invincible, and people who feel invincible can accomplish anything.
As you read this book, know that I wish the same for you as my mother
wished for me: that the wisdom shared here will help you enjoy a quality of life
to the last day—a beautiful quality of life where you can look, feel, and be your
very best. I also wish that you will have as enriching an experience learning and
practicing what Dr. Yang teaches about health, wellness, and beauty as I did. So
here’s to an invincible future!
—Norma Kamali