Healing as a Daoist Landscape
(By Paolo Propato, LAc) In East Asian Medicine, we often speak about “treating the root through the branch.” The branch is the symptom. The root is the deeper source, causing the symptom. In acute conditions like a cold, flu, or an ankle sprain, the root is usually clear. But in chronic illness, patterns become layered and the root is more complex.
This is why Lyme patients, for example, may test positive for mold exposure, or a doctor might diagnose both rheumatoid arthritis and Sjögren’s at the same time. Natural systems are rarely linear.
In Daoist medicine, the body is a landscape, a microcosm of the macrocosm. Rivers, mountains, and pathways of movement. We can clearly see anatomy in an inert cadaver, but we work within living systems. Everything is still in motion.
One region of the system always affects another— nothing is isolated. Just as the Sahara dust travels on the wind and rain to feed the Amazon rainforest, the body depends on constant exchange between distant systems.
As practitioners, we have to begin somewhere. In clinical work, I often start with one of these three:
1. Digestion (Middle Jiao)
What are you eating? Processed foods, sugar, heavy or greasy meals all shape gut function. This impacts mood, cognition, sleep, and elimination. Digestion is also emotional. We must “digest” not just food but also experience.
2. Breath (Upper Jiao)
Breathing regulates the nervous system. Shallow, fast breathing signals stress. Slow, spacious breath shifts the body toward safety. Efficiencies of breathing also alter pH, drive metabolism, and move stagnation. Change the breath, and you change the system’s state.
3. Mind (Upper Jiao “inner landscape”)
As we make our way into the caverns of the mountains, we find our thoughts, beliefs, and internal narratives and how they shape physiology. What you believe about your healing directly influences how you heal.
I often ask patients: “Why do you think this is happening?” Not to get the right answer, but to open the map. Because the deeper truth is this: You are not separate from the landscape. You are the landscape.
And there is more intelligence in your system than you’ve been taught to appreciate. Changing our diet, breathing and even our thoughts can accelerate our path to a harmonious landscape.