Chi Nei Tsang: Deep Healing from Within

By Karen Pearle

Over the years, as a healer helping people recover from trauma and stress, I've sought the deepest and most effective healing methods. Yet there still seemed to be something missing: Why is the abdominal area is overlooked in healing? Then I found out about Chi Nei Tsang through an OPEN EXCHANGE ad. Here was a therapy that focused on that neglected area and made me a more effective healer.

Contrary to our assumptions, emotional experiences aren't governed by our brains alone. Actually emotions originate in the body's center, the belly. So when we have a "gut feeling," or can't "stomach" something, we are connecting with our bellies.

Just like with food, the body needs to digest our emotions so we can fully let go of them. The mind is unable to digest emotions. Emotions aren't rational, so they cannot be solved like problems. It is in our bellies that we digest our emotions as we take what we need out of them and eliminate the rest. By connecting with our bellies, we actually process our emotions: healing becomes a process of outgrowing stagnant emotional obstacles and evolving. In this way we become more completely ourselves.

Chi Nei Tsang (CNT), which means "working the energy of the internal organs," began as an ancient art of massage used by monks in Taoist China to help detoxify, strengthen and refine their bodies in order to maintain the high energy required to perform the highest levels of spiritual practice.

What is so different about CNT is that it goes to the very roots of physical and emotional problems. While providing the safety and support to work on very subtle and deep levels, I use the chi (energy) from my chi kung practice to work mainly on the abdomen with a gentle and precise touch.

I help people to unwind the stored emotional energy in their bodies while training their internal organs to work more efficiently. Though there may be painful feelings—grief, fear and anxiety—when we release them, we are transformed. The conflict and tension at the root of the problem is fully resolved. So we feel more awake and clear and experience an inner strength in our core.

People come for CNT sessions for many reasons: for digestive, reproductive and breathing difficulties, for chronic neck, back, shoulder pain, and for low self-esteem, low energy, depression, chronic fatigue, relationship problems or healing from trauma. Whatever the symptoms, the CNT practitioner works with the whole person. All areas of our bodies are in deep communication with one another.

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