by Salvador Cefalu, M.S., L.Ac.

You may have noticed a lot of discussion lately about how gratitude supports healing in both your body and mind. As you go through your life journey, however, you may experience emotional or physical traumas that can negatively impact your brain’s neuroplasticity and reduce your ability to think positively. These challenges can thankfully be understood (and overcome) with tools from Classical Chinese Medicine.

Challenges to Thinking Positively

For some, the practice of gratitude comes easily whereas for others who are experiencing a lot of pain and suffering, it can be quite a task to feel or express gratitude.

Since it’s well established how your thoughts impact your health, changing your brain to think more positively can have powerful repercussions throughout all areas of your life.

The practice of keeping a gratitude journal essentially works with your brain’s neuroplasticity to optimize the function of its neural network. Though the brain is more malleable to change in its early years of development, your brain has the capacity to improve its function at any age.

According to Classical Chinese Medicine, which is based on Daoist philosophy, life challenges fall into nine different categories called the Nine Palaces.

The Nine Palaces are essentially categories of life to achieve a sense of completion in order to feel whole and at peace with yourself in this lifetime. If at the end of your life, any of these palaces remain incomplete, this creates the agenda for your next incarnation. 

When challenged, any of these Nine Palaces feel lacking or incomplete and thereby inhibit you from experiencing gratitude.

The Nine Palaces and Five Elements

The Nine Palaces of life are:

1. Health

2. Wealth (also called the Abundance or Fame Palace)

3. Prosperity

4. Relationship (Love)

5. Children/Creativity

6. Career

7. Global (Travel)

8. Knowledge (Wisdom)

9. Home

Each of the Nine Palaces corresponds to a particular Five Element energy.

The Wood element corresponds with the Health and Wealth Palaces.

If you’re challenged by health issues or focus a lot on your health, then you likely are incomplete in the Health Palace. Similarly, if you feel a lack in your finances, then there are still lessons to be learned within your Wealth Palace. You don’t have to be rich to feel complete in the Wealth Palace since you can be poor without actually feeling poor. Contrarily, you might be financially stable and well off yet never feel you have enough money and therefore have issues around feeling at peace within the Wealth Palace.

Your perception ultimately sets the energy for feeling complete in any one area of life.

The next palace, Prosperity, is the idea of having a sense of enough abundance that you can freely share it with others.

Since the Fire element corresponds with the expression of the heart, it corresponds to both the Prosperity and Relationship Palaces.

Prosperity is a sense of abundance that’s not necessarily related to money, so it can be any kind of resource that you’re willing to share with others. As described in the example above, a person can be financially very wealthy yet feel a lack of abundance and hence find it difficult to share with others.

Challenges or a sense of incompletion in the Prosperity Palace requires Fire energy to be either fortified or cleansed. The same goes with the Relationship Palace, which needs attention if you’re struggling with any relationships in your life. This may require working with your Fire energy in terms of warming up your Fire so you can open your heart and express more love or cooling the Fire down to calm your mind, ‘let go’ and relax into having a healthy relationship.

Out of relationships come children, so Children and the Creativity Palace share a common theme and that is to be able to create and birth that which you hold in your heart.

The Children/Creativity Palace relates to the Metal Element and therefore supporting or clearing blockages of this energy will help you get through challenges relating to this palace.

Once you establish your creativity, you can develop your Career Palace.

Career relates to the energy of Water.

Thus if you feel blocked in your career or uninspired in the work that you’re doing, invigorating your Water energy can help you move into the career of your dreams.

The next palace, known as the Global or Travel Palace, also corresponds to the Metal element.

While this palace relates to a need to explore and see the world, these days you don’t necessarily need to leave your home to nurture this palace because the internet and television can give you the experience of travel and learning about other cultures. A common understanding that comes out of travel is that people across the globe share similar core values.

Experiences that come out of a more global worldview support the Knowledge/Wisdom Palace, which relates to both the Water and Earth elements.

The difference between knowledge and wisdom is that knowledge requires going outside of yourself and connecting with society (Earth) to seek information and the answers to your questions. Wisdom on the other hand relates to the Water element as it is about going within yourself to seek the answers.

The final palace is the Home Palace which also relates to the Earth element and reflects returning home to your spiritual roots.  

Self-cultivation practices such as Qi Gong, Yoga and Meditation allow you to find inner peace so you can feel at home within yourself. 

Conclusion

Self-cultivation supports you to achieve a sense of completion in each of these areas of life. Ultimately, the ability to feel a sense of completion in each of the palaces is reflected in your ability to ‘let go’ of the struggle or resistance you may be feeling in each area. Though this is easier said than done, Classical Chinese Medicine provides tools to assist when you’re stuck or struggling in a particular area of life.

Once we achieve a feeling of completion, the experience of gratitude comes naturally and we’re able to live all aspects of life with a positive outlook.

In Part 2, we’ll discuss at-home protocols that can support you when you feel stuck and help you cultivate a sense of completion in each of the Nine Palaces.

Salvador Cefalu, M.S., L.Ac. is Founder & Co-Director of A Center for Natural Healing in Santa Clara, CA, a wellness clinic he runs with his wife, Setareh Moafi, Ph.D., L.Ac., that specializes in Classical Chinese Medicine & Japanese Meridian Therapy, a rare non-insertion form of Acupuncture using Gold and Silver needles. Salvador is also the co-host of The Natural Healing Podcast. Learn more at www.acenterfornaturalhealing.com.