Tui Na Massage Healing Secrets: Specialized Lineaments and Poultices Part 2 of 2
Favorite lineaments used in Tui Na Massage by martial artists include:
Di Dat Jiao – Iron Hit Medicine famous treating bruises all types, especially for treating bruised hands. A good item to have in your training bag when heading to class or a tournament.
Tiger Balm – A classic hot cold sports rub. One of the first of its type, Tiger Balm is a classic to put in your sports bag and use for any strained or pulled muscles. Great for old injuries feeling cold or for muscle spasms. There are many variations of Tiger Balm under a variety of names and formulas.
Zhen Gu Shui – A great lineament for use on strained tendons and joints.
Each style of classical Chinese martial arts often has their own secret recipe for these types of formulas. The recipes would be closely guarded secrets. In the ancient period, medical skills were extremely valuable and closely guarded like trade secrets to prevent competition. This extended even to rarely teaching female children medicine because they would marry, and the medicine would leave the family and create many competitors. Making sure that everyone in a guard company or unit was healthy and fully able would be important to survive a long and difficult campaign. For all these reasons the medical skills, and particularly the formulas that were highly effective, were closely guarded.
Favorite Tui Na Massage Poultices include:
San Huang Sang – Three Yellow Powders – This is the so-called “Chinese Ice”. A simple, famous formula made of three herbs with a yellow color, it works to thoroughly relieve swelling without causing stagnation like actual chilling or icing does.
Bone, Muscle, and Tendon Poultices – There are separate poultices for each of Bones, Tendons/Joints, and Muscles. They all speed healing and help to avoid lingering pain. The formula of the bone poultice is also taken internally and has proven to be effective.
“The Patch” – We always just called these “Patches”. The Patch are a pre-made thin sheet herbal poultice on a plastic sheet sold in boxes or individually at Chinese herbal stores. We would apply these over any strained muscles, mostly on the back. Patches are full of pain relieving, blood stagnation reducing, and circulation enhancing herbs perfect for a strained back. The insider tip is heating the herbal side, not too hot, before you apply it. Feels great and can be a huge relief.
Learning the entire theory and skills of Traditional Chinese Medicine and becoming an acupuncturist is not necessary to use these treatments. It is incredibly helpful to get hands on training from someone with experience, but even that is not actually necessary to try your hand at using poultices or lineaments. The most important part to using Lineaments and herbs is getting the herbs and lineaments ready in advance and having some legitimate recipes or formulas. The in advance part is important because when you are banged up, you want to use the product now, not go shopping or order and wait for delivery.
You can make your own lineaments or your can buy pre-made ones online or in Chinese Herbal Stores. Poultices are less common to buy other than “the Patch”. To make other poultices you will often need to order the herbs and then grind them yourself. This does require a dedicated herb grinder. If you like this sort of thing it is a lot of fun and you get a great quality product.
The use of poultices and lineaments is one of the many ways that the traditional Chinese martial and medical arts are intimately linked.
