Combining massage with herbal medicine has great benefits. Massage can enhance and speed up the action of herbal remedies, our hands can detect a wealth of diagnostic information and touch adds a deeply compassionate level to the act of healing. Furthermore the liniments, oils etc used in massage provide an additional channel for herbs to work.

The Planetary herbalist will get more from a system of massage based on the same traditional energetic and wholistic principles as their herbal practice. Inevitably we must look to the great civilisations of the East to find such systems. Chinese massage, the subject of this article is a sophisticated ancient but living tradition rooted in Yin-Yang, five elements, qi-blood-fluid etc with a unique power to heal disease rather than simply relax the body and relieve tension.

Chinese massage is closely related to acupuncture in its use of the meridian system and is considered to be effective for a similar range of health problems. However it should not be seen as a poor relation to acupuncture. It is an effective and comprehensive therapy and is regarded alongside herbs, diet, qigong and one of the fundamental arts of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Massage is of course as old as human kind. However even with this perspective the pedigree of Chinese massage is impressive. There are massage textbooks as far back as the Nei Jing (722-481 BC) the most ancient medical texts. In the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) it is recorded that there were 56 massage doctors in the imperial hospital more than the total of herbalist and acupuncturists. Around this time

Chinese techniques were imported to Japan and eventually gave rise to Japanese Shiatsu. Later still Peter Henrik Ling learned from Chinese masters before developing Swedish Massage the origin of Western bodywork.