THE HIERARCHY
of
Traditional Chinese Medicine Healing Methods

TCM has a hierarchy of healing methods. Sources vary (as they do in any field of study and practice which is several thousand years old) but most commonly the hierarchy has seven or eight healing techniques or methods which are ranked by two factors. First is the degree of invasiveness. Second is who performs the healing; professional or self (patient). Use of the different techniques is not limited to moving one step at a time from the bottom to the top. The realities of an imbalance (illness) often require different levels of treatment simultaneously and they may be not even be adjacent to each other in the hierarchy. The hierarchy has to do with the nature of the techniques in specific and only in a general way to do with the level of health (balance) of the person. The chart below displays one version of the hierarchy.