Fundamentals

Welcome and Overview: Get an overview from your instructor Chinese Medicine practitioner and Holistic Nutritionist Jennifer Raye.

Chinese Medicine and Taoist Theory: The foundation of Chinese Medicine dietary theory is an understanding of how energetics work in your body, in food, and in absolutely everything.

Yin and Yang: Everything arises from yin and yang. An imbalance of yin and yang creates all disease. Learn about this fascinating idea as a start to understand disease and health through a Chinese Medicine lens.

Guidelines for a Holistic Diet: In TCM food therapy the path to a healthy diet includes choosing the right types and quantities of foods, preparation methods, energetic considerations, and attitude. Learn more about what it takes to use food as medicine in this lesson.

Thermal Nature of Foods: Foods can be energetically hot, warm, neutral, cool, or cold. This isn’t temperature, instead it’s an “energetic” or characteristic, and it can help determine whether a food will be healing or harmful for a specific condition or constitution.

The 5 Flavors: Each of the 5 five flavors have therapeutic actions. Learn how to use these actions, and combine them, for specific constitutions and ailments.

Directions and Actions of Foods: Beyond flavor and elements, foods also have specific actions. Learn about them and how to use them in this section.

Support the Center Burner: Digestive function is considered central in food therapy and in Chinese Medicine. If digestion is not working optimally, it won’t matter what changes you make. Learn more about how healing the digestion sets the foundation for preventative health and strong immunity.

The Breakfast Puzzle: When making the transition to a healing diet, breakfast is one of the most common problems. It seems western diets just don’t have the energetics right! Learn what Chinese Medicine has to say, and how to make your breakfast more healing based on energetics.

Easy to Digest Meals to Heal and Strengthen Digestion: Get in the kitchen with Jennifer and cook alongside her as she creates easy to digest dishes you can personalize for your clients or yourself.

Energetics of Food and Kitchen Demo’s

Foods, Spices, and Creating Healing Diets

Food Energetics and Guides: This section is a big resource that covers all major food groups and their energetics. Expect to learn about grains, beans and legumes, vegetables, fruits, seaweeds, animal products, and so much more.

Spices for Healing: Learn about common kitchen spices and how you can harness their powerful medicine while getting creative in the kitchen.

Introduction to Creating your own Healing Recipes: Learn how to combine all of the knowledge you’ve gained so far and apply it to your own meals, and making meal plans for others.

Chinese Medicine Patterns of Imbalance

The Causes of Disease: Learn about the 6 pathogenic factors, the 7 emotions, and more.

The 6 Pathogenic Factors Explore the details of these important environmental and internal factors that cause disease and how to identify them for yourself.

The 8 Principles: These eight factors will help you determine the underlying pattern of disharmony and the right foods for healing. In this section you’ll learn how to use these eight principles in your cooking and with the people you’re helping.

Qi and Vital Substances: Substances like Qi, Blood, Yin, Yang, and Body Fluids make up an important part of Chinese Medicine theory. Learn about these substances, how to assess them, and how to work with them to create healing.

The 4 Examinations Learn about using these examinations to determine what kind of imbalance is occurring in the body and what to do about it.

Case Studies

Tongue Coating and Digestion: Learn how to identify symptom patterns with lots of tongue examples, and through looking at your own tongue.

Diets for all Phases of Life: During different seasons of life we have different nutrition needs. Learn how you can support your organs and gain optimal health by paying attention to what phase you’re in.

Overview of Chinese Herbal Medicine: Learn how Chinese Herbal Medicine works and some Chinese Herbs you can start using in your kitchen right away.

Therapeutic Diets for Common Ailments: Learn about the different ways you can suggest foods as therapy.

Chinese Medicine Patterns: Explore the basic patterns of health and disease and discover where you and the ones you’re helping fit.

Case Studies: This section covers traditional and modern recipes for common health problems. We’ll examine multiple clinical case studies, and have some fun in the kitchen, so you can see how it all comes together. Cases will include common complaints like common colds, constipation, fatigue, menstrual difficulties, and menopausal complaints among others.