Rich of several thousand years of existence and practice, Traditional Chinese Medicine has developed a complete system, that is to say a set of theories and practices concerning human beings and their health. It has its own tools and its particular way of interpreting the causes of diseases, making diagnoses and conceiving physiology. It is an ancient and complex discipline which uses 5 main practices, explained below. The general principle is to maintain the harmony of energy within the body, as well as between the body and the external elements.
Traditional Chinese Medicine
In ancient China, scientists observed what was happening in the universe (seasons, climate, day/night cycles) and deduced that the same phenomena occurred inside the human body.
They reproduced the general diagram of the energetic organization of the human body as follows*:
The energy system of the human body is a 3-story system.
The 1st floor is a floor of transformation and production of energies. Once the energies have been produced on the 1st floor, they will take an elevator to go to the 2nd floor of the energy diagram of the human body, that of the 8 marvelous vessels. Their role is to regulate the distribution of energies produced by the 1st floor, where needed, when needed, in quality and quantity to the 3rd floor which will use them. The 3rd floor will concern the use of quantitative and qualitative energies which were produced on the 1st floor, then regulated and distributed on the 2nd floor. On this floor we find 2 levels:
- An external function with the 12 main meridians
- An internal function with the 5 movements, also called the 5 elements: Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water * Extract from the Alchemy of Energies in the Chinese tradition. Volume I (JP GUILIANI, Dr Romain Gourmand)
THE 5 TOOLS OF TCM
These 5 elements which explain and allow us to analyze the phenomena of the surrounding world
and nature are available in Traditional Chinese Medicine
through 5 pillars:
- Acupuncture and moxibustion
- Massages: TUINA
- Energy gymnastics: QI GONG
- Chinese dietetics
- The Chinese pharmacopoeia, which has an unparalleled millennia of use.
All these disciplines have a common language: that of the 5 elements.
An analogy game will allow us to weave a gigantic network of connections.
Each element is associated with a season, a color, a sense, an organ, a tissue, a feeling…
Thus, the plants of the Chinese pharmacopoeia benefit from this same classification in 5 elements.
APPLICATION
How has NUENCE-MTC, by analogy, transferred the great principles of TCM to a range of cosmetics? Traditional Chinese Medicine offers this global approach to the human being to "take care". By analogy, it determines where the imbalances, excesses, and insufficiencies are located. Also by analogy, we rely on this same ancestral philosophy to "take care", rebalance, and nourish through external use and by using this magnificent discipline that is Chinese pharmacopoeia.
The ancients compared all the cycles, whether external to man or internal: the states of wakefulness and sleep, the rhythm of functioning of the human body to the cycle of a cell... The cells of our skin are subject to cycles whose law of analogy rigorously applies to the 5 elements. Our creams naturally use this principle of the cycle of the 5 elements applied to the cells of our skin.
-Wood: the skin cells are very active in full expansion or subject to hormonal variations making the skin sometimes more oily or more reactive.
-Fire: the cells are always in an active, sensitive phase, sometimes going as far as irritation.
-Earth: the cells are in periods without great disturbance with a need for hydration essential to life but only balance is sought.
-Metal: the cells are in less active periods of multiplication and appear duller.
-Water: the cells are even less active and their regeneration speed is slower because we can be more tired or because the cold freezes the energies.
In Chinese pharmacopoeia, here again, the 5 "movements" or "elements" represent the reference. The plants that we have selected were selected because of their affinity with their favorite element.
CONCEPT AND INNOVATION
NUENCE-MTC was born from this synergistic research between the harmony of the cycle of the 5 elements on external beauty associated with the affinity of plants for each element.