San Fu: Ancient Chinese Celestial Immune Boosting

For the last three years I have participated in San Fu, an ancient Chinese tradition to boost my immune system in preparation for the coming autumn and winter months. Personally I have found since starting this tradition, I have not had to deal with cold or flu illnesses. Given the current state of the world, I plan to repeat San Fu again this summer - I thought I would offer it to you all as well.

Dating back to the Qing Dynasty, San Fu is the practice of applying a paste of medicinal herbs on specific points of the body, on special days of the year, to fortify the body's Wei Qi or defensive Qi. The rationale combines Taoist concepts of astrology, medicine and acupuncture to achieve this goal.

The San Fu dates are the days predicted by Chinese astrology as the days of the year that will have the greatest amount of Summer Yang Qi for the year. On these days, we are able to harness and direct Summer Yang Qi in treatments aimed at fortifying our Wei Qi. Ailments that dominate in autumn and winter time tend to involve some form of Yang Qi deficiency, so gathering and storing Summer Yang Qi makes sense.

The herbal paste used in San Fu is often made of a base of mugwort, an important herb in the Chinese Herbal materia medica. This is the same herb used to make moxa for use in moxibustion. Aside from the heat generated when ignited, mugwort is warm and nourishing in nature, perfect for building up Yang Qi.

Finally, the parts of the body we apply the San Fu herbal paste is guided by acupuncture  points, helping us to direct the Yang Qi to specific organs, parts of the body or areas. In San Fu, the Yang Qi is directed to specific organs to store and use over the coming year. I often use Kidney points as the ruler of winter time and Lung points as the ruler of Wei Qi.

San Fu is a simple procedure - a coin sized ball of herbal paste is applied to points on the back and a bandage is applied over it to keep it in place. Patients must remove the paste once the skin in the area become irritated, itchy or feels sunburned. Patients are then to take basic care of the skin where the moxa was applied by keeping it clean and moisturized.

I am offering San Fu as an add-on to a Kiiko-style constitutional wellness treatment.

Patients who want a San Fu treatment must sign up for 3 of the 4 possible San Fu dates - Thursday July 16, Sunday July 26, Wednesday August 5, or Saturday August 15. A deposit for the first session is required in order to secure herbs for your San Fu treatment. Sessions will be 75 minutes long, including acupuncture and San Fu. To sign up, please click here.

You can see some photos of my past San Fu treatments.