THE ALCHEMYCAL PAGES

FACIAL DIAGNOSIS

The art of facial diagnosis is one of the most highly prized qualities a person may develop for themselves. I will be spending some time going into giving you the fundamentals and practice of facial diagnosis over the next few years.

The main reason for learning the art of facial diagnosis is self-knowledge, for as you learn to know how to read your face you will become more and more confident about knowing what is going on inside your body. Furthermore, the knowledge you gain will teach you how to see problems arising well before there is any possibility of your body coming into crisis.

It cannot be overemphasized enough that modern scientific medicine is the medicine of crisis, at the center of a culture in crisis. When you go see the doctor you are usually in some kind of medical crisis. The reason being you do not know how to read what your body has been telling you for months and even years in advance of the crisis actually occurring. So, by the time you get to see the doctor, all that can be done is to give you massively powerful drugs or surgery which are designed to deal with the symptoms and hope that your body gets through the crisis so that it can "heal itself".

The approach of modern scientific medicine, in essence, is to pour gasoline on the flames of your illness in the hopes of dousing the flames. It would therefore be a matter of pure chance whether or not your body survives the assault of these powerful drugs and other invasive techniques if were not for the incredible healing resources that are "designed" into the dynamics of the internal organs and tissues.

Whereas the macrobiotic art of facial diagnosis is the subtle science and accurate art of learning how to read your face so that you can tell, early on, when any organ is becoming "out-of-balance" or "stagnated", and take the necessary steps to alleviate the burdened or "stagnated" organ and its related tissue.

The basis of facial diagnosis is the human organism, divided into the head and the body, is seen as the head being a compacted, condensed, more yang expression of the body, and the body is seen as an expanded, soft, more yin expression of the head.

The head, in this scenario, is seen as being constructed of the lower limbs forming the lower jaw, the upper limbs the upper jaw and the rib cage forms the skull, with all the internal organs expressed as nervous tissue inside the skull, as brain tissue. And the condition of the internal organs is seen as expressed in the face as a inverse mirror image of their location in the body. The following diagram illustrates the principle:

Taking this principle and applying it in more detail to the face is shown in the following diagram:

Thus we have a 'topography' of the internal organs of the body mapped on the face. There are a couple of areas on the face that need to be mapped out which are not shown in the above diagram. First, you will notice on the skin of the forehead of every human being some horizontal lines, usually between three and seven. These are normal. However, if they stand out prominently so as to be noticeable, this is an indication that the organs associated with this area are too expanded, that is, too yin.

The organs "mapped" on the the forehead are illustrated in the following diagram:

Another area we need to look at is around the mouth, as in this illustration:

On the face of women, the purple crosses mark a spot on either side of the mouth where an imaginary line drawn out from the corners of the mouth to where the line etched on every human face which goes from the sides of the nose around and down in a semicircle to end approximately level with lips (the black lines in the diagram). This spot shows the condition of the ovaries, the right side of the face the right ovary and the left side, the left ovary.

The area inside the red line shows various aspects of the uro-genital system, with the word Prostate showing where you look for signs of prostate dysfunction.

This is a good place to pause until the next update (if you are a regular visitor to "The Alchemycal Pages" you will know updates occur approximately every 3 months). These next three months what you do is observe people's faces very closely but you only concentrate on ONE feature at a time.

From now until September, choose one feature of the human face - say the nose this next 2 weeks, and just do nothing but look at noses. Observe the nose of many different people over the course of the 2 weeks, taking notes on the size and shape and whether it is bent up or curved down, is it long or short, flat on the face or prominent, is it clearly featured on the face or does it seem to blend in to the face, does it have any blemishes, spots, discolorations, what colors if discolored, are there any swellings, does it appear swollen generally, and if not, where is the swelling? Carry a notebook with you devoted to the study of the human face, for you can do your observations anywhere - on the bus, train and subway, in the cafe, sitting in the park, taking up a suitable vantage on a street corner or market square or while strolling down the street. Jot down all your observations, make sketches and notes, noting every detail, the date and time of day and weather patterns the day you make the observations, and whether they are of a man or woman, and whether of a child, teenager, adult, middle-aged or elderly person.

Do similar detailed obervations on the cheeks, upper lips, lower lips, beneath the eyes, the eyes, the eyelids, between the eyes, the forehead and the temples. Also do a study of ears.. If you spend two weeks on each that will be in time for the next update.

At this point do NOT try and figure out what it all means, simply observe and let the facts you observe speak to you, and we will continue our studies next time.

Before going into more detail on facial diagnosis a problem arises when we are determining how we should eat in terms of yin and yang. The problem is that we may have a yin constitution or body-type and a yang condition and vice-versa. For if we have a yin condition then we need to eat more yang to balance the condition, but if we also have a yang constitution then we need to eat more yin to balance the constitution. How do we solve this dilemma? This will be addressed next in the discussion on how to diagnose our constitution or body-type.

Constitutional Diagnosis

kaareb@mac.com