1

This book has been compiled from edited transcripts of lectures

delivered in the 1960s by the late Haruchika Noguchi to

members of Seitai Kyokai.

ZENSEI PUBLISHING COMPANY

TOKYO

JAPAN

AKIKO NOGUCHI 1986

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or

reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented,

including photocopying and recording, or in any information

storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from

the publishers.

First published 1986

Printed in Tokyo

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Colds and Fatigue ....................................................... 9

Chapter 2

Bodily Tendencies ......................................................29

Chapter 3

Symptoms ................................................................46

Chapter 4

Having a Bath ...........................................................59

Chapter 5

Passing Through a Cold ..............................................70

Chapter 6

More about Baths ......................................................96

Chapter 7

Psychic Factors ....................................................... 110

Chapter 8

Leading the Imagination ........................................... 129

Chapter 9

Directing the Bodys Traffic ....................................... 146

Chapter 10

Different Kinds of Colds ............................................ 178

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Chapter One

Colds and Fatigue

The season of colds is upon us, and the number of people with

colds has suddenly increased, so I shall begin by roughly

explaining, what to do if you catch one. There are many kinds

of illnesses, but in my experience the illness that is most difficult

to deal with is a cold.

Years ago, I used to treat colds as if I were curing an illness, but

because colds, take innumerable forms it is extremely difficult to

put ones finger on what, exactly, a cold is. For example, it takes fourteen days for someone to pass through a bout of

pneumonia, so what I have to do is make an effort for this

number of days: the course of the illness is determined. Or take

appendicitis: we know the course it takes, too. If you do yuki to

the second lumbar vertebra, the pain will cease; and then if you

do yuki

9

to the lymphatic vessels on the insides of the thighs, a bowel

movement will naturally occur; until the bowel movement

occurs, I let the stomach work a little excessively. That is all

that is needed. So one illness takes so many days before a

person recovers from it, and another illness takes a few more

days. It is very simple, and I have never felt that any one illness

is particularly difficult to deal with. With a cold, however, I may

seriously set out to cure it, but it is passed through easily; or I

may treat it lightly, but it changes into another kind of illness.

So a cold is a very difficult thing to grasp. Consequently, I

began looking into the question as to what kind of cold a person

with such and such a body catches, and, again, what kind of

transformations one must be on ones guard against with people who have such and such a body. These things differ from person

to person in accordance with bodily constitution. Colds became

the motivation, so to speak, for my entering upon the study of

taiheki (bodily tendency). And then, because I sought to correct

bodily habits by making use of illness, I began to think about

the correction of taiheki; but, even so, colds still prove

10

difficult to deal with. If I take one lightly, it completely

disappears before I have made use of it; alternatively, it just

goes, on and on.

In fact, there is nothing so troublesome as a cold. When one

begins, to give sh (seitai guidance), the most difficult illness

to deal with is a cold. Even now, I inspect the whole body

carefully when a person has a cold, but this by itself is not

sufficient, so next I inquire into that persons past and everything else; only then can one broach the question as to

how this cold will be passed through. If things go exactly as I

have thought, then I feel that I have comprehended that

persons body. So long as ones prognostications are mistaken in the case of a cold, one hasnt understood that persons body.

When one catches a cold, the body usually becomes ordered as

a result. Nevertheless, if in consequence one doesnt take a cold seriously, it will get worse. Still, if one has come to know

someones body well, one will definitely not be mistaken in expecting the cold to take such and such a course, leaving a

lingering effect in, say, this part of the body; that the effect left

in

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such and such a part of the body will soon be cured if a certain

other part is treated; or that the cold will take such and such a

course and this place will change for the better. I have been

able to do this for about ten years now; before that it was

difficult.

Nevertheless, comprehending a cold is difficult even now. In the

case of someone I know, I am not at all worried if he catches a

cold, but in the case of someone whose body I do not

understand yet, it is as difficult as ever it was. Though a cold is

difficult to deal with, people think of one as being simply a cold,

and they dismiss it. They say, Its just a cold. One can only call this way of thinking reckless.

It has come to be said these days that if a woman catches a

cold in the early stages of pregnancy, she may give birth to a

deformed child. People now know that poliomyelitis and

smallpox and illnesses like them are kinds of cold; they think of

a cold in a manner rather different from the way they thought

before. If all of us take this opportunity to change our ideas

about a cold and take a greater interest in the subtle bodily

change that is a cold, methods of treating colds that impair the

health will

12

disappear, and I think that catching a cold will no longer result

in the healths being damaged.

7

A healthy body has resilience. It has the capacity to expand and

contract. We say that a part of the body that is always used

excessively is a part that suffers, from biased fatigue. The

excessive use of a certain part of the body is what we call

biased movement, and in those parts, always affected by biased

movement, biased fatigue builds up. You do not notice this

yourself, but when such a part is felt, it is stiff, and the capacity

of the muscles there to stretch and contract is greatly reduced.

When this capacity becomes even less, it means that one has

grown old, and when it is even more reduced, it means that you

are in the grave; for when one is dead, this resilience

completely disappears. Human beings gradually lose their bodily

resilience, and then they die. So if you observe the whole

process until death, you will see that the course of most

peoples lives is determined, and that there is no such thing as sudden death.

When I am inducing katsugen und in people, I sometimes

come across a person

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whose back is as rigid as a corpses. I ask him to relax, but he tenses himself instead. For a person like this, there is no

difference between tensing himself and relaxing. Indeed, the

more he tries to relax, the more he tenses himself. So his body

has become wholly insensitive; he is unaware of illness or

abnormalities, but nonetheless supposes that he is as strong as

a horse. And then he suddenly collapses. If he suddenly dies, it

is because his body is so stiff and dull that he has reached a

stage one step before dying; his death may be unexpected, but

in another way it is not unexpected at all. Because people

suppose there is nothing wrong, they speak of an unexpected,

sudden or accidental death and are frightened of high blood

pressure, but if one looks at the body from the point of view of

its elasticity, a persons suddenly succumbing to cerebral apoplexy or developing cancer is definitely not an accidental

thing. Cancer, leukemia, hepatitis, cerebral apoplexy all these are illnesses that become serious before one is aware of them,

and when one does become aware of them, it is too late: this is

characteristic of todays illnesses. The root of this kind of thing is a

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body that has become insensitive.

When a cold is caught, an insensitive body to some extent

recovers its elasticity. For this reason, the blood pressure of

people with high blood pressure comes down. But it is less a

matter of the blood pressure coming down than of the blood

vessels becoming more supple. Blood vessels, too, have

elasticity, and when they lose this elasticity and become stiff,

they easily burst. In short, so long as the blood vessels are

supple, they will not burst no matter how high the blood

pressure climbs; but if they lose their elasticity, they will burst.

So, rather than blood pressure, it is a matter of the degree of

elasticity of the blood vessels, or of the hardening, of these

vessels. But it is, not simply the blood vessels: if one lives in

such a way as not to lose the elasticity of the whole body, or of

ones whole being, including ones sensibility, ones health will not suddenly collapse; and if ones body has become stiff, catching a cold will solve the problem.

So if, while using the body, biased fatigue becomes latent in a

certain part of the body, this part loses its suppleness, and one

catches a cold. After a cold has been

15

caught, this part recovers. So rather than thinking of a cold as

an illness, I have come to think of it as being a curative activity.

But because people think only of curing a cold without passing

through it completely, the bodys weak points remain as they are and one catches cold again. Because people do not correct

the biased fatigue or, more fundamentally, the bodys habitually biased activity which is the cause of their catching cold, and because only one part of the body does most of the

work, the necessity arises for the body to catch a cold again. For

as long as you can catch colds again and again, you have a kind

of guarantee, but once you become unable to catch colds, the

only thing that lies in the future is collapse. If you carefully

observe people who succumb to cancer or apoplexy, what most

of them have in common is that they do not even catch colds.

But if you look at people who live long, they are in a way always

sick: they are constantly catching colds or their nose suddenly

starts running whenever the weather gets cool. The noses running is a manifestation of a kind of power of resistance to the

various harmful things in the air, so if your nose runs, one can

say that your

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whole body is sensitive.

9

Why do peoples bodies grow stiff despite their possessing this activity whereby colds are caught? It is because they use

various means to prevent colds and to cure them, and so dull

their bodies to colds. You may, for example, rub yourself down

regularly with a wet towel so that you do not catch colds any

more, but all you are doing is making your whole body as

insensitive as your face: you become as dull as those porters

who made a living by wading up to their necks through rivers

and carrying things across. If you look at those people who

succumb to illnesses like apoplexy, a great number of them are

the kind of people who rub themselves down with cold wet

towels. But it is not only people who do this who succumb to

apoplexy or whatever: many people succumb to these illnesses

because they have made their bodies and minds stiff and

insensitive. So, as long as you can feel stiffness in your

shoulders or neck, you will not collapse, but if you become

unable to feel stiffness in your body, you will. If only you pass

through colds well, your blood pressure drops, the stiffness in

your body disappears, and it will not

17

happen that a part of your body is affected by illness.

So if you catch colds, you will not succumb to apoplexy. Just

have a look at the past of someone who has apoplexy. At a

certain time this kind of person stops having colds: there is

definitely such a time. If you do katsugen und for a certain

period you catch colds readily, and then you catch them less

often. If you observe carefully what happens during the period

when colds are caught readily, you will see that the biased

movement in various parts of the body is corrected, and that

muscles which are stiff recover their resilience. So if you

observe the body carefully, you realize that today the cold will

relax this part of the body and that the next day it will result in

that parts recovering, and so you will understand how long a cold will take to run its course.

If you make observations in this way, you will come to

understand that colds have different characters according as the

biased movement of the body differs, and that there are many

ways of passing through a cold depending on the parts in which

biased movement accumulates. So while you

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do not completely understand the characteristics of a persons body, you cannot give him sh for a cold. Or rather it is

difficult to use a cold in such a way that his body is made better

after he has passed through it.

Some people may attempt to interrupt a cold by trying to lower

a fever in order to cure the cold quickly, or by trying to stop a

cough, but while they are receiving, treatment, their bodies

grow stiff and gradually become insensitive.

My principal concern is to order the body, so I am against

disordering the body in order to cure an illness. For example,

when a finger has gangrene, it is cut off and you are told that

you have been cured, but that mutilation lasts for ever. This is

not healing: all you are doing is giving the body another injury

in addition to the gangrene in the name of curing it. This is not

a real cure. Many women have their wombs and ovaries

removed. If this is done, the unhappy husband for a time

provides an outlet for the energy of his wife, who vents her

anger on him for no reason; but when her womb has been

removed, it is natural that the way she expends energy should

change; she cannot control this. So it is

19

misconceived to think of this kind of thing as constituting a cure.

Unless one treats the body in such a way that it is maintained in

a natural state, without impairing its natural workings, and

without dulling or debilitating it, you cannot call what you do

curative in the true sense.

These days many people have various organs removed, so that

it is very inconvenient for someone like myself, who uses the

natural activities of the body for the maintenance of the health.

There is nobody walking about without a heart, but there are

any number of people who are lacking a kidney, a womb or

ovaries, and even though one may try to cure them in an ideal

way, it is impossible. So I must ask each person whether he or

she has had something removed. The worst kind of people say,

They said it might develop into cancer, so I had my stomach removed. If you dont have a stomach, you wont get cancer there Well, why dont you have your head cut off? You wont have any illnesses at all after that.

In any event, one should maintain ones natural body in as natural a way as possible. This being the case, it is surely more

20

significant to properly catch a cold and properly pass through it

than to use all sorts of methods to cure it. So if, instead of

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thinking in terms of cures for various diseases, you once master

living in such a way as to pass through a cold properly, the kind

of numbed body that tends to get cancer or apoplexy can be

corrected. So there is no need for you to get illnesses like these.

If you use your head too much and it gets tired, you will catch a

cold. After putting too much of a burden on your digestive

organs, you will catch a cold. And after your kidneys have

worked too hard, you will catch a cold. If biased movement

occurs in one part of the body or another, and one part has to

work too hard, you will catch a cold. People who drink too much

alcohol and whose liver is constantly swollen catch the kind of

cold that is connected with the liver. People who always eat too

much rich food and whose kidneys are swollen catch the kind of

cold that is connected with the kidneys. Congenital worriers

catch the kind of cold that is connected with the nervous

system. In this way, each person catches the kind of cold that

suits him; first those parts affected by

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biased fatigue recover their resilience, and after the cold has

been passed through, the body becomes resilient and refreshed.

So a cold is not something to be cured, it is something that

must be passed through. But though one may try to have

someone pass through a cold, it cannot be done unless one

knows the characteristics of that persons body well. By making these characteristics my starting point, I came to find the

characteristics of taiheki. In any event, colds pose a problem.

Most people do not change ways of life that result in the

accumulation of biased fatigue, and they only interrupt the colds

they catch again and again, so that it is natural that their bodies

should never become sound. Colds and diarrhea are the most

important of the bodys ways of maintaining itself in good condition; or, to put it another way, repeated slight colds and

light bouts of diarrhea are bodily activities that lead to the

bodys becoming sound. Whether a cold or a bout of diarrhea leads to the bodys remaining sound and as new or whether it leads to some parts becoming stiff or the bodys losing its resilience depends on whether it is dealt with without forcing

things or not. If

22

you intend to use the method of yuki on someone who has not

fallen seriously ill, then how he passes through a cold or a bout

of diarrhea becomes the most important question.

Sensitive people readily catch colds, and the kind of person who

often catches a light cold has a sound body. So I often catch

colds. But I pass through them within forty minutes to two

hours. In most cases, once I have sneezed twenty times, the

cold has left the body. Each time one sneezes when one has a

cold the whole body relaxes more and more. I am used to this,

so, I can recognize what is happening. Thus, depending on the

part of the body in which a sneeze, so to speak finds an echo, I

say to myself, I must have drunk a little too much, I must have eaten a little too much, or I must have used my head a little too much. So every time I sneeze when I have a cold, I examine myself concerning the way I have been using my body.

My way of dealing with a cold is very simple. I breathe deeply

and continuously into my spine. As I breathe in this way, the

spine gradually straightens and arches backwards; when the

spine becomes

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completely arched, it perspires slightly. It takes about two or

three minutes. Then I twist my body two or three times. And

that is all. As one passes ki through ones spine, there are spots where it passes through with difficulty: these are the places

where there is biased fatigue. One concentrates ki there, and

breathes through these places. If, after that, the ki still passes

through with difficulty, someone else can do yuki to these

places. I generally do katsugen und.

That is all there is to my method of treatment; I usually pass

through a cold only by breathing through my spine. Even though

other people say all sorts of things, I use as a way of keeping

healthy, and as a constant standby, breathing through the

spine. I have ordered my body for forty years only by means of

passing ki through my backbone. When I have diarrhea, I

breathe through my lumbar vertebrae; when I have a cold, I

breathe through my thoracic vertebrae; and with this alone it is

all over.

This breathing through the spine is no different to gassh gyki

(breathing through ones palms after putting them together) except that one is breathing through

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ones spine; and you can do this sitting, or lying down, or standing. As I am doing calligraphy, say, or giving sh to

someone, I pass ki through my backbone. Even now, when I am

13

talking like this, I can pass ki through my backbone. Thus, there

is, no need to set aside a special time for doing this.

People who can set aside so many minutes or hours every day

for the purpose of maintaining their health are fortunate, but a

way of keeping healthy that cannot be followed by busy people

poses a problem. But if you become skilled at breathing through

your spine, only one or two breaths are sufficient. At the

moment my back is perspiring; this is evidence that ki is

passing, through my spine. If there is no perspiration, this

shows that you have only the intention of passing ki through

your spine, and are not actually doing it. As, you pass ki

through your spine a certain place will begin perspiring, and

then you can say, Ah, the cold is of this kind. Thus, for me, colds are not much of a nuisance.

When you pass ki through your backbone, the place that

perspires is invariably determined. It is, because everyone has

25

habitual ways of using the body, and biased fatigue becomes

latent in a certain place. So, having come to know the habitual

ways in which the body moves, or the place where fatigue

gathers, one need only deal with this part in order to really pass

through a cold. It is enough to give a little help to this place, so it is very simple if only you know the place on a persons body where fatigue becomes latent. On the other hand, it

becomes very difficult if you start asking, What part of the body should I touch in order to cure a cold? or What method of cure should I use in the case of a cold? or How do I do yuki in order to cure a cold? If you come to be able to cure a cold perfectly, you can deal with any disease. If you can help

someone pass through a cold well, one can perhaps say that

you are able to cure difficult diseases. Though they say cancer is

difficult to treat, the difficulty cannot be compared with the

difficulty of treating a cold. Even with cancer, if you catch a cold

it will get better. Recently, cold germs have been used against

cancer, and the cancer has disappeared, and there is now the

hypothesis that catching a cold is a way of treating cancer. But

this is not

26

confined to cancer, nor to hardened arteries; I think a cold is

the most efficacious remedy for a dulled body.

You will probably want to know the place to which sh should

be given, but from our point of view, if the place where biased

fatigue has become latent the place that has lost its resilience is rectified, then the body will no longer need to have a cold, and it will recover. The important thing is to create a body that

does not need a cold, so one can say it is sufficient only to give

sh to the place that needs it. As to where this place is, one

can only say that a hundred people differ in a hundred different

ways. A person will soon recover if you can find exactly where

this place is on his body, but you will not be successful if you

make a wrong guess, no matter how strenuously you may treat

his body. When it comes to giving sh for a cold, it is so

difficult that one cannot lay down any guidelines. But to put the

matter in a nutshell: if you simply lay your hand on the place

where fatigue usually gathers, the place that is generally used

excessively, so that a response arises, in it, that is sufficient.

Thus, to explain sh for a cold, one can

27

only say that it consists in doing yuki to the place where fatigue

has become latent.

This kind of place already wants yuki done to it. The

phenomenon we call a cold is an activity that occurs in a body

that is trying to get better, so that while the body is dull, a cold

will not be caught. The act of catching a cold is itself a demand

for recovery, so that if a response arises in the body, it will get

better. In fact, when yuki is done in this way, anyone will pass

through a cold in one evening. If it lasts two or three days, then

the body is fairly dull, and so it is better to gain, so far as is

possible, the kind of body that recovers from a cold within the

day on which it is caught, and that catches colds readily. It is

not good to have so dull a body that it takes three or four days

to pass through a cold; even so, as long as you are catching

colds, you are still all right.

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Chapter Two

Bodily Tendencies

When it comes to the question as to where, on a certain

persons body, fatigue is latent, there is no other way than carefully examining how this person uses his or her body. This

poses an extremely difficult problem. But fortunately we are

able to classify taiheki by determining types, with what we call a

stabilograph, whereby the distribution of the bodys mass can be measured, and by clarifying the characteristics of each body;

so that understanding the habitual ways in which the body is

used is fairly simple. With each taiheki, we have inquired into

those places where biased fatigue is latent in other words, where the ki is obstructed and when we approach the problem in this way, it is not so difficult.

For example, there are people whose

29

bodies tend to become stooped. When their bodies are tired,

they always bend forwards. When you see someone who is bent

forwards, it seems that things are not going well with him. Even

though he bends forwards for reasons of business, a hotel

manager, for example, somehow gives a servile impression. So

that when you see someone who is bent forwards, you wonder

whether he has debts or some other worry on his mind. But

there are people who unconsciously adopt this joyless posture.

If it is a result of tiredness, it is rather understandable, but

there are people who, although they are not tired, have a habit

of bending forwards, and when they try to raise their heads,

they thrust their chins out instead. When someone says Good morning to a person like this, he raises his chin in response, but in the belief that he is bowing. His usually adopting a

melancholy posture but taking an arrogant attitude when he

bows is not intentional: it is simply a bodily habit.

When someone who habitually bends forwards catches a cold,

sweating will occur if you do yuki to the fifth thoracic vertebra,

which is the place where sweating may be

30

encouraged. It will not be a cold sweat, it will be the kind that

adjusts bodily temperature. You can find the fifth thoracic

vertebra on someone by getting him to bend his neck forwards.

When he does this, the last bone in his neck the seventh

cervical vertebra will be thrust out. The fifth thoracic vertebra is the fifth bone in the spine down from the last bone in the

neck. It is immediately below the point where the space

between the shoulder blades is narrowest. If, when he has a

cold, you touch the backbone of somebody who has a tendency

to bend forwards, you will find that only this bone is thrust out;

and if you check the bones above and below it, the resilience of

only this fifth thoracic vertebra will feel reduced. Thus, though

you may not know how a certain person habitually uses his

body, if the fifth thoracic vertebra does not move properly

inwards and outwards and is, the only bone to be thrust out,

this, person has the habit of bending forwards. When this kind

of person catches a cold, it begins, by affecting the nose and the

throat. So the first signs occur in the nose.

To go into more detail: the root of the habit of bending forwards

lies in the first

31

lumbar vertebra, which is the bone that moves most when you

arch yourself backwards. Because, in the case of people with

this bodily habit, the first lumbar vertebra moves with difficulty

and the structure of the body is weak in this place, the body

bends forwards. In the case of a person like this, the fifth

thoracic vertebra has a tendency to become dull, and then a

cold begins in the nose. More precisely, a cold begins in the area

between the nose and the throat, and it then proceeds to affect

the nose on the one hand, and the throat on the other. It is a

characteristic of such a person when he catches a cold that

strength drains from the first lumbar vertebra. If you touch the

first lumbar vertebra of someone whose fifth thoracic vertebra is

thrust out, you will find that it is rigid and moves with difficulty.

If both these conditions are present the fifth thoracic vertebra thrust out and the first lumbar vertebra rigid you may conclude that the person in question has the kind of taiheki that

is characterized by bending forwards.

When a person with the habit of bending forwards catches a

cold, he will get better if yuki is done to the fifth thoracic

vertebra,

32

and when he has recovered, the first lumbar vertebra will also

have recovered its resilience. So one waits until the day when

resilience returns to the first lumbar vertebra. If this bone

recovers its resilience while yuki is being done to the fifth

thoracic vertebra, then the cold is already disappearing. If this

17

does not happen while yuki is being done, then yuki should be

tried again on the next occasion. Thus the time when the first

lumbar vertebra begins to recover its resilience is the time when

the cold begins to disappear. For there is a kind of oscillation in

the body between periods of tension and periods of relaxation,

and in accordance with this, one can work out how many days it

will take to recover from a cold. This, however, is extremely

difficult. It is enough for you to observe the condition of the first

lumbar vertebra as you do yuki to the fifth thoracic vertebra: if

it begins to regain its resilience, you may say that the body has

recovered, or that it will recover within a day; if it still feels

irresilient, then the cold is still there while it remains rigid, the body temperature may climb higher or the bodys condition may be such that the cold will continue to develop. Thus, if you

pay

33

attention only to the way the fifth thoracic vertebra is thrust out

and to the way the first lumbar vertebra moves, you wont make a mistake.

Again, when this kind of person has a cold, the cold will move to

the windpipe if he is too active at a time when the fifth thoracic

vertebra is still not right. If this happens, he will start coughing

when he goes to bed, though he wont cough much while he is up. A person whose windpipe is chronically enlarged will not

cough ordinarily but will find himself coughing when he goes to

bed. When one lies down, the whole body generally relaxes, but

in his case only the windpipe will not relax. But if he uses a

smaller pillow and puts it under his neck so that his head is

slightly thrown back, he will not cough and he will be able to

sleep. In any event, an abnormality occurs in the windpipe.

When this happens, the seventh cervical vertebra and the first

thoracic vertebra have drawn close together, and have been

thrust outwards. So people who have this condition before they

catch a cold do not pass through a cold smoothly and without

complications, but the cold goes to the windpipe, and only after

that do they

34

recover; it takes a fairly long time. So one should be prepared

for this more or less from the beginning. When this happens,

laymen say, The colds got worse, but from our point of view it has not got worse; instead, we have foreseen that this

development is one part of the process that people like this go

through.

If you become able to judge how far someones cold will spread, dealing with it will become extremely straightforward. People

whose fifth thoracic vertebra is thrust out catch colds in the

nose or the nasal passages, and the cold subsequently spreads

to the throat and windpipe. More often it is the windpipe that is

affected rather than the throat, and the process of the cold will

continue until the first lumbar vertebra has recovered its

resilience. Once this vertebra begins moving properly, the cold

is already getting better.

In the case of people whose seventh cervical vertebra and first

thoracic vertebra are in an abnormal condition, a cold will not

get better until it has spread to the windpipe. If someone who

habitually bends forwards and whose seventh cervical and first

thoracic vertebrae are in an abnormal

35

condition repeatedly catches colds that do not spread so far as

the windpipe, his shoulders will gradually become more and

more rounded, and a disease of the respiratory organs will

result. The kind of person who habitually bends forwards,

bringing his shoulders forwards at the same time, has a body

that is susceptible to respiratory diseases.

We know that tuberculosis is an infectious disease, but a

susceptibility to tuberculosis is also an hereditary thing. Even if

you separate the children of tubercular parents from their

parents, you will find that their susceptibility to tuberculosis is

greater than in the case of ordinary people. This susceptibility

derives from their bone structure, and is therefore hereditary. In

what way is their bone structure abnormal? These people have

that habit of bending forwards which I have been talking about,

and, in addition, the third and fourth thoracic vertebrae are

constantly moving together and apart; if you touch these

vertebrae, they are over-sensitive and they move about

excessively. Only this place is excessively elastic. If, however,

the health of a person who has this condition becomes

36

poor, the capacity of these bones to move suddenly grows less.

When, in the case of this kind of person, the resilience of the

third and fourth thoracic vertebrae is lost, illness becomes a

long-drawn-out process. It seems that a person has recovered

from a cold, but he catches one again; or he seems to have

caught a cold, but it disappears. Catching cold and recovery

19

constantly alternate, and there are two possibilities as to the

future: either the third and fourth thoracic vertebrae will recover

their resilience, or this person will succumb to a disease like

tuberculosis that goes with these bones becoming stiffer and

eventually unable to move. If these vertebrae move closer

together, pneumonia will result, and if they move further apart,

tuberculosis or some disease of the lungs similar in one way or

another to tuberculosis will ensue.

One should realize, therefore, that recovery from a cold is both

protracted and complicated in the case of a person who

habitually bends forwards if, in addition to his fifth thoracic

vertebra being thrust out, his third and fourth thoracic vertebrae

are stiff. If it is only the fifth thoracic vertebra that is the

problem, recovery is simple; in

37

this case, all you need do is keep an eye on the first lumbar

vertebra. If, however, the seventh cervical vertebra and the first

thoracic vertebra are in an abnormal condition, you should

realize that the cold will move to the windpipe, there will be a

fever, and the cold will not be passed through in one night. In

most cases, you need observe only these places when you are

treating people who habitually bend forwards. Once the first

lumbar vertebra begins to move properly, recovery is always on

its way. Even in the case of a person whose third and fourth

thoracic vertebrae are in an abnormal condition, a cold will not

necessarily develop into pneumonia or some other lung

disorder; if the first lumbar vertebra regains its resilience, this

kind of person will recover, too. That said, no matter how much

you may treat the first lumbar vertebra directly in an attempt to

make it sound, it is of no avail. If you are going to do anything,

do yuki to the fifth thoracic vertebra and let the process take its

course. And if, beforehand, you have done yuki to the seventh

cervical vertebra and the third thoracic vertebra, a cold will be

passed through comparatively rapidly.

38

A cure, therefore, does not consist in actually curing an illness, but in helping the body to pass smoothly through an

illness without the process being impeded; for this purpose, we

correct those important parts of the body that are in an

abnormal condition, order the body, and wait for it to pass

through the illness.

These days, people think of illness only as something to be

feared, and they suppose that the slightest indisposition must

be cured completely and as quickly as possible; they take no

account of the living activity of the body as a whole, or of the

bodys natural workings. Because, for reasons of work or whatever, people think only of curing an illness quickly or, for

example, stopping a bout of diarrhea as soon as possible, the

natural balance of the body is gradually lost; and more and

more people become unable to pass through a cold smoothly. If,

however, yuki is used and a number of colds are passed

through, one comes to pass through a cold more quickly each

time, and one catches colds on account of very minor, bodily

changes. When this happens, one feels that one wants yuki

done to a certain place; if yuki is done to this place, one

39

quickly recovers, and in the end a cold does not last more than

a night. If you use methods other than yuki and say each time,

Ive cured my cold, Ive cured my cold, you gradually become so dulled that you cannot pass through a cold properly, and

even after recovery fatigue remains in the body. If you use yuki,

the fatigue disappears, the body feels refreshed, and various

parts of the body recover their resilience; this does not happen

with other methods. Thus, even though we may speak in both

cases of passing through a cold, a natural recovery and a cure

are somewhat different. I feel that, looked at from another point

of view, an approach to illness that thinks only in terms of a

quick cure is a means of whittling away your life-span.

It is untrue to say that a quick cure is a good thing. But neither

is it true to say that a slow recovery is a good thing. What is

desirable is that the body should naturally pass through an

illness in the way that suits it. If possible, the body should be in

a sensitive condition so that it can pass through an illness

quickly. If one considers the human body in terms of its

resilience, a cold is a good opportunity for the body to

40

recover this resilience. A sudden and unexpected severe illness

is simply the result of the bodys having become insensitive and losing its resilience, and if you carefully observe the body, you

can see that a cold is nothing to be frightened of. Nevertheless,

one has to be careful about complications, as in the case of

people who have the habit of bending forwards and whose third

and fourth thoracic vertebrae are extremely far apart.

21

A characteristic of human beings is that they can stand on one

leg. On the sole of the foot are three points of support on which

the weight of the body bears, and this is why you can stand

upright on one leg. A monkey, however, bends forwards when it

stands. This is because it has only two points of support on its

foot, on the outer side and at the back; and so it cannot stand

upright. When weight is brought to bear on the three Points on

the sole of your foot, your lower back straightens and you can

stand upright. But the monkey has no curve in its lumbar

vertebrae, so that when it stands, its body will not straighten

up. Among human beings, however, there are people one of

whose legs has three points of support like

41

normal people, but whose other leg is like a monkeys. One could perhaps say that such a body is primitive in some respect,

that it is half a monkeys; for one side of it is straight, whereas the other bends forwards. This kind of body constantly twists

itself. If you observe a person with such a body carefully, you

will see that when he looks to the right, his body faces towards

the left; with this kind of person, the third lumbar vertebra the one opposite the navel is twisted. A person whose body is habitually twisted in this way is in a normal condition when the

twisting of the body is centered on the third lumbar vertebra. No

matter what part of the body has something wrong with it, it will

recover simply as a-result of ones returning the third lumbar vertebra to its normal twisted condition. But if the third lumbar

vertebra is not twisted, and another part is twisted instead, this

state will result in a colds not being passed through smoothly.

Again, when a person whose body is habitually twisted catches a

cold, the resilience of the fifth thoracic vertebra is reduced. If

the tenth thoracic vertebra is also twisted, whenever he makes

a movement, the movement will start from that vertebra.

42

When a person with this condition catches a cold, the cold does

not begin in the nose, but in the throat, and it then goes on to

affect the kidneys or bladder.

The course of recovery from a cold is the same for everyone

whose body is habitually twisted, and if the third lumbar

vertebra is adjusted, recovery is on its way once this vertebra

starts becoming twisted. With the kind of body that habitually

bends forwards, however, recovery will come about once the

first lumbar vertebra begins to be thrust out. But with people

whose bodies are habitually twisted, recovery is on its way if,

when you check the third lumbar vertebra, the resistance on

both sides is the same. But if the tenth thoracic vertebra is

twisted, a cold that begins in the throat will cause disorders in

the bladder or kidneys. Therefore, if after having caught a cold,

a person develops nephritis or bladder catarrh, it is never

fortuitous; it is because the body has this kind of tendency. This

is the way that people whose bodies are habitually twisted pass

through a cold.

With adults, this is obvious, but parents who do not realize that

their child has a body that is habitually twisted say, Our

43

sons got a tendency to develop complications, and he will definitely get nephritis. So they pack him off to bed almost before he has caught a cold and while he still hasnt got nephritis, they cut down on certain of his foods. But no matter

what they do, he still develops a secondary illness. If, however,

you tell the child to cross his legs in bed so that his third lumbar

vertebra may become twisted, this alone will prevent secondary

complications from arising, and he will recover. Children are

generally resilient, and so a child with this kind of body will

usually recover overnight merely as a result of sleeping with his

legs crossed or bent. A cold is not something that unexpectedly

develops into one complication or another, nor is it something

that, for no particular reason, takes a long time to pass through,

or, for no particular reason, is quickly recovered from:

depending on the habitual ways in which the body is used, the

way of passing through a cold differs, as does the way of

recovery. If you understand the habitual ways in which someone

uses his body, matters are very simple. But further explanation

would complicate things, and, having roughly described the case

of a

44

person whose body is habitually twisted and that of a person

who habitually bends forwards, I feel that this is sufficient.

There are also people who are biased either to the right or to

the left. When these people catch a cold, they get diarrhea.

Rather, until they get diarrhea or the bowels suddenly loosen,

the cold will not get better. With these people, change always

originates in the second lumbar vertebra.

With others, a cold affects the head, and yet others have

muscular aches and pains here and there. Among people whose

bodies are habitually twisted, there are some who have

23

muscular pains akin to those of rheumatism when they catch a

cold: with these people, it is the tenth lumbar vertebra that is

the problem. Thus, unless one grasps the habits and structural

characteristics of a persons body so that he may be assisted to pass through a cold naturally, one cannot wait for recovery with

equanimity. One must also understand the bodily habits of

people of the vertical type and the open-closed type.

45

25

Chapter Three

Symptoms

There are certain symptoms that everybody manifests with a

cold: a high temperature, sneezing, feeling chilly, the head

hurting, the teeth hurting, the eyes watering. These symptoms

result from the impairment of the functions of the carotid blood

vessels, and if this area is treated, each of these symptoms

grows lighter and disappears. If one does yuki to the muscles

that lie alongside the carotid blood vessels (musculi

sternocleidomastodei), starting at the top and moving gradually

down to behind the collarbone, where the infraclavicular fossa

lies, recovery will be hastened. If, in addition, one does yuki to

the point on the outer side of the arch of the foot in which a dull

pain is felt when it is pressed (yuki may also be done here in the

case of a sore throat), as well as to the

46

underside of the third metatarsal bone, recovery will be certain.

Doing yuki to these points is also effective in the case of too

frequent urination, so that stimulating these points seems to

have an influence on the functioning of the urinary system.

Another interesting point: whenever someone catches a cold,

the muscles running alongside the carotid blood vessels become

hard; in the case of someone who has pneumonia, if you do yuki

to the infraclavicular fossa, which lies just behind the collarbone,

the temperature comes down; and so it seems clear that the

infraclavicular fossa has some connection with the functioning of

the blood vessels of the lungs. Hardening of these muscles

occurs also in, for example, people who look pale because they

have used their brain too much or because they are anxious

about debts, and in people who, because of a disastrous love

affair, have developed a respiratory illness; if you treat this

phenomenon as you would in the case of a cold, it will

disappear. It works, too, in the case of someone who is

depressed after failing an examination; he will recover his

spirits.

After discovering the course a cold will

47

take, people whose responsibility it is to guide others towards

health may think to make someone happy by telling him or her

that matters will be simple because the cold will take such and

such a course. Some people become indignant when too low an

estimate is put on their cold, and they adopt what might be

called inflationary tactics: they do their best never to recover,

and after they have recovered they wont admit it. These people seem to dislike being told, Your cold is light. It is as though you were telling them, Your wallets looking a bit light. In the past, whenever I thought someone would recover easily, it

always took a long time. I wondered again and again whether I

had made a misjudgment. But it wasnt a misjudgment on my part, the problem had to do with the other persons mind. So when you really think about how a cold is passed through, you

mustnt think only of the body, but of the persons deepest feelings, too, or of the movement of his or her subconscious.

Otherwise, someone may say, What a dreadfully rude man! He didnt take my illness seriously at all! When this kind of resentful feeling arises, a person resists you, and his or her

48

cold will not easily get better. It would be simple if we had to

think only of the bodys condition, of doing yuki to the fifth thoracic vertebra, and of recovery as coming about when the

first lumbar vertebra regains its resilience. But when, for

example, a child who feels that what he wants is not being given

to him, or that his parents attention is distracted elsewhere, catches a cold, it provides him with the opportunity to satisfy his

demands. As a result, the cold is even more troublesome. In

order to cure a cold, therefore, you have to study subconscious

factors as well.

All this may seem troublesome, but there are common ways of

passing through colds. Although one person may develop a high

temperature, sweat, and after that develop diarrhea, and

another may sneeze, or the color of his urine may change, there

are certain set courses that colds take. If you know these, you

can predict with a fair degree of accuracy how a cold will

proceed. Theres no need to know how you should treat everyone. It is sufficient to know the kinds of colds the

members of your family, including yourself, catch; and in the

case of your children you should know whether

49

their colds belong to the type you catch or your spouse catches.

Within each family, there will be two basic types of cold, though

there may be some mixture between them. A child will catch

colds of his fathers type or his mothers type, though sometimes a child will catch colds that have the characteristics

of both his parents types. In a family with five children, perhaps

27

one child will catch colds in which the characteristics of his

parents colds are combined; the rest will catch colds that belong to one or other of their parents types. In this way, colds have certain characteristics, and in a large family you can see

these characteristics clearly. Since, in one family, there will be

two basic types of cold and a combination of these types, you

do not need to know the way to cure everybodys colds. The combination cold comes under the two basic types, so that you need know only the latter. If, for example, you think your

husband has the kind of body that habitually bends forwards, I

want you to remember what I said about the fifth thoracic

vertebra and the first lumbar vertebra. And if you think your

husband is so twisted as to be positively cross-grained, you

should remember

50

what to do in the case of a person whose body is habitually

twisted. If your husbands main interest is in food, you need only remember what to do in the case of someone who belongs

to the lateral type. Thus, you need only remember what is applicable to your household, and you may forget the rest.

As I always say, when you do katsugen sh (seitai guidance

given by means of katsugen und), your hands will move of

themselves and, through the subconscious, they remember and

do all the difficult things I have been speaking about today. The

subconscious really is a convenient thing. But in comparison

with doing katsugen sh unconsciously, curing a cold by doing

yuki to a place you have singled out is much more satisfying. So

though a cold will definitely be cured if you do katsugen sh,

you can set aside the straightforward purpose of curing a cold

out of a desire to observe the process of passing through and

recovering from a cold, and treat a cold by means of conscious

observation. When your observations are spot on, it is

immensely satisfying it is better than winning a game of chess!

51

Your health is something that you yourself should maintain, but

while there are people who are good at curing illnesses around,

everybody depends on them and forgets that one passes

through an illness by means of ones own strength; and nobody thinks of curing himself by taking into account the way he uses

his body. The existence of people who can cure illnesses

sometimes has effects opposite to those intended, and I have

often thought it would be a good thing to stop giving sh in the

near future; but though Ive said to myself time and time again, Im going to stop doing sh, it is, to be honest, interesting to do it its certainly better than losing a game of chess! We know that recovery is straightforward if katsugen sh is done,

but I find it a little unsatisfying. That is why I began quite unnecessarily as you must see the study of taiheki, of bodily tendency. Truly, you do not need to know about this kind of

thing. All you need do is place your hands on the others body, let your hands move as they will and do sh in this way, and

the other will recover. So it is quite sufficient to say that there

are various ways of passing through a cold, and that,

52

depending on the person, a cold will last a long time or a short

time, and he will have diarrhea, fits of sneezing, or whatever.

It does not matter whether you do katsugen sh consciously or

unconsciously. Nor does it matter whether you believe in its

efficacy or not. You may timidly attempt to do yuki, and be

surprised when it proves effective and an illness gets better. As

you do it again and again, your confidence will grow. If you say,

Ill do it once I feel confident about it, you will never become confident. It is arrogance to suppose that you must be

confident before you can do something. There is nobody who

lives by means of confidence. Living is not something that is

done by means of confidence, you know. You were living at a

time when you didnt think about how you should live. Doing yuki is much the same: if you have remembered how to do it,

you dont need to think about it as you do it. If you do it, you will begin to understand it. And once you have understood it,

there is no harm in thinking about it. These days, many people

think a lot about things, and so I specially want to ask you to

plunge in and concentrate on actually doing yuki.

53

An important matter to keep in mind when you are doing sh

to someone for a cold, is that even though both sides of the

lumbar region may seem to be swollen, you shouldnt treat both sides at the same time. See on which side there is pain when

you touch the fifth thoracic vertebra; if it hurts on the right, you

should treat the right side of the lumbar region; if on the left,

the left. A person catches cold on one side of the body and then

the cold moves to the other side; and so you should treat one

side and then the other, and not both at the same time.

Otherwise the process of passing through the cold will be

retarded. Treat one side, and once you feel it is better, treat the

29

other. At this stage, the other side is not yet affected by the

cold; nevertheless, you should treat the left side once the right

has recovered, or vice versa. This is the key to doing sh in the

case of a cold.

Before people catch a cold, they generally begin moving about a

lot in their sleep. This results from the bodys desire to get rid of, one by one, pockets of biased fatigue that are latent in the

body. People say that you catch a cold because you toss and

turn in bed, but moving about a lot is in fact part

54

of the process of catching a cold. Attempting to stop this moving

about is far from being the way to prevent yourself from

catching a cold; rather, your body will become such that it

cannot do without a serious illness.

One mother was worried about the way her child tossed and

turned in bed, and so she tried to make him sleep without

moving about by tucking the bedclothes in extra tightly. The

result was that the child kept catching cold and developed

pneumonia. I said to the mother, The child is not moving about enough in his sleep, and thats why his colds develop into pneumonia. While hes sleeping, let him move about more freely. Then he will rid himself of fatigue and his colds wont be serious.

No, no, she replied. If he moves about a lot in bed, he catches cold, and thats why Ive been tucking him in as tightly as possible so that he cant move.

And thats precisely why he got pneumonia instead of catching a cold, I said. And if you go on doing that, I expect the same will happen again.

She was taken aback, and afterwards let the child sleep as he

wanted. Tossing, and

55

turning in ones bed is in fact a kind of katsugen und whereby fatigue is got rid of, so that it is wrong to try to suppress it. It is

not because someone tosses and turns in his sleep that he

catches a cold; tossing and turning is part of the process of

catching a cold. A demand to get rid of biased fatigue or the entry of one of the bodys periodic cycles into an ascending phase arises, and after that a cold develops. Once one has caught a cold, ones fatigue becomes spread throughout the body in a balanced way, and one stops tossing and turning in

bed. So when you sleep, it is important to be able to wholly

relax, particularly when you are catching a cold.

I often say, If you dont want to catch someone elses cold, dont sleep in the same room with him or her. I say this particularly in the case of a new bride who is worried that her

husband might not like her tossing and turning in bed, but in

fact a cold is not an infectious thing. Still, it sometimes happens

that a new bride cannot relax unless she sleeps alone, and in

this kind of case it is convenient to say that a cold is infectious.

I have never thought of a cold as being an infectious thing. You

catch a cold if your

56

body is in such a condition that it should catch a cold, and if you

catch a cold from somebody else, youve made a good bargain. Your body becomes stronger when you catch a cold, and so

catching a cold from someone else is nothing to be worried

about. Nevertheless, I say, A colds infectious, so sleep separately, because that way a person recovers more quickly; sleeping relaxedly is important to curing a cold. So you

shouldnt be worrying about this or that when you go to sleep. If you do, you cant relax. You have got to empty your mind.

Something that is even worse than worrying is watching

television in bed. If you do this, ocular fatigue will affect the

third thoracic vertebra and cause abnormalities in the

respiratory system. It is for this reason that some people those in whose heads energy easily builds up catch cold if they watch television too much. You could call this kind of cold a

television cold, and since television can be the cause of a cold, the worst possible thing is to watch it when you are in bed with

a cold. The fact that you are in a strange posture as you watch

makes it even worse.

57

So if you have a cold, you should darken the room and leave the

television off. But there is nothing wrong with listening to the

radio or to music. So the best thing to do is to sleep in a room

that has no television.

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31

Chapter Four

Having a Bath

People who catch cold usually wonder whether they should have

a bath. It often happens that a cold gets worse if you have a

bath, and I think that this is why people often feel cautious

about having one. But though a bath can cause a change for the

worse, it can also, depending on how it is used, bring about a

change for the better. So if someone assumes that you can have

a bath when you have a cold and asks me how to go about

having one, I think thats very good. But if you ask, Should I have a bath or shouldnt l?, one can only say that you should think for yourself, and that if you feel like having one, do, and if

you dont, dont. The effect of having a bath is that the hot water stimulates the skin and thereby heightens the workings of

the whole of the body. And if you warm your body by

59

staying in a hot bath for a while, it also encourages sweating.

From this point of view, it is a good idea to have a bath when

you have a cold. I have even given baths to babies who have

colds, and have cured them in this way. It is simply a matter of

making use of differences in the temperature of the water, and

if you can do that, giving an infant a bath will lead to his passing

through a cold much more quickly than if he had not been given

one. But depending on how you use a bath, a cold may turn for

the worse, and so you must be extremely careful.

Here are some things to keep in mind with respect to having

baths. Dont have a bath just before going to bed. People often say its a good thing to warm yourself up just before going to bed, but the human body is not like a teapot; its temperature

will drop by as much as it has gone up, and it doesnt simply drop, it drops too much. If you are up, your temperature will

adjust itself, but if you are in bed, this doesnt happen. So you should only have a bath just before going to bed in order to

relax your body when it is extremely tired. Removing fatigue

from your body is rather like

60

removing harshness from vegetables: it is a good thing to soak

yourself for a long time in a tepid bath. Some people, however,

may have a cerebral hemorrhage if they do this. Nevertheless,

someone who is partially paralyzed as a result of an apopleptic

stroke will be put on the road to recovery if he soaks himself in

a tepid bath for a long time, since this encourages the

expansion of the blood vessels and makes them less liable to

shrink. Some people soak themselves in a tepid bath in order to

prevent apoplexy, but if you do that, you will get apoplexy.

There were some individuals I heard of who, in order to prevent

apoplexy, went to a spa that was known for its efficacy in curing

the partial paralysis that results from a stroke.

The result? Three of them succumbed to apoplexy one after the

other. I think its rather silly to confuse curing partial paralysis with the prevention of apoplexy, and in most cases you

shouldnt soak yourself in a lukewarm bath in order to recover from a cold or have a long, hot bath to warm yourself up just

before going to bed. The important thing is to tighten up the

body.

You should take a bath in such a way that the body is instantly

tightened up and

61

sweats freely.

For an adult, the usual temperature for tightening up the body

in this way is between 42 and 45 degrees Centigrade (107.6 and

113 degrees Fahrenheit). A temperature of 40 or 41 degrees

(104 or 105.8F) is too low. The borderline between lukewarm

and hot is 42 degrees. If 42 degrees is comfortably hot, then

your bodys sensitivity is normal. If 42 degrees seems lukewarm and 45 degrees seems just right, your body is that of someone

who is 45 or 46 years old. Old age is catching up on you! And if

you like a temperature of around 46 degrees (114.8F), you

really are old. But a normal body feels that a temperature of

around 42, 43 or 44 degrees is comfortable.*

The temperature that is suitable increases according as your

fatigue is great. If you find a temperature of 45 degrees or

above comfortable, rather than being a sign of senility, it in fact

shows that the fatigue toxins in your body have increased

greatly. For example, if you have drunk a lot the

62

previous day, the temperature you find comfortable will be

higher. In my experience, if I have had a little whisky, I find

that the bath temperature that is comfortable is 1 degree higher

than it was the day before.

* It should be noted that the Japanese tend to like their baths hotter than Western people generally do, and that the design of the Japanese bath is different from that of the usual Western bath.

33

When the body is in a normal condition, the most comfortable

temperature is between 42 and 45 degrees. If your body is

tired, has some kind of abnormality, or is about to catch cold,

then the temperature that feels comfortable is higher. But there

is no need to think about finding the exact temperature that

suits the condition of your body: if, when you get out of the

bath, parts of your body have become reddened whereas others

have not that is to say, the reddening is uneven and the whole body is not equally red and especially if one leg is less red than the other, then you already have a cold, even though

you dont realize it. The cold is just about to manifest itself. So if, after getting, out of the bath and drying yourself, you find

that one leg is less red than the other, it is a good idea to put

that leg back into the hot water of the bath for a brief while.

Generally speaking, the way to warm it is to put it in water 1 or

2 degrees higher than the temperature of the

63

bath you have just had for two minutes, so that it becomes

equally as red as the other leg. So if, after having had your bath

and dried yourself, one leg has not become red, raise the

temperature of the bath by 1 or 2 degrees and put that leg in

for two minutes. If, when you take it out, it as red as the other

leg, your cold will disappear.

If, after getting out of the bath, neither leg has become red, you

have eaten something that disagrees with you. When you have

been poisoned by something or have drunk too much, so that

your digestive organs are in an abnormal state, neither leg

becomes red. So when your body becomes red but both legs

below the knee do not, it is the result of an abnormality caused

by something you have eaten or drunk. In such a case, you

should raise the temperature of the bath by 2 degrees and

warm both legs again.

It sometimes happens that only the feet do not become red.

This is due to an abnormality in the throat, and you should

warm the feet again in the way I have just described. The

temperature of the bath may feel comfortable, but if the whole

of the body does not become equally red, it tells

64

you that the temperature was not high enough for the parts that

havent become red, and that these parts werent warmed enough. Dont put your trust only in what you think you feel. Look at the color of your skin and make sure.

If you have eaten or drunk something that is bad for you, it is a

good idea to gradually raise the temperature of your bath while

you are in it. If, however, you do this when you have a cold, the

body will become excessively loosened and it will take very

much longer to pass through the cold. In fact, this way of

having a bath has an extremely bad effect on the way you pass

through a cold. So you should check the temperature of the

water before you get in the bath.

I was in Kyoto a little while ago, and I got into a bath whose

temperature was supposed to be 40 degrees. But it was only at

the surface that it was hot. Beneath the surface it was cool. I

put on the gas and heated up, the water while I was in the bath.

By the time all the water had reached a temperature of 40

degrees, my body was so loosened that it had become like a

vegetable that has been boiled slowly to remove

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the bitterness. Still, if you have eaten or drunk something bad,

having a bath in this way is a good method of getting rid of the

toxins.

Some years ago I was talking about this sort of thing, and in the

audience was a rather miserable-looking fellow who didnt have much money. But after that he suddenly became prosperous,

and would even bring presents for my students. I wondered how

he had managed to become so well off, and subsequently I

discovered that he and some others had been betting on how

much soy sauce they could drink, and that he would always win.

You can only drink so much soy sauce, and if you drink more

than that, people say you will die. But soon after drinking

quantities of soy sauce, this fellow would scurry off to the public

baths, get in and ask the attendant to heat the water up. As a

result, nothing untoward happened to him. But the people he

was betting with thought he must have some trick that enabled

him to drink so much soy sauce, and one day, after a soy sauce

drinking session, they chased after him, and since he didnt want to give his secret away, he didnt go to the baths. The result was that he

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had a heart attack and died. I told the owner of the baths and

the people he had been betting with that I had told him the

secret of getting into a bath and then warming it up. The owner

said, No wonder hed cheerfully tell me to keep heating the bath when he came. But his betting companions said sorrowfully, Then were murderers, arent we? Thus, the way

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you take a bath can reduce even a risk to your life, as this case

shows. There is an old antidote used when someone has been

poisoned as a result of eating blowfish: you bury him up to his

neck in earth and wait for the poison to be absorbed by the

earth. But its much better to boil yourself alive. Gradually make the water as hot as hell!

But when theres nothing wrong with you, it is not a good idea to have a bath in this way. When you have a cold, especially,

having a bath in this way immediately makes it more difficult to

pass through the cold, and the process, takes longer. So you

should be careful about getting into a bath that is still being

heated up. Instead, heat the water up first and prepare a bucket

of cold water. If the bath water is too hot for you to get into,

empty the cold water into

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the center of the bath and then get in yourself. Around your

body it will be slightly cooler. Once you feel that the water

around you is very hot, immediately get out. This is the best

way of having a bath when you have a cold. To cure a cold, the

water should be from 0.5 to 1 degree (Centigrade) higher than

you feel is comfortable. The water will feel very hot, and so you

should reduce the time you stay in the bath by about a half. In

fact, you wont be able to stay in for long, and you will want to get out quickly. And if you put the leg that hasnt got red back in the water again, you will pass through your cold easily.

If you can easily heat up the bath, a better way is to get in for a

while, get out and then heat up the water by 1 degree and get

in again. An even better way is not to get out of the bath, but to

stand up and dry your body well: in this way, you can warm

your legs further. It is best to check your legs to see which is

paler, and then, when you stand up, leave only that leg in the

water; still, there is no harm in leaving both legs in the water.

While standing, dry your body well, and then sit down again in

the water for a bit before getting out. Having a quick

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bath helps you recover from a cold. When you finally get out o

the bath, drink a glass of cold water, and you have done all you

need to do.

I think that a cold is something to be cured by having a bath,

and I have dealt with the colds I catch in this way for a number

of years. I tend to assume that when people ask me about

having a bath after catching a cold. they are asking me how

they should have one, but this generally turns out not to be the

case: they are asking whether they should have a bath or not.

Its an absurd question! If you have a bath in a skillful way, a cold quickly disappears.

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37

Chapter Five

Passing Through a Cold

If you pass through a cold well, your food will taste better and

your complexion will be refreshed and look as though it were

translucent. If, however, your body remains bent forwards after

you think you have recovered from a cold, you have not in fact

recovered. Once something within the body picks up and the

body looks refreshed, the cold is over. This happens to

everybody after passing through a cold.

It is a good thing to cut down a little on your food when you

catch a cold, and to eat things like soup and dishes that are

piquant. People think you should cut down on piquant dishes

when you are ill, but when you have a cold it does you good to

eat some very piquant food. Anything is all right be it made with ginger, chilli pepper or ordinary pepper. Just thrust it down

you

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until your stomach breaks out in a cold sweat! That way you will

pass through a cold more quickly.

More important than all this, however, is to observe the fifth

thoracic vertebra. Get the person you are treating to sit, and

then check the positions of the vertebrae. To tell whether or not

someone is catching a cold, roughly check whether the positions

of some vertebrae are abnormal and whether there is a dull pain

in some vertebrae when they are pressed. But when you are

checking the mobility of the spine, the person you are checking

should not be in a sitting position; you have to get him to lie

down on his front. When he is lying down, the highest point on

his back will be the fifth thoracic vertebra. Put your thumbs on

this vertebra, bring a little weight to bear on it and push and

release it a few times. If it moves, only slightly, there is no

abnormality, but if it springs back, the bone is thrust out, and if

it sinks down and doesnt return when released, there is also an abnormality. When it sinks down in this, way, it hurts, and we

feel that it is over-sensitive. If the vertebra is thrust out, a dull

pain will be felt when you press it moderately strongly. In other

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cases, there will be no pain. As you press this vertebra, you can

ask the person you are treating whether it hurts or not. Next,

press the vertebra from the right side, and then from the left. In

short, you press it from three directions, and then you check it

by pressing on the top and bottom of it. You can tell whether

someone has a cold from the degree of movement of this

vertebra: if it moves readily, an acute pain will be felt in it; if

with difficulty, a dull pain will be felt. In either case, the person

in question has a cold.

The way to check the first lumbar vertebra is the same. Once

you are used to dealing with people who have colds, you can

recognize when they have recovered by doing yuki to the fifth

thoracic vertebra and occasionally checking the first lumbar

vertebra. Once these vertebrae regain their resilience, the

person you are treating has recovered.

Thus, until you are experienced, you should begin by observing

the fifth thoracic, and then the first lumbar vertebra. But with

someone whose body is habitually twisted, you should check the

fifth and tenth thoracic vertebrae. With people who be

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long to the lateral type, you check the fifth thoracic and second

lumbar vertebrae. People whose most important bodily

characteristic is that their pelvic bones move belong to what we

call the open-closed type; with these people, you should check the fifth thoracic and first lumbar vertebrae. These bones are

thrust out by which I mean naturally, not abnormally so that you can easily recognize them. Once the fifth thoracic

vertebra begins to move and then the first lumbar vertebra

begins to move, a person with a cold is on the road to recovery.

When you have checked people in this way on two or three

occasions, you will have come to understand the essentials of

helping someone pass through a cold.

A cold is something that usually gets better of itself. It is itself

an activity that restores order to the body, so that there is no

need to do much. Nevertheless, one has to be careful when a

cold is accompanied with fever and sweating. It sometimes

happens that a fever climbs quite high. With some people, it

may climb to 38 degrees (100.4F), with others to 39 degrees

(102.2F), and occasionally it climbs above 40 degrees (104F).

But it is ridiculous to

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hastily attempt to bring the temperature down. Instead, you

should warm the base of the skull for forty minutes with a warm

flannel that has been folded small, renewing the heat every so

often by dipping it in hot water and wringing it out. If this is

done the person with the cold will sweat, and the cold will

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disappear as the temperature comes down. As it comes down, it

will fall below the normal temperature, which is between 36.5

and 37 degrees (97.7F and 98.6F). It will fall to, say, between

35 and 36 degrees for a short period. So there is a period during

which the temperature is below normal. After that, it will return

to normal.

The normal temperature differs from person to person. It is

usually somewhere between 36.5 and 37 degrees, but there are

people whose normal temperature is 37.5 or 35.5. One person I

know has a normal temperature of 34.8 just like a lizard! And he behaves like one, too. In the winter he rolls himself up

in his eiderdown virtually for the duration. I laughed when I

heard this and told him, The only difference between you and a lizard is that a lizard crawls under a natural eiderdown whereas

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you crawl under an artificial one. When this man finally creeps out from under his eiderdown, the temperature has risen a bit,

and his own temperature has risen to around 35 degrees. In

winter it falls to 34 point something; by the spring equinox it

has risen to around 35 degrees, and when this happens, he

emerges.

Since there are various normal temperatures, we cannot speak in terms of some general norm. Nevertheless, people do,

and they find it a bit difficult to take seriously someone whose

normal temperature is 35 degrees when he says, as though he

were seriously ill, Ive got a temperature of 37 degrees.

Because each persons normal temperature differs, it is a bit of a problem to check whether someones temperature has dropped below normal, and that is why I generally rely on the

pulse. The normal pulse rate is between 78 and 80 pulses a

minute. If it is lower than 78, you may assume that a persons temperature is below normal; if above 80, that his temperature

is higher than normal. A childs pulse rate is, generally a little higher than an adults. So you can roughly determine whether someones temperature

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is normal or not by checking the pulse, since it is easier than

checking temperature.

Incidentally, there is a relationship between ones breathing and pulse rate: the normal ratio between pulse rate and taking in

and exhaling one breath is four beats of the pulse to one breath.

Even a small abnormality will upset this ratio. In the case of a

cold, however, this ratio will not change much. Especially when

someone is at the point of recovering from a cold, this ratio is

almost perfect, and so I take this as the standard.

Nevertheless, I once knew a young woman whose pulse rate

was as low as 18 which is the pulse rate of someone who is about to die. When I was told of this, I rushed over to see her,

but her face didnt seem unusual in any way. I thought the mother must have made a mistake, but when I checked the

young womans pulse, it really was only 18. After she had recovered from a bout of rheumatism, it rose to 34, and

subsequently, while I was giving her sh, it rose to 52 still not up to the norm. There are cases like this, when the pulse

rate is as low as 18, so perhaps it doesnt do to depend too much on the pulse rate. But

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with the usual run of people, you will not be mistaken if you

check temperature by means of the pulse rate. After someone

has had a cold you will be less liable to make a mistake if you

check the pulse rate rather than the temperature.

You can judge when someones temperature is below normal for him or her by checking either the pulse rate or the temperature.

The period during which the temperature is below normal is a

crucial one in passing through a cold. If during this period one

moves around too much and allows the body to become cooled,

a secondary disorder will result. Particularly in the case of

mumps which we regard as a kind of cold if a child hops and skips about a bit during the period when the temperature is

below normal, it will lead to a secondary complication in an

unexpected place. A girl may start wetting her bed or develop

ovaritis; a boy may have an abdominal hernia or develop

testitis. This is true not only in the case of mumps: if, during a

period when the temperature is below normal, a child moves

about, a secondary illness will develop, and this failure to pass

through an illness properly may contribute to a less than full

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development in adulthood, or to, say, menstrual disorders in

women; so one needs to be careful in these periods. In the case

of the adult, too, if the body gets cooled in a period when the

temperature is below normal, the result may be a secondary

complication: it may suddenly become difficult to pass water,

diarrhea may suddenly develop and never stop, or the body may

begin aching here and there.

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While one has a cold and ones temperature is above normal, there is absolutely no harm in moving about, and no harm in

having a bath in fact, as I have said, it is good to have a bath. And over-eating or whatever doesnt matter either. Once, however, the temperature has risen and then fallen below

normal, it is necessary to rest quietly until it has returned to

normal. Children want to racket about during this period, but

parents would be wise to be cautious. I cant stop him from jumping around, some mothers say, and they get just as excited as the child they are trying to calm down. But what I do

in such a case is put a mosquito net over the childs bed. It doesnt matter whether its summer or winter: just put up a mosquito net and throw

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your child inside. Once the period during which the temperature

is below normal has ended, you can take away the mosquito

net. Inside the net, the child can go on only a small rampage at

most. This is the method I use, but I think it would be a good

thing if parents used their wisdom to think up a variety of

methods. If you find a good one, please let me know.

It is in this period alone that complete quiet is of the greatest

importance; if this period is safely passed through, the

temperature returns to normal, and you neednt worry about doing anything. Before the temperature returns to normal after

being below normal, it will rise briefly a little above normal.

Once it does this, you neednt take any special care any longer. You can move about, and there is no need to stay in bed any

more. Get up on the first occasion when your temperature has

risen to normal. After you get up, your temperature will rise

once again a little above normal and then come down again.

After that, it will become normal. At this time, it doesnt matter whether you rest or move about. In any event, the first period

in which the temperature is below normal is

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crucial; it is very important that you should not