Read your flame

Chinese medicine doesn’t start with your symptom — it starts with you: the particular way your body tends to run. Warm and depleted? Cold to the core? Wound tight, or heavy and damp? Two people with the same tired, the same sore back, often need opposite things — and warmth (moxa) is exactly right for some and exactly wrong for others.

This reading sorts that into five plain pictures — five flames. Four are patterns warmth genuinely helps, each with the three or four points the tradition warms for it. The fifth runs hot, and the honest answer there is that moxa isn’t your tool right now. Your flame isn’t a fixed type like a star sign — it’s how you’re running this season, so it’s worth re-reading as the weather and your life turn.