The Treasure of the Common Cold

Perhaps the most misunderstood health event is the common cold. The sneezing, irritated runny nose, headache, tiredness, scratchy throat, a little cough maybe—such nuisances, we think. In Chinese medicine we call it wind-cold, or external wind, a condition that is so multi-faceted that it occupies a full 70% of the great classical text, A Treatise on Cold Diseases, compiled about 1800 years ago. 

A Chinese medic could talk about the common cold for days. The words wind and cold alone are loaded with meaning. Wind means change, but also resistance to change, and most importantly, change in consciousness. Cold means cold temperature, but can imply rigidity, stiffness, lack of movement, not perceiving that change is required. 

The common cold falls into two largely overlapping categories: 
1. Expulsions and 2. Shifts. 

1. Expulsions occur after exposure to cold. Cold is seen in Chinese medicine as highly undesirable. Deep in rural China there are still no salads, raw food dishes, or ice cream, and even in light breezes, you don’t see people without their high-neck clothing and scarves. Cold causes the body to slow, it causes swellings in the joints (arthritis), slows the gut, damages metabolism, and compromises production and circulation of blood and fluids. 
On Saturday we were on Sydney harbor on the foredeck of a high-speed commuter catamaran, warmly dressed, but Andrew was without scarf, and when we got off, he had a runny nose—a mild common cold—for a short while as his body expelled the cold it experienced. Expulsions can be short like that one, but if the body is dehydrated or internally cold from cold food, cold drinks and underdressing, it might not be able to expel the cold quickly and a full common cold will set in. 

2. Shifts. These interest me tremendously. Every so often, we are due for a shift. There are minor, yet significant shifts, such as changes of point of view, attitude, or mindset. And there are major shifts, such as changes in relationships, vocation, or home. We can make these changes consciously, or the Divine can step when it’s time and shake us up with a major dose of wind (change). 

In both categories, there are cold signs and symptoms. 

For expulsions, the body creates sneezes with their accompanying microsweats to push the cold out through the pores. The body might create a little heat at the throat to arrest the progression of the cold to the lungs. A slight headache will be present as the cold causes a contraction into the center of the head. This creates pressure at the nose which allows the body to press fluids through the nose, expelling the cold. 

For shifts, the body makes the same actions but instead of pushing acquired cold off the exterior of the body, it is expelling the cold of rigidity—the resistance to change that prevented the person from adjusting fluently to current challenges, or taking the next step in life. 

What western medicine calls a virus, classical Chinese medicine would call the agent of change. We breathe in many trillions of them—10⁴¹ viruses, with every breath. All kinds of viruses are around us, and all possible responses are open to humanity at all times. Western medicine considers the common cold contagious, but in the view of Chinese medicine, it is the change that is contagious. One person in a family experiencing a change, a common cold, can trigger family members to enter a change also. So, after an episode of colds in a household there will always be some kind of shift in attitude, approach, action, or household tenor. The virus is not the element of contagion, the change is. 

Likewise, on a macro scale, after a sweeping viral infection in the population, there will be major shifts in attitude, in community, in communication, culture, and indeed, that is what we have seen in the last few years. Many people have experienced immeasurable change, often change they could not have imagined. Certainly this has happened to me personally as the thought of being able to train Chinese medical practitioners on five continents fully online was unreachable prior to the lockdowns.  

I received an email from a graduate of the mentorship program about her common cold experience:

Hi Ann,

I hope you are well! I just had an amazing experience thanks to the mentorship!

I was supposed to go hiking in the mountains for three days last weekend, and the morning I was supposed to leave, I woke up with a horrible cold. Like the worst I’ve had in years! I thought about pushing through the hike though since I had flown across the country to do it. But, I remembered what I learned in the mentorship, so I cancelled the hike and just stayed in bed pretty much for three days straight. Sometimes I read and sometimes I sat in front of a fire, but I was mostly sort of delirious!

Then yesterday I woke up at home, and I just thought – something is different. Like, my mind had been changed in some way! There were some issues in my life that had been weighing on me, and I just saw them completely differently in a really deep way.

I’ve never really been aware of how a cold was actually changing me while I was sick, and now I see it was a packaged gift of wind!

Thanks for all your teaching. Wishing you and Andrew all the best. Looking forward to seeing you two again one day!

With love,
L.

Stay warm, especially around the neck where cold loves to enter. If you get a common cold, if you possibly can, take time off and ponder what change you are being directed to make by your gut. You can always know what that change is. The cold is providing you with a reason to rest and a chance to actually hear it.

Ann Cecil-Sterman
Studley Park Boathouse, Australia.
20 July 2026