Internal Dragons

by G. Michael Reynolds on August 18, 2010

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So I got several hundred words into this evenings post when I realized that it wasn’t a blog post, it was a PAPER. Like, the kind of thing you get published in the Journal of Chinese Medicine. I’m going to blame this on time spent reading “Dragon Rises, Red Bird Flies” lately.

Anyway, I would like to make a few points here in, well, significantly less stultified tone, and I might as well borrow from the aforementioned work to do so. I’ve been asked to talk about the emotions in Chinese medicine this week, so I’ll do that.

 

In my opinion, you absolutely cannot get anywhere with the modern patient (at least here in America) without addressing their psychological “physique”  in some way. Now unfortunately the brand of standardized professional Chinese medicine that is currently in vogue in this country really doesn’t get much further along than stress, nebulous concepts of depression, and “shen disturbance”. The truth of the matter is that modern patients are so screwed up that they don’t even realize how bad they’re screwed up. To top that off, even when their problems aren’t due to the Five Emotions being completely out of control, their relatively minor physical complaints are obstructed by the lack of communication outward from the Heart so that if you go directly at their shoulder pain, nothing happens, no matter how correct your treatment would otherwise have been.

The oft-quoted here Heiner Fruehauf has stated numerous times that in the very ancient Chinese medical writings the Heart was considered to be an Earth organ in the Five Phase model, and that it contained the Fire of the Shen,the Shen being  the Thing that must not be disturbed, the Imperial Fire, the Emperor of the entire being. Daoist traditions (everything from scholarly to medical to martial) harp on the need to empty the Heart of all desires so that the Shen may reside there undisturbed. The  primary role of the emperor in ancient China (apart from being seen to be on the throne and in control) was, as a sort of high priest for the entire Earth, to enter the Temple of Heaven at the prescribed times and perform the appropriate rituals and offer the correct sacrifices in order to keep Earth in harmony with the will of Heaven. Some medical intuitive traditions teach that your best source of information will not be relying upon the chakra of the third Eye but rather the Heart and Wisdom chakras in the solar plexus and stomach. In our society we uses phrases like “getting to the heart of the matter” and knowing something in your “heart of hearts” or getting a feeling “in your gut”.

Our society in its very existence seems to go out of its way to espouse behaviors that disturb the Shen from its necessary perch in the Heart. When, really, are we ever calm, quiet, and stable? Despite being someone who supposedly knows better, as I type this I’m listening to music, clicking back and forth between web pages and applications to keep up on sports news and what my friends are doing, thinking about my patient schedule for tomorrow and who needs what, contemplating potential tactics for my strategy game of the moment, and so on. Throughout my life my state has been to be going in several directions at once, something that is far from the natural or preferred state of being. We are ALL like this and so are our patients. So many of our patients are afflicted with this need to be doing more than they did yesterday, to achieve more, to accomplish more or…what, exactly? Everyone has their own demons, I suppose. Our patients overwork to keep up with their bills then overexercise to keep up with the current standard of appearance and to offset the stagnation of the previously mentioned overwork. We overplan, overconsume,overindulge, overspend, and generally multitask ourselves into insanity. Insanity is the word here. If you were to talk to 25 people today, how many of them would seem to you to be calm, contented, healthy, of sound mind and sound body? Not many.

We need to remember that the Five Emotions (or seven, depending on your source) when excessive or deficient (meaning not exactly right) become known as the Internal Pathogens, and since not as many of us have our life-forces frittered away because of exposure to a harsh outdoor environment we can look at them (along with environmental toxicity) as the primary cause of disease in our age. Our minor emotional difficulties are forever getting in our way, causing minor illnesses in the short term and adding up to much worse things in the long term. Our major emotional difficulties (meaning traumas) set us up for extremely difficult lives emotionally and physically and make us vulnerable to all the worst sorts of diseases, from mental instabilities all the way up to autoimmune disease and cancer. We also have the difficulty of past emotional trauma blocking the Heart from receiving the Shen properly, or from expressing the mandate of the Shen so that things become almost impossible for us to treat until these traumas are dealt with. All too frequently our patients have no idea what the real trouble is. As I tell my students, any time someone comes in with shoulder pain (especially if it centers at LI-15) I immediately have them turn around so that I can find the massive knot at UB-14 or 15, the Back Shu points of the Heart and Pericardium, which is always there.

I have honestly reached the point where almost all of my acupuncture efforts are aimed at dealing with psychological and emotional issues and leaving any denser and more material issues to an accompanying herbal formula (which is not to say that I don’t use those for psychological treatment too).

Our job increasingly involves creating awareness in the patient of their particular plight and encouraging them to take an active interest in achieving proper balance in their lives. As one first century text puts it, “emotion is that which is meant to be kept quiet while nature is that which is meant to be active and to unfold.” A kingdom in which the Emperor is out of control has no chance whatsoever of peace and instead finds itself in civil war. The bulk of our job currently is getting the Emperor back on the throne. Until that happens, there’s really not a great deal of use obsessing over crop prices or tinkering with delivery of goods to outlying provinces.

 

 

 

 

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Tension between the modern and the ancient in self cultivation

by Eric on August 15, 2010

This is my first weekly YODA update.

It was a tumultuous week, there’s no doubt about it.  I’ll be talking about the details on my personal blog and the Deepest Health forums, so won’t prattle on here.  However, I will provide a summary and the most important insights that have come from my work during this initial phase of the project.  Remember – the whole point of this thing is to see whether devoting myself to a rigorous program of study and self cultivation will result in my becoming a more effective practitioner of Chinese medicine.

There’s no doubt that my clinical practice changed for the better this week.  The reality is that the process was a long and winding road.  What I’ve noticed is that as I focus on really living up to the oath I took as a graduating Chinese medicine practitioner, I am aware of the many ways in which I have FAILED to live up to that oath.

Now, let’s be clear, I’m not berating myself for being a bad person.  I’m a good practitioner, my patients improve, I work hard.  I think that I just became aware of the degree of dedication, focus and commitment that is embedded in the oath, as well as most of the classical discussions of what it means to be a great physician.  I realized that if I can slide, I let myself slide.  I don’t find myself wholly engaged in the process of learning more about the human body, the planet, this medicine.

Becoming aware of that sent me on a bit of a voyage of discovery.  As I investigated, I fell in love with the medicine all over again. I became excited and moved to study, to work.  I ended up looking into some things I hadn’t looked into before.  This had a variety of consequences, but again, I won’t go into details here.  However, there is one important point that I wanted to bring up.  I know that the way that I will word it, as well as the content itself, will cause all kinds of problems.  That’s ok with me.

I found myself investigating a lot of more contemporary takes on self-cultivation and personal development philosophy.  I looked into more modern exercise programs, things like Integral theory and Evolutionary Enlightenment, contemporary philosophical works concerning the relative importance of physical, mental and spiritual work and so on.  All of these things have roots in ancient wisdom traditions, but are working to reinterpret those traditions and, in some way, combine them with more modern ways of looking at things.

I want to emphasize that, in principle, I have no problem with this. I think that a sort of dogmatic religious fervor settles over people like me sometimes.  By “people like me,” I mean people who consider themselves to be “Classically minded” in some way and who are studying a tradition deeply.  This fervor drives us to reject any modern retelling of our cherished stories and to have a hard time questioning any of the principles or conclusions of the tradition in question.  I can’t think of anything more damaging in my quest to be a great practitioner of this medicine.  So – attempts to look at the traditions I love from a new angle, to question their assumptions and outcomes – these are welcome.

But the questioning and retelling will be rejected if it doesn’t work any better than the original tradition.  As far as medicine is concerned, I need to see that a contemporary (or even just post Han dynasty) reworking actually helps patients get better, and more importantly, live more vital and engaged lives.  *I* need to see that in my own patients.  As far as self-cultivation is concerned, well that’s a little trickier.  The reality is that some things pass muster and some don’t.  It’s a gut-check kind of thing, I suppose.

For me, the self-cultivational theories and practices I was investigating just… didn’t work out.  They felt unnecessarily distancing, intellectual and sometimes self-gratifying.   They demanded that I embrace a  way of looking at the world that is actually something I spent a lot of time investigating and ultimately rejecting.  I was left thinking that sometimes progress for progress’ sake is regress.

Ultimately, I went back to the stable center where I have been living and thriving for years.  Rooted deeply in my practice of Qigong and basic meditation, reading closely classical Chinese texts like the Yijing and the Dao De Jing, and working closely on learning medicine.  Again, more about the details on those other sites I mentioned above.  However, I wanted to put this out there just to see if anyone resonates with what I’m saying.

Have you done a similar investigation?  Where did it leave you?  Disagree with what I’m saying here?  Let me know about it!

 

 

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Interesting Internet Intersections #2 : Electro dermal testing, ecology, pulse and more!

13 August 2010 Blogging

Here’s a quick listing of some of the best resources I found about Chinese medicine on the Internet this week.  Have other favorites?  Post them in the comments!
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Discussion of the use of electro-dermal testing (like MORA) on the Deepest Health forums
A fantastic article about ecology and Chinese medicine by Dr. Leon Hammer
Medigogy (formerly known as [...]

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Regarding the Pericardium

11 August 2010 Acupuncture

Recently I found myself “eavesdropping” on an online conversation between two professors at NCNM, namely Roger Batchelor and Ed Neal, on the subject of the Pericardium in the Classics. What came out of it was more than a little enlightening and inspired me to talk about the Pericardium a bit this week.
 
The essential point of [...]

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Year of Diligent Action : A study in Chinese medicine excellence

9 August 2010 Personal Development

 
I’d like to announce a new project here at Deepest Health.  We like projects.  This one is called the Year of Diligent Action, or, YODA.
Project motivations
It’s not enough to believe that something is true.  It’s not enough to read an oath every morning.  It’s not enough to know what you must to do be what [...]

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