A lifelong student: Eric’s journey to Classical Chinese Medicine – Part I (1977-1997)

When I get into a conversation with someone about “what I do,” I inevitably am asked how I got into Chinese medicine. When I tell them I am a blogger as well, I get more questions. :) So here it is, my life story – particularly as it pertains to how I got to where I am today: a successful 3rd year student of Chinese medicine and blogger on Deepest Health. I’ll release the story in four parts to improve readability and will continue to release other content to satisfy my discriminating readers. :)

Early life

The first dozen years of my life were good. In some ways typically American, my family moved quite a bit around the Western United States. My parents held a number of jobs in service and sales. I was loved, and as the first child/grandchild, always felt like it was my responsibility to “be somebody.” For you astrology geeks, you might appreciate that this feeling I just described may have something to do with my Fire Dragon and Aquarian nature. ;) I had a lot of influences as a young child that might explain my current life direction. My mother was always interested in natural health – I remember her administering doses of echinacea before it was widely available. She, along with my grandfather, were always encouraging me to achieve at the highest level I could. These influences definitely helped me to become the person that I am today.

My parents divorced when I was 13. Honestly, I have to thank them for that because things were none too smooth in the period immediately preceding the event. However, it did result in me living with my father in Phoenix. My father and I always had a bit of an embattled relationship. But, because of a number of medical problems he was experiencing, it was a especially difficult during this period. I remember having a lot of thoughts about traveling, about walking into the mountains and becoming a hermit. To escape the home situation, I walked around the city a lot. I also found solace in nature, sometimes traveling into the desert alone just to think. I was terrifically bored in high school. I had always been in gifted programs during elementary school and junior high. Unfortunately, these programs were not available in the school district where I ended up. Because the public school system had nothing to offer me, I began to contemplate dropping out. This desire intensified as my relationship with my father deteriorated.

During my early teenage years I began to use computers in earnest. I was gifted a Commodore 64 by my uncle along with a 1200 baud modem. Yes, 1200 baud. If you don’t know what that means, trust me, you don’t want to know. Even in the early 1990’s, this was old technology! There was a thriving network of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) in Phoenix at the time, and I became involved with several. Because I was not connecting with many folks at my High School, I began to build a network of friends through these multi-line BBSes. Because most of us were local, we did have meet-ups (called GT’s, or get-togethers) that helped to cement some of those relationships into something meaningful. I learned to type very, very fast at this time not because of my High school course in the subject but because most of the folks on the BBS used much faster modems than I did and I needed to type quickly to keep up. I began to learn more about computer technology, even helping to maintain a BBS and moderating some BBS discussion forums.

I remember very clearly when the first portal link to the Internet appeared on my favorite BBS’ front page. I saw it as a threat and hoped it would go away! Very quickly we began to see fewer folks using the BBS format. My first forays into Internet land were, as I remember, depressing. I wouldn’t accept the Internet as a viable feature of my life for several years… ironic now that I look back on it.

Beginning the inward journey

I left my father’s house when I was 16 and thus began a period of traveling, spiritual growth (and decay), various debauchery and loss of innocence that wouldn’t end until the birth of my daughter when I was 20 years old. That time was trying – I was often living out of a car or wherever I could and I wasn’t taking very good care of myself. I relied on the kindness of friends and my mother (who lived far away at the time), but mostly just on my own ingenuity and survival instincts. I learned to read people, to find food when there wasn’t much and to heal myself from common illnesses since I had no insurance coverage and no money to pay out-of-pocket expenses. This was probably the first time I consciously started to research natural medicine. I remembered having taken echinacea as a kid, so looked for that at local shops to help me resist the many pathogens I was coming into contact with. I became interested in healing with herbs and read several books during this time about the subject.

This was also the time when I really started to explore my spirituality. I was raised atheist/agnostic and actually had a pretty dim view of most spiritual subjects. However, as I began to encounter more of the world and the people in it, I began to have an understanding of some kind of underlying unity in it all. Along with reading books about herbalism, I began to explore literature about Wicca, astral travel and Buddhism. This led to my experimenting with meditation, magick and astral projection. I had some very intense experiences both alone and with others, and although I didn’t find a system of spiritual development that worked for me, this experimentation laid the groundwork for what would come later.

Another important lesson I learned during this important time concerned the nature of suffering. I was living on the streets or couch surfing and associating with a lot of people who were deep into the whole sex, drugs and rock-and-roll (or in our case, electronica) scene. A friend died of complications of HIV/AIDS, I lost more than one friend to heroin addiction and I came into contact with people every day who were suffering from a variety of mental, physical and spiritual illnesses. At first this was all very shocking and I had no idea how to deal with it. However, my burgeoning spirituality as well as some until then hidden store of internal strength allowed me to approach these situations with compassion and strength. I believe it was probably during this time that the seeds of yearning for a medical career were planted within me.

Stepping on the path to a better life

When my daughter was born, I was reborn. I suddenly realized that I had been given a life to live and that I should live it to the fullest of my ability. I also knew that I needed to support a child and that was going to take more than wishful thinking and street smarts. Further, I was sick of living off of scraps and not knowing where I would sleep the next day. However, I didn’t know what options were out there. Fortunately, I had moved to Oregon and information about options was easy to come by. I found out that financial aid was available for people like me to go to school, so decided to take that route. I then entered the higher education system in 1997 and have yet to leave its comforting embrace. :)

In the next installment, I’ll discuss how I learned to learn in a formal setting again as well as much more. Stay tuned for the next part of the saga. :D

Eric

Note: I’m honestly just really self-conscious about writing all of this, but several folks assured me that it could be valuable for people – so here it is.

Tagged as: childhood, education, erics-habits, life-story, spirituality, travel