Deepest Health LIVES!

It’s true, my friends, Deepest Health is still around. It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted, but I shall fail you no more. I needed some time to rejuvenate my brain and – perhaps more than that – reevaluate why I created this blog in the first place. I spent a lot of time working on this last summer, and I think my work has paid off handsomely. But, frankly, it can get a little wearing sometimes.

The same is true of the Year of Sagely Living. I am the kind of person who seems to be able to do a whole lot without tiring. However, I can only do this if I understand on a deep level WHY I am doing it. With life getting so busy as the reality of being in the clinic and starting my own business start to set in… well, it’s easy to lose sight of why I do the things that I do. I think you can relate?

Out of this extended hiatus has come two things – both of which I would like to share. This will be followed rather shortly with a return to a semi-regular posting frequency and all the things you’ve come to love so much about this sweet little corner of the Internet.

The first thing – A VISION STATEMENT for Deepest Health

If there was ever any question that I’m a total dork, I hope this will put that question to rest. But, seriously, while the idea of having a formal mission statement may seem silly, it is a construction that helps me keep focused on my vision. Without vision, the people perish! Doubtless this vision will undergo significant evolution as time goes on. Without further ado…

Deepest Health is a place for the exchange of information and inspiration about Classical Chinese Medicine through the publishing of written, visual and audio material of value to students, practitioners and patients. Deepest Health makes no claim to have a monopoly on the truth of Chinese Medicine or medicine in general. Deepest Health, instead, encourages a warm and expansive spirit of exploration, experimentation and exhortation so as to participate in the evolution of Classical Chinese Medicine as the medical system of choice for contemporary people.

The second thing – A reorganization of the Year of Sagely Living project

I’m pretty excited about this. As April came and went (without an update from me – despite the fact that my garden is doing FABULOUSLY well) I began to rethink the whole Year of Sagely Living concept. Through conversation with my partner, Amanda Barp, and my friend Abdallah Stickley, I determined that a reorganization of the thing could be quite rejuvenating. First, let me share some of the reasoning before explaining what I will be doing from now on. I’ll try to keep it simple.

Initially, the idea for the YSL came from conversations between Dr. Stickley and myself about how self-cultivation seems to be the very essence of what it is to be a Classical Chinese physician. We both have particular traditions of practice (or amalgams of traditions, in my case) that we feel are in some harmony with the principles of self-cultivation that the Classics discuss. In essence, we wondered if our cultivation practices would be similarly productive of great physicians. This led to further conversation about the types of cultivation exercises that seem embedded in the theory and practice of Chinese medicine. Eventually we began to talk about the organ clock and how it might be a helpful organizational tool for a program of CCM centered self-cultivation. Thus, the YSL was born.

But I have noticed a few problems with the original format. First, we switch too often. While there is some continuity between months, mostly they represent very different categories of practice. I could spend a year simply on the excellent practice of raising my own food, delving deeply into it, learning from it… The same is true of all the categories. The second problem is that somehow the categories and their practices were feeling like an extra veneer I was placing on my life – not as something being deeply embedded in me in the sense I expected. I expect this has something to do with the character of my own situation, but it failed to meet my desire for the project. Third, more nebulously, somehow the project as described and practiced so far doesn’t speak to the initial impulse behind the whole thing. It’s wonderful how it’s gone and I appreciate very much everyone’s participation – but I’d like to see it evolve.

While the conversations between Abdallah and I have not (and probably never will) come to some “final” or “static” conclusion, I feel that my mind is settled with regards to the topic. We batted several ideas around. One was to create a YSL focused on scholarship – twelve months of different scholarly topics (Yin/Yang theory, Five element theory, etc). An incredible idea – but not appealing to the overworked student in me. Perhaps after I graduate? Another idea was to halve the number of categories and double the time spent in each. Good, but perhaps not solving the root. There are two “winning” ideas that I’d like to see others play with.

First, one would become more serious about one’s own personal practice. For instance, a practicing Zen Buddhist might renew his or her dedication to that practice. He or she would then use that practice as a lens through which to look at Classical Chinese medical theory and practice. For instance, consider the practice of meditation. How does diving deeply into a meditative state enhance or hinder the practice of Chinese medicine? How can we characterize meditation from the perspective of CM theory? How does quieting the mind in this way develop one as a physician? What do the Classics seem to say about this kind of activity? What is the experience of the practitioner or practitioner in training? In this way, we come to bring our deepest selves fully into our practice of Chinese medicine. Does that sound fun or what? In many ways, Abdallah exemplifies this kind of work in many of his blog posts and, indeed, in the whole concept behind his blog.

Second – the choice I will be working with – requires that we artificially cleave the calendar year into two parts, yin and yang. It would be easy to get bogged down in discussing various theories about which months are Yin and which are Yang, but I’d like to make this as easy as possible. Because of the time, I’m going to say that April began the Yang phase and it will consume April, May, June, July, August and September. Then we will enter the Yin phase of the year until the following April. Feel free to divide where you like. Then take just ONE category of practice behind the YSL. I will be choosing that of my physical body, energy and vitality. Use the entire year to focus on this category, altering the precise habitual expression of the category as necessary to match the seasonal energy and one’s own situation. For instance, in the more “Yang” time of the year I plan to focus on the relatively more Yang aspects of physical activity, moving Qigong forms, intellectual assessment of the physical body, etc… In the Yin part of the year, perhaps I will focus more on developing stillness, balance and thorough nutrition. Does this make sense?

I’m anxious to hear folks’ thoughts. Please chime in and feel free to adapt any and all of the ideas above for your own practice. I believe moving into this kind of YSL idea will help me to produce more posts about it, as I will be diving more deeply into it.

Thanks for reading – more soon,

Eric

Related articles

• Year of Sagely Living : Business and leadership in Chinese Medicine (4)
• The nuts and bolts of the Chinese medicine awareness experiement (11)
• Five simple ways I get more than 24 hours in a day (6)