There is no use mentioning what has come before – the Dragon energy that has come my way through the yijing, through conversations, through my own presence as Dragon born, through the energy of this coming year – demands a focus on what is coming up and what is flourishing.

Today starts a practice that I know will bring value to all of us who gather to learn as deeply as possible. It will populate this blog for years to come. But, it starts here, at the birth of the year of the Dragon.

Shanghan lun line 12 – part 1

太陽中風，陽浮而陰弱，陽浮者，熱自發，陰弱者，汗自出，嗇嗇惡寒，淅淅惡風，翕翕發熱，鼻鳴乾嘔者,桂枝湯主之.

Tài yáng zhòng fēng, yáng fú ér yīn ruò, yáng fú zhě, rè zì fā, yīn ruò zhě, hàn zì chū , sè sè wù hán, xī xī wù fēng, xì xì fā rè, bí míng gān ǒu zhě, guì zhī tāng zhǔ zhī .

Mitchell-Ye-Wiseman translation (p60):  ”In Taiyang wind strike with floating yang and weak yin, floating yang is spontaneous heat effusion, and weak yin is spontaneous issue of sweat.  If [there is] huddled aversion to cold, wetted aversion to wind, feather-warm heat effusion, noisy nose, and dry retching, Guizhi tang governs.”

After this brief statement, the ingredients of the formula and how to make it are listed. Because there are multiple modifications listed, I will save that discussion for another day.  It’s worth digging into.

In the common way of my personal study of Chinese herbs and herbal formulas, I have added this line to digital flashcards, my Personal Brain, my private wiki and my Devonthink database. If nothing else, this means that I will always have access to the line and its translation and that I will have written it down many times — a proven memory aid.  All of these study/memorization methods will be discussed in upcoming posts, as well as in a resource I am creating to bring all my work in that field together.

Also as part of my study flow, I have found information online that relates to this Shanghan lun line, as well as pulled together my private lineage notes from courses I’ve taken with my teachers that relate to this line. Now it is on me to commit the line to memory and to associate everything that I can with it for future reference.  That’s the way this works.

I can’t share all of that with you, but my hope is to take this (and all future lines) – bring together all this information, and say whatever interesting things come forward.

This statement is one of those that is talked about in classical Chinese herb circles quite often. I think it’s about as far as most people make it into studying the Shanghan lun. There are a few symptoms listed here, and they are familiar to most of us.

1. The sensation of heat, or “fever” as we commonly call it – later qualified to refer to a rather light fever, nothing too intense
2. Sweating, though probably not a ton
3. Intense aversion to cold, making the patient cower & huddle away from cold
4. Aversion to wind, as though the patient were wet (think of how you feel when wet and waiting for the bus – a common Portland phenomenon)

One problem emerges immediately.

If a patient  walks into a Chinese medicine clinic with the above signs, the text suggests we should give them Guizhi tang, yes? But does the information provided by this line alone help us to prescribe Guizhi tang to our patients? No. I should note that the listing of ingredients with modifications based on clinical situations helps us a lot, and will be revisited in blog posts to come.

Looking at a line in isolation is often misleading.

Understanding this line at the deepest level seems to require an understanding of the whole text, but understanding the whole text would seem to require that one comprehends this line. A classic paradox.

However, we have no recourse except to continue – to keep track of results – and to return to the parts once we have some grasp of the whole and vice versa.  It’s the flow of information processing that takes us into new territory as well as keeping us grounded.  An ability to do that is something all our patients will surely be happy about.

One way to proceed even now, aside from memorizing and researching with this information in mind is to deconstruct the formula discussed in the line and, in so doing, come to understand the line more deeply as well as understanding that part of the text more deeply. As already mentioned, we will turn to this task before long.

Guizhi tang is a particularly interesting formula because of its ubiquity.

It is something everybody has learned about, though many fail to use it. It is featured in many other places in the text, for one thing. In a quick check, I identified nearly two dozen lines with different pathologies where guizhi tang was listed as a possible formula to consider.

It is also the core upon which many other formulas are built.

There are the obvious ones – Guizhi jia gui tang (Guizhi tang with extra Guizhi) and Guizhi jia Longgu Muli tang (Guizhi tang with longgu and muli added) and many other formulas which are basically Guizhi tang with additions or subtractions. But, there are also formulas that seem at first glance to be unrelated to Guizhi tang, yet contain it – the most obvious of which is Xiao jian zhong tang – which is guizhi tang with double Baishao and Yitang added.

This, among other reasons, is why I’m so bewildered when Chinese medicine practitioners dismiss Guizhi tang as a formula for clinical use. It’s possible to build an entire clinical practice on understanding this formula alone, in my opinion.  It appears that Zhang Zhongjing agrees.

On the blog, I will explore this line & its implications until I feel done (and until I’ve memorized it) and then we’ll move on to other lines.  We’ll do this until we’ve gone through the text, then move on to the Jin gui yao lue.  Along the way, as we break down formulas, we’ll make frequent and intense forays into Shennong ben cao jing territory.  It  will probably take a while, but it will be fun.

I find that working with texts and formulas produces all kinds of interesting insights.

This obviously includes stuff about medicine – formulas, pathology, preparation – but also cultural and language based information, insight into clinical practice, even business!  I hope you will enjoy the process, and contribute when you feel called to do so.

Speaking of your contribution…

What is one surprising use you’ve found for Guizhi tang. If you don’t have one, why not just mention something this blog post has taught you?

Related posts:

1. Chinese herb profiles – looking briefly at Guizhi / Cinnamon
2. From the front line : Thoughts on running a Chinese Medicine Clinic

Last week we began by exploring the concept of timing in acupuncture. This week we’ll move on to herbs.

Timing in Herbology

Timing is equally important in herbology, as knowing where in the system the disease currently is will dictate what formula you prescribe and what modifications have to be made (I discuss this in an upcoming free PDF entitled “Beginners Guide to Acute Respiratory Disease”).

For this, the Six Conformation model used by Zhang Zhongjing (called the Six Channel Model in TCM) is without question the most powerful tool we have at our disposal, telling us where the disharmony is, what its nature is, and what principles are required to fix it.  This applies in acute as well as chronic cases. For example – If the problem is diagnosed as a Cold invasion of the channels of Taiyang we know several things at once:

1. We know that since the invasion has penetrated into the channel that the surface is open, which removes the need for the pure surface opening action of Ma Huang Tang.
2. We know that Taiyang is a Yang conformation. Therefore, our efforts are going to be centered on expelling the Cold pathogen and that if resolved correctly there won’t be any long term consequences of the invasion having taken place (as opposed to an invasion of the Yin conformations which tends to leave the need for a significant cleanup operation after being resolved).
3. We know that according to the Five Phase (or Five Element) model Taiyang is associated with Cold Water of the North. Taiyang invasions tend to be accompanied by all over muscular aches of varying degrees (depending on the situation). If we envision the Taiyang channels (UB/SI) as being rivers of cold water coming down from the mountains to nourish the plains (read about Mt. Kailash for the ultimate example of this) we can see that when those rivers get more cold, they freeze over and stop flowing. The Chinese characters for pain 疼痛 (teng tong) indicate a state of cold and of obstruction of movement, much like the frozen river analogy. This tells us that we need to “melt the ice” by warming up the channels and re-establishing uninterrupted flow.

The formula that answers all of these requirements is Gui Zhi Tang. If given on time (meaning before the pathogen passes on to, say, the Shaoyang level) the patient will recover quickly. Aside from the diagnostic timing, however, the Shang Han Lun tells us about another necessary element of timing.  An all important feature of timing and momentum in Chinese herbalism is the method and length of time to apply treatment.

The text that introduces Gui Zhi Tang makes very clear that the formula must be prescribed under very specific conditions. One of them is the instruction to give the decoction to the patient warm, then have them bundle up to await sweating. However it also makes very clear that once the patient sweats the formula must be stopped immediately.

The danger here (one that I have seen happen many times and have even experienced personally) is that the patient over-sweats and suffers damage to their Yang Qi, thus creating a different or more complex condition that now has to be treated.  In a Gui Zhi Tang type situation, over-sweating can lead to a combined Taiyang-Shaoyin condition of external invasion with underlying Yang deficiency (needing a formula such as Gui Zhi Jia Fu Zi Tang).

Strength and Focus

The other side of this is the question of strength and focus. A principle that Heiner Fruehauf often points out is that you must have not only the right formula with the right herbs, but also of sufficient quality and enough of them.

A practice of a lot of TCM-trained herbalists (including those from China and even those who have been in practice since the early days of the PRC) is one of adjusting downward individual herb dosages in formulas for the purposes of safety or according to someones weight. This is especially true for Shang Han Lun formulas, which seem overly aggressive in comparison with modern “gentle” formulas.

TCM herbalists will take a formula like the aforementioned Gui Zhi Tang and begin stripping it of its curative power by ratcheting downward the dosages of the warming herbs Gui Zhi and Sheng Jiang by as much as half, then playing around with the amounts of Da Zao, Bai Shao, and Zhi Gan Cao according to some paradigm known only to themselves. The result is the equivalent of cooking a complex dish in the kitchen while randomly choosing ingredient amounts and never tasting the results. This results in a grossly ineffective formula (I’ll save a critique of the practice of ingredient carpet-bombing for another time).

Native Dosage

An absolute fact in Chinese herbology is that each herb we use behaves differently in both different dosages and different ratios within each formula. Each herb also has what I think of as a “native dosage”, meaning the amount that you are most likely to see it prescribed at effectively. For example, Gui Zhi at 9g, Chai Hu at 24g, Ban Xia at 12g, etc. Going away from these amounts (without very good reason) usually translates into outright failure in my experience. If you need Gui Zhi Tang, you also need Gui Zhi at 9g. If you need Xiao Chai Hu Tang, you need Chai Hu at 24g. Going away from this is a good way to not be successful vs. the condition you are treating.

When you change the dosage of herbs you change the functional emphasis of that herb within its formula. The best example of this principle in my opinion is with Fu Zi. Fu Zi in most TCM clinics-if used at all-is used at a very low dosage, usually in the range of 3-6g. The fear is that because Fu Zi is so “toxic” that more than a small amount will give the patient headaches, nosebleeds, hot flashes, etc.

Paradoxically, Fu Zi in this small amount causes its energy to rush outward to the exterior and to the head, causing the very situation that they were trying to avoid in the first place. However, once the dosage crosses a certain line (around 18g in my experience) its entire behavior changes. Now instead of warming the Yang and sending it rushing outward and upward, it grabs the Yang qi of the body and causes it to descend into storage (the lower Dantian in Qigong parlance) where it is now able to recharge. Rather than feeling hyperactive, patients on the receiving end of recharge formulas like Qian Yang Dan (in which I usually use 30g of Fu Zi) have the overwhelming urge to go to sleep, which is exactly the aim of the formula.

Ratio

Finally, one must account for the ratios of herbs in formulas. In the Shang Han
Lun there is an army of formulas that are essentially Gui Zhi Tang with one ingredient changed in some way. This small shift significantly changes the impact of the formula.

For example, if in the case of Gui Zhi Tang you increase Gui Zhi to 15g you now have the formula Gui Zhi Jia Gui Tang.  Now, instead of treating a case of the common cold, the formula treats the anxiety disorder known as Running Piglet Syndrome. The increased Gui Zhi stokes the Fire of the Heart.  The Heart, in turn, is now able to descend and overcome the amassed cold in the Lower Jiao.  This amassed cold was what the patient’s Yang qi was counterflowing away from -  causing the Running Piglet sensation.  Problem solved.

Another example starting with Gui Zhi Tang.   If we remove Bai Shao altogether we get the formula Gui Zhi Qu Shao Yao Tang, which treats conditions of fullness in the chest and skipping pulse.  These symptoms  point toward Upper Jiao blockage as well as deficiency of the Heart itself. Removal of sour flavored Bai Shao also removes the formulas restraints on the Wood energy of the body (due to Bai Shao’s affinity with Metal and Metal’s husband-wife relationship with Wood).  Wood is now more  able to feed the Fire energy (due to Mother-Son relationship) and release the body’s Earth energy (again, husband-wife relationship) which makes up half the Middle Jiao!

Formula Strength

There is also the question of amount of herbs taken. Zhang Zhong Jing was very clear on the necessary amounts to be taken for all of the formulas in his book, as well as specific preparation instructions. A close inspection of the Shang Han Lun’s preparatory methods reveals formulas that are orders of magnitude more concentrated than their modern descendants, using significantly less water both at the start of decocting as well as the final dose.

In both individual herb dosages as well as the total amount to be taken, these formulas were very much built upon the idea of the right intervention at the right time and in concentrated strength. It’s no good to just try and push a boulder any old way in hopes that it will move. You have to push at the right spot (the fulcrum) and use sufficient force  in order to accomplish the task.

The point here is that as herbalists we absolutely must know what our herbs do inside and out, right down to the effects of differing amounts. This will prevent the useless (and potentially dangerous in the hands of the over-enthusiastic) practice of trying to assign random amounts and percentages to our formula components.

Next week we’ll begin tackling the issue of momentum.

Related posts:

1. Strategy in Chinese Medicine: Timing and Momentum, pt. 1

“When a falcon strike breaks the body of its prey, it is because of timing. When torrential water tosses boulders, it is because of momentum.”

Timing

In the current culture of TCM, the evidence-based protocol is king. A hypothetical example: “On 6-14/09 Patient K. was diagnosed with asthma. UB-13, UB-23, Ding Chuan, and Lu-9 were needled with reinforcing method for 30 minutes. Treatment was repeated daily for 7 days. Upon re-evaluation patient’s spirometer performance increased 15%. Therefore, this protocol is useful in treating asthma. ” This is how case studies are presented to us in our primary textbooks. This is also the primary research method in Chinese TCM hospitals presently, thus making it the perceived superior method of research and treatment amongst the standardized professional Chinese medicine community in the West.

However, this method has an ocean of problems, chiefly that it doesn’t work very well when replicated in clinic. Leaving alone for now the problem of misunderstanding what particular points/methods/herbs/formulas really do, it also neglects the necessity of meeting the patient exactly where they are at that very moment. This is what I mean by timing.

No matter how effective a formula or protocol has been in the past, if applied to the wrong situation it will not only not be effective, it may actually make the situation worse.

The importance of accurate diagnosis cannot be overstated. As a clinician, it’s the heart of your job to figure exactly what is going on with the patient in front of you at that moment, work out specifically what needs to be done, and apply it correctly. It’s no good giving a patient Gui Zhi Tang because they have a “Wind-Cold Invasion” when in fact the disease has moved on to a deeper level and the patient now needs Xiao Chai Hu Tang. You may have been needling St-36 and Sp-3 for the past three visits and seeing improvement in the patient’s digestive condition, but continuing to needle it would be a huge mistake if this week they’re having back spasms and can’t walk.

Timing in Acupuncture

The image of a falcon crashing into its prey from a steep dive at a hundred miles per hour is an accurate description of how effective doing the exact right thing at the exact right time is. However if we imagine the situation from the reverse angle, we can imagine the falcon arriving at the wrong time and completely missing its intended target. As the Lingshu says: “At the moment the energy arrives, [the physician] does not stray even by a hair; and if he is unaware of it, no results are produced. Therefore it is necessary to discern the arriving and departing movements of energy in order to intervene in time. The mediocre physician ignores this rule; the skilled physician respects it.”

This is a good time to clear up a common misconception among acupuncturists about this “arrival of energy”, usually referred to as De Qi. The commonly held belief is that De Qi is when the patient experiences a jolt or shocking sensation. This is held to be the sign that things are working and that now the patient should be left to relax with needles in for twenty minutes or so in order to allow the Ying Qi to make a full circuit through the body.

What the text is actually referring to when it talks about the arrival of Qi is the moment of regulation, the specific and clearly perceivable moment when the channel imbalance has been corrected. The higher level of perceiving this moment of regulation relies upon the acupuncturists ability to experience the unseen energy of the patient, a subject I don’t feel currently qualified to address. However the lower method (one that can be used by everyone fairly easily) is to monitor the state of channel balance via the Renying-Cunkuo pulse method where the very moment of balance can be felt by comparing the strength of the pulse at Renying St-9 and Cunkuo Lu-9 while needling the affected channels.  The timing for this is so delicate and vital that the Lingshu says: “When needling, if the energy does not arrive, the number of needles is insignificant. If the energy arrives, stop needling.”

This timing is important not only for good results, but also for avoiding bad ones. You can imagine the falcon missing its target so badly that it crashes into the ground face-first. This is a very real possibility in everything we do. Contrary to popular belief, the Lingshu makes very clear many times throughout its text that the patient can be significantly harmed by incorrect acupuncture technique. To wit:

“Needling presents two risks:

1. Not removing the needle once it has reached the affected zone, which may cause the loss of Jing
2. Removing the needle as soon as it reaches the affected zone, which may cause the Xie Qi to return.

The loss of Jing exacerbates the illness with nervous exhaustion, and the return of Xie Qi is the origin of abscesses and ulcerations.”

Our primary concerns for harming the patient in our schooling are things like puncturing the pleura, the peritoneum, or an organ. However, the Lingshu rarely talks about physical damage due to incorrect needling and instead frequently cites examples of energetically-caused damage from doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, including different forms of insanity and even death. Clearly, the acupuncture needle is a powerful tool, one that must be treated with the same respect as a sharp knife or sword.

My point here isn’t to scare people, but rather to insist that if we are going to use any tool in the pursuit of altering the health of  another person for a fee it’s our responsibility to be very very good at what we do and to not mistakenly believe that we can get away with following a protocol cookbook. Our practice of a natural and holistic medicine in no way lessens our responsibility to practice safely and effectively to the utmost of our abilities and the ability of our medicine. Acupuncture is capable of a lot, and the Neijing repeatedly talks about it in the context of treating very serious illness. However, it only works when you do it correctly.

Next week in this column we’ll discuss timing in herbology. If you want to talk more, please leave a comment or drop by the Deepest Health Community Forum.

See you Wednesday.

Click here if you would like to read the first part of the travelogue.

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The quality of the harvested root is entirely dependent on the care that has been taken in the process of cultivating the crop. Rich people always get the highest quality product, while poor people can rarely afford the highest grade. Sometimes the crop is harvested during the 7th month, yielding a product referred to as “Early Water” (Zaoshui), the roots of which are too small to fit snugly inside a closed fist—these represent a type of Fuzi that is not quite mature yet.

Overall, the cultivation of Fuzi brings with it the fear of inferior quality, and is hard to bring to maturity. Sometimes the seedling looks good, but then the sprouts don’t prosper; or the sprouts prosper, but the root does not fill out; or it ferments and rots underground before the harvest; or it splits open and becomes deformed; or some creature erodes it. Therefore it is customary for the planters to make a sacrifice to the Heavenly Spirits before the harvest, or make gestures to the plant spirits.

The harvested product is processed by first fermenting it, using containers of wine that are placed in a sealed room. There, the roots are steeped for several months until they start to ferment and increase in size. Afterward, the roots are removed from their brine and exposed to the sun and wind until they are completely dry. When the roots first emerge from the wine, the largest pieces are as big as a man’s fist. After drying, they will shrink to a smaller size, producing a dried root around which an adult’s hand can close. It is rare to yield a root that reaches a weight of 1 liang (40g).

Altogether, there are 7 types of Fuzi products—all of them start from the same mother root, yet their final form is different. (Separation of the following passages into a bulleted list is my addition to make it easier to read.  Eric.)

• The transformation of the original seedling is called Wutou (Crow’s Head);
• In general, offsprings that sprout out side-ways from the Wutou are called Fuzi (Attached Offspring)
• If an even pair grows out to the left and right, it is called Lizi (Tripod Root);
• If one grows out that is particularly long, it is called Tianxiong (Heavenly Male)
• If one grows with a sharp point it is called Tianzhui (Heavenly Awl)
• If one grows out of the top of the root it is called Cezi (Sidelings)
• And those that grow all over the place are called Loulanzi (Offsprings from a Leaky Basket).
• All are linked to the main root like a child is connected to its mother, but since the name Fuzi has come to be valued the most among them, all of these are now called Fuzi while the other names have fallen into disuse.

If one plants a seedling that yields 6-7 offsprings, the harvested roots will be small. If one yields 2-3 offsprings, they will be larger. If one plants 1 that grows 1 offspring, it will be especially large—this is the norm. As for the shape of Fuzi, the ones that have few corners and can sit squat on an even surface are considered to be of the highest grade. So-called rat breast shaped roots with many corners are of 2nd  best quality, and those that are uneven in shape, exhibit crumples or were injured during the cultivation process are of the lowest grade.

As for color, the plants that have white flowers are considered to be best, those with rust color are 2nd, while those with blue-green flowers are deemed to be of lower quality. Tianxiong, Wutou, and Tianzhui all are considered superior when they are full in size, producing a root size that does not fit into a closed hand anymore. The Loulan and Cezi variety, in contrast, are generally considered not worth counting and are given to the beggars.

Overall there are only few people in Shu (Sichuan) that consume Fuzi regularly. Only the people of Shaanpu (today’s Shaanxi Province), Min (today’s Fujian Province), and Zhe (today’s Zhejiang Province) have made Fuzi consumption a regular habit. The traders in Shaanpu focus on bringing the lower grade to market, the ones in Min and Zhe tend to trade the medium grade, and the highest grade is generally sold to public officials (mandarins). The nobility has money and loves the extra-ordinary, and thus is generally satisfied with only the larger kind of roots. Some local fellow with a basic understanding of medicine once said: “The small roots should indeed be avoided, but every piece that weighs more than ½ liang (20g) is good, it is not necessary to seek out those rare ones that measure a full liang”–that just about sums it up.

The Shen Nong bencao jing once remarked: “Fuzi grows in the mountain valleys of Qianwei (today’s Leshan in Sichuan), as well as left of the Yangzi (the southern banks of the lower reaches of the Yangzi River), South of the Mountains (the regions south of Mt. Hu and Mt. Zhongnan), Mt. Song, and the region of Qi and Lu (today’s Shandong Province).” My research shows that there isn’t any Fuzi that grows in these areas. This is clearly a mistake.

The classic further states: “If you harvest the crop in the spring you will get Wutou; in the winter, you will get Fuzi”—a major mistake, in my opinion. The text goes on: “Fuzi that exhibits eight corners is of the best quality; the corners are called Cezi.” This is an even bigger mistake, and completely different from what I learned in the course of my research. This is truly a case of “to believe only what is written in books is worse than having no books at all”!  All the data above stems from my original field work.

Eric’s note: The last paragraph is, of course, quite interesting.  I think the intensity of his comments is probably misguided, but he was clearly very excited about what he discovered.  It may be that the SNBCJ, like many texts of its time, was referring to more symbolic information as opposed to very specific growing/harvesting instructions.  It may also be that between the Han and Song dynasties things simply changed with regards to Fuzi.  This is why I’ve become more and more interested in combining understanding of the Han (and earlier) texts and later (but still early) commentaries like this one.  It’s a big job, but rewarding.

I know that this kind of article is a little hard to comment about – what to say?  I would like simply to hear from you if this translation, so kindly provided by Dr. Fruehauf, was useful to you.  What did you learn?  What more would you like to know?  Add your thoughts in the comments or head over to the Facebook group to discuss. Thanks everybody!

Related posts:

1. Fuzi : exploration of the growing regions and conditions of aconite

As I’m working on some of the foundational materials for the upcoming Shennong Relational Herb Learning course, I’m revisiting some material from classical Chinese medicine texts that I don’t know particularly well.  It’s prompted me to get out my Big Chinese-English Dictionary and start slogging through the tedious process of translating passages when you’re not fluent in Chinese.

So, when I was looking for which archived post I wanted to release today, this short text interview with Richard Goodman seemed a natural choice.  Richard has produced an excellent set of texts for Chinese medicine students and practitioners that helps even hopeless language learners like myself make sense of the process.  I really cannot recommend them enough.  I hope you enjoy the interview (below).

Deepest Health (DH): What is the biggest impediment for English speakers in learning to read Classical chinese?

Richard Goodman (RG): “Every aspect of Chinese, and especially classical Chinese, is different from English. From learning and memorizing characters to grappling with a grammar that has no tense, much of what we encounter in Chinese is difficult to understand. When I was finally at the stage that I could start approaching classical Chinese medical texts, I was overwhelmed-where does one begin? The vast number of medical books written before the 20^th century is alone enough to scare people away. This combination of learning a language that is different in every way from English with the sheer volume of classical texts available overwhelms people and even the most well intentioned people never begin.”

DH: How do your books help folks with that?

“My overall goal was to address as many of the frustrations I had in my own studies as I could in one series of books. The two I mentioned were two of my biggest frustrations and I addressed this first by just selecting texts that are fairly easy for beginners. Volume One starts out very slowly and builds very purposefully on the characters and grammar already taught. In both Volumes One and Two, 95% of the characters will be found in every medical text. I didn’t want any “filler” or terms that were rarely found. I was never trying to “wow” readers with impressive texts, but instead made language learning the priority. This does not take away all of the difficulty in learning Chinese, but learning slowly and building upon an ever increasing vocabulary makes the task seem a bit less daunting.”

“One thing I have heard from people over and over is that they did not feel overwhelmed by these books, and that is satisfying to hear because that was definitely one of my goals. Learners need confidence and they need it quickly.”

DH: Have you seen real clinical impact when people learn to read the classical Chinese medical texts? Why do you think this is?

“I think this very much depends on the type of practitioner one is when they begin to study classical texts. If one practices in a way that relies upon starting with a disease, moving on to its standardized differentiation, and then giving the formula and point prescriptions based upon that, that type of practitioner will not find classical texts clinically useful. There are virtually no classical texts that proceed in that way, which is why I suspect most people read translations of the classics and then decide learning to read classical texts is no longer relevant to modern day practice.”

“For practitioners who rely on understanding the underlying theories of Chinese medicine to treat patients, the classics are a treasure trove of information. Even rudimentary concepts like Qi, yin and yang, and the five phases are used to describe healthy and ill states with a depth that is quite astounding and much more refined than anything I have seen in English. I personally never had a really firm grasp on these basic ideas until I began reading them in the context they were originally discussed.”

“A lot of practical information also exists in the classics. For example, my views on pulse examination have transformed many times over by reading classical authors’ methods. Just one practical example is the relationship between the breath and the pulse. Most modern books teach us to use a watch, but rapid and slow pulses are determined in relationship to the number of times the pulse moves per breath. This changes the pulse dynamic considerably, leaving the focus entirely on the patient. Additionally, the terms for the pulses make much more sense to me in Chinese and the translations, such as slippery or choppy, do not really capture the image. Having access to all of the more detailed information on virtually every aspect of Chinese medicine, from prescriptions to diagnosis, will most certainly create a more refined practitioner.”

DH: Do you plan to write more books on the topic?

“There will be one final volume in this series which will focus more on herbal texts and their theories. I have already selected all of the texts and I expect that book to be available by early 2010.

I have already started working on what I am currently calling “learners’ editions” of the classics. That seems to me to be the next logical step so that people can continue studying while also tackling entire books. These will not be translations per se, but people who are not interested in learning the language could still use them as such. All together, I have about 10 books planned to come out over the next two years and all of them are related to Chinese classics and language.”

DH: What advice do you have for people in the field looking to write books? Any sagely advice? Tips and tricks? Things to avoid?

“I think the best advice I can give is simply do not try to force a book out of yourself. Everyone is different and I can really only share my own experience. I never really had the intention of writing books at this stage of my life and I just kind of fell into it. I found work as an editor at a publishing company to support myself while I studied Chinese. As my Chinese got better, I was moved to their Chinese language department and started translating Chinese language textbooks.”

“After editing what was probably hundreds of language teaching books, I got a real sense for what worked and what didn’t. My life circumstances were such that this series was just a natural extension of what I had been doing for the past five years. This is not to say that there weren’t times I struggled with the writing, but the idea and outline was very easy to come up with. Just write what you know and ask for help from others once you have something written—no one can write a book alone. “

Related posts:

1. Reawakening the faculty of touch in learning Chinese herbs