5 Things to Look forward to after graduation : Chinese medicine post-graduate education
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Since the arrival of my friend Brandt Stickley, I have been unfortunately unable to devote the amount of time I would like to living out our wild Portland-area Awareness Project dreams. We had so many late night chat and Skype conversations, whipping one another into a sleepless frenzy about the power and possibility in symbolism. The symbolism of the Classical texts of Chinese medicine, the symbolism of the body, of acupuncture points and herbal formulas, of ancient poetry and contemporary culture – but most of all – the symbolism living all around us in lived experience.
Well, there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I can TASTE the completion of this degree. I can FEEL the reality of my impending licensure. Our clinic is already running. We have meetings every week. I’m totally ready to see patients – and already have several ready to go. This deal is sealed, God willing things are now operating on the gravity created by hard work and not a little bit of Grace. Running a business takes time, lots of it. But, the fact is, I’ve been working hard on that all along. I set myself up precisely so I would actually experience some ease and freedom after graduation.
So, I thought I would make a list of the five things I’m most looking forward to doing after I graduate. This does not include the usual suspects : getting more sleep, spending more time with family and friends, taking fewer tests, etc… It also doesn’t include the very exciting new developments of running a business full-time, getting back into (and developing my skills within) blogging and – of course – developing as a clinician and scholar in Chinese medicine. All five of these things I see as being major contributors to the invigoration, development and eventual worldwide flourishing of the Awareness Project.
- City Safari - : Portland is, I think, one of the most wonderful cities in the world. It is easily the greatest city I have ever visited. There is simply no end to the nooks and crannies to be explored. From the urban mettle of the Eastside Industrial district (spitting distance to our clinic) to the gilded streets of the Pearl, the well-worn sidewalks of the Belmont and Hawthorne neighborhoods and all the other incredible districts and ‘hoods. Add to that the abundant Hill Walk
- Getting to know the Watershed – : Beyond the city limits, a smorgasboard of outdoor space awaits. From NCNM, I can see two mountains – absolutely surrounded with verdant forest, sublime foothills, rushing rivers and not a few glorious swimming holes. Both up and down the valley we have hotsprings, old growth, wine country, waterfalls and a hundred underused hiking trails and tent camping spots. This is to say nothing for the miles of undeveloped beaches, the endless expanses of highland desert, dunes, caves and lakes from outerspace. It’s not hard to understand why so many people love this state. Just as the city safari, the kind of surprises and encounters that come about while wandering the wildness of the world is an awareness building experience.
- Reading (and experiencing) Widely – : I have a reading list a mile long. There is a lot I want to read within the field, but even more outside of it. There is just so much to learn, so much to imagine, so many people writing down so many incredible things. Finally, finally – I may have some time to take it all in. The reality is that I will probably stay more or less in the range of Chinese medicine related materials – but for me – that field is pretty broad. I also have a whole lot of Continental Philosophy to burrow into. Also, Rorty. Oh, and I started playing roleplaying games again, so there’s plenty to read there. All of this helps build a richness of worldview that can only help me as a practitioner. Like some guy once told me.
- Learning and Using Chinese language – : The most important new project I’m taking on over the next decade is to deeply learn Chinese language. I’ve got a lot of materials for homestudy, as I won’t be able to afford (or stomach) formal education for at least a year or two. I’m hoping between that and the resources of my peers and friends, I’ll be able to make a go at it. I’m going to be doing the arduous task learned in Classical Texts classes at NCNM – going through texts character by character, and trying to drink them in. I believe that a mastery of this language is a crucial key in unlocking my potential in the field. I don’t intend to put that off, if I can help it. The deeper I fall into the symbols of the language, the deeper my awareness, the more profound my connection, the more effective the medicine. Or so some other guy told me.
- Redoubling my efforts in Self Cultivation - : I have experienced first-hand the difference between the treatments of practitioners who attend closely to their self-cultivation and those who do not. I don’t expect to be a saint, and I don’t expect any other practitioner to be. However, the degree to which we learn to become still, to connect deeply (both inward and outward) and care for our health on every level is the degree to which we will become not just technicians, but deeply skilled care providers. I have been working on this throughout my four years at NCNM, but I must admit that the rigors of my life have sometimes made me less than totally devoted to practice. I’m looking forward to a chance to change that.
Onward!
Eric
What is a watershed?
So, you may remember all this talk about the Awareness project. The idea was (and is, though evolved now) that we wanted to bring all of our senses to bear IN THE WORLD as people nourished by particular types of practices to really live what the Classics tell us about. This in turn would be productive of particular kinds of character traits that would, in turn, inform our medical practice and so on. A kind of evolutionary development watered at the deepest level by taking seriously the Classical literature – particularly that of our spiritual traditions and our medical traditions.
Something like that.
Anyway – you might have thought we forgot. We didn’t. It just needed some time to come to maturity. It’s still doing that… coming to maturity. It takes time. You know, you may want to drink that bottle of wine or that puerh tea RIGHT NOW, because it smells good, looks good already. But, in fullness, better things come.
So there’s lots of talk about, lots to share. It’s all relevant to Chinese medicine, don’t worry. But, I’ll ask you to get and stay open – because that’s what’s required of all of us. Not just in understanding this project, this blog. But in medicine, in life, in this evolution of humanity in which we find ourselves embedded. Get and stay open. Ok?
So, despite my basic discomfort with hearing my own voice – amplified by the fact that this is very much off the cuff, unedited, unscripted and raw – I bring you some insights from today’s walk through Tideman Johnson Natural Area (which I think I mispronounce in the first audio!). This is one of my favorite places to walk in the world, and I do so daily.
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Note: The bird image is not my own, but resembled the scene I witnessed in many details.
The walk I take is about 1.5 miles, through a couple of neighborhoods and ultimately into the Johnson Creek watershed area of the incredible Spring Water Corridor we have nearby. As soon as I descend into the valley, I am hit by a mélange of odor, of sound, of sensations on my skin. Water dominates the place, with it all of the things that go along with the Oregon wet – rotting leaves, nutria, a hundred birds of different species hunting bugs in the bark and fallen pine needles, the rushing of nearly flooding Johnson Creek, woodsmoke, stalwart bikers passing me on the trail, a hundred trails going into the brush. I recorded this (forgive my snippy comment about another blog I’ll not mention in text – it was a moment of weakness).
I continued on my walk – in fact at the end of that breathless audio you can hear me descending yet again to arrive at a fork in the creek accompanied by a waterfall.
There was this bunch of roots congregating in an eddy just beyond this photo. I wrote the following:
there is beauty/in the pine bough/sanded/smooth/clean as silk as silk has ever been
the clean lines/suggestions of wanton utility
but give me the roots/gnarled/open/sore/full of soil/insects/worms
waterlogged or exposed
eating the earth/utility no mere suggestion
I sat there a while thinking about a conversation that Brandt and I have been having – for over a year now. Thinking about how it is coming into its own, and I into mine. About how my whole family is bound up into this thing, and my whole life, everything about it. And I thought this is as good a time as any to start talking about Watershed.
It’s a term I’ll use a lot. It’s a movement, it’s a movement that’s already always been there. It’s the evolution of the Year of Sagely Living and the Awareness Project. It’s the culmination of the hard work and dreams of a lot of people. It will be a clinic. It will be a fork in the river (as seen from both directions).
Still learning Chinese medicine : through the birth canal
It’s a cardinal rule in blogging that one shouldn’t write too many “sorry I’ve been away” posts. They tend to convey weakness, over-involvement in one’s own process and generally turn readers off – particularly first-time readers. If you’re a first time reader, may I suggest that you hunt through the Articles page or look to the archives and calendar in the right hand columns (scroll down!) for some of the great content that has been pumped out here at Deepest Health. All that to say, this is sort of a “sorry I’ve been away” post. :)
But – with a twist! Content will be deftly woven throughout – perhaps particularly useful for my peers across the country and around the world who are in their final year of Chinese medicine school. But even you savvy practitioners will be able to recognize something of yourself in my words – and hopefully you will be able to offer some wisdom and insight to those of us still on the “other side.”
I’ve been thinking about writing for about two weeks – I looked back at a couple of posts I wrote recently and realized that I had resolved to write more frequently. The idea was to just put out there what I was learning. A noble goal – and one to which I am still committed. The fact of the matter is that I’ve been learning a lot, a whole lot. But something happened to me during the summer term – sometime around August, I think. It was a combination of several things:
- My clinic adventures dealt a mighty blow to my self-confidence.
- Various personal explorations and experiences left me in a very introspective frame of mind.
- I got tired of being on the computer so much.
- I started several seminar/discipleship series that commanded a huge amount of attention and time (they’re still doing that).
As I thought about writing on Deepest Health, I began to have this curious sensation of looking over my last 6 months or so and seeing the time for what it has been. It took me a while to fully render the image and be able to put it into words. It’s nothing short of being born again. No part of my life has been immune to the birthing process. It’s been a squirming, squalling, squishy, endorphin-heavy mess. I can only imagine this is part of many folks’ education process in Chinese medicine. This may be particularly true in programs that have discipleship components or choose to teach in a more Classical manner. I imagine that for some more TCM oriented students, the final year might feel different.
Why do I say this?
At NCNM, when engaged with whole-heartedly, nothing short of a total rearrangement of the Self takes place. Now, there are plenty of little nagging problems at the school. It’s a relatively new program with lofty ideals, and institutions often take a long… long time to work out kinks. Still, the overall structure of the thing is sound, and I think it’s making a decent practitioner out of me. However, it’s been a hell of a ride. The first year, my entire sense of the universe and myself was shattered. Swallowed whole, partially digested, regurgitated and reconstituted. Yes, my friends, my entire experience of life became something like an owl pellet. There’s no prettying that one up.
The second year was about finding my way. I found myself strongly attracted to herbal medicine and found that I had a natural affinity for learning herbs and their personalities. Then I met Arnaud Versluys, which ignited my love for the TEXTS of Classical Chinese Medicine. It’s important to say that, during the year before, Heiner Fruehauf had already enflamed my passion for the medicine, for imaginative thinking and for the core principles and ethos of the Classical Chinese way of doing things. These two streams of thought converged, and with my fragile confidence with the herbs, I became aware that I actually COULD do this with the rest of my life.
The third year was nothing short of a blitzkrieg of information – my self-confidence increased as I came to understand formulas. In Clinical Observation, I felt I was finally able to get some kind of diagnosis from a patient before the doctor spoke. My spiritual and personal development began to shift, however, and this started to destabilize my already fragile sense of who I am in this medicine. This destabilization continued through the summer between my third and fourth years, with the added stress of actually being IN CLINIC with patients. This is when the long slow push through the birth canal began in earnest.
I truly have had the sensation of being squeezed, almost to the point where I can’t really think. My ability to drum up any meta commentary about anything has been dramatically reduced. I haven’t had the time or energy to do much but just experience what’s in front of me. I haven’t been studying as deeply or as broadly as I was before. There’s no doubt in my mind that the departure from NCNM of my most active mentor, Arnaud Versluys, shook me in ways that took me a while to recover from. In fact, that experience made me question pretty much everything – in a similar way to my first year adventures. But there is the sensation of increased pressure and urgency due to my impending graduation (June 2009).
All of this has resulted, only in the last couple of days, in a completely reordered list of priorities and best practices. I have been in personal development and spiritual flux for about ten years, and I have the curious sensation of having found a set of practices that I’m going to be sticking with for a while. This has coincided with a similar stabilization in the realm of Chinese medicine practice. Over the coming days, I’d like to share these things with my readers. I hope it will be of some help to those of you who might be undergoing a similar experience.
The summary is this, my friends: It’s been a rough one, I’m stepping out of the long dark and I’m happy to be back. Thanks for your encouragement and patience.
Eric
Deepest Health Chinese Medicine Podcast : Episode 10 : End of term clinical reflections
Welcome to another Episode of the Deepest Health Podcast! In this episode, I discuss my reflections as I come to the end of my first term/quarter in clinic at NCNM. I reiterate the importance of memorization and excellent patient care, but then go in a philosophical direction on a couple of topics. First, I discuss my experience of being able to separate the disease from the person experiencing the disease. Second, I talk about the paradoxical reactions of some patients to treatment. I wrap up the podcast by a discussion of utilizing our many human gifts, referring often to the quintissential “Renaissance Man,” Leonardo da Vinci.
In the podcast, I reference a blog – but cannot remember the name of the blog, so cannot link to the post that inspired my da Vinci explorations. If you, for some strange reason, know what I’m talking about – let me know and I’ll link it. I also reference a book I’m currently reading about da Vinci and the practices one might take from his life. You can click on the link below to check it out.
Deepest Health Chinese Medicine podcast : Episode 9 : Interview with Dr. Heiner Fruehauf, Part II
Here’s the second part of Friday’s podcast interview with Heiner Fruehauf. If you missed the first portion, you can access it by following the link to Deepest Health Classical Chinese Medicine podcast, Episode 8. There you can also find links to Heiner’s various web presences and learn about what he’s doing now. I hope to offer more information on the Classical Pearls product he recently released, as well as offering Deepest Health readers a great option for signing up with the Associates Forum at Classicalchinesemedicine.org.
Thanks for listening!
Eric
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Updates from my personal blog (Ericgrey.com)- Some lyrics… May 12, 2009
- A bikeride into God May 8, 2009
- Quiet versus moving Qigong practices March 7, 2009
- A new perspective on the healthcare crisis February 26, 2009
