5 Things to Look forward to after graduation : Chinese medicine post-graduate education
If you like what you read here, you may want to keep updated by using my RSS feed. Want to know more about RSS/feeds? - read more here. Thanks for visiting!
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
Mining for gold : Best of Deepest Health
Hey folks,
As I’m winding down on this crazy educational journey, I find myself nostalgic for those days of olde. Back when I wrote posts with abandon. Anyway, some pretty good discussions went on during some of those posts, and they can be hard to find in the archives. I thought I would highlight some of the best here – for your weekend enjoyment. One, the first listed, has a very recent discussion that has stirred up a lot of discussion among a few key folks at school – I expect it to blossom into a much larger conversation featuring several posts, at some point in the future.
–
- The differences between Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) : this post was one of those things I wrote on the spur of the moment because I realized that not everyone was using the same terminology that I was using. There are a lot of things I would do differently in that post, mostly make it longer and explain myself more clearly. However, the discussion in the comments is the real gold. Check it out.
- 7 Keys to a balanced vegan diet in line with Chinese Medicine philosophy : again, this was something I wrote on a whim. That seems to be what the readers like. This is the highest ranking article in Google for “vegan chinese medicine” and has prompted a number of fascinating conversations. Soon, I will publish a conversation between myself and an experienced practitioner about being vegan and prescribing Chinese herbs. Look for it.
- Reading widely to learn Chinese Medicine : This article got a lot of attention and I received more personal email about it than any other post I’ve written. This is one of a rare class, a piece of writing that I look back at and find inspiration in even though I wrote it.
- The Watershed posts : Although these posts didn’t receive much attention, they are among the closest to my heart. I was truly engaged when writing all of them, and the ideas I express are going to be the heart of my practice for many years to come. You can read about “What is a Watershed,” “The nuts and bolts of the Chinese Medicine Awareness experiment,” and “Entering the Flow.”
- There are a lot of posts on Deepest Health about cosmology and symbolism. While I could never speak as eloquently and practically on the topic as Heiner Fruehauf, people have found some of my posts on the subject to be useful basic introductions. See “7 Keys to understanding the Classical Chinese Medicine concept of organs,” and the popular “Chinese Medical Symbolism: the Organ Clock.”
One day, in the not too distant future, I’ll be cranking out the content like I once did. I’m really, really looking forward to that day. For now, you can expect to hear from me this weekend about how I did in working through the first week of my 12 weeks of power.
Thanks everyone,
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.
—
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).
Chinese medicine, the Earth and the Center
When talking about the five elements, particularly as applied to the organ systems of Chinese medicine, it’s easy to find an angle from which to proclaim the supremacy of any of the elements. Fire gets four organs, for instance, one of those being the Emperor – surely it’s the most important. Water, on the other hand, lies at the depths – no element is more revered than water in the cultural literature of the Chinese (the Dao is often said to be like water, the supreme man is said to be like water in taking the lowest place, etc….). Surely water is “top dog,” then. But what of Wood? Wood begins the cycle of the elements from most perspectives – it is the animating principle of the whole system – Wood must be the most important.
So on and so forth. The answer to the question, “Which is most important,” is the absurdly easy and frustrating, “None.” However, Earth could have a better reason than the rest to lay claim to this elusive prize. Earth is the center – the center is the axis upon which everything else spins. Without the center, you just have a group of unassociated pieces, functioning on their own in vain. The center brings it all together, ensures that it functions.
There are two ways to think about Earth seasonally. One perspective holds that Earth is associated with a kind of “late summer,” just before the fall rains begin. Another, which I prefer, holds that the Earth occupies an interstitial space between each season – the 14 days or so around each solstice and equinox – the transitions from one season to another. I’ve heard a variety of perspectives about the actual length of time and the precise arrangement of those periods, but this seems to be a consensus. Regardless, this “in between” nature of the Earth element makes it vital, it governs our transition from one energetic state to another.
Sunday, I went on a beautiful hike in the Columbia River Gorge. I decided to try to open my senses and not impose anything in particular on my experience. The overwhelming message, again and again, spoke of the Earth element. The sweet smell of decay – cloying, almost – with the merest hint of rich wine or butter or something I can’t define. No matter what part of the trail – metallic/mineral rock faces all around sharing their sharp, clean scent – deep, watery pools of clarity lending a weedy, fresh aroma – high and dry grassy plain full of pungency and heat… behind was the deep Earthen bassnote, emanating everywhere. Now, we are not officially in the period around the autumnal equinox, though we are technically within that “late summer” period perhaps – but the working of the Earth energy was present everywhere I looked.
The overwhelming idea that came out of all of this exploration is simple. Earth is at the center, and you must always look to its health. This is why dietary therapy is the root of most successful treatment plans. It’s also why so many of my patients seem to need a simple Earth tonification formula (such as Xiao Jian Zhong Tang) after any other series of formulas. In fact, from now on, I will be carefully examining that possibility with every patient. I feel that this is, in some ways, superior to the rampant practice of throwing some heavily tonifying formula at a patient after a big illness. The idea behind it is the same, but it is actually looking at the source of weakness and not the branches.
(Photos taken by Eric and his family, August 2008)
Chinese medicine and the senses : Part I : Scent
As I have been contemplating this new project that Abdallah and I have begun, I’ve found myself stymied at times. The aim of the project is clear, but the methodology is less so. Simply, everything that we’ve said in our introductory posts makes a ton of sense on a variety of levels, but when it gets down to “doing,” things become a little unclear. I know what I want to put out (multi-media posts that draw all of us deeper into our relationship with the world and its interpenetration with Chinese medical concepts) but how do I get the inputs to create the outputs?
Why is this harder than it sounds?
In the United States, and I suppose in most Western countries, our sensory experiences are more or less controlled. For the most part they are stifled, except for sight and hearing which are simply overwhelmed. Actually, thinking about it, we overwhelm all of our senses – limiting what they experience to a set number of approved, mostly synthetic items and then amping those up to the nth degree. I’ve grown up in the States my entire life, thus I’m subject to this dismal state of affairs. Fortunately, through Qigong and other experiences, I’ve gradually learned to lighten up, literally and figuratively.
Regardless, I find that fully utilizing my sensory capabilities requires effort – most of all it requires intention. The sense of smell is particularly interesting. So, to start a short series on the senses and how to return them to their natural state and attune them to a higher degree than ever – I’ll offer my thoughts on the sense of smell.
Chinese medicine and the sense of smell
In Chapter 11 of the Neijing Suwen, it says:
“故五氣入鼻藏於心肺．心肺有病．而鼻為之不利也”
This has been translated in a couple of different ways. The basic translation says:
“When the five Qi/odors enter the nose, they are stored in the Heart and Lung. Heart and Lung disease is detrimental for the nose.”
Maoshing Ni goes on to posit that the five scents are really “the five qi of environmental energy that we breathe in.” Regardless of the fact that I don’t see this particular statement in the text (thus underscoring my basic problem with Ni’s translation) it is interesting to contemplate. What is odor? Certainly it is Qi – but beyond that? In thinking about this, consider the Neijing’s statement that the odors are 藏/cang/stored by the Heart and Lung. The Lung makes a lot of sense given that the nose is the orifice of the Lung in both a Western and Chinese context. But what does it mean to say that the Lung receives and stores these odors? One could posit that they become part of the Qi that then rains down on the body as heavenly restorative water/Qi. I’m not sure if that position could be supported by the texts.
More interesting to me is the relation of odors and the Heart. What can it mean that the Heart stores odors? You’ll excuse me if I offer my own simple theories. As famously studied by Gilles Laurent at Cal Tech, there is a powerful association between scent and human memory. Nothing brings back a scene or person to the mind like a scent last experienced in that scene or with that person. When considering this idea, I most naturally think about the smell of my clothing when I come back from my mother’s house on a visit. I smell her for weeks afterward – and though the smell is created in part from her detergent, there is more to it than that. The scent is wrapped up in emotion, the scent contains not just detergent fragrances, but her spaghetti sauce aroma, her hair, the smell of Idaho, cold winters, the essence of what comes from her pores as a product of all she eats, drinks… well, you get the idea. The memories triggered are as complex.
Consider also the devotional aspects of scent – incense of various kinds have been used in religious ceremony and other spiritual activity since time immemorial. The Catholics still use incense as part of Mass, as do some Episcopalian congregations. Buddhist and Hindu shrines are nearly always adorned with incense censers. We can also think about the effects of Moxibustion using artemesia. While some people hate moxa for its thick smoke and messy nature, I find it to bring an essential element to treatments where it is indicated. While not explicitly of a spiritual nature, I do believe that there is something of an offering that occurs when using moxa in treatment.
This relationship of memory and spirituality to the sense of smell helps me to link it to the Heart. While we often talk about the Kidney as being the storehouse of memory in Chinese Medicine, from what I’ve read and learned, the type of memory held by the Kidney is more primal, older and is less easily accessed by consciousness. The Heart seems a likely place (especially in its relationship to the Western concept of mind) to store the memories of this life. The Heart’s relationship to Shen makes its connection to human spirituality quite clear.
In classical five element acupuncture, the art of smelling is still employed. The five odors, discussed first in the Neijing, are assessed by the practitioner to help understand the primary pathology of the patient, as well as used as a key in discovering the patient’s landscape tendency (constitutional factor). This is one of the most difficult diagnostic techniques for Westerners, as I’ve already hinted at. I find it to be incredibly difficult, personally, particularly given how so many patients cover up their natural odor as a matter of course. For the sake of completeness, I should list the five odors!
- Fire : scorched – one of my professors says that this is the smell of recently dried clothes
- Earth : fragrant – like rotten vegetables or new compost
- Metal : rotten – like a garbage bin or feces
- Water : putrid – like urine or stale wine
- Wood : rancid – like rancid oil, mcdonalds
Scent and herbal medicine
Briefly, what is the role of scent in Chinese herbal medicine? Most would say, “There is no role!” I disagree. One of the reasons I am a huge proponent of patients taking home and cooking their own bulk herbs is because of the experience they gain by doing so. Looking at the herbs, smelling them in their dried state, allowing the smell to permeate their living space, smelling their powerful odors when drinking – all of this, in my opinion, is part of the therapy. While many patients are unwilling to have this experience, it is one I encourage and have benefited from personally. The worst case scenario with regards to this would be taking pills of granuled Chinese herbs. I believe the move in this direction is detrimental, but understand when some patients choose this path.
Scent and the natural world
The sense of smell is much more emphasized in certain animals, including dogs. The sense of smell is a fantastic way to seek out prey that is not yet within range of the vision. While animals that live their lives in the air can afford to skimp on smell and focus on vision, animals that do most of their hunting in forests and tall grass fields need an alternative way to seek out their prey.
The natural world is full of odor. The sweet decay of Pacific Northwestern forest floors. The acrid, putrid, complicated smells of downtown sidewalks. The unbearable sweetness of babies nursing for the first time. Blood, urine, feces, animals marking their territory with complicated brews of hormones and urine – these less pleasant smells are just as much a part as any of the others. The human world is no different in this respect, though we would like it to be so.
Fearless smelling
Being able to integrate myself fully into the world using all of my senses is the primary methodology of this Chinese Medicine awareness project. So, how to proceed with the sense of smell? My first trick will be simply to allow myself to smell everything, without reservation. This means making a conscious effort to breathe deeply through my nose at all times. I will also be going out of my way to smell things that are likely to be interesting or complex. I will also be practicing this during tea drinking. The difference in smell between two otherwise similar puerh teas, for example, can be remarkable and really impacts the experience of the tea. This, of course, brings me around to the importance of smell for TASTE – but perhaps that’s for another article.
Do you have any ideas of how one can integrate the exercise of the sense of smell into daily living? Share your thoughts in the comments!
What am I up to?
-
Subscribe to Deepest Health
-
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
