As a first-year student, I was so blown away by everything I was learning in school for Chinese Medicine, I couldn’t keep my mind straight. I was being rearranged, challenged on every level. I really couldn’t have blogged about the questions I was having if I tried. During my second year, things were less windswept but busier – that was my strongest blogging year during my tenure at NCNM. My third and fourth years were *much* busier in terms of work at school, work outside of school – the blogging clip declined. Also, while I was more able to formulate relevant questions, I was less likely to actually pose them. Why? Part bravado, part fear, part exhaustion.

Bravado might be the wrong word, let me explain. Learning something new, especially something as new as Chinese medicine was to me, is always a meandering path of discovery. You don’t know who to listen to, you don’t know how to even find the right information – it’s all just surprise after surprise. As you progress, things come into focus a bit. In a field as vast as Chinese medicine, even a little focus feels like an incredible accomplishment. However, if you’re a humble person (or even just a marginally intelligent person) you realize that this little bit of focus is a REAL little bit and you’ve got several lifetimes of work to do.

But imagine… you’re a second or third year student, a year or two to go. You’ve invested lots of time, energy and money into learning a profession. You’re looking to make a career of the thing. At some point you realize that you’re basically just going to escape school with enough knowledge to avoid killing people. This is scary, because you want to graduate with enough knowledge to be as good as your teachers. At least close, anyway.

You have a couple of choices at this point. First, you can act like you know more than you know. Many people take this approach. Ill advised. Second, you can become despondent and drop out. Equally ill advised. Third, you can become despondent and a pain in the butt to the school administration, your fellow students and the profession in general. Please don’t do that. Finally, you can do some version of what I’ve done – hunker down and get to learning.

The problem with how I’ve done the latter is that I stopped being vocal. I stopped asking questions, even when I had them. It’s sort of like this – as soon as I think of a question, I see how it is attached to a million other questions and I don’t even know where to begin. So, I shut my trap. This is NOT GOOD FOR BLOGGING. It’s only when I had a particularly crystal clear question that I was able to pull something together for a post. Those posts tended to generate a lot of discussion, but they were few and far between.

What I want more than anything is for Deepest Health to grow into a vibrant community for students and practitioners of Classically oriented Chinese medicine. A place where we can come together, discuss issues, get to know one another and get busy becoming the future of the medical profession. A place where we can exchange news, resources, advice and anecdotes. A place for the genesis of new ideas that will help our patients. I’ve been working the last couple of weeks to figure out how to make this vision a reality. If you read the last 30 or so posts on DH, you might see that I’ve actually been working on this for a couple of years! :D

In service of all of this, in service of the work I’m doing to write a book, in service of the work I’m doing to be a good teacher to my fine students at NCNM – I am going to try something. Each month, I will search my soul to find a topic that is most standing out to me and will focus on that for the majority of my posting during that month. I hope that this will help us, as a community, to engage more deeply with a topic while also keeping me focused and motivated to blog. In some ways, it’s an extension and development from the Year of Sagely Living and other “grand projects” that have been discussed here. In other ways, it’s just a representation of my own development as a scholar and practitioner. It seems like an interesting possibility. The timeframe may contract or expand, depending. The topic may be vast (reading Classical Chinese) or very narrow (Mahuang in Shanghan Lun formulas) – I will try to trend a little closer to the former. We’ll just see how it goes.

We’re a little far into January, but I have to start somewhere. This month is all about flavor, wei 味.

I’ll post some introductory thoughts shortly. Thanks, as always, for your support.

。

Chinese medicine question of the month : intro to a new method of engagement

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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 opportunities, countless little pockets of Wildness all over the city, endless cultural events, used bookstores galore, junk sales, free boxes, chickens running wild, food carts, curiosities around every corner.  It’s too much to think about, much too much to write.  It is a place that draws together many interesting things.  I love to walk, I love to bike, and one of my favorite things is to just go where the wind blows me.  These blown about moments are ripe for deepening awareness, pregnant with the possibility of seeing more deeply into reality – informing my practice and my purpose.

- 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

5 Things to Look forward to after graduation : Chinese medicine post-graduate education

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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.

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1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.”
5. 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

Mining for gold : Best of Deepest Health

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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).

Crows and Eagles audio

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.

Johnson Creek Flooding audio

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).

What is a watershed?

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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, the Earth and the Center

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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!

Chinese medicine and the senses : Part I : Scent

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I am in a state of heightened awareness as I sit down to write this post.

My breathing is deep and slow, without my direction.  My posture is erect as possible but without strain.  My vision is open and yet acute.  I feel the air coming in to the edges of my nostrils.  I feel it careen down my windpipe and alight on the left-side of my throat, where my dry cough originates.  I get this when I talk too much:  after lecturing for 8 hours without a break, which I do frequently.  Suddenly I am aware of the stickiness, a sink of sorts, that draws the inspiration to that place.  I am breathing.  It appears before my mind’s eye.  It is paler than you’d think, not red or inflamed.  I can see the network of vessels visible under the thin mucous layer.  I feel my chest expanding from the corners, in dark hollows .  As I close my eyes for a moment, my shoulders drop.  They’ve been folded into an origami crane’s tail all of this time.  Now there’s clouds forming before the craggy precipice of my shoulders.

How can I understand my experience (recognizing that I do not need to understand it)?

Can it be the Oud I was compelled to wear today?  Incidentally, Oud derives from the same tree that gives us the medicinal Chen Xiang: why not grab your Materia Medica and look it up.  Feel the pages beneath your fingertips.  Write down some notes long-hand, allowing your hand to teach your heart away from the abstraction that marks the computer keyboard.

Lung Qi opens into the nose; when the Lung is in harmony, the nose will distinguish the fragrant from the foul

That’s a simple statement.  I have patients with multiple chemical sensitivities that can tell you the difference.  But what about the things that we say unwittingly about others? What about the thoughts that waft before us?

Can this state derive from my son regaling me with plans to tour Tasmania to see the Eastern Rosella in the wild?

Can it be this passage from A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century?

Purity is reached through the Absolute Water, the Water of the Unseen, that is, the Limpidity with which the visible world is flooded, Limpidity which is variegated in Its manifestation, One with Itself in Its seeming multiplicity, Self-manifested, Hidden through the intensity of Its manifestation, Absolute in Its relativity-this Water which is free from any taint and which availeth for purification…This restriction excludeth the waters of the sensible world and the psychic world, since both of these waters have suffered change from their original state.  It is the water of the Spirit which fulfills all that the definition requireth, for This is indeed Absolute, being free from any taint, and remaining ever as It was, not adulterated by anything, not flavored by anything, not added to anything, not restricted by anything, with naught above It and naught beneath It. Here lieth the Truth of Absoluteness and it is only This that deserveth the name Water.

Simple Signs, Symbol Science

Really, this is the crux of the matter.  The point of the last passage is not in the symbolism of water, just as my writing about the Lung does not affect my breath. It is rather, that the believer, no matter what symbolism he sees, still performs his ritual ablution, and is purified in it whether he recognizes the Absolute Water or not.  Indeed  it is the joining of the simple action and the unseen aspects of it that are the realm of the symbolic, but still transcend beyond it.

I guess, what we are going for has been aptly described by Heiner Fruehauf in his freely available papers at Classical Chinese Medicine. There he defines the concept of symbolique developed by R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz:

the highly complex science of synthesising the manifold layers of reality into a single crystal of meaning.

So what we’re going for is reconstructing the awareness that informs the science right where we are, and in doing what we’re doing.  The next action, then, is to offer that glimpse to you, by whatever means necessary.  Each of the things that informs my experience of this day, with all of its metal and Lung-oriented imagery could be a photo, a poem, a story, or an investigation of scents, tastes, sights, and sensations.  Honestly, I haven’t written a complete poem since the week before starting acupuncture school.  My photographic chops are nil (and I will not take pictures of people or many living things).  But as for a spirit of experimentation and an inner attention to the senses, those I have in spades. Thanks for coming along for the ride….

Abdallah

It drops deep as it does in my breath

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In two articles, Abdallah and I have begun to lay out the foundations for a project that is, in some ways, the extension of the Year of Sagely Living.  There hasn’t been much discussion generated around those two articles.  There are two possible reasons for this and they both come down to our failure to express the essence of the project appropriately.  I will offer two articles – one today and one tomorrow – that attempt to explain the project clearly and also highlight its importance.

First, here, I’d like to just lay out in very clear prose what it is we are proposing and, briefly, why.

Record of a journey

Blogging is, at its best, the record of some person’s (or people’s) particular way through life.  Even when the blog isn’t personal, it represents a particular take on some particular aspect of the experience of living.  Deepest Health has always been mostly about exploring Classical Chinese medicine from the perspective of one student, myself.  In this journey, I’ve revealed my own struggles and a-ha moments.  I’ve also attempted to share the knowledge I’ve gained in my schooling in an effort to make good information about Chinese medicine more available.  As I grow and change, so does the blog.

I’ve walked across a threshold in my study – the threshold from theory to practice.  In doing so, I’ve learned deeply the importance of rock-solid theory.  More than that, I’ve learned about the inseperability of theory and practice.  They inform and shape one another.  One of the places where theory and practice interpenetrate for me is in the realm of Chinese medical symbolism.  What I’ve learned about the symbols of Chinese medicine from a few professors, most overtly Heiner Fruehauf, is the way that Chinese medicine is actually built on a system of symbols and a method of symbolic perception and thinking that is at least somewhat alien to contemporary Western consciousness.  I’ve tried to make that way of thinking and perceiving less alien for myself and, through my blog, for you.

In clinic, I don’t think that much about the Chinese medicine organ clock.  But, I do think a lot about symbols.  I think about the symbolism of the pulse.  About how to read it, how to match it up with patient experience.  I think about how the pulses are written about in Classical texts and the deep symbolic meaning present in every character.  I think about the symbol of the human face, a microcosmic representation of the whole body.  I consider the symbolic diagnostic methods of Worsley style five element acupuncture.  I wonder about the concise descriptions of symptoms patterns in the Shang Han Lun, and begin to understand the deep symbolic nature of the characters that make up those descriptions.  I see how all of my professors seek to understand this way of thinking, seek to incorporate it into their practice, despite how they feel about more overt conversations about the subject.

There is no class that can teach me how to think symbolically.  There is no seminar that can rearrange your mind so you think less analytically and more holistically.  There is only lived experience.  There is only gentle but persistent effort.  Nature and patients as teachers.

Wait, didn’t I say this was going to be clear?

Yes, yes yes…  To provide a “why” for the rambling “what” above, please accept the following. I believe that by teaching myself to think symbolically, to deeply perceive the infinite richness of patients and nature and the world at large, I will gain information that will make me a better clinician.  There are lots of ways to teach myself these skills.  There are lots of layers to be unfolded.  The project that Abdallah and I are proposing is simply to record our journey to gain this particular way of thinking and perceiving.  Just as everything it will grow and change, but here are the essential elements:

So what is this going to look like?

Records of our efforts in the form of text articles : This is more of the same as far as Deepest Health is concerned.  You can expect frequent reports on how our efforts are progressing.  Sometimes this will come in the form of an article about a formula or an herb, something like you’ve seen here before.  But, it will attempt to go deeper by incorporating multi-sensory lived experience.  Sometimes it might be a new type of article that reports back on a specific experience along the lines of what I’ve described above.  For instance, if one week I find myself especially attracted to understanding the Chinese medicine concept of fire, I might write an article about all of my multifaceted research on the subject.  This could incorporate lines and interpretation of those lines from various Classical texts.  It could incorporate my own musings about patients and myself as related to fire.  It might posit connections between lines in the Classical texts, formulas that I have recently prescribed and some aspect of popular culture that makes clear some important relationship.  It could involve a series of photographs around Portland as well as a recording of some firedancers on a mountaintop.  Which brings me to the next point…

Multimedia integration : What we are proposing is that only by laying open ALL of our senses are we able to really understand the wisdom of the ancients.  How many of us really understand the five odors and colors used in diagnosis?  How many of us really understand the five flavors of herbs?  This understanding is important to have on an intellectual level, of course, and textual analysis is important for that.  But equally important is our lived experience of these things.  Now, while we would be hard pressed to offer scents and flavors on the Internet, we can certainly talk about scents and flavors.  But, what will really set this project, and ultimately this blog, apart is the inclusion of audio and visual content to help illustrate concepts.

I have been experimenting with audio and have been very impressed with the medium.  I recently purchased some new equipment that will help me deliver higher quality audio to Deepest Health readers/listeners.  I would love to continue to offer record of conversations, as well as music and soundscapes that illustrate particular points.  Imagine the impact of not only reading an article about Shaoyang fire, but hearing audio that is evocative of this primal force and seeing photographs and drawings that seek to explore the concept further!  We will offer audio as well as pictures, artwork and video.  Some of it will be strictly in service of elucidating particular concepts, but also just to continue to enrich the site’s content – as with interviews, video of my talking head, and so on.

Some of what we put forward may be pure folly! You may watch a particular video, hear an audio, or read an article and think : By jove, they’ve gone off the deep end!  And that’s when audience participation comes in.  We want lively conversation!  We want response!  Further, as we explore the project you may find that you hear, see, smell and feel things that go along with (or contradict) what we are putting forward.  We’ll post it!  Put it forward!  Let us create a living database of information that goes beyond the simple recounting of TCM textbooks.  The future of Chinese medicine on the Internet, no less!  :)  But, it is important to note that for me, the Classical texts are the ground from which all I think about springs and ultimately it is what I want to keep connected to at all times.  I believe this will help us from going too far afield, proposing theories and ideas that are radically disconnected from the thousands of years of clinical experience that we are fortunate to have access to as students and practitioners.

I hope this helps explain what we’re after.  More to come.

The nuts and bolts of the Chinese medicine awareness experiement

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