Deepest Health Chinese Medicine Podcast : Episode 8 : Interview with Dr. Heiner Fruehauf
Hello everyone -
I’m happy to offer an interview for this edition of the podcast. Dr. Heiner Fruehauf, founding professor of the school of Classical Chinese Medicine at National College of Natural Medicine in Portland, OR, agreed to talk with Deepest Health readers about the nature of Classical Chinese Medicine. I’m incredibly grateful to Heiner for offering his time and wisdom - I think it will be a treat for all of you.
Dr. Fruehauf has been a great inspiration to me as I navigate the deep waters of this discipline, and he is beloved by students of Chinese medicine all over the world. He currently practices at his clinic in Corbett, OR as well as teaching classes at NCNM. He runs the incredible website, Classicalchinesemedicine.org, which is an excellent resource for anyone interested in learning more about the roots of Chinese medicine. In fact, I have an exciting proposition for folks concerning a discounted membership to the site that I will talk about in a separate post sometime this coming week. Stay tuned. If you haven’t perused the great free content Heiner has put up on the site, do visit and check it out.
I want to mention that Dr. Fruehauf also recently launched a line of high quality, professional grade herbal capsules based on Classical principles for a variety of common conditions. Check out the site and see what you think. Every effort has been made to ensure that this is a high quality product. This product is unrivaled by anything on the market of which I am aware.
This podcast was split into two parts - the first of which you can access below. The second part will be released on Monday or Tuesday. Each section is around 30 minutes long. Enjoy!
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Tags: ccm, classical-chinese-medicine, heiner fruehauf, inspiration, interview, Learning, Podcast, Portland, tcmRelated posts
It drops deep as it does in my breath
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
Tags: heiner fruehauf, inspiration, lung, oud, scent, Science, sufi, symbolism, writingRelated posts
Deepest Health LIVES!
It’s true, my friends, Deepest Health is still around. It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted, but I shall fail you no more. I needed some time to rejuvenate my brain and - perhaps more than that - reevaluate why I created this blog in the first place. I spent a lot of time working on this last summer, and I think my work has paid off handsomely. But, frankly, it can get a little wearing sometimes.
The same is true of the Year of Sagely Living. I am the kind of person who seems to be able to do a whole lot without tiring. However, I can only do this if I understand on a deep level WHY I am doing it. With life getting so busy as the reality of being in the clinic and starting my own business start to set in… well, it’s easy to lose sight of why I do the things that I do. I think you can relate?
Out of this extended hiatus has come two things - both of which I would like to share. This will be followed rather shortly with a return to a semi-regular posting frequency and all the things you’ve come to love so much about this sweet little corner of the Internet.
The first thing - A VISION STATEMENT for Deepest Health
If there was ever any question that I’m a total dork, I hope this will put that question to rest. But, seriously, while the idea of having a formal mission statement may seem silly, it is a construction that helps me keep focused on my vision. Without vision, the people perish! Doubtless this vision will undergo significant evolution as time goes on. Without further ado…
Deepest Health is a place for the exchange of information and inspiration about Classical Chinese Medicine through the publishing of written, visual and audio material of value to students, practitioners and patients. Deepest Health makes no claim to have a monopoly on the truth of Chinese Medicine or medicine in general. Deepest Health, instead, encourages a warm and expansive spirit of exploration, experimentation and exhortation so as to participate in the evolution of Classical Chinese Medicine as the medical system of choice for contemporary people.
The second thing - A reorganization of the Year of Sagely Living project
I’m pretty excited about this. As April came and went (without an update from me - despite the fact that my garden is doing FABULOUSLY well) I began to rethink the whole Year of Sagely Living concept. Through conversation with my partner, Amanda Barp, and my friend Abdallah Stickley, I determined that a reorganization of the thing could be quite rejuvenating. First, let me share some of the reasoning before explaining what I will be doing from now on. I’ll try to keep it simple.
Initially, the idea for the YSL came from conversations between Dr. Stickley and myself about how self-cultivation seems to be the very essence of what it is to be a Classical Chinese physician. We both have particular traditions of practice (or amalgams of traditions, in my case) that we feel are in some harmony with the principles of self-cultivation that the Classics discuss. In essence, we wondered if our cultivation practices would be similarly productive of great physicians. This led to further conversation about the types of cultivation exercises that seem embedded in the theory and practice of Chinese medicine. Eventually we began to talk about the organ clock and how it might be a helpful organizational tool for a program of CCM centered self-cultivation. Thus, the YSL was born.
But I have noticed a few problems with the original format. First, we switch too often. While there is some continuity between months, mostly they represent very different categories of practice. I could spend a year simply on the excellent practice of raising my own food, delving deeply into it, learning from it… The same is true of all the categories. The second problem is that somehow the categories and their practices were feeling like an extra veneer I was placing on my life - not as something being deeply embedded in me in the sense I expected. I expect this has something to do with the character of my own situation, but it failed to meet my desire for the project. Third, more nebulously, somehow the project as described and practiced so far doesn’t speak to the initial impulse behind the whole thing. It’s wonderful how it’s gone and I appreciate very much everyone’s participation - but I’d like to see it evolve.
While the conversations between Abdallah and I have not (and probably never will) come to some “final” or “static” conclusion, I feel that my mind is settled with regards to the topic. We batted several ideas around. One was to create a YSL focused on scholarship - twelve months of different scholarly topics (Yin/Yang theory, Five element theory, etc). An incredible idea - but not appealing to the overworked student in me. Perhaps after I graduate? Another idea was to halve the number of categories and double the time spent in each. Good, but perhaps not solving the root. There are two “winning” ideas that I’d like to see others play with.
First, one would become more serious about one’s own personal practice. For instance, a practicing Zen Buddhist might renew his or her dedication to that practice. He or she would then use that practice as a lens through which to look at Classical Chinese medical theory and practice. For instance, consider the practice of meditation. How does diving deeply into a meditative state enhance or hinder the practice of Chinese medicine? How can we characterize meditation from the perspective of CM theory? How does quieting the mind in this way develop one as a physician? What do the Classics seem to say about this kind of activity? What is the experience of the practitioner or practitioner in training? In this way, we come to bring our deepest selves fully into our practice of Chinese medicine. Does that sound fun or what? In many ways, Abdallah exemplifies this kind of work in many of his blog posts and, indeed, in the whole concept behind his blog.
Second - the choice I will be working with - requires that we artificially cleave the calendar year into two parts, yin and yang. It would be easy to get bogged down in discussing various theories about which months are Yin and which are Yang, but I’d like to make this as easy as possible. Because of the time, I’m going to say that April began the Yang phase and it will consume April, May, June, July, August and September. Then we will enter the Yin phase of the year until the following April. Feel free to divide where you like. Then take just ONE category of practice behind the YSL. I will be choosing that of my physical body, energy and vitality. Use the entire year to focus on this category, altering the precise habitual expression of the category as necessary to match the seasonal energy and one’s own situation. For instance, in the more “Yang” time of the year I plan to focus on the relatively more Yang aspects of physical activity, moving Qigong forms, intellectual assessment of the physical body, etc… In the Yin part of the year, perhaps I will focus more on developing stillness, balance and thorough nutrition. Does this make sense?
I’m anxious to hear folks’ thoughts. Please chime in and feel free to adapt any and all of the ideas above for your own practice. I believe moving into this kind of YSL idea will help me to produce more posts about it, as I will be diving more deeply into it.
Thanks for reading - more soon,
Eric
Tags: Blogging, inspiration, vision, Year of Sagely LivingRelated posts
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