Call for guest writers at Deepest Health
Hey everyone,
The summer is wrapping up for us at NCNM, which means a ramping up of school-related activity for me. Add to that the fact that my best friends are getting married (and both my partner and I are in the wedding) is a recipe for light content here on Deepest Health. So, I’d like to put a call out for guest authors. I’m particularly interested in offering articles from guest authors on the following three topics:
1. Back to school : Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine students all over the US and elsewhere in the Northern hemisphere are heading back to school. What advice do you have for them? This can range from product reviews to lists of “must have” books and supplies, etc…
2. Basic information from a unique perspective : For instance, what can you tell us about some commonly used acupuncture points, but put a twist on them using the classics?
3. Clinical stories : If you’re a storyteller and would like to share some of your most poignant lessons, whether in the classroom or clinic, I’m happy to publish stories like that as well.
Criteria for authors - I can’t publish just anything on Deepest Health, of course. A site’s got to have standards, after all. :) You need to be able to write in English with a reasonable degree of accuracy and have decent flow. You need to be able to proofread your articles and come up with engaging titles for them. You need to be in the field of Chinese medicine, whether as a student, teacher or practitioner. I reserve the right to say no to anyone. I will probably receive more requests than I can publish, but may keep folks’ names on a list to contact if another guest writing opportunity arrives. Let me know if you would rather I not put your name on that list.
Benefits of being a guest writer - If you run a blog or website, the benefits of being a guest writer are numerous. Deepest Health gets a fair amount of targeted traffic, and because a link to your site will be provided in the text of the post, you will get visitors heading over to your site to learn more about the person behind the article. The link will also provide some “link juice” from Google, helping your search engine rankings. Even if you’re not a website owner, you will be able to get your name and your writing out there for folks in your field to read. You will also obtain the massive personal benefits I get from having a blog - chief among them solidifying what you know and exposing what you don’t… a benefit that usually only comes from writing.
If you would like to write an article, and meet the criteria, please send your article along with a statement about who you are, where you go to school/teach/practice and any other relevant information to deepesthealth @ gmail . com (without the spaces). It’s critical that the article not be published anywhere else on the web, so don’t bother sending me rehashed content. If I choose your article, I will let you know and we can go from there!
One more note, folks : I will not be able to put together my regular Friday podcast this week. I’m so sorry! I will return to normalcy next week, no worries.
Thanks,
Eric
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Tags: articles, author, Blogging, guest-post, Learning, rest, students, summer, writingRelated posts
Deepest Health Chinese Medicine Podcast : Episode 6 - Schools of Chinese medicine and learning
Sorry to get this podcast out so late, folks. There’s been a heat wave in Oregon, and I’ve just been worthless for work. Things are still moving and changing here at Deepesthealth and you can keep looking forward to more great content. :)
This week’s podcast is a fairly quick one where I talk more about my clinical experience. The topic of this one concerns the different schools of Chinese medicine and how students should look at the possibility of “choosing” between them. It’s also the first podcast with the new equipment, tell me what you think in the comments!
Look forward to more great content next week - as well as a post coming out tomorrow that started out small and then grew into a monster!
My best to everyone - Eric
Tags: clinic, Learning, Podcast, schools, shang-han-lun, students, wen bing
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The Year of Sagely Living - The Evolution
When we decided to move away from our original Year of Sagely Living idea, I knew I would run the risk of dropping the project entirely. While I had the intention to focus on my physical body, I didn’t really know what form that would take. I’ve struggled to keep closely to my focused program of physical improvement, mostly because I actually exercise better in the cooler months due to my intolerance of heat. I’ve honestly done pretty well - I’ve lost over 15 pounds and increased my overall strength.
I’ve been following a program of Qigong, lots of walking around beautiful neighborhoods, bike riding and strength training on my (cheap) home gym. The last element is the weakest, and the one I will be focusing most on improving in the coming months. I have a goal of reaching an ideal body weight and basic strength by the time my two best friends get married in early September. The process has taught me quite a bit about my body - fundamental among them being that my body really does well when pushed a bit. Given the conversation we had about exercise here on Deepest Health, I wasn’t sure what to think. But, experientially, I’d have to say that the level of physical activity I am doing most certainly seems to have an overall Qi and Yang boosting effect without damaging Yin or Blood, at least as far as any external or internal signifiers can tell me. So, interesting…
The Year of Sagely Living was always about more to both Mr. Stickley and myself. For me, it comes back to the essence of the following quote from the Confucian classic - the Greater Learning:
Only after the principle in things is fully apprehended does knowledge become complete; knowledge being complete, thoughts may become true; thoughts being true, the mind may become set in the right; the mind being so set, the person becomes cultivated; the person being cultivated, household harmony is established; household harmony established, the state becomes well governed; the state being well governed, the empire becomes tranquil.
I have always been a person who cares about my community, about the fate of the people of the world. When I was younger, I was politically agitated - I protested, I threw myself into various causes. It never seemed to get myself or anyone else into a better place. I still apply my public force in appropriate places, but now I’ve turned that agitation inwards. I would say the last 3-4 years have been about seeking. I’ve been searching for the appropriate set of practices and the appropriate mindset with which to turn myself into a person who can overcome anything, a person who can do great good in service of humanity, a person who does not say harsh things to others out of anger, a person who spends his life making the world a better place. A tall order, perhaps, but what other good in life can there possibly be? (That’s rhetorical, ok?)
I find that what generally happens is that I find the things that resonate with me strongly, I dive into them (as I used to dive into political causes) and then I withdraw. Usually, I have some kind of external excuse to do so (finals week, dental surgery, financial trouble) but those excuses are always JUST excuses. The fact is that, being an agitator, I have trouble resting and abiding in anything. Why am I telling you this? Because I suspect some of you have felt this way and might benefit from learning a little bit about my process.
Over the last year, the frequency of emergence of those “resonant” things has become higher and higher. What do I mean? You know when you’re feeling the pulse and immediately when you lay your hands on the person, you immediately get a sense of the problem? Then you let it go and delve deeper. But, for me, that initial instinct is almost always the strongest part of the case — there’s more there, but from an 80/20 rule perspective, my first thought was the best one. It’s the same for me with finding principles and practices that are going to lead me toward my life goals. When I first meet them, in whatever form, I have an immediate shocking sense that this is Truth. Then I ignore it, and it comes back around. I ignore it, it comes back around. I ignore it, it comes back around. If/when I finally fully recognize it, I realize that my initial impulse about it was correct. It’s maddening.
So - here’s the essence of this post. I’ve found the practices that will lead me toward my destiny. I hate to say that I’m done looking - because that’s always a statement of great silliness - but I can say I’m done seeking. Things may find me, and I may embrace them, but I’m done being agitated. So, my Year of Sagely Living has been a success - really - because in this focused, public seeking - I have found the end of seeking. Now, I can settle into what I think was the essential point of the YSL in the first place.
The work, now, is to implement the practices and principles I have settled on. This is really where Abdallah and I come together. He has always had the sense that the practices and principles that grow out of Islam are productive of the highest type of Chinese physician. For him, I think, there is also the sense that the rewilding movement and some other things he is interested in add to that set of practices and principles. For me, the practices and principles may be different - but the idea is the same. I don’t feel the need to talk about those principles here - but will do so at my personal blog soon. You can go sign up for updates there, if you’re interested.
The point for Deepest Health readers is a simple one: in our quest to know this medicine (whether as students, practitioners or even patients) we must know most deeply ourselves. We must come to reckon with the things that move us, sing to us, cajole us into action. We must rectify ourselves in the name of these principles and practices and dedicate ourselves to them wholeheartedly. Only then will “the principle in things be fully apprehended” and thus starting the chain reaction up to the healing of the Earth community itself. This may seem a thing far removed from Chinese medicine, but I would argue that nothing could be farther from the truth. Doing this work is the essence of the Great Physician - there can be nothing more important. Other than passing board exams, that is. ;)
Eric
PS: There’s a second part to this - along the lines of finding a “best practice” that is very relevant for students. Please find that article published tomorrow.
Tags: 80/20, community, focus, health, Learning, QiGong, student, students, unity, Year of Sagely LivingRelated posts
A year of blogging about Classical Chinese Medicine
We’re running up on the one year anniversary of Deepest Health!* Can you believe it? One year and we’re up to almost 250 daily subscribers (thank you!) and a very respectable daily traffic number that averages around 15,000 page views a month. We also recently reached a search engine benchmark - receiving Pagerank 5! All of this despite the toll that my busy schedule has taken on my posting frequency. I want to thank each and every one of my readers for interacting with me, teaching me, promoting the site and just generally being awesome. Thanks!
I’ve been doing some thinking about where I would like the site to be in another year. The fact is that I would like to see more readers, more subscribers, and more conversation going on. This requires MORE content creation on my part, and I recognize that. I’ve been getting plenty of emails from readers wishing I would go back to my super frequent posting schedule of last summer. I’ve been thinking about whether I want to make blogging a priority again.
My posting frequency has plummeted for a variety of reasons, but it comes down to three major problems.
1. I’m way busy.
2. Getting more readers made me a little afraid to “speak my mind” especially when some of my readers are professors and quite active practitioners in the field.
3. I started to become unsure about what readers wanted.
These reasons are bad ones. To address number one - I’ll always be busy. I can’t let that get in my way. We’ve all had the experience of suddenly finding time for something we’re motivated to make a priority (new love, anyone?) just as we’ve all experienced the converse (taxes, anyone?) So, I guess that’s debunked. Number two is just crass fear. I’m a student. In a little more than a year, I’ll be a new practitioner. I’ve never claimed to be anything else, right? I know I’ve said this before. It scares me a little to know that my professors, my esteemed colleagues and practitioners with lots more experience are reading my words. However, the response has been overwhelmingly positive and it seems like folks want to see me writing more often - so I guess I’m going to have to consolidate my Kidneys and get on with it. T
To address the third issue - it is still a problem. Everyone seems to like something a little different. The most significant problem I have is the worry about writing for practitioners and dorky students (like me) and leaving average folks and brand new students without anything compelling to read. I’m just going to have to hope it works out. I’ve tried writing articles for new patients before, and it just didn’t move me very much. Every once in a while I feel like I put out something of interest to the general public, and those posts are rewarded with good traffic, but I don’t want that to be a focus.
In the end the greatest barrier is a combination of all of these. Because of my fear and lack of comprehension about what readers want has led to my spending WAAAAY too much time with each article. This has made it impossible for me to consider fitting posting regularly into my schedule. With these myths busted, hopefully I can get on with producing excellent content for all of you who are interested in reading it.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this public display of what is a private process. It’s like talking to yourself to work out a problem when you think nobody can hear, only I know you can hear. Such is the blogging life.
Eric
*Note: Deepest Health has actually been around in some form for almost 2 years, but I really began writing in earnest in June 2007
Tags: Blogging, content, focus, health, overwhelm, rest, students, summer, teaRelated posts
Taking it all in: Buddhist practice and Chinese medicine school
I’ve been struggling for the past couple of weeks. I’ve gone through the range of responses to my difficulty, mostly hovering in the realm of “just keep moving” which seems to work for me. The fact is that since I began Chinese medicine school at National College of Natural Medicine (NCNM) I’ve gone through periods of difficulty. Some of them come with warning - I am asked to interact directly with something challenging for me - but mostly they sneak up and don’t give much explanation as to their origins. This time has been one of those latter types. Finals week was hard. I mean, medical school is supposed to be hard, right? True, this finals week was particularly difficult. It reached deep and it wouldn’t let go, even with a very relaxing Spring break. But, somehow, this isn’t enough of an explanation for the kind of existential weirdness I’ve been experiencing.
Well, most of these things come on quickly and without much fanfare and leave much the same way. This time it broke open gently, slowly, and not all at once. In fact, there are some stubborn bits that refuse to go. But the breaking open has released some articles that I’m going to write all in one sitting and release over the week. They may represent something of a departure from my regular musings, but I hope they will be helpful to you nonetheless. The first, this one, is probably the most important for me to get out. So pay attention, will you? And let me know how it goes.
A short time ago, I was reading the Shambhala Sun,a wonderful Buddhist publication for anyone (not just Buddhists), and was struck by an article by noted Buddhist author Sylvia Boorstein. The article discusses the Divine Abodes, an element of the Buddhist explanation of reality that centers on particular states of consciousness that are (in part) an antidote to some pretty common negative emotional states of human beings. The Divine Abodes can be translated as (1) equanimity (2) impartial goodwill (3) spontaneous compassion and (4) genuine appreciation. The article discusses these states of consciousness in a very approachable manner and I learned a lot from it, but that wasn’t really moved me.
I was particularly interested in the simple explanation Boorstein gives of one of the primary insights of Buddhism. That is that situations, in and of themselves, have no inherent nature. My sitting in this coffee shop writing an article cannot, in a sense, MAKE me feel one way or another. I may have various reactions to being here (the basics being positive, negative and neutral) and those reactions are ok, but they can cause problems. For instance, if I enjoy it very much my clinging mind may start scheming to find a way to retain the experience and, knowing that I have to be somewhere in 45 minutes, I may begin to suffer the negative effects of knowing that this, too, shall pass. Boorstein talks in easy prose about her lived experience as a person observing her own reactions to various stimuli and finding equanimity within these situations. Equanimity allows us to experience all situations in such a way that we do not suffer from them, though we may still (of course) feel pain, pleasure or indifference in response to particular stimuli.
What does this have to do with Chinese medicine? Well, plenty. As I mulled over this article, I realized how important its insights are for students. In every educational program, we have classes that move us tremendously, others that we don’t really care one way or another about, and others that we actively dislike. When I am in a class that I love, I feel inspired and excited and I’m so reluctant to leave! This is particularly the case if I have a class that I don’t prefer soon afterwards. In fact, wonderful classes negatively impact my experience of classes that are less interesting to me. When I’m in a class I don’t prefer, I find myself not really taking in the information and - indeed - not even really being IN the class. I disconnect. I suffer in response to considering having to go to that class in the future. All of this dramatic running towards and running away serves no purpose but the stroking of my own ego - my steadfast resolve that I know what is good or valuable and what is bad or worthless. It detaches me from my lived experience and probably robs me of a great education.
So, I’ve begun trying to cultivate equanimity in class. When I say “try” I really just mean that whenever I notice my state moving in the direction of overt negativity, overt positivity or obvious indifference, I try to come back to being in that moment. What’s going on around me? What is my body sensing? What is the professor saying? Where is my breath? In this way, I had the best pharmacology class EVER today. The danger, of course, is that I become so interested in so many things that I don’t know what to focus on! :D But, there’s no rush and no aching need to spend every waking moment in pursuit of knowledge when my state is one of equanimity - so hopefully no danger there.
I realize I may not be communicating this absolutely clearly, but I hope the essence is coming across. I think this kind of state might be quite helpful in a clinical situation as well. It’s really just a variation on the old exclamation, “BE HERE NOW!” I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts in the comments.
Eric
Tags: buddhism, Cultivation, education, Learning, ncnm, Personal Development, Student Life, students, study
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