Entering the Flow
Whither Sagely Living?
Across a divide of space spanning a continent, a partnership in exploration has opened whose wellsprings lie removed further still across a span of centuries and oceans. I am speaking, of course, of this latest project that Eric and I have conceived in the course of our conversations over the last few months and weeks. If this is the new development of the Year of Sagely Living, then I count that undertaking a success. I perceive a greater alignment with the operating principles of that concept becoming active in our new pursuit. Or, rather, we have awakened to its possibilities, and take seriously the precepts of the Classical view we hold dear. Above all we are entering a flow. Let me explain.
A Story
I’ve been inspired almost as much by the College of Mythic Cartography as I have been entranced by Deepest Health. Willem Larsen, who is the genius behind CoMC, and is another resident of Cascadia, articulates what he terms “invisible technologies” that underlie his practice of rewilding: that is, decolonizing the mind from the non-indigenous. Another way to put this, is that he recognizes that some of the most important aspects of indigenous cultures, critical components of any definition of sustainability, lie in the cultivation of relationships based on mutual trust and support, and in story as an expression of those relationships to one’s land-base and greater family. He writes eloquently, and if I may borrow a phrase, appears to “live deliberately,” or as I am wont to say, with rigor. His explication of associative reasoning, and t
he role of riddles and story in enlivening knowledge struck me as deeply resonant with the conversations that Eric and I have shared, and with my entire orientation to practicing Chinese medicine.
Further back it correlates with what I’ve learned through many years of association with Leon Hammer. I read his first book, Dragon Rises, Red Bird Flies
The next insight, a thrill, to be honest, a thrumming indication of things to come, came at an interesting time. After years of practice I had decided to pursue further training in medical school, with the intention of seeking a psychiatric residency. The Baker Act places an acupuncturist in a unique bind. I’ve had patients whom I knew required 24-hour evaluation and supervision -in crisis- but was faced with the certainty that appropriate herbal medicine and acupuncture could resolve the condition more rapidly and with less trauma to the patient. So I conceived of enrollment in medical school as a means of surmounting institutional barriers. I enrolled in courses to prepare for the MCAT, and contemplated at length the options, when suddenly, in an intensely liberating flash of realization, I abandoned the plan resolutely. I felt renewed. I felt like I had been handed $200, 000 in cash and been given a reprieve that granted me 15 years of my life back. I went from being amongst the oldest of potential med students to being again among the youngest teachers in the Chinese Medicine field. Above all, I realized that the plan amounted to a digression that was perhaps the world’s greatest attempt at procrastination. In other words, my work had already begun and there was more to do.
Literally the first thing I did was sign up for the Associates program at Heiner Fruehauf’s site. And then it happened. The article and videos related to Wang Fengyi, the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century founder of a unique lineage of storytelling healers curing with their stories, chants and humble, ethical behavior gave me back the feeling that had enlivened me in Leon’s book, and in every subsequent, often wordless, intimation of the realities laid out before me. It also unleashed a period of intense creativity that led to new insights into everything from the underlying structures of Dr. John Shen’s herbal formulas, to aspects of Dr. Hammer’s methodology and model, and even provided the impetus for the Year of Sagely Living. I discovered Rewilding not long after that.
Rewilding is ultimately predicated on awareness, just like the others practices that inform my life. As a Muslim, I cannot endorse the animist beliefs, and according to some this would indicate that I do not understand the movement. Where awareness is the focus I am fully in accord. I would even argue that awareness is the crux of the critique of modern civilization.
Through a Dark Wood
So this is where our project unfolds: from these disparate elements, we intend to construct an experiment in awareness. Not in terms of normative practices, but in terms of opening ourselves to the symbolic fields articulated by Chinese medicine, and with a commitment to document our findings and chart our exploration. We are saying, “Yes! And…” to the implications a symbolism rooted in antiquity, as a method for creating new symbolic content that is appropriate to the times and places where we are. It is not enough to rehearse old mythologies. That is not to disparage the Classics in any way. Rather, it follows Basho’s admonition to seek what the master’s sought. Where else are these patterns to be articulated if not in our lives?
Another very significant element is our engagement with the concept together. We hypothesize that by allowing the conversation to publicly unfold, much as it has in private, and also to avoid setting arbitrary limits upon it, we will create a free-wheeling and unfettered mode of expression about Chinese medicine. I am the control group in this particular experiment; because like all-too-many clinicians I am not as steeped in the Han Dynasty symbolism that informs the pristine logic of NCNM’s program. And this with having studied Classical Chinese at UC Berkeley! And my estimation is that the conversation will enrich us. After all, dialogue is the form that the Classics assume, both in structure, and in the rich legacy of commentaries that exist. In fact, I’ve dubbed it: Han Dynasty 2.0.
Improvisational Classical Scholarship
This is also not to suggest a mere modernization or even urbanization of an alien cosmology. Every patient encounter is an opportunity to approach the unknown. What mysteries are in each of us? What stories? Riddles? In the meeting of microcosm and macrocosm, there is a grain of sand. If there’s a universe in a grain of sand, then what of the pearl produced by its slow gestation?
As Eric quoted earlier: “it’s a way of effortlessly being with awareness and allowing Chinese philosophical and medical concepts to shape the perspective.”
Sapere Aude
How can this become a practice that is effortless and yet produces insights that will carry over into our clinical work? It is quite simple. In my estimation, the most integral question is a simple one: why? But that does not obviate the need for us to likewise attend to the what’s of our experience. In other words, our answers will be as good as our questions. Everything has its voice, and it may speak to us in a way that we can understand. One way that I describe pulse diagnosis is as a way of listening to the ever-communicating body. So, we will take the rich world of symbolism and metaphor that we’ve inherited from Chinese medicine, and simply frame our questions according to what we want to investigate. In the process we will learn to apply this method to anything that strikes us, and also begin to see the webs of meaning that inhere in the very messages that are being communicated in multivalent means by the body. And we can use all of our senses to seek our answers, and in so doing we will begin to inhabit our bodies and experience our lives in wholly new ways.
Abdallah
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!
Tags: abdallah stickley, classical-chinese-medicine, commitment, content, creativity, Cultivation, heiner fruehauf, imagination, patterns, scholar, symbolism, The Project, visionRelated 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
7 keys to understanding the Classical Chinese Medicine concept of organs
I’d like to piggyback off of the organ clock post and introduce the Chinese medicine theory of organs in a little more
depth. It’s important to understand that there is not just one right way to view the body. There is no more validity in viewing it in the Western medicine manner than there is in viewing it in the Chinese medicine manner. Each system (and many others) have taken different features of the human being to be primary, each system has used their own conceptual understanding to render a viable picture of the body and its interactions. Perhaps most importantly, each system uses their vision of the human being to craft effective treatments. It seems that different systems will create different spheres of effectiveness - a topic for a future post. With no further ado, here are seven things you need to know to enhance your understanding of Chinese medicine organ systems.
- There are twelve organ systems in Chinese medicine: Heart, Small Intestine, Bladder, Kidney, Pericardium, Triple Burner, Gall Bladder, Liver, Lung, Large Intestine, Stomach and Spleen. The typical convention is to capitalize when we are talking about Chinese organ systems and not to capitalize when we are referring to the anatomical organ known to Western medicine. Another convention is to refer to the in the singular. So, for instance, the Lung organ system includes the Lungs, but we don’t say - for example - The emotion of the Lungs is grief.
- They’re not ORGANS. Probably the most important thing to understand is that the Classical Chinese view is not based on materialism. Although the ancient Chinese did investigate the inside of the body and were clearly aware of the physical structures that Western medicine now names “organs” this is not primary for the medicine’s understanding. The organ is included in a larger concept that is often called the “organ system,” which you have already seen me use many times. This organ system includes the physical organ, it’s associated channel(s), the tissues, surfaces, functions and other bodily features associated with that organ and other more rarefied aspects of the system.
- The organs work together as a dynamic whole. While each system has specific functions and can be talked about in isolation, the beauty of the Chinese medical view of the body only becomes truly apparent when you focus on the interconnections. No system is complete without seeing its relationship to the rest. This can make it a little confusing to study because our brains seem to find it simpler to focus on one mono-dimensional thing at a time. TCM has largely lost its understanding of the physiological interactions of the organs except where those interactions are extremely simplified.
- The organs are a reflection of the macrocosm. This principle relates back to Chinese philosophical understanding of the holographic nature of reality. For a complete review of the holographic worldview, see Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe. The basic gist of this philosophy is that the fundamental nature of reality is reflected in its smallest pieces just as much as in its largest. The small reflect the large, and the large reflect the small - they’re both reflecting something much deeper than themselves. In Chinese medicine we study this principle all the time. On one level, each organ is a reflection of all the others - the parts reflect the whole. On another level, the total complex of organs and each organ individually reflect some aspect of nature. For example, the Heart reflects the nature of our Sun and acts as such within the body. Understanding these layers of meaning help us to fully comprehend the human body, and studying the human body through this lens helps us to gain a greater understanding about the Universe. It’s funny like that.
- Following from that, then, the organ systems can be understood using natural and governmental symbolism. For me personally, learning about the Chinese concept of the body was much easier once I learned to think about it as an ecosystem or as a country. With the former, I could simply walk in nature in a mindful way and reflect on the various features I found there. IS the Heart like the Sun? What would that mean if it were? How does that bear out in diagnosis? In treatment? I think this practice does its work on more subtle levels as well - it must be why we are constantly urged to spend time in nature as CCM students. Using metaphors about the government helped me a great deal in understanding the functional relationships between organ systems. If the Heart is like the Emperor (or the King, possibly the President) then what relationships should I see between it and the Lung, which is said to be like the Prime Minister (or Presidential Cabinet?).
- The organs’ interrelationships are therapeutically useful. Far from being a simple intellectual exercise, understanding the organ systems as networks of interrelationship bears out in treatment. An example: imagine we are looking at some kind of problem that - through the intake process, including tongue and pulse taking - we come to understand as being centered in the Heart organ system. A TCM process of differentiation would then focus on the Heart, most likely, only adding other organ systems in limited circumstances (such as adding Lung if there are breathing difficulties). A more nuanced approach will consider the interrelationships using various systems, such as five-element or six conformation. Using a five element approach, we might wonder whether fire is failing to be generated by wood, or whether it is being over-controlled by water. We would search for symptoms that might suggest this, we would recheck the pulse to see whether we had missed something. There are specific systems to use when doing these investigations, but the key is simply to dive deeply into the physiology in order to comprehend pathology. It will yield excellent treatment.
- Even with this complex understanding - the organ systems are not PRIMARY. In a sense, the organ systems are simply a useful way of organizing the overwhelming amount of information we can get from studying the human body. It is a convenient way because it has clear physical correlates. But we must also consider the fluids of the body (Qi, Blood, Jing, Shen, JinYe) as well as any more subtle aspects of the human being. We must also keep in mind that the body is not just a jumble of parts, but a integral functioning whole - when we treat we are not “tonifying the Kidney” but instead having a specific kind of impact on an infinitely complicated system using a particular technique. Maybe that’s splitting hairs, but it seems an important distinction.
There’s a lot more to know - but that’s a good start. Please put any questions or thoughts in the comments!
Eric Grey
Tags: classical-chinese-medicine, exercise, five phases, flu, focus, health, Learning, liver, lung, materialism, nature, organ system, Organ systems, organizing, overwhelm, pericardium, philosophy, pulse, rest, spleen, students, study, studying, symbolism, tea, Theory, traditional-chinese-medicine, visionRelated posts
-
-
What am I up to?
-
Subscribe to Deepest Health
-
