Year of Sagely Living

The Year of Sagely Living is a group project. It takes as its primary goal to discover whether living by the principles of Classical Chinese Medicine is a desirable and possible activity for contemporary people. The initial idea was conceived by Abdallah B. Stickley of the blog Even Unto China. In conversation, we discovered a shared passion for the underlying philosophy of Chinese medicine and developed his initial idea into a full blown community based year long project.

This page will be, primarily, a place to:

  1. Archive Year of Sagely Living posts
  2. Link to similar posts on other participants’ websites
  3. Chronicle in a journal-type format my experience with the project - for more reasons on why I’m doing it in this way, please see my post about my initial Year of Sagely Living experiences.

You can read more about the Year of Sagely Living by clicking on the links below

Introductory material and further philosophical exploration of the project

Concerning particular months’ themes

Concerning my specific commitments

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Below begins my Year of Sagely Living “journal” to be updated frequently, with more developed insights to be shared as blog articles on the main page of Deepest Health and linked to on this page.

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June 6, 2008

I haven’t been posting to this page, but I don’t think it gets too many visitors. So, hope noone noticed. :) My weight loss and fitness goals have been going very well. I will post in more detail in a while - I’ll probably revamp this page entirely to make room for more specific reporting of my goals. I’ve really enjoyed the Year of Sagely Living so far, and I look forward to seeing what it brings as it continues.

March 18, 2008

Watching the organ clock has been a surprisingly difficult experience. It’s funny because some people might call me clock obsessed, but it’s hard for me to think about the energetic quality of any particular time that is showing on the clock. Right now, I’m typing to you during Heart time. I find that I often think about the organ clock during this 2+ hour period. The other times I find myself spontaneously considering the organ clock are around Bladder time and again in Lung time. Both of those make sense because they are at the beginning and ending of my average day.

In general, I find that during Heart time it is difficult for me to work in a focused way on anything. I naturally tend to want to do Qigong, review my mission statement, listen to inspirational audiobooks or music and generally just rejuvenate myself. A tough sell during finals preparation. For the rest of this month, I’m going to be a little more focused on the periods - setting alarms for myself as I said I would. During my moments of meditation, I will try to sit with one of the symbols associated with that organ system and see what kinds of resonance come about.

I have been doing very well with taking time for my family. It’s very, very hard to “justify” just hanging out with them on the weekends instead of doing lots of work for school or the blog. It’s not hard emotionally - I *want* to - but right now I’m so driven in both of those areas of my life that I have to do a lot of firm talking with myself. :) Still, I have been managing to spend almost my entire weekend either doing weekly reviews , going on picnics/hikes, doing housework and cooking, playing games, watching movies or some other family/home oriented activity. It’s been wonderful and I think has helped me to avoid the major external invasions circulating around Portland.

I had a realization regarding my initial Year of Sagely Living goal - studying for an hour a day per subject that I’m studying. I find that this plan just doesn’t work for me. I lose a lot of momentum changing from subject to subject. I’ve modified this habit so that I study 1-2 subjects per day, making sure to study important/difficult subjects at least twice a week (not including class time) and other subjects at least once a week. For subjects that have study sheets or flashcards, I do my best to look over these at least once a day regardless of if I’m intensively studying that subject that day. This seems to be working, I’m not worried about finals at all and this with all the time spent with family as listed above.

March 12, 2008

It’s been a bit of a bumpy ride so far this month. I had a couple rough days - I think I was fighting something off, as everyone at school seems to be sick. I had a hard time sleeping and a harder time waking up. I also have a point before every finals week when I get this low level stress reaction to the whole deal. I don’t notice it consciously, but my physiology gets wacky and there’s no other explanation for it. I think I’m recovered now.

Today is the first day that I’ve actually managed to get out of bed before 6, and I feel fantastic. There’s something that happens to me if I can just get up before that time… it’s wonderful. When I woke up, I was just edging out of Lung time. I am interested to see if I tend to feel better if I wake up during that period. Right now, we’re solidly in Large Intestine time. Contemplating this organ network, I find an overwhelming sense of just wanting to get down to work. I’ve found this once before when meditating on LI during LI time — no fanciful ideas, no dreaminess, just the straightforward sense of wanting to work on something tangible. Fortunately, it’s about time for me to leave for Formulas class. This will more than satisfy my urge. :)

In general, my organ system contemplations have been going well. I particularly enjoy meditating during the time of the water organ systems, Bladder and Kidney. It’s easy for me to remember to meditate during this time, both because I’m often just home from school and because there seems to be a quality about the energy that invites that kind of activity. I don’t really want to be working at that time… interesting since LI and KD are across the organ clock from one another - perhaps representing one of the true differences between the rise into Yang and the descent into Yin. Interesting…

March 5, 2008

I obviously slacked a little in my journaling and I really do want to get back to the material I learned last month. But, school moves fast and I have to keep up. :) I’ve been paying attention to the organ clock this week. It’s been quite a challenge with the fast pace of my daily life. I notice that I nearly always check during Heart time and again during Kidney time. Not sure what this means. I enjoy meditating during Kidney and Bladder times — the quality is almost dreamy and I find it easy to concentrate. This is interesting because I’ve always tried to meditate during Lung time, as that seems most “correct.”

I have struggled to wake early because of another interesting time-related situation. The past two nights I’ve woken around 1:30am (Gall Bladder time) with intense Gall bladder stagnation pain and a bounding pulse. There are a few medical reasons this is probably happening that I don’t need to get into here. But, it’s definitely interesting. When I wake at this time, I find myself wanting to do Qigong and go for a walk! Instead, I do a little tapping along my Gallbladder channel and lie back down until I fall asleep. Hopefully this pattern will cease relatively quickly and I can get on track with my early waking goal.

February 18, 2008

I don’t know how many people actually read this page. I just wanted to briefly update to say I’m still alive. Formulas has me in its grips and I’ve time for little else right this second. I have great posts in the wings, but they’re going to have to wait, I’m afraid. I have lots to say about the changes that have come over me in working on my personal finances and listening to leadership related audiobooks, but unfortunately I will have to put it off. Thanks for your patience!

February 13, 2008

It’s interesting how this month has gone so far. I began not being quite sure what I wanted to take in - primarily because this strategy/business category is something that comes so naturally to me. I’m constantly taking in this information, constantly improving in this area. I think one of the things I have learned so far that this is one of my great strengths - but it also points to a problem. I need to apply the same level of intensity at other realms of my life that I do to this one. While self-improvement on a business, organization, strategy level is very important - it is not the only thing in life.

Anyway - I’ve been listening to Steve Covey’s Principle Centered Leadership, and that’s been great. I actually ended up loading a few other e-books to my iPod - one of which is the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. I’ve read a lot of Robbins’ work, but not that particular book. While I was listening to Steve Covey one day, I accidentally switched the pod to random mode and the Giant Within came on! I was hooked from the first sentence and I’ve been listening to it ever since. Covey and Robbins speak to very different parts of my life so I’m happy to listen to both of them. We’ll see how it turns out in the end, but I hope to share insights from both.

February 12, 2008

Hey everyone - sorry for the long times between updates. I think as time goes on, I’ll get better with updating. This month of Sagely Living has been plagued with a unique problem. While I have been listening to Principle Centered Leadership, and enjoying it very much, I’ve honestly been working more with my own financial health using Dave Ramsey’s system. I’ve thought a lot about it, and I think I will share insights from both systems. While personal finances may not fit with this month’s category exactly, I do think it has lots of relevance for the principles behind YSL.

More to come!

February 3, 2008

I’ve decided to work with Steven Covey’s Principle Centered Leadership. I love Tony Robbins, but I think that Steven Covey has more to offer in terms of helping me to cultivate leaders in the Chinese medicine community. I’ve only just started and have some catching up to do, but certainly will have interesting insights to share with folks as time goes on. I’ve decided to read some Lao Tzu as I do this and see what kind of cross-pollination I can get going.

I’ve also been working on my financial health using Dave Ramsey’s system. While I don’t agree with lots of Mr. Ramsey’s observations on gender, politics and religion I do think he has something special when it comes to being a financial advisor. I also appreciate his enthusiasm. It’s funny how enthusiastic people (personal development and finance gurus, self-made millionaires, renegades in any profession) become the target of the petty words, thoughts and actions of others. It’s revealing - but not of anything that the one attacked possesses. I take what makes sense from these folks and I discard the rest. Some have criticized me for this - but there it is.

January 29, 2008

Well, January is coming to an end. Because my life is already so focused on scholarly pursuits, it wasn’t too much of a departure to work on this. Still, the concerted effort has been an important addition to my daily routine, one I will write about more detail on the main blog. In actuality, the biggest change has been looking at all of my classes every week for at least SOME time. This has, frankly, been transformative. Not only do I feel more caught up with my studies, but I find that realizations are coming more frequently. I feel more equipped to ask questions of the doctors and I have no stress regarding midterms and finals. So far. :)

January 22, 2008

Studying every class a minimum of 2 hours a week has been a much easier commitment to keep up with. It’s funny because somehow I don’t feel it is enough. That’s just good ol’ overachievement talking, though. It’s more than I have been doing up until now. Mostly in the past, I have studied classes as they keep my interest. While that is certainly ONE strategy, it usually leaves one scrambling to study for tests at the end. Because, unfortunately, professors don’t ask whether I am interested in a class before they decide to test me on the material. Go figure. Also, when I have managed to keep up with material that I had, for one reason or another, dismissed as “boring” or “irrelevant” - I have learned a great deal. When I relax my ideas of what interests me and what does not, whole new vistas of knowledge open up.

Formulas has been particularly enjoyable to study this term. I feel I have the hang of Dr. Versluys’ lecture style (fast, information rich) and am familiar enough with formula structure and function to keep up. I have been having an especially hard time applying myself to Internal Medicine.

January 16, 2008

It has definitely been a continuing challenge to keep to my commitment. For two days this week, I didn’t study one or more of my classes. Two days were really “on,” but even those days I couldn’t do half an hour a day. So, I’ve determined that for my courseload and life circumstances, that kind of intensity isn’t healthy or even really possible. For the rest of this month, this will be my routine:

Study every class a minimum of 2 hours a week: Acupuncture techniques, Herbal medicinary practicum, Business seminar, Herbal formulas, Pharmacology, Acupuncture theory, Clinic (with a 5 element practitioner) and Internal Medicine. Within that structure, I will make every attempt to at least look over the notes or do some reading for each class each day. This may involve just reading my notes all in a row before I go to sleep, during my evening routine. It may be more interspersed, or more focused - depending on my week.

Really, the key is that my weeks aren’t stable enough to guarantee me 2-3 hours every single day for study. So, we’ll move to Plan B. So far, I am already noticing increased comprehension of material in classes even from what little I’ve been able to manage thus far. It’s definitely worth the extra work.

January 12, 2008

I wanted to be sure to make a single journal entry to start off this page. However, I am putting most of my observations into a full-blown blog entry, linked above. You can also just click The importance of the Spleen in studying Classical Chinese Medicine. However, to be more explicit about my experiences… I had a very hard time keeping to my 1/2 an hour a day commitment. I think it may actually be impossible, so I’m going to work this week on a revision. It may be that I give myself some flexibility - 10-30 minutes for each class depending on availability with a weekly goal for each class depending on its importance and workload. The key is simply to go over the material as frequently as possible. I found that last term I would study a subject only every 2-3 weeks and the stuff I was studying seemed really new and strange each time I encountered it! Not good. We’ll see what the next week brings.

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