What Does it Mean to Live the Wisdom of Chinese Medicine?

I subtitled this blog “Living the Wisdom of Chinese Medicine”.  I was so excited and moved to post the past two blogs that I overlooked one very important question:  what is this blog about, anyway?

What I love about the word wisdom is that it implies that something is being passed down throughout time (or perhaps from an older person to a younger person) as well as a sense that wisdom is inherent in all of us.  This is absolutely true about Chinese medicine.  It is possible to talk about the wisdom of Chinese medicine without any of the terminology that you may have heard about such as qi, meridians, or acupuncture points. 

To me, the wisdom of Chinese medicine lies in the eternal and boundless wisdom of nature.  To the ancient Chinese, it was impossible to consider oneself separate from nature.  Every season, every sunrise, every sunset, every rainfall, every birth, every death, every cycle around the sun was observed and honored.  There was no source of artificial light or heating or food production that allowed anyone to live outside of these natural cycles of nature.  People considered themselves part of nature rather than machines with replaceable parts. 

The study and practice of medicine, then, came from the study and practice of living in harmony with nature. In nature, the seasons come and go.  Each season offers to the universe unique gifts.  The same occurs within us.  On the most basic level, here are some examples of the gifts of the seasons:

Fall:  Slowing down, acknowledging what is most precious in life and letting go of

what is not absolutely precious (as the trees let go of its leaves to prepare for winter), receiving inspiration from the universe, recognizing beauty.

Winter:  Stillness, deep listening, growth that is under the surface (such as trees

that look dead but have a vibrant root system underground that allows them to survive through the frozen winter), a deep sense that when the time is right spring will come.

Spring:  Birth, growth, newness, potentiating ideas, benevolence, movement,

            planning and carrying out, flexibility. 

Summer:  Celebration, joy, partnership, laughter, compassion, connection.

Late summer:  Nourishing ourselves with the harvest, supporting and nourishing

ourselves and one another, satiety, transforming what the universe has to offer into something digestible that leads to a feeling that we are deeply cared for.

Each of us has a capacity to experience all of these gifts in our lives.  The wisdom of Chinese medicine is about being able to move through the seasons peacefully, welcoming the gifts each season offers.  For most of us, we tend to prefer the gifts of some seasons over others.  When we realize this it gives us an opportunity to create space to practice the gifts of each season.  For example, one gift of winter is stillness.  To me, most of the people I know are the least still during winter.  Our culture asks us to attend parties, hustle to busy shopping centers to buy gifts for others, and finish up projects for school and work.  The teachings of Chinese medicine have us ask ourselves, how can I be still and peaceful during this time?  What ways of thinking, doing, and being can I practice to be more still and at peace?

When we live in harmony with nature, the gifts of the seasons become obvious and natural to us.  It is how every traditional culture has lived for millennia.  Because we live in a modern society with values very different from those of traditional cultures, most of us are not practiced at living in Oneness with nature and the cycle of the seasons.  It becomes an exploration for us to rediscover the gifts of nature and the seasons.  This is the wisdom of Chinese medicine that I wish to share with my readers – how can we reclaim and rediscover what is inherent in our nature as human beings?

The Healing Nature of Chinese Herbs

I receive lots of questions about how Chinese herbs “work”.  My post today is just one way in which I hold the power and beauty of herbs.

One way to think of how the body works is to liken it to an orchestra.  Each organ is an instrument, and the quality of the sound from each instrument affects the entire orchestra.  Each instrument has a particular resonance, and the music that the orchestra plays is beautiful in its uniqueness, layered complexity, and synergistic nature of the sections playing together.  What is so beautiful about Chinese medicine is that my symphony sounds completely unique from anyone else’s symphony.  To me, this is the gift of Chinese medicine – to help each person reach his or her destiny, to allow a person’s true nature to blossom.  I can feel this in the pulses.  Each person’s pulses are sacred because they are a reflection of how qi moves through the body.  In Chinese medicine we use the pulses as a diagnostic tool to understand how someone’s orchestra sounds, to get an idea of what instruments are a bit out of tune and how the different sections of the orchestra work with one another.  When I feel a person’s pulses, they give me an idea of the person’s body, mind, and spirit.  And after an acupuncture treatment, or after taking herbs for a few days, the pulses often truly do sound like a symphony – I can feel through my fingers the resonance of the instruments, how certain sections of the orchestra have come into tune, how all the pulses reflecting each section of the orchestra communicate with one another.  And because the pulses are made of qi, when the pulses are harmonious, the qi is harmonious (and vice versa). The symphony is playing at its best.  Even when there is a hiccup in one section, because the orchestra as a whole is strong, it tends to recover quickly.

In this medicine we are interested in how the entire symphony sounds.  Some forms of modern medicine focus mainly on one organ, or one body system.  In Chinese medicine we are concerned with how the whole symphony sounds.  The string section (let’s say it’s digestion in this metaphor) may sound beautiful on its own, but put it with the wind section (which as the respiratory system also sounds pretty good), together for some reason they sound a bit, well, off.  The beauty of Chinese medicine is that with acupuncture needles or herbs we support the wind and the string sections to help them communicate, help them follow the conductor, help them create harmonious music together.

If you think about an orchestra that sounds more like an elementary school band, the solution is rarely to just add a few talented musicians.  A better solution would be to identify some folks who have been proven to be able to help struggling musicians improve their craft, as well as some folks to help the different sections of the orchestra to work better together.  These folks are the herbs.  Each herb has a personality, a particular resonance, and qualities that make it suitable for certain tasks.  As an herbalist, it is my job to put together a team of herbs that resonate in such a way that will create the conditions for a particular patient’s orchestra to play at its optimum level.  It is extremely rare in Chinese medicine to prescribe only one herb to a person.  Instead, we look to create a blend of herbs so their particular personalities (or energetic resonances if this makes more sense to you) can interact with each other in a way that strengthens and harmonizes a particular person’s orchestra.  And because I am dealing with dehydrated herbs (also called raw herbs) rather than prepackaged pills, I tweak the blend to fit your unique needs.  This means that two patients experiencing the same symptom of acid reflux will not have the same herbal prescription. 

So back to the original question:  How do Chinese herbs work?  The answer will likely evolve throughout my study and practice of herbs.  After all, the Chinese have been using herbs for thousands of years and throughout this time herbal strategies and philosophies have always continued to change and evolve.  But the simple answer may be something along these lines:  Chinese herbs have a resonance that, when blended in a particular manner for a particular person, brings about harmony on the levels of mind, body, and spirit.  Chinese herbs are not about curing or fixing a person; they are about creating the conditions for this person to heal from the inside out.

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