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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