Wonders Never Cease!

By Steve | Published: December 15, 2011

Many chapters of Yijing, the famous Classic of Changes, invoke individuals to persist. “Perseverance furthers,” the classic reads, and indeed the constantly evolving nature of the universe brings (nearly) all things forward at some point. My key questions seem to be:

  • How to draw attention to ideas that had long been hidden and are now widely ignored?
  • How to stimulate this process of unpopular ideas coming forward?
  • How to stimulate people to pay attention to some ideas that challenge dominant theory and practice of Chinese medicine?
  • How to shift the discussion about Chinese medicine away from information and back to personal cultivation of insight?
  • How to facilitate discussion of philosophy and contemplation as valued methodologies for refining one’s knowledge of Chinese medicine?

Often, it seems some random circumstance, event, or action by another person impacts my path, and I continue following my inclinations. So, here are a new opportunity to share the amazing world of classical Chinese medicine, and a new focus that fills out my work:

I’m pleased to share that Five Branches University has decided to partner with me to provide a weekend introduction to classical acupuncture. The whole story leading up to this weekend offering is surely much to long to share, but I can say there is a big difference between barely being tolerated and being embraced. Thank you, Alexandra Polk, for being inspired to support my efforts to enrich the acupuncture profession with my commitment to deepen our understanding of this healing  practice. I’ve written many essays during the past several years that have helped me develop my unique understanding of CM, and have selected a few that seem the best preparation for participants in those seminars on my Introduction to the Channels and Vessels page. Or, simply peruse the archive of my essays.

Perhaps as strange, at least to me, is the newest focus of my overarching project to articulate the classical wisdom of Chinese medicine for contemporary people. I’m starting to do my own renditions of excerpts of Huangdi Neijing (黃 帝 內 經), the fundamental Yellow Thearch’s Classic of Internal (Medicine), into English. I hope to blog more soon on both the challenges of translating the ancient Chinese medical texts of Suwen (素 問) and Lingshu (靈 樞), and especially some of the interesting things I’m finding. It has indeed been a revelation. My work to understand Neijing has its roots in my many years of working with the oral lineage of Jeffrey Yuen; my interpretations of the text began many years ago with some relatively superficial issues I found in many translations, such as including the work “organ” when the text mentions either the 五藏 (five zang) or 六腑 (six fu). This was only one example of a systematic “static” or “physical” bias I’ve found embedded within most modern interpretations of Chinese medicine. While I could discount such distortions in my own mind, and continue my practical work with acupuncture as inspired by my studies with Jeffrey, I had no idea how rich the original Chinese of these classic texts could be. I’m learning now!

A Luddite Praises Computer Technology

I’m slow, but I’m not (completely) stupid. Twenty years ago I started studying the symbolic nature of Chinese written language. The was a nice text of the etymology of Chinese characters that had been translated early in the 20th century by Weiger that I started using. I learned a lot from that process, but it was slow and cumbersome. I decided to focus more attention on studying and working with the clinical practice of acupuncture and Chinese medicine, rather than devoting the amount of time needed to learn classical Chinese. Hail, the rise of software — in this case the excellent work called “Wenlin,” by scholars at the University of Hawaii. Their software  transforms an exceedingly cumbersome process into an eminently manageable project.

I’m starting with about a hundred pages of key excerpts gathered and translated by Dr. Neal for his 6-weekend series on Neijing Acupuncture. Excerpt by excerpt, they are like little morsels of classical wisdom, wrapped in a puzzle. I’m discovering that my revisions of Dr. Neal’s translations fall into two main groups, progressing from changes in voice (mine are more active) to substantive changes in the content of Neijing theory I understand being discussed in various excerpts. Everywhere I look in these classics, I find language suggestive of my lineage’s key interpretations. So, raise a cheer for computer technology! I hardly believe I’m writing this, yet this software is clearly helping me uncover the wisdom of 2100 year old Chinese medicine classics. Wonders never cease!

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IVAS Rocks!

By Steve | Published: December 3, 2011

Thank you all for a wonderful 37th annual conference!

A special thank you to Vikki Weber, executive director of IVAS (International Veterinary Acupuncture Society). It appears that I’ve finally been discovered for my unique contributions to the field of Chinese medicine. Is it strange that these enthusiastic doctors are Veterinarians, and that I’ve never treated a non-human animal? I thought so, and so did my sister-in-law! What do I know about treating canines, felines, equine, or other non-human patients? Very little, yet I was asked to give two four-hour Keynote presentations at the IVAS annual conference in San Diego in September. Why, you may ask?

Well… the local reason is that Vikki read an essay published by Golden Flower Chinese Herbs, who have sponsored my CEU classes for several years. That particular essay introduced the five systems of channels and vessels, and was re-published on this site. It discusses what I used to refer to as “the five systems of channels and  vessels,” and now call “channel complexes,” technically 經 絡 (jingluo). These jingluo provide a conceptual framework that differs from the much simpler modern clinical doctrine of zangfu (viscera and bowels) and primary channels. These channel complexes provide both theoretical and practical advantages, compared to the “standard” doctrine, and Vikki was willing to invite me as an honored guest to the IVAS conference, so her members could learn more about my thinking on Chinese medicine. Filled with enthusiasm about her invitation, I proposed another idea in addition to reworking that essay into a presentation. When I received the contract to officially secure this opportunity, I learned that I’d have to submit essays of at least 6,000 words for each topic. GULP! Well, of course, I ‘bit the bullet’ and committed to writing those essays. It was a great process, and a lot of work!

The larger reason may be that many Veterinary acupuncturist are very cool people, who have “gone to the mountain, scaled it, and seen it’s limitations.”  They’ve all been trained in (western) medicine, yet they also recognize certain systematic weaknesses of that worldview and thinking process for health care. I knew I was among “my people” after I mentioned as back ground my education before I went to acupuncture school. I told them that I’d been in a PhD program at UC Berkeley for two years, where I studied how (western) science prejudices its understanding of the world based on how it asks questions and what it takes as evidence; there was a smattering of applause and a couple hoots. Imagine! They wanted to learn about the ‘weird’ worldview I’ve cultivated during nearly two decades of learning and practicing the Neijing-style of medicine as taught by Jeffrey Yuen.

So, find an acupuncturist for your pets, and you’ll find a doctor who is working to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both western and Chinese medicine. Actually, IVAS is even somewhat broader than that, as many of its members have interests in other approaches, such as osteopathy, Ayurveda, etc. What could be better?

Yeh, so why the delay in posting this blog piece?

It’s a funny thing about the internet — once we publish something, it’s PUBLISHED. I admit, I really don’t know how to think about this opportunity. Will people download a big essay, and engage me about the ideas discussed? Will they respect my attempt to discuss challenging ideas, or simply pick at my choice of language to my target my ideas as “not Chinese,” because they’re not discussed in the TCM they learned. Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of flack for “embodied spirit,” though it’s my translation for 精 神 (jingshen), which is used extensively in Neijing. So, my ideas differ from the currently dominant doctrine. Are we going to be slaves to the historical forces that created the contemporary doctrine, assuming that newer must be better, or seek theory that is more coherent and incisive?

I’ve devoted many hundreds of hours to writing those papers, during seven months of very hard work — on top of my practice and teaching schedule early this year. They represent one attempt to discuss what I’ve learned over many years.  Am I likely to benefit by giving away that work, or am I simply forsaking the opportunity to publish those essay in some “better” venue? What is a better venue? How democratic has information become? How willing are individuals to evaluate information for themselves? For some odd reason, it didn’t make a lot of sense (to me) to post an announcement of that great event, without posting links to the papers I presented. Perhaps that’s really stupid, but it led me to on it. Instead, I focused my attention toward my primary interest, seeking  to articulate the wondrous world of classical Chinese medicine. I still don’t know the right answer to the question of how best to use this opportunity to publish my work, but I’ve decided to try something different. I’d REALLY like to hear thoughtful comments or questions from people who read these essays. Anyone interested in an Introduction to this approach to acupuncture?

Keynote Papers for the IVAS Conference (2011):

Living Systems of Acupuncture Channels

The World of Dao: Movement in Chinese Medicine

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Hail ISSCA!

By Steve | Published: September 15, 2011

Scholar’s Retreat a Huge Success!

During the past few months, I’ve grown increasingly involved with the International Society for the Study of Classical Acupuncture (ISSCA); we’ve recently had our second annual “Scholar’s Retreat” in Trout Lake, WA (near Portland, OR). It was a relatively small conference, as such gathers go, yet we had many fine presentations; and the four day gathering within the inspirational environment of Trout Lake Abbey was filled with opportunities for informal discussion and learning. I presented a paper just after lunch of the first day on the transmission of classical medical teachings, based on the biographical sketch of Chunyu Yi from the Western (Early) Han Dynasty. Then, late in the afternoon of the fourth day, I did a clinical demonstration with a patient of one of the young practitioners attending the retreat, who lives and works near Trout Lake. That was an interesting experience, in part because I decided that “when in Rome” (in this case, among Neijing practitioners), I would do “as the Romans do” — us larger diameter needles. In short, I’d learned that what I’d learned to do with mostly 36 and 34 gauge needles is MUCH more powerful with 28-32 gauge needles (as the number gets lower, the diameter is bigger).

ISSCA originally grew from a group of Dr. Ed Neal’s students in Portland, OR. He is a medical doctor who grew interested in acupuncture many years ago, and went to Italy to study with an Italian doctor who had learned from a pre-TCM acupuncturist who often referred to Neijing. During the early nineties, Ed had some health challenges that prevented him from doing very much other than working on translating the texts of Neijing. Dr. Neal has been working with direct translation of Neijing for approximately the same amount of time I’ve been studying with Jeffrey, and he has learned much of interest and value from those efforts. I’ve taken his introductory series on Neijing acupuncture, which explores some of the classic’s key language and concepts; some of his work has helped me understand a larger linguistic and  conceptual foundation for Jeffrey Yuen’s teachings. Dr. Neal’s series on “Neijing Acupuncture” provides an excellent introduction to many aspects of classical acupuncture, which differ from contemporary training in modern TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine).

The entire retreat was a wonderful experience, and next week I’ll be meeting with several ISSCA members in Portland, OR to discuss plans for my series on the channel systems to start there during the coming months. My early experience indicates that ISSCA is fertile ground for cross-fertilization, at least for me. I believe we can all learn a lot from each other — me from their scholarship of the texts of Neijing, and Dr. Neal and his students from my work learning ‘my’ oral lineage. While it has taken Dr. Neal a little time to accept the value of my work with my/Jeffrey’s lineage, my presentation at the 2nd annual ISSCA conference last month seems to have won him over. He was the first to ‘sign up’ for my series in Portland, when I saw him briefly a week after our retreat. I was in Portland to pick up my car, after flying back from being co-Keynote Speaker at the 37th Annual Conference of the International Veterinary Acupuncture Society (IVAS), but that’s another story. Stay tuned!

I’m starting to feel “at home” with a group of Chinese medicine practitioners and students, and am consequently growing increasingly involved with ISSCA. Watch for upcoming classes, and other events.

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Exploring the Channels

By Steve | Published: March 11, 2011

Well, if I still have any readers, I’m back! It’s been a long time, and all I have is crummy excuses. I went to Portland, OR last summer for the first annual conference of the International Society for the Study of Classical Acupuncture. I enjoyed the communion with other Chinese medicine  practitioners who are trying to reach beyond the narrow bounds of modern doctrine to explore and learn from the classic texts at the roots of this great healing art and science. One thing I learned is that studying the text alone does not lead many to prioritize the five systems of channels and vessels, as I have learned from the oral lineage of interpretation of Jeffrey Yuen. I wrote an essay that discusses both the foundations and basic functions of those five system called, “Exploring the Channels.”

Enjoy it, and share your thoughts below…

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Will We Get True Health Care Reform?

By Steve | Published: March 21, 2010

After more than a year of discussions and widespread contention, we appear on the cusp of health insurance reform. Our society may benefit from such reforms, or as others fear, they may undermine the virtues of our current health care system and damage our economy. Interesting and compelling as that debate may appear, it is really a side-show. The changes introduced by pending legislation remain a long way from actual health care reform. Health care relies on actual caring, yet for all the resources our society devotes to maintaining our diseases, we show remarkably little caring for our embodied spirits in the process. The symptoms and signs of disease are the embodied spirit’s attempt to communicate its distress.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger!

While individuals don’t like experiencing the symptoms of disease, they are useful for helping us understand what the embodied spirit needs, and sometimes they specifically express the embodied spirit’s attempt to correct its dysfunction. We honor the needs of our embodied spirits in sustaining life when we listen to those symptoms and signs, and use what we learn to make needed changes. Our contemporary ethos seeks control of the uncomfortable expressions of disease, rather than sorting out and disentangling its individual causes.

Each individually embodied spirit has intrinsic capabilities to maintain his or her life. We promote healing when we facilitate and support those intrinsic capabilities, rather than when we seek to control and minimize the embodied spirit’s expression of distress. Yet, when we can begin to stimulate (substantive) changes in the patient’s qi (vital process) that had been “stuck,” the symptoms generally go away because the embodied spirit doesn’t need to keep screaming for help when it’s key struggles are being addressed. Are we willing to listen to our embodied spirits and make choices based on what it needs? When we’re tired, are we willing to rest? And if we can’t rest well, do we sort out why not, or do we simply attempt to impose sleep through the use of drugs? Can we accurately:

  • perceive thirst and do we drink water to quench it?

We all need water — anything more is a delivery system for other nutrients; for many “beverages” that people drink, one needs to use substantial portions of their water content to process the nutrients within them alone, so where is the water needed to process fully the other things one eats?

  • distinguish between physical and emotional hunger, and nurture each appropriately?

What food choices do people make when they engage “emotional eating,” and what becomes of the “foods and drink” that one ingests at that time?

  • differentiate what foods actually nourish our lives, and eat those rather than products that may be easier or more convenient (in the short term)?

Where are the freshly cooked foods in many people’s diets? Where are the vegetables?

These are some of the embodied spirit’s most fundamental needs for promoting (preserving or restoring) good health. Are we willing to honor them, or are we slaves to the sometimes unreasonable desires of our personalities? In the end, we have the health care system that we have tacitly requested over the years, because as a society we’ve allowed both our food and health industries to fulfill their economic “needs,” rather than the physiological and spiritual needs of the individuals in our society.

Sometimes individuals need interventions beyond simply reforming their lifestyle habits. Yet, when we seek care for our diseases, do we recognize the need for changes in our lifestyle choices, or do we simply want therapies that allow us to continue living as we did in developing those diseases? I believe we can only conquer our health care challenges, when we are willing to take responsibility for supporting our lives, rather than using our lives to support our personalities.

Health is an opportunity that each individual can choose, when they’re willing to honor its demands, rather than a consumer good that can be purchased — regardless of the price one is willing to pay.

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Liberating Wei Qi Can Be Volatile!

By Steve | Published: February 11, 2010

The following was sent to my email, and Caryn gave permission to post it to this blog:

Steve – after we needled using the chiseling method spiked a fever and got body aches. My partner did a point on the San Jiao. I thought is was just me, but I needled a patient yesteday, ah shi at around SJ 12 and needled the ting well – she called this morning and had the same symptoms, sweat, severe pain, like the flu. What should I have done to protect her from that response, or is that normal and the wei qi is just adjusting? I hope this question makes sense. Caryn White PS – had to leave early Sunday because of fever and body aches, I just thought I was coming down with something.

This is an excellent question, because things don’t “just happen,” but occur for reasons. In this series, we are working to look more deeply into the movements and functions of qi, and this is an interesting somatic expression. However, I’d like to try to lead whoever follows this thread through the thinking process, rather than just giving an answer. Chiseling the ashi and jing-well points specifically activates wei qi to release/expel wind. Of course, wei qi is a post-natal expression of yang, and when yang is impeded from flowing smoothly through the embodied spirit, it generates (“pathological”) heat, as in fever. Is that enough to get you, Caryn, and others started? If not, I’ll expand on it.

BTW, there are two parts to the answer to this question: one would be exhibited in any channel, and one is specific to the shaoyang channels (each slightly differently). Think about the function of sanjiao; I’m trying to open this up to the group.

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It’s Great Having Acupuncture Students in the Series

By Steve | Published: February 9, 2010

… because students are SO studious, and want to be clear on the info. I think it was Sesame who showed me an illustration of the L.I. sinew channel that connected all the way to the upper thoracic spine. My comment at the time was that I use it all the way to the medial margin of the scapula, but was not really connecting it to the spine. A more complete answer is that it flows over the areas that either activate or restrict the yangming movement of the arm –  medial flexion over the chest with the arm extended. I’m now seeing that it can go further medial, but it does not connect directly to Dumai.

We plan and the Supreme Being Laughs

I realized shortly after the sinew release demo that I have to keep my hands on the demo model, just as I would with a patient. That’s what I get for using my hands to gesture when I present ideas. And, I’m not even Italian! Well, even my Jewish heritage has a fair amount of talking with one’s hands, so I guess I come by it honestly, so I’ll have to pay particular attention during clinical demos. It may work during the lecture, but definitely doesn’t while demonstrating those releases. Yet, it appeared that most of you were able to successfully use those sinew releases.

Some people (possibly including Desiree) will need channel divergence treatment rather than sinew treatments. Work with the sinews for now — both with the releases and needling approach we discussed, and see what you can do with them. That will prepare you well for the class on channel divergences in just less than three months!

I’m also glad Justin and Carrie encouraged me to do an actual demonstration of “chiseling” needle technique, rather than just explaining it and modeling the movement. I’d been a little concerned in the environment of the class it might be hard for demo models to feel the propagation of wei qi. So much for my thoughts… Practice that needling technique, and we’ll get into others in coming weekends. However, I must warn you. I’m not particularly focused on needling techniques — part of any technique is for the physical sensation in the patient, and part of their value is in focusing the practitioner’s intention. I’ll talk more about that during the second weekend.

I’m ready to discuss — to help you work with the sinews. Who wants to start?

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San Diego Channel Series Begins

By Steve | Published: February 9, 2010

Wow!

Thank you all for coming, and contributing to the start of what I hope will be a great series! Enjoy working with the ideas we discussed, and post questions and comments relative to the Sunday seminar — the first day on the primary channels — after this posting. I’ll respond to some of them online through this blog, and others I’ll address next time we meet. We still have another day on the primary channels. Can you believe it? I’m hoping to learn some more names, so we’ll be able to have more “connected” communications in this forum.

I’m particularly interested in hearing ideas on how you believe this series will work best for you. I have a lot of ideas to discuss during the second day on the primary channels, and can certainly make some room for responding to your questions. Have a good time experimenting with “pulse feedback,” and using that process to better understand how to read the specific struggles of the embodied spirit.

Grace: I’m sorry I wasn’t able to complete the communication with you after reading your pulse. Staying completely present with that during breaks is a little challenging, as I have other things on your mind. I do have some thoughts (which I won’t share in this forum — probably with just the class, but not on the internet), and you may end up as a workshop “demonstration model” for the second weekend.

Desiree: It’s entirely possible that you could be a demo case for the third weekend.

I’m open to discussing. Who wants to start?

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The Cost of Scientific Medicine

By Steve | Published: January 8, 2010

Many patients faced with serious illnesses seek the assurance that their practitioners are using proven healing methods. Many practitioners also seek the security that the therapies they use have been proven by scientific research. Yet, few ask the question:

What is this proof that so many seek, and what are its limitations?

In modern “scientific” medicine, the nearly ubiquitous standard of proof uses the methodology of “randomized, controlled and double-blind” experiments. While each of these features of medical research serves a clear and understandable role, they also limit researchers to studying substances and procedures that act on the mechanisms of life, rather than those that work with the individual blocks of the embodied spirit. Such remedies can’t cure disease; they can only manage and control it. Yet, in our modern society’s urgency for the security of proof, we’ve played this semantic game with our lives and convinced ourselves only experiments that conform to that methodology are “scientific.”

Classical Chinese medicine is actually MORE scientific than modern so-called “scientific” medicine. I make that bold assertion based on its willingness to investigate the true nature of life, rather than reducing it to a mechanistic model of the individual as a very complicated biochemical machine. Yet, few seem to recognize the severe limitations of the physical model of modern western medicine, perhaps because they’re distracted by its empirical form and the impressive technologies that serve it. Though medical researchers have developed:

  • sophisticated knowledge of the physical expression of disease, modern science frequently over-simplifies the issue of causation.
  • many pharmaceutical therapies that control the expression of disease, there are few that promote resolution.

The simple fact is that medical research seeks to serve the personality rather than the embodied spirit.

The efficacy of most therapies is measured by their ability to temporarily control symptoms and clinical signs. Little progress can be made by modern medical science toward reversing conditions that are considered progressive and degenerative, because that would require practitioners to discriminate  individual challenges and process. Helping patients reverse most chronic diseases requires that one treat the individual rather than the disease. In addition to the massive financial toll of modern scientific medicine, it has another greater cost. The true cost of scientific medicine is that it limits our efforts to:

controlling the expression of pathology, rather than individually probing its resolution.

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Drowning in a Sea of Information

By Steve | Published: January 5, 2010

Contemporary practitioners and students of Chinese medicine face an enormous educational challenge, which has shifted somewhat over the past few decades. When I began my studies of Chinese medicine nearly three decades ago, it was difficult to find adequate information in English. Now there is A LOT of information available, and a quickly increasing number of translations of historical texts into English. One could easily read constantly for many years and barely scratch the surface.

Yet, I’ve always thought that emphasis on information suppresses insight. I think the problem with Chinese medicine at this point isn’t a lack of information, even info about the true nature of the modern version, but the lack of insight about how to practice it. Yet, so few people seem to get that we are drowning in a sea of information that practitioners are TAUGHT to STAGNATE in their minds. Such is the nature of modern TCM, which provides fixed interpretations of symptoms and signs as the MANIFESTATIONS of a dysfunction and disease, rather than learning to sort out the dynamic process of how each individual develops and embodies their health challenges.

Classical Chinese Medicine is a thinking process, rather than just a great collection of information

I believe that learning Chinese medicine should be the quest to master the process of differentiating. Classifying the manifestations of distress into patterns is only the beginning of diagnosis. We do our best diagnostic work when we look into the manifest distress to see how/why it is develops and is being perpetuated or sustained. When the person’s condition is chronic or degenerative, we ask ourselves what factors have accumulated and why. Learning that degree of differentiation can inform the practitioner  how to stimulate each individual to facilitate healing, rather than simply how to effectively control the expression of distress.

The wealth of wisdom in Chinese medicine is based on the practitioners ability to understand the embodied spirit as a responsive being focused on surviving and protecting itself. We must learn to “sort out” symptoms — to differentiate pathogenic factors from the embodied spirit’s response, and learn to support that intrinsic response without suppressing it. We have SO MUCH to learn about Chinese medicine in modern America, and almost all of it is based on first unlearning how we think we understand the nature of the world and the quest to engage it to facilitate healing.

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  • About Steven

    Steven Alpern, L.Ac., practices acupuncture and Chinese medicine as applied clinical philosophy. He is also a teacher, author and speaker. His efforts to discern the nature of individual health draw upon the classics of Chinese medicine and several historical traditions and specialties. Learn more...

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