• 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!

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

During the past couple years, a few friends suggested I join another in a long line of local groups aimed at gathering “like-minded people” to provide mutual support and focus attempts toward social change, either local and global. Often the groups I’ve gravitated toward have gathered around healing work or sustainability and green politics; in this case it seems to focus equally on both. Yet, I’m generally much more interested in my own philosophical and clinical investigations of Chinese medicine than I am in group process, so I continued in blissful ignorance of the progress of:

FoCuS — Foothill Collaborative for Sustainability

Yet, about a month ago Sheila Gradison asked me to participate in an Educational Symposium on March 19, 2010. I went to my first meeting about that event on Wed. (12/2), and found engaged and interesting people involved in various aspects of the “holistic health” field. We had a discussion about the topics each of us would like to address during that brief symposium, which touched on the topic of quantum physics (of all things!). I’m reminded that group process has its virtues, including stimulating clarification. After many years of reflecting on my work, that meeting stimulated me to write a few pages of comments on the foundations of Chinese medicine, which even leads many enthusiasts to invoke the results of experiments in quantum physics! My interest in this topic dates back to the beginning of my interest in Chinese medicine; I’m curious to see how others will connect with those ideas.

While quantum physics can be a valuable topic for holistic health practitioners who are attempting to engage (particularly “scientific”) members of the public, I believe it is ultimately a distraction. It can help pry open the minds of people set in their allegiance to mechanistic conceptual models of reality, but it also tends to invite people to enroll in it as the “right” conceptual model that explains how things work. People want so badly to feel in control of their world…

I believe the key point that most holistic health practitioners are trying to make in referring to quantum physics is that mechanistic “scientific” models do not provide the ultimate explanation of the world — that the world, especially the human world,  is much more complex and magical than most imagine. Some people believe quantum physics suggests that there is a consciousness expressed through the “physical” universe. Indeed, they’ve given one type of quark (subatomic particles) a suggestive name like “charm.” While such speculations may amuse us, why do we seek support for the idea that consciousness be included in our descriptions of individual human life from the outset?

Each individual is an embodied spirit. The first task of that embodied spirit is to survive in this world of constant polar interactions. The highest healing work facilitates that process, rather than controlling the expression of distress when there is something awry. We need to study that, and how to support it in disentangling from its blockages and stagnation. Natural medicine is far more (and less!) than the use of naturally occurring products. It is the process of facilitating an individual’s return to his or her own nature — to optimize it’s ability to live.

1. I went to San Diego twice in November; the second was to teach a newly conceived one day seminar introducing the five sets of acupuncture channels. It was a big success, and I want to thank Justin Ehrlich and Carrie Denaro for their wonderful help in organizing and marketing the seminar, and the upcoming four weekend series on the channel systems in San Diego. I also want to thank all the practitioners and students of Chinese medicine who came out to listen to some of my ideas about Neijing (Inner Classic) style acupuncture, question both my ideas and their own experience and understanding, and evolve their thinking about Chinese medicine. My heart was warmed by your enthusiastic response to my work to restore the vitality to acupuncture, and look forward to seeing many of you in a couple months when we start the series.
2. I’ve made initial contacts with a medical illustrator and a publisher about several book projects I’m in the process of developing in conjunction with the seminars I’m currently writing, and the ones I’ve already taught. Those early contacts have been very fruitful, and have taken a lot of time and focus.
3. Cindy Micleu and I have finalized plans for a new full weekend version of my seminar introducing the Waike (External Medicine) Specialty of Chinese herbal medicine. It will be held next October in Seattle.
4. Also finalized plans with Golden Flower Chinese Herbs for their sponsoring the four weekend series on the five systems of channels in the San Francisco Bay Area starting in Sept. 2010 and in Albuquerque early in 2011.
5. I’ve gotten involve in a Health & Wellness Educational Symposium to be held March 19, 2010 in Murphys – near my home in Sonora. While I hadn’t been much involved with the local community since closing the Healing Center of the Sierra several years ago, I’ve been inspired by the planning meeting I attended.
6. Oh, and by the way, I also got a new roof on my house. The noise…

So, please don’t draw any unwarranted conclusions from my absence from blogging for a few weeks. Thank you for sharing links with friends and associates who might be interested in the healing possibilities of CCM. The site continues to grow and evolve. There is now a list of classes and seminars scheduled around the country in the upper right corner of each page, and the blog is coming back to life…

the ancient Daoists may have been whitewater boatmen.

They were, after all, the first to counsel “going with the flow.” Indeed, the river teaches very clearly that trying to fight the flow brings only struggle and ultimately failure. Running the river also teaches us that if we pay very careful attention to choose when and where to exert our efforts, we can avoid getting hung up on the rocks. The boatmen all did a great job, allowing me to cogitate that insight within the safety of the boat. It is equally true concerning life (and the Dao), as it is relative to the river.

I’ve returned home for a few days of office hours, then I’m off to San Diego tomorrow for the Pacific Symposium — an annual meeting of practitioners of acupuncture and Chinese medicine. Look for me there, and ask about the one-day “Introduction to the Channels and Vessels” seminar we’re planning for San Diego on Nov. 22.

I’m committed to sharing the wealth of classical Chinese medicine, which I’ve been able to learn through the generous teachings of Jeffrey Yuen. Yet, Jeffrey doesn’t make it easy – The sage is not humane (Dao De Jing, verse 5). Or, in contemporary vernacular – it’s cruel to be kind! Jeffrey is inspired in his teaching, though he’s also assiduously “low key” about the value of his teachings. His teaching style expresses to me that the key to realizing the wealth of Chinese medicine lay in learning to “sort out” the subtle and dynamic factors that guide each patient’s life, and thus discern accurate and inspired treatment strategies.

Patients present their practitioners with lessons and complexities, which certainly don’t come emblazoned on their foreheads. Practitioners are challenged to identify the specific nature and location of pathogenic factors, and differentiate them from the embodied spirit’s intrinsic responses to sustain life. Modern TCM teaches us to classify the manifestations of a patient’s distress, but provides little guidance for unwinding that individual’s entanglement in habituated dysfunction. We’ve been taught to simply treat whatever imbalances the patient manifests. However…

Symptoms and signs express the embodied spirit’s struggle to maintain life in the face of “pathogenic factors” that challenge it.

They exhibit the combined influences of pathogenic factors and the embodied spirit’s reaction it them! I’ve found that the best therapies focus on resolving pathogenic factors, without compromising the individual’s vitality. Indeed, they often stimulate and facilitate the embodied spirit’s intrinsic responsiveness to allow it to function more freely. Can one teach others the inspiration to sort out the entangled nature of a patient’s symptoms and signs, and the willingness to trust the embodied spirit in its sometimes violent efforts to expel factors that have been blocking its healing? Probably not, but Jeffrey and I reach out to participants in our seminars and try…

Try what? In the end, we each have to come from our strengths. Jeffrey has nearly boundless experience, learning through direct contact since he was a toddler from masters who embodied strong currents of classical Chinese medicine. I’ll never match the depth and variety of that experience, but I do have one experience that may be valuable to practitioners and students who want to learn from his enigmatic teachings. I’ve had the experience of having to figure out the mysteries of classical Chinese medicine as an adult. While Jeffrey shares the dynamic and responsive world he sees and challenges his students to awaken to that reality, my seminars provide a little more step-by-step guidance, as I:

• share my thinking process, and how it’s inspired by specific images and theories of CCM
• engage participants to entertain the CCM (especially the Neijing – Inner Classic) thinking process
• describe how I work through the evaluation of a patient to devise a treatment strategy

I provide lecture notes, because I want participants to engage the ideas and thinking process of classical Chinese medicine while I’m presenting them rather than trying to scribble down a lot of unfamiliar theory and information. I invite questions, because I know the challenge of working through the systematic limitations of modern TCM. I’ve written essays to give perspective participants (and others) the chance to read and “chew on” the perspective of classical Chinese medicine that I’ve learned and cultivated — before they come to a seminar. After attending a seminar, participants will be invited to participate in an online discussion to help them implement those teachings.

Check out the new link in the upper right corner of every page — Scheduled Classes. I’m currently talking with three seminar sponsors, including Golden Flower Chinese Herbs — gracious sponsors of my seminars for the past two years, and hope to have more links there soon!

Yet, Matt and I were going in different directions. He was pretty cynical about many of his local colleagues, and how they used (and mis-used!) the very expensive technology at the core of his specialty. I learned a lot from him about both the strengths and limitations of medical imaging as part of my specialized training in “acupuncture orthopedics,” and I was searching for an entirely different conceptual framework for practicing health care. We drifted apart as the stresses of our respective lives consumed our attention, even though our souls knew we were “brothers” in our quest to improve American health care.

The focus of Matt’s rapier wit has shifted from local to global. He now believes there are severe systemic flaws in American health care, and declares that only a complete transformation of financial incentives can repair the system. Matt shared his perception that:

The current fee-for-service health care system renders patients into fodder to generate fees (and hence INCOME) for providers

Matt strongly expressed his conviction that our health care system can only be repaired by adopting a national program like the one in Great Britain. His twenty-five years practicing medicine has convinced him that the health care system must be designed with patient welfare at its center! I heartily agree with that perception.

While I may identify different specifics and remedies, Matt and I agree on many aspects of our societal challenges with health. I concur that our health care system suffers because of some very warped incentives, and believe lasting effective remedies must address them. Twenty years ago the “money people” devised “managed care,” which was supposed to squeeze the inefficiencies out of our health care system. Yet, that industry now soaks up more than 17% of GNP, and our health outcomes are poor relative to other industrialized nations, especially when measuring health span. Maybe we can start with several principles:

1. We must find ways to put patients back at the center of health care, especially identifying specific life changes they can cultivate to promote healing
2. We must line up incentives throughout the entire economy to support health
3. Modern (western) medicine doesn’t have a monopoly on wisdom about health — a free marketplace of ideas will optimize our solutions

We can find solutions for our health care crisis!

I told Matt about my blogging concerning health care policy; he shared his small website to spread his philosophy. I suppose he got disheartened or busy with other things, because he hasn’t continued writing new pieces for that site. Matt seemed inspired by the idea of blogging, and I hope he gets invigorated to share his experience and insights about our profound societal health care challenges. While our voices and messages are rather different, I believe that a mélange of caring and concerned health care practitioners will identify the important principles for resolving our health care challenges.

Sometimes, the darnedest things happen at the supermarket!

Do you want to participate in the disease management industry or the art of healing?

Has the idealism to help others, which continues to inspire many young people to enter the health care fields, been overwhelmed by the “scientific” doctrines students must learn and later the practical challenges of making a living? While that idealism appears well beaten-down in most, I believe it continues to smolder in the hearts of many. Can we gently fan those embers with the knowledge that the healing potential of the embodied spirit dwarfs the efforts of scientific medicine to control the expression of pathology?

Modern medicine relies on fear.

Allopathic medicine portrays patients’ bodies as “broken” — in need of permanent physical repair through surgery or ongoing physiological control with pharmaceuticals. Yet, embodied spirits that exhibit various diseases aren’t broken; they’re simply congested with stagnation, which blocks the natural flow of vital function. The symptoms and signs of disease are a cry for help; they are the embodied spirit’s gesture to express the nature and extent of its distress.

While western medicine sets the tone for our health care system, most proponents of “natural” medicine conform to its passive care model. And why not? — it makes SO MUCH SENSE economically. What could be better than selling people on the need to take a certain supplement for the rest of their lives, or come for three treatments per week for the next six months? Excuse me while I price a new BMW.

Practicing Health Care is a Sacred Trust.

People come to health care practitioners with their pains and their fears. I believe our work challenges us to discern the sources of each individual’s suffering, and find ways to stimulate the transformations of healing. Often that takes more time initially than simply controlling the manifestations of distress, but careful work to discriminate an individual’s blocks to healing can pay substantial dividends. The financial value for both individuals and our society of empowering patients to resolve their ailments is enormous. The non-financial value is even greater!

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy (or modern science!).

Relative to human health, there are the awesome mysteries and magic of the embodied spirit. Yet, where there is awesome power, many experience fear. How will people respond to my lancing – like a picador – the “sacred cow” of modern medical science? Many people place their faith in the truths of science as profoundly as many generations of our ancestors invested theirs in religion. Fundamental challenges to the authority of socially dominant paradigms have not been welcomed — ask Galileo or Socrates! Yet, the growth of human knowledge depend on such challenges.

The conceptual power of modern scientific thought is exactly what renders it incomplete for the study of human health and disease. The wondrous conceptual frameworks of modern science enhance our investigations of those aspects of human life that exhibit uniform physical laws, yet they fail to help us facilitate the individual potential to heal. The predictive power of modern science belies the individual possibilities of the embodied spirit. Can we learn to enhance the magic of individual healing? The modern consumption-based approach to health care doesn’t account for this basic truth:

Health and healing emerge from individuals who live in alignment with their beings; they are NOT consumer goods that can be procured from the outside.

We can’t control healing, but we can learn to stimulate and facilitate it. Are modern people willing to hear the basic truth that we can’t externally control such a fundamental aspect of human life as our health? Modern medical technologies leap forward in their ability to control acute crises, but ailing patients remain subject to the natural progression of most diseases. Are we willing to return our faith to efforts focused on enhancing the embodied spirit’s healing process, rather than simply trying to control the expression of distress?

Each individual is a complex transducer between physical and spiritual “realities.” Physical and spiritual factors influence each other in myriad ways. The study of that relationship lay at the core of the classic text Lingshu (The Spiritual Pivot); the title refers to the deepest link between an individuated spirit and its physical embodiment. Lingshu and Suwen (Simple Questions) together comprise the fundamental Chinese medical classic Neijing (Inner Classic). My practice of Chinese medicine and the story of healing discussed on this site are primarily based on Neijing, as I’ve learned the key principles from Jeffrey Yuen.

I find the story inspired by my practice of classical Chinese medicine compelling, even when it differs dramatically from the more widely held scientific story about the “physical realities” of life. Yet, I’m also clear that it’s just my STORY.

From my classical Chinese perspective, modern (western) medicine focuses on:

• descriptions of the physical nature of disease
• the search for the proximal and precipitating cause
• dramatic rescues through (externally) controlling a “broken” body

In contrast, classical Chinese medicine focuses on:

• descriptions of the individual’s experience of disease
• the search for multiple contributing causes, both external and internal
• finding ways to stimulate and facilitate the embodied spirit to realize its natural potential to heal

The CCM Story, based on the Neijing (Inner Classic), Consists of a Few Key Principles:

• The apparent decline of aging is due to accumulations that block the free expression of an individual’s vitality.
• Those accumulations primarily consist of external and internal pathogenic factors, which have been suspended and stored in the body:
  • External pathogenic factors arise from the individual’s failure to adapt and effectively respond to changes presented by the environment. Neijing refers to this as “perverse wind.”
  • Internal pathogenic factors consist of the individual’s failure to resolve emotional conflicts.
• Unresolved pathogenic factors stagnate, and thereby impede the free flow of vital physiological function (qi) and blood.
• When the embodied spirit is no longer willing or able to suspend unresolved pathogenic factors, they are overtly expressed in symptoms or signs of disease.
• True healing comes from the inside, and is available to ANYONE (regardless of disease manifestation) who resolves previously suspended pathogenic factors. That resolution generally involves both transformation and release or expulsion of previously accumulated pathogenic factors.
• Suppressing or controlling the embodied spirit’s expression of distress doesn’t facilitate healing; those efforts simply displace distress from one place to another.

Which story is true and which is a fairy tale, intended to keep one’s inner child from being frightened in the middle of the night? Who among us knows for sure? While we’re discerning the truth among these stories, I’ll keep sharing mine on this site — its different and hopeful, by asking individuals to take responsibility (physiologically) for their lives. I believe that a free exchange of ideas will help us find truth.