Tag Archives: progressive/degenerative disease

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” [...]
Posted in Scientific Medicine | Also tagged , | Leave a comment

The Archeology of Disease

By Steve | Published: November 5, 2009
People develop progressive and degenerative diseases from stagnations that accumulate within the embodied spirit. We can tolerate those accumulations for some time, but eventually they impede or obstruct “normal” physiological process. Each embodied spirit is provided with an amazingly effective collection of “storage reservoirs” that allow them to adapt and adjust to pathogenic stagnations. (Technically, [...]
Posted in Personal Health, The Philosopher's Stone | Also tagged , , | Leave a comment

Is it a Fairy Tale?

By Steve | Published: September 8, 2009
The conceptual model of physical “reality” articulated by modern scientific medicine is powerful and compelling. It appeals to our naïve experience of living in, and learning to manipulate, a mechanistic physical world that submits to our control according to fixed “laws of nature.” The ideas of scientific medicine are deeply satisfying to many, especially relative [...]
Posted in Personal, Personal Health, The Philosopher's Stone | Also tagged , | 1 Comment

When is a “Cold” not Just a Cold?

By Steve | Published: September 6, 2009
Ms. C. is a thirty-seven year old woman, who called me about four months ago seeking relief from persistent pain and dysfunction of her right hand, which made her work difficult. She came for an appointment, and reported having received treatment for neck pain and nerve root impingement causing pain and dysfunction of the arm [...]
Posted in Stories of Healing | Also tagged | Leave a comment

Indicator Symptoms: A Patient’s Best Friend

By Steve | Published: September 3, 2009
Don’t Shoot the Messenger Symptoms are the embodied spirit’s gesture to communicate its distress. They are intended to get the individual to focus his or her conscious awareness toward discerning the nature and causes of that distress. Though symptoms seem to be afflictions (to the personality), they are NOT themselves the problem. They are only [...]
Posted in Personal Health, The Philosopher's Stone | Also tagged | 1 Comment

Are they Divergent Channels or Channel Divergences?

By Steve | Published: September 1, 2009
I say potāto and you say potäto… Does any of it really matter? I talked with Andy Ellis a few days ago, who brought to me the question posed in the title of this posting. He mentioned that according to Chinese syntax and usage, the translated name should be “channel divergences,” rather than the commonly [...]
Posted in Channel Divergences and Distinctions | Also tagged , | 2 Comments

  • 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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