To Sleep Like A Baby

By

Travis Cunningham LAc. MSOM DICEAM

(The Elusive) Good Night Of Sleep

How long has it been since you’ve had a good night of sleep? Can you remember what it was like?

Do you remember falling asleep? Staying asleep? Or, how you woke up? Do you remember the dreams you had? Or, do you only remember the feeling of restfulness upon waking?

One of the most challenging things to consider when we contemplate sleep, is just how unconscious a good night of sleep can be. We require nothing to sleep well. All humans must sleep. But how much? And, to what quality? What is required and what is optimal? What does sleep do for us? And, how can sleep be corrected if it becomes problematic?

If we take the basic premise that sleeping well is a natural process, we encounter our first problem…

“If a good night of sleep happens unconsciously, how can we consciously change it?”

And thus, (the internet) spawns a million suggestions. Searches, studies, science - all seeking to answer the same basic questions.

One of my teachers used to say that “if we look at the disease, we will find one thousand medicines to treat it. But, if we look at health, we will find only one cure.” Before we can learn to treat a problem, we must first understand what it is like to have no problem. So, what is healthy sleep?

Defining Healthy Sleep

The first thing that one might notice in the analysis of healthy sleep is that sleep - all sleep, is a rhythm. Just like breathing, eating, urination, defecation, movement and rest, sleep is a rhythmic process. When a person generally sleeps well, one night of poorer sleep doesn’t bother them so much. When a person generally sleeps poorly, one night of good sleep doesn’t benefit them so much. Many people who have chronic insomnia will actually report that they feel worse, when they (rarely) get a full night of sleep. We can make sense of this fact with the simple understanding that sleep is rhythmic. And, the effect of a single “beat” of sleep, is not nearly as impactful as the timbre of a repeated rhythm.

When we compare sleep to other rhythms, like eating, we find that sleep is a longer rhythm. Sleep is longer; both in the time that it takes to engage in, and the time that it takes to influence as a habit. When we are younger, we can live with poor sleeping habits for a longer period of time without feeling the negative effects on our vitality. As we age, poor sleeping habits catch up with us more quickly and become much more difficult to correct once they are set. In the traditions of East Asia, this is explained by the concepts of Yin and Yang.

In youth, we are more Yang. We have access to more energy and are able to make changes in our lives more easily. As we age, we become more Yin. We become more stable, (hopefully) more grounded and wise, but with less capacity to quickly change and shift. It is advised that we establish good habits when we are youthful because it is easier to keep these habits as we get older. While I believe that any habit is changeable at any stage life, sleep is a rhythm that is easier to correct in our earlier years.

It is important to discuss the longer rhythmic nature of sleep right away because if we wish to change a longer rhythm, we must expect that it will take a longer period of time to shift than other activities. When I work with adults in the clinic for sleep, I tell them to expect that it will take a minimum of three months to shift the basic pattern and possibly longer if there is a standing history of insomnia. Good sleep takes time. It takes effort to create a positive sleeping habit, before good sleep can become effortless once again.

Sleep & Time

Sleep, just like any rhythmic process is inextricably connected to time. The connection to time has two aspects. First, we have the duration or amount of time a person is sleeping within a day or night. Second, we have the time during the 24 hour day that a person chooses to sleep. While at first, these two aspects of time seem to be separate topics, at a closer glance we will find that they overlap and influence each other.

In East Asian medicine, there is a keen interest in the efficiency and quality of nature. Ancient people observed that all creatures followed the circadian rhythms of day and night. Human beings tended to sleep during the night time and stay awake for most of the day. Humans generally followed the cycles of the Sun, and were more active when the Sun radiated its light from the sky.

As human beings evolved with the Sun’s cycles, our physiology “learned” to become more efficient when we follow them. We have naturally more energy to act during the day and more proficiency to restore ourselves through resting at night. In modern times, we can easily live outside of or contrary to these natural rhythms. But we inevitably pay the price through inefficient restoration and a challenged expression of vitality.

Many modern people may push against the idea that for optimal vitality, we must adhere to the circadian rhythm - resting and waking with the cycles of the Sun. These people may insist that they feel better staying up late at night, and waking in the late morning or early afternoon. I can honestly say that I have not (yet) seen a single person in clinical practice to make this claim who has not obviously damaged their health because of it. Sleep, as we saw before, is a longer rhythm. It is harder for most people to see the damaging effects of an inefficient sleep habit in the short term. But over the course of weeks, months and years, the deficit will show itself.

So what does a sleep deficit look like? For some people, it can simply mean that they require more hours of sleep to function normally than they might. The lack of efficiency in restoration means that the body needs more time to recover than it could otherwise. In traditional medicine, we think of a healthy sleeping habit to (generally) require between 6-8 hours of sleep within a 24 hour cycle. Most people trend closer to the 8 hour mark with what they need, then the 6 hour one. This need can also fluctuate with the seasons - trending a bit longer in the winter and a bit shorter in the summer.

Problem One: Needing More Sleep

If a person finds that they need more sleep than 8 or 8.5 hours to feel rested, it is a sign that their sleep is inefficient or in deficit. I’ve treated patients who claim to need 11 or even 12 hours of sleep per night to feel rested. This is a sign of a profound deficiency of vitality that the body is trying to rectify by sleeping more. In traditional medicine we would say that the body is having a difficulty storing its vitality. The need to sleep for this many hours obviously effects the person’s daily life. I’ve also noticed that a huge percentage of these patients struggle with depression. In these cases, there is good news. If we can help to restore their vitality, the person will generally need fewer hours of sleep and their depression will either lift or at least be less problematic for them.

In East Asian medicine, we see this pattern of sleep coincide with feelings of cold in the body, weak digestion and malaise or fatigue. We call this Yang deficiency with Yin sinking. The warm and active quality of Yang is deficient and unable to transform or utilize the nutritive substance of Yin. This Yin substance “sinks” in the digestive tract, causing looser stools and a general feeling of heaviness in the body. The remedy for this pattern is treatment which targets warming the Yang, making it strong enough to transform the Yin substance and lighten the body.

Problem Two: Being Unable To Sleep

The other possibility for inefficient sleep or sleep deficit, is that a person may be unable to sleep or unable to sleep deeply. These people generally learn to sleep for fewer hours than the 6-8 that is considered normal or healthy. They basically never sleep well or feel rested, but may report feeling worse when they (rarely) do get a decent night of sleep.

While this may appear different than the first type of problem, it is actually the same. Both problems come from inefficient sleep or a lack of restoration. In East Asian medical diagnosis, I find that most of these patients still qualify as Yang deficient. In these cases the Yang is not only deficient, but also floating. These people can tend to have an overactive mind when they lay down to sleep, feel warmer at night or experience night sweating and have very vivid dreams. Underneath the superficial heat, there is cold. Sometimes you can feel this cold when you touch their feet or lower abdomen, especially when compared to the temperature of the neck.

These people would be treated differently than the first type, given that their presentation is not the same. I find that working with these folks can be a bit more challenging, because they will often feel more tired when we start treatment. These feelings of tiredness are often what they have been avoiding during the day, by use of stimulates or stimulating activities. Unfortunately, they must begin to feel their body’s fatigue in order to restore their vitality through sleep.

Can It Change?

In every case of insomnia, inefficient sleep or sleep deficit that I’ve seen thus far, the answer has been yes - it can change. The more important question is how much of a priority is the person willing to make their sleep? Sleeping well is a by-product of living a life where good sleep is possible. If we live contrary to the body’s natural rhythms, we cannot expect our sleep to be efficient or restorative. But if we are willing to change, so can our sleep. So how can we get our sleep back on track?

Step One: Empty The Stomach

A famous Chinese medicine doctor once said, “if a person tells me that they have a problem sleeping (any problem sleeping), I tell them the same thing: No food after dark. If they can adhere to this rule alone for two weeks, about 60% of sleeping problems will resolve.”

This one sounds a bit strange at first but when we take a closer look, it makes quite a lot of sense. When we go to sleep at night, our heart rate decreases and our body’s surface becomes cooler. A complex chain of events begins to happen involving many organs, nerves, blood vessels and the hormonal system. In East Asian medicine, we call this phenomena Yin ascending, Yang descending or the communication of the Heart (Fire) and Kidney (Water).

If we go to bed and our stomach is still full, our body has to ramp up its metabolism to digest the food. Our heart rate increases, and it can even feel uncomfortable to lay down. When our stomach (Earth) is full, the pathway for the heart (Fire) and kidney (Water) to communicate is “blocked.” This can inhibit the quality of a person’s sleep or even prevent sleep from occurring at all. The first and clearest step to getting better sleep is to increase the amount of time between your last meal or snack and your bed time. I recommend people work toward 3 hours between the two, if possible.

Step Two: Create A Slide

If you have any difficulty getting to sleep, its unlikely that you’ll be able to do so for awhile without a routine before bed. So create one. This routine will look different for every person. But the routine should include the general feature of moving from more activity to less. I call this “creating a slide.”

Keep in mind, that by activity, we don’t only mean physical activity. Modern people are less and less physically active as our work becomes more closely engaged with technology. For some of us, our evening routine may need to include physical movement to release the activity in our nervous systems. There are many great practices for this - from gentle Qigong, to Yoga. My favorite is actually just walking. Remember the cheesy phrase: Whatever it is that you do to unwind, make sure to include your body and mind.

Step Three: Swing Out To Swing In

Many people have a difficult time sleeping because they lack basic movement or exercise during their day. But by engaging in a short exercise routine, people can dramatically enhance the quality of their sleep at night.

There are many studies that have been done on this subject alone. Some of these studies have analyzed specific data on the cycles of hormones and the assistance that day-time exercise can provide.
In East Asian medicine, we can summarize this phenomena quite simply: Yang activity benefits Yin restoration. Swing out, in order to swing in.

Step Four: Create A Break In The Static

So many cultures around the world take a siesta or a mid-day nap. Interestingly enough, if we look at the times of the day that most cultures take siesta (1-4PM), these are the clock-opposite times that most Americans struggle to sleep at night.

If you ask people about how they sleep, many people who can fall asleep easily will struggle to stay asleep between 1-4AM. East Asian medicine is a medicine that looks at opposites (Yin & Yang). If there is a problem that regularly occurs for someone at 3AM, we might look at adjusting the person’s conduct at 3PM to change it. For example, If a person is regularly waking up at 2:30AM and unable to fall back asleep, one way to change this dynamic would be for the person to take a short nap at 2:30PM. It sounds strange, but it totally works!

Another way to think about the helpfulness of mid-day rest is what I call, creating a break in the static. First, imagine that during the work day, we accumulate stress or a type of pressure in our nervous system. To me, this stress feels like static electricity, so I call it static. As the static builds without a release point, our nervous system continues to get more and more stimulated. If this continues all day, when we reach the day’s end, we may experience the “tired but wired” phenomena. We feel very tired, but we cannot sleep.

By taking a mid-day nap or short resting period, we can provide a natural release valve for our accumulated stress. Now before you instantly write off this idea by telling me that you don’t have time, hear me out. A break even as small as 5 minutes can significantly shift the state of accumulated stress within the nervous system. I’ve worked with all types of busy people. If you prioritize it, you can create the time.

What can you do with this time? The best thing that I’ve found, short of a quick nap is a mindful breathing practice or a shaking exercise (scroll down the page to see the exercise). If you make the time and participate every day, you will feel the changes.

Step Five: Get Help

If you’ve been struggling with your sleep for a long time, or even a shorter period of time, the quickest way to get better is to receive help. I’ve specialized in helping people with their sleep since beginning my training in East Asian medicine. Not being able to sleep efficiently is a huge burden - one that I know from my own experience.

It is possible for your sleep to improve if you are willing to receive help and participate in the process. If you’d like to take the next step, follow the links below to read more about treatment for insomnia or sign up for your first appointment today.

Behold The Humble Ginger Root: Understated Workhorse of Good Health

Ah the ginger root — the edible rhizome of the flowering ginger plant Zingiber officinale. This increasingly common kitchen herb has many more tricks up its sleeve besides making your curries and stir-frys really sing.

Chinese Medicine assigns two types of descriptors to any sort of herb or food - Nature and Flavor.

These two categories of description tell us about the intrinsic qualities of a plant, animal, or mineral and give us insight into how to use that item either as food, medicine, or both. Fresh Ginger has a warm nature and an acrid/pungent/spicy flavor.

Items that are warm in nature have effects that fit with that word. In the case of ginger in particular, it has the ability to warm the body physically, especially throughout the digestive system and even on the surface of the skin. We often find ginger combined with foods that tend to be cooler in nature like pork or shrimp and many people have used it for generations to ease an upset stomach. In fact, it is one of the key ingredients in remedies to relieve morning sickness.

As for it’s flavor, you might see acrid, pungent, or spicy used to describe this plant because finding the exact word to translate the Chinese word xīn 辛 is a challenge. None the less, if you were to bite into a slice of fresh ginger, you would get a real sense for the potent flavor of this root.

Ginger Root as your Winter Defender

Fresh ginger’s nature and flavor give it a particularly powerful ability to prevent a nascent cold or flu pathogen from getting settled into your system and wreaking havoc. So get some fresh ginger root when you are at the store next. Store it in the pantry with your potatoes and onions so that you will be prepared this season.

Now you know the feeling: you wake up one morning and you feel a little off. Nothing super obvious but a little slower, maybe a slight ache in your neck and a tickle in the throat. You’re not sick but you feel like you might be soon.

That is the time to grab your ginger and follow these instructions:

1.) Take about 2 inches of ginger or a piece about the size of your thumb and slice into thin pieces.

2.) Put the slices into a large-ish coffee mug and cover with boiling water

3.) Let that ginger steep until the liquid is drinkable, about 5 minutes

4.) Strain out the ginger pieces and mix in a spoonful of local honey, molasses, or good quality brown sugar.

5.) Drink your spicy ginger tea with its slight sweetness until its all gone. Then immediately hop into a hot shower.

6.) Wash up in the hot water until you’ve got a slight sweat going on. Change the temp to something a little cooler. Finish up and dry off.

7.) Bundle up and stay covered through the day, especially your back and neck and if you’re outside, cover your head too. Stay out of the wind or drafty areas.

8.) Drink lots of water throughout the day and eat your veggies. Lots of ‘em!

When you get home from work or school, you can repeat this process including the hot shower. The goal here is facilitate your body’s natural pathogen fighting abilities and push the infection out through your pores. Using ginger like this at the very first sign of sickness is essential to making it work for you. Wait too long and the picture will change and you’ll need more expert help to get better.

I tried it but I’m still feeling sick!

Now sometimes, you miss the window where ginger alone is effective for stopping colds. In that case Chinese Medicine has several more tricks up its sleeve to help you get better. And one of the best parts about those tricks is that they often involve more honey, cinnamon, and dates. Treating cold and flu is definitely one of our betting tastes remedies!

If you feel like you haven’t been able to kick out that icky feeling before it took hold, get in touch with a Chinese Medicine provider in your area ASAP before that sore throat turns into something much more nasty.

Chinese Medicine is NOT Energy Medicine

Travis Kern MAcOM, L.Ac.

Feel the resonant, cosmic, potent, masculo/feminine, Gaia/Kwan Yin presence

Ok, ok, ok! Put down the crystals friend. I'm not insulting your sense of energy and the flow of cosmic forces through the human experience. Well, I'm not directly insulting those sensibilities, but I am questioning how we understand the language of Chinese Medicine and by extension a whole host of "New Age" concepts like energy healing, auras, chakras, vibrational medicine, and many many others. And by the way, the New Age is hardly New any more. It fact, it has it's own vocabulary, jargon, and style that gives it a distinctly dated feel. 

So here's the rub: Saying that Chinese Medicine or Reiki or Yoga or Aura Atunements are energy medicine makes a significant assumption about the nature of reality -- an assumption that is based on a distinctly Western understanding of what it means to be real and extant and is heavily influenced by the moral dimensions of Christian thought, especially the sort of Christian thought that was brought to the American colonies by our ancestors. So there are really two dimensions of assumptions that I want to explore. The first has do with what is real and the second has to do with Satan waiting for your in the wilderness. Let's begin.

Primary Assumption in the term Energy Medicine: You can understand what is real and you are distinctly part of "real"

This assumption asserts that reality is a collection of solid objects that are animated by another force called "energy" or "spirit" or "vibration," and it is this other force, separate from the solid objects that it animates, that creates the activity of life. It doesn't matter which word you use to describe this separate force because they are all touching on the same idea, and they all conjure a similar image to mind -- that of the meat-filled, skin bag human excited and propelled by an ethereal, mysterious force that might be translucent like Casper, glow from the fingertips like an Xman, or pulse around the body like a rainbow disco show only visible to those with the gift.

This image presumes that human beings are composed of two opposing, dualistic natures, one of substance with little character which is plagued by base instincts and another of heavenly light and cosmic potency that is glorious and mighty to behold (if you have that ability of course). Hold on champ! We've got a problem - dualism is a fundamentally limiting perspective. Instead of understanding and knowing the infinite complexity of existence, we're stuck with only two forces to make sense of our experience. 

"But that sounds just like Yin and Yang," you say! "Aren't you a Chinese Medicine practitioner? A student of Dao? How can you dismiss this idea?"

The thing is, you're almost right. It is almost Yin Yang Theory. Except that Yin and Yang are just parts of a complex system that is not based on two things. It's based on one thing: Dao. Which emanates to two things: Yin and Yang. Which begat the three things: Heaven, Human, Earth. Which birthed the four seasons and the five elements and then the ten thousand things (i.e. everything else). Yin and Yang are part of a larger constellation that is not about substance but about movement -- about change. In fact, Yin and Yang are concepts that reflect the way that things change, not what they are but how they move from one state of being to another. It is a constant question of interplay and dynamic transformation. To be one thing is to stagnate and ultimately to descend into permanent suffering.  

Assuming that you can manipulate the energy of something demands that the energy of whatever you are manipulating is a component part of a mechanized whole, that it is like gas in a car or circuits in a computer. Standard biomedicine doctors are trying to fix the parts of the substance (the things they can observe and measure), and contemporary energy workers want to work with the ethereal (the things they can sense and feel). Each group is really doing the same thing -- being a mechanic who is repairing the part of the structure or spirit that is broken. But what if you are not actually made of substance or spirit? What if you're not really made at all in the way that most of us think of it. You're not a peanut butter sandwich and you're not a multi-phasic dimensional ghost. Stop assuming you can repair anything and/or stop assuming you have magic powers. I wanted to be McGyver and I wanted to be Hermione too but that ship has sailed. You can help bodies remember how to be whole and functional, but it's not because you shot invisible light and good vibes out of your forehead and fingertips, or because you replaced 1000 knees in surgery. 

Now let me be clear....
You can't help bodies return to physiology and dynamic health with  magic, nor can you do it with biological science. This is not a rational science apologia. The acupuncture needles aren't stimulating cytokine/immunoglobulin/heat protein cascades through your lymph/immune/cardiac/myofascial systems either. Well they might be doing those things if we could actually measure them (which we can't seem to... but one day amiright?), but that's not why it works. At least, that's not why it works within the framework of the system that created that tool. Chinese Medicine is not dependent on lab tests and petri dishes, nor is it dependent on belief or electric energetic forces. It is reliant on the observation of dynamic movements in nature, the earnest effort to understand those movements, and to apply the concepts that those changes represent to the human condition. Because as it turns out, we aren't actually separate from anything around us.  We don't have dominion over all the other things on the planet. The idea that we are superior or wholly unique from everything else is part of that morality stuff I mentioned earlier. Gosh we have so much to talk about.

And I guess this explanation still isn't very clear. 

How about a comparative example?

Setting: Ancient times - when people were superstitious and dumb

There are definitely bad things that live here. Maybe even a ROUS...

So here you are walking along through the woods when suddenly you realize you have strayed into the forbidden swamps of the ancestors. Here is a no-pass land, long slapped with a metaphorical verboden sign because it is well known that the spirits that live in this place cause illness and death to those that enter. Though if you are strong and young and still possessed of the good stock given to you by your own ancestors, it is possible to survive a walk through these bogs, but nonetheless, a travel pass is not recommended. Yet here you are. Suddenly bitten by a swarm of gnats and assaulted by foul-smelling air, you bolt from your position across the swamps and back home where within a day you start to feel ill.

Chills and fever take hold of you and the local healer declares that you have been possessed of a foul force from the swamps. It has broken through your charms and defenses and that you will need the smoke of healing herbs and the poultices made of tree barks to cure you.  It's hard to know which spirits are the ones that are attacking you and without that info, the healing approach is in broad strokes. But you are young and from good people so hopefully the protection offered to you from your own family spirits will be strong enough to survive. You'll make it. A little worse for wear but you make it.  

---

Setting: Contemporary Times - when people know what's real and aren't bound by ridiculous assumptions

It's just a casual walk in the woods. Good for you, right?

So you're hiking in Mt. Hood National forest when you realize that it's colder out here on the trail than you had imagined and you don't have a nice North Face fleece to cover up with. It's cool you think, punning to yourself quietly, and you carry on with your hike. You've been assaulted by a few No-See-Ums while walking along but you brought your handy bug spray so you're pretty comfortable. By the time you get back to your car though you've got a little sniffle and you hope it doesn't get worse.

The next morning you are sick. Sneezing, hacking, your through feels full of razor blades and you know you need to see the doctor. They tell you that you have a bacterial infection in your throat and lungs. These pathogens probably entered through your mouth and nose and set up shop while your immune system was depressed by the cold. These bugs are causing your symptoms, but they're not sure which one's they are. So take these antibiotics to see if it'll get rid of them and if not, you're young and strong with good genes. You'll be ok. A little uncomfortable but Ok.

---

Comparison: They are the same thing.

Both of these scenarios describe a similarly observable process. They both are looking at a sick person and trying to understand how that person went from being healthy to being sick. Each of them relying on a set of knowledge and a system of analysis to determine the answer to the question. Now I don't mean that one is real and one is a metaphor for something real. I mean that these stories are just using particular vocabulary to describe the same thing. Healthy becomes sick. Microbes and spirits? The same thing. Whoa snap! I know. I sound like a crazy person to both camps but seriously just sit with it a minute. Have you ever seen a microbe yourself? Have you ever seen an ancestor spirit yourself? Have you been to Havanah before? Yeah like in Cuba? But all or some of these things are real? How do you know? What is it to be real? Whew ok, lets take a step back from the post-modern, relativistic anarchy and just breathe.

In

and out

Just breathe a second, and feel the air. 

I am not trying to collapse the world down on itself to say that all the things are just one thing, in fact that they are not even "things" as such, and that how you view the world, no matter which frame of reference you are using is not more or less real than any other. That, in fact, there is no sense of real because nothing is fixed, and everything that we truly understand or try to understand is a moving target. Wait, actually that is what I am doing. 

The parameters of our language create boundaries around our experience by the nature of description. Can we understand things without words for them? Can we see that energy and body are not separate nor are they joined? They are the same thing moving in different spheres and observed in different frameworks. By observing a phenomenon we are intrinsically changing it (concept credit to a white guy from a while back who probably didn't actually think of it but got credit for it anyway).

Chinese Medicine isn't Energy Medicine because that is a limited and erroneous description. People don't get better because my acupuncture needles manipulated their energy flow or because your invisibly glowing hands moved their cancer out of the way or because your good vibes made The Secret come to life. It's because when we work in a sphere that is speciously described as an energy space, we are softening the edges of our own "realness" and experiencing ever so briefly the interconnected fabric of Dao. Our pattern of health and wellness is laid over the pattern of disease and disorder when those boundaries are loosened, and they interact. I don't do anything accept make the space; open my mind to the very difficult idea that what we are all experiencing is only an infinitely small fraction of what is moving in, around, and through us. The actual healing that happens is the flow and movement of existence on a macro scale. You can cut out a tumor or lay in downward-facing-dog or chant or take pills or smoke drugs to solve your ails, but none of those things is the treatment really. They are tools to accessing the pattern of things. Not a magical pattern to be stored in some grimoire or a rational pattern to be tracked by electron microscopes -- just the pattern that even gives us the framework to read grimoires and see microscopes. 

A little jazz hands or maybe spirit fingers or maybe it's just waving. But the demons are waving at YOU!!

So about Satan and the forest:

If the world is dominated by two forces: body and spirit, up and down, hot and cold -- then one of the core anchors of a dualistic world view is that Good and Evil also stand in opposition to each other. God and Satan. Even if you're a polytheist or a nature worshiper, what is the fundamental relationship at play in your pantheon? My guess is probably Good and Evil. Or if you're a super modern person maybe it's Good and Apathy. Even still, this idea of good and evil is reflected in our love of spirit and energy and our derision of animal and substantive. Our society looks at our physical selves as machines in the process of decline and popular nutrition and baseless science is constantly trying to purge your body of all the toxins it has absorbed or created, all in an effort to restore your pristine, "natural" self. Your clean soul, free from the dark influences of indulgence and a lack of self-control. Take your vitamins even if you don't feel like they do anything for you because it's important to build up health brownie points for the time in the future when your skinbag starts to fray.

Satan has long been depicted as waiting in the dark forests of the Americas. Living and working through people of color and natives, warping their minds and filling them with notions of unmarried sex, demonic chanting, and the reverence for the very natural world that has been infused with disease. That same fear has been at the heart of Western empirical thought even as the very people who started the Enlightenment worked to release themselves from the shackles of what they saw as an oppressive religion. And yet, the idea of your body as flawed and impure has persisted, even among people spending time at Free Love Ashrams.

But wait, you're a free-thinking atheist (sometimes agnostic) who has spend years working and studying the Eastern Ways and you know that the world is in fact filled with poisons and horrors that must be purged.

Sure. Ok. But if you are taking a collection of plants and supplements that have words attached to them like: natural purgative, anti-inflammatory, emetic, demulscent, restorative, curative, immuno-supportive; and you are consuming these products with the aim to "purge toxins," to "cleanse the liver," or to "expel  heavy metals," then you should know ahead of time which toxins and metals you are targeting and then you should have some way of measuring whether or not those things are actually happening. You are living and working in the world of biomedical, reductionist science (even if the treatment is called natural and chemical free) because you and your practitioner are thinking about your body in this substantive way -- that you are biological machine who needs its oil changed because ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS/MOLD/FUNGUS/GLUTEN/NIGHTSHADES. But fear that these toxin monsters are lying in wait with henchman from Big Pharma and Monsanto who are all waiting to destroy you is just the Devil in a new form. It is the Puritans exacting control from 500 years in the past. Western culture has not shaken the influence of Abraham, and American culture in particular has made a new religion of fitness and health among some of the least healthy and high-strung people on the planet.  

And look, I feel that tension myself every day. We are all of us in the US entwined with our past and our history. We have not left it. We have not evolved beyond it. It is our ancestry -- in Chinese Medicine terms, it is our cultural Jing. And we can't start being vegetarians until our great great great auntie has had her fill of steak. 

So how how about those action items?

The only way out of the mind bend is to work to internalize every day that how we have been trained to know and understand the world is not objective. Science with an capital S is not without a point of view -- not without assumptions in the same way that our tribal or religious ancestors made assumptions about reality. The fact that you saw a video on Facebook of a virus attacking cells and injecting its DNA into those cells to reproduce is not itself evidence of an incontrovertible truth about existence. The real truth is that almost no one has seen with their own eyes what that video showed you. It was made in a computer, an example of what we believe is happening based on our observations of lots of other factors. When your doctor tests your blood for infections, they don't look at your blood in a microscope and see all those badboy microbes puttin' a beat down on your cells. It's more complicated than that and much less exact. Certainty is an armor against the scary truth that profound humans have been spouting on about for millennia: The world is largely unknowable in any concrete way and sitting with the certainty that things are the way they seem to be, is the root of inquisitions. The only certainty is that there is no certainty (concept credit to Neo or did Confuscious say? Look for a meme. I'm sure it'll be a wrong attribution).

Chinese Medicine is NOT energy medicine because there is no energy and there is no medicine. And of course both energy and medicine do also exist. Sort of. The answer is Yes and it is No. Because the answer is not what is important. It's the space between the answers and the transition from one answer to the next which gives us the only real insight into what is.

Now jump on into the comments pool. It's pretty warm this time of year...

The Power & Poise of Chinese Herbal Medicine

Travis Cunningham L.Ac.

    Where I live in Portland, Oregon, many people share an interest in natural medicine. There are two Chinese medicine schools in town, a Chiropractic school, a Massage school, the oldest Naturopathic school in the country, and a medical school which specializes in Integrative Medicine. With such an abundance of natural medicine to choose from, why would someone pick a medicine that does not draw its roots from local soil? Wouldn’t it be better to choose medicine that is grown, stored and processed here? Why should people give Chinese herbal medicine a shot?

    All of these questions are valid. And as a Chinese medicine practitioner, I have been asked them many times. The answer lies within the uniqueness of assessment, diagnosis, and treatment that Chinese herbal medicine can offer. This begins with the medicine’s focus on relationship.

Understanding the Relationship

The focus of a Chinese medical assessment is not based on the physics of what is happening in your body. This assessment is actually more concerned with understanding the relationship between your component parts (e.g. your organs, tissues, or bones). Our understanding is expressed using a kind of symbolic language. These symbols are taken from activities and movements that ancient people observed within nature and then observed that those natural processes had an apparent likeness to activities within the human body.

Knowing the History

The Chinese Medicine understanding of combining herbal remedies is backed up by thousands of years of writing and experimentation. The older writings that exist on the various topics of herbal medicine also have hundreds of years of commentary and discussion by physicians of past and present. In a very real sense,  Chinese herbal medicine has close to two thousand years of peer review. This fact alone may suffice to make it worthy of consideration for modern people.

Defining the Symbol

Natural experiences like heat, cold, dampness, dryness, and wind, are described as they appear in a person’s body presentation. Shaking, for example, with its sudden appearance and disappearance, tremor and vibration are caused by wind. The ancients observed the air suddenly moving and gusting, shaking the leaves of the trees and blowing debris along the ground, and they carried this experience to their understanding of human physiology.

Symbols such as Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water, were also chosen to emphasize patterns of functional movement within the body. The Lungs and the Large Intestine both descend and consolidate, as is the movement of Metal in nature. The Lungs breathe in air (descent), and consolidate the essence of air into nourishment for the body. The Large Intestine descends the stool and consolidates moisture for optimal elimination. Every major organ is looked at by a similar likeness with a corresponding movement in nature.

The ancient Chinese found that when these movement patterns were happening harmoniously and in just the right amount, a person was happy and healthy. While, a disharmony or mismanagement of these movement patterns led to disease. When these nature-based symbols are used together in an evaluation, a Chinese medicine practitioner can form a type of diagnosis called a pattern. A pattern reflects the relationship of harmony and disharmony within a person’s body.

Finding the Pattern

All Chinese medical treatment, whether acupuncture, moxibustion, cupping, gua sha, or herbal medicine is done to address a person’s pattern. This is different than targeting the person’s disease (as is done in biomedicine). If we seek the destruction of an illness we require a force to eliminate it. If, however, we seek to restore a pattern of functional movement, all that we require is a guide. This guide can be less forceful, but it must be precise. The cultivation of precision is the skillset of the Chinese medical practitioner. This skillset is practiced through a careful differentiation of the pattern. 

Lets look at an example:
Two people catch a cold. Person A, has chills and fever, a slightly irritated sore throat, a headache on the sides of their head, and itchiness in the ears. Person B, has chills and fever, an intensely swollen and painful throat, and is sweating profusely.

Analysis:
Biomedically, these people may have the same virus attacking their systems. But in Chinese medicine, what is important is the pattern that such an illness presents within the individual. And in the example above, the pattern is different.

In person B, the intensely swollen, painful throat and profuse sweating indicate a heat pattern. In person A, the sore throat is less severe. The itchiness in the ears and location of the headache indicate that the illness has reached a different pathway (the Gallbladder or Shao Yang layer). The Chinese medical treatment will be different for each case, as it will tailor to the individual’s pattern.

As you can see, the pattern not only tells us about the disease, but also the relationship between the disease and the person’s constitution. This relationship is given a symbolic name with the terms discussed above (Example pattern: wind-heat invading the exterior). Treatment is given to principally address this relationship, and help assist the person restore their health (Example treatment principles: clear heat, vent wind, secure the exterior).

Choosing the Formula

To execute the above principles in the form of a treatment, a formula is chosen. A formula is a set of procedures that follow the direction of a treatment principle. In acupuncture, a formula is a list or set of acupuncture points, and the needling techniques of each point. In Chinese herbal medicine, a formula is a set of herbs given at a particular dosage and frequency of administration.

Chinese herbal medicine studies not only the effects of an individual herb, but pays particular attention to how that effect changes when herb A is combined with herb B. Herbs in combination can emphasize certain functional principles, or unlock new actions entirely.

The hot herb Fu Zi (Aconite) can be used to treat invasive cold patterns like neuropathy of the limb, by warming and dispersing the cold influence. But Fu Zi can only become a tonic for the heart, when it is combined with other sweet herbs like Gan Jiang (Dried Ginger) and Zhi Gan Cao (Prepared Licorice Root). In this case, Gan Jiang and Zhi Gan Cao also act to nullify the toxicity and harshness of Fu Zi, making the decoction or tea, safe to drink. While if you were to take Fu Zi by itself, the remedy might actually be dangerous.

Treating the Person

The strength of using Chinese medicine ultimately stems from the medicine's focus on treating the person. The perspective that Chinese medicine comes from is a view that believes in health as a natural phenomena. Health doesn't need to be forced, it can simply be encouraged. And with the right encouragement, a natural state of health and happiness can resume. Ease is, after all, easier than disease.