Covid-19 and Natural Medicine

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus across the globe caused a certain kind of existential panic that many of us were not used to entertaining. Runs on toilet paper and hand sanitizer were the first markers of our terror followed with increasingly dire warnings, recommendations, and mandates to stay home, shelter-in-place, and avoid all unnecessary contact. Now we are living with the constant threat of infection and tragedy. We are burned by it while also feeling like we can’t continue to care about this thing that has been going on for so long. The struggle is real. Let me begin the content on this page with this important statement:

Covid-19 is a serious condition that should be treated with all the gravity that it is due.

Once we internalize the reality that we will be dealing with this virus for many more months to one degree or another, a different sort of anxiety can start to take hold and a series of questions starts to emerge:

• How are we going to survive the economic impacts?

• How will I make it through the continued onslaught of isolation, cancelled plans, and working from home?

• How can I continue to protect myself and my family?

• What medicines or supplements can I take to stave off the virus?

Social distancing and face coverings are for your protection and especially for the protection of vulnerable populations. Take this situation seriously.

These queries are totally normal and what all of us are wondering. Since my expertise does not extend into the economic or psychological realms, I can just say that we are all in this situation together and with some practiced calm and reaching deep for compassion and patience, we will weather the realities of paying mortgages and rents, car notes and credit card bills. There will be continued pain but it will eventually give way. It will also take some effort to remind ourselves that we need to remain vigilant and even if Thanksgiving doesn’t look like usual this year, try not to worry too much. There will be another one next year.

Where my insight and experience become relevant are on the subsequent questions about health and protection. As a person who practices medicine and deals with patients from all walks of life, many of whom are dealing with serious and sometimes life-threatening diseases, I want to underscore that it is important to take the guidance from state and local governments seriously as well as making the things we’ve heard about from the CDC about handwashing and face-covering as part of your daily and recurring habits. While you may be young or healthy, the transmission of this disease is not only about your health. The rapid transmission rate of the virus and the fact that we still do not fully grasp how and in what ways it moves through our environment make it essential that we all take precautions to minimize person-to-person contact outside of the people we live and share space with already. And when we do interact with other humans, cover your face. I know it feels restrictive or that you can’t breathe very well. You are fine. Cover. Your. Mouth. AND. Nose.

Next, THERE IS NO SINGLE HERB OR SUPPLEMENT THAT WILL STOP THIS VIRUS. Let me say that again: NO SINGLE HERB OR SUPPLEMENT WILL SAVE YOU. I want to be emphatic about this point because in crises like this one, many people who live in the often ethically-gray space of nutriceutical distribution are looking to sell you something “for your immune system” or to “keep your body in top shape” to stop the virus in its tracks. While it is certainly possible to use herbs and supplements to help keep your body in peak condition, this “health banking” mindset primarily works for people who are already mostly healthy. Let me explain: how many times have you read something online, or heard something on the radio, or got told something by the hot guy at your gym that sounded like something like this: “Well you’ve got to start turmeric. I mean it is so great for dealing with inflammation. All kinds of inflammation. I mean more research is showing that inflammation is the root of all diseases so getting turmeric in your juice blend or in a capsule is going to be clutch for dealing with (insert idiopathic condition here like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, restless leg syndrome).”

Now, don’t interpret my glib tone as diminishing the conditions above. We treat them regularly in our clinic, and they are sometimes debilitating problems for patients. But I use this example to underscore the fact that these kinds of supplement recommendations are not based on any real expertise. Turmeric is a very useful herb for a variety of conditions including body pain, irritable bowels, post surgery recovery and more. But using that herb requires more than taking a trip to your local health food store to buy a bottle of standardized Turmeric and taking the label dosage because you heard it’s “supposed to be good for joint pain.” What are you looking for while taking it? How will you measure its effectiveness on your condition? How long will you take it for to decide if it is helping? And all of these unexamined questions are just to see if turmeric is going to maybe take the edge off of a non-life threatening condition. With regard to Covid-19 and herbal promises to keep you safe, relying on uninformed or worse, ill-informed, advice could have mortal consequences.

“Having the legal authorization to prescribe herbal medicine does not automatically confer the knowledge and skill to do so successfully.”

Qualified and experienced Chinese Medicine practitioners who use herbs regularly in their practices will have the requisite training and clinical application to prescribe herbal formulas that are targeted and that have measurable outcomes. While the scope of practice for licensed acupuncturists in most states allow those practitioners to use herbal medicine, having the legal authorization to prescribe herbal medicine does not automatically confer the knowledge and skill to do so successfully.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF ACUPUNCTURISTS IN THE UNITED STATES DO NOT HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE OR EXPERIENCE TO PRESCRIBE HERBS EFFECTIVELY. This is not just my opinion and observation. The American Society of Acupuncturists even mentioned this point explicitly in their guidance to the profession during this pandemic. What that means is that if you’ve heard that you need some Chinese skullcap or some ephedra (called ma huang in mandarin) or maybe just get a little teapill of this or a powder of that, STOP. These herbs that we use to help people with real problems are serious medicine. What you are taking on the advice of well-intentioned but no less ill-informed practitioners at least could be a waste of your time and money or at worst could have severe side-effects from incorrect administration. These are herbs are not some mild elderberry extract your cousin made or a great herbal tea Gweneth Paltrow sold you. Know your medicine and know what it’s for.

The Rub

I want you to use herbal medicine. I want you to treat your body with respect and love. I want you to lean on its incredible ability to heal and repair. And I want you to do all of that with a qualified Chinese Medicine physician in your corner. The universities of Google and Facebook have given us so much knowledge but they have also made it difficult to know what to believe, what to trust, and what steps to take. But remember that expertise is real, training is real, and there are practitioners out there who can keep you healthy during these difficult times.

Please find a qualified Chinese herbal practitioner in your area who helps patients with internal medicine problems. You can ask them how many of their patients use herbs as part or all of their treatment plan and if that number is less than 65%, keep looking. Ask that practitioner if they have a well-supplied pharmacy company that they work with or if they fill the formulas themselves, and then ask if they can get herbs in lots of forms like granules, whole herbs, and/or pills. Your goal here is to assess whether or not they have systems established around herbal medicine and how deep their use of that modality is. It doesn’t matter if you’re not sure what you’re asking about; what you are trying to assess is the practitioner’s ease (or lack thereof) with answering.

Chinese medicine is well-suited to helping patients reduce the intensity of infections and to ease the symptoms of people who are really feeling the weight of their illnesses, whether that illness be Covid-19 or any of the other hundreds of conditions that we treat in our field. Get someone in your corner who knows what they are doing. Ask them a million questions and then do what they ask you to do. Health is not a mystery.

Wishing you the best during these difficult times,

Travis H. Kern, MAcOM, Dipl. OM, LAc
Founder, Root & Branch Chinese Medicine Pharmacy and Clinic

R&B Is Reopening

Understanding the New Policies and Procedures

As the United States begins to reopen some of its businesses, those of us who run those enterprises are asking ourselves what we need to do to make sure that any reopening is safe for our customers and clients. There has been a large variety of guidance from local, state, and national levels that can make it difficult to know what the best approach is for reopening, but the Chinese Medicine community in Oregon is incredibly fortunate to have a robust state organization that has been working tirelessly through this crisis to keep all of us up-to-date and also to distill all the garbled information into something actionable. So as we start the slow process of returning to business and getting a sense of our new normal, here are our new processes while we continue to navigate the Covid-19 reality:

1. Appointments will be spaced out and scheduled by phone

   We will putting 30 minutes between each appointment to minimize crossover time between patients coming in for treatment, paying, and getting their herbs. Appointment times will still be their usual length but there will be fewer total appointments in a day. By reducing the total number of people who can come through the clinic at one time, we are able to help reduce potential vectors of transmission, and the added time gives us the flexibility to thoroughly clean between patients. In addition, we would like to find the best time for your appointment by talking to you directly. Please call the shop between 10am and 2pm to schedule your appointment. Telemedicine appointments will remain available for online scheduling as well.

   Clinic Phone (971) 288-5939

2. Patients will be screened prior to seeing their practitioner

   Patients should self-screen before treatment by asking themselves the following questions:

   1. Have you been exposed to a person or person(s) with a known coronavirus diagnosis?

   2. Have you or someone in your household had any two of the following symptoms in the last 48 hours: fever, chills, muscle pain, shortness of breath, cough, headache, sore throat, new loss of taste or smell?

   If a patient has answered yes to any of the above questions, they should call the clinic prior to an appointment to determine if they should come in for treatment or if the appointment should be delayed or shifted to a telemedicine format.

   In addition, patients will have their temperature taken when arriving for their appointment. If their temperature is 99.5 degrees F or above, patients will be asked to reschedule.

3. Patients should wear a facemask to their appointments

   Practitioners and staff will be wearing facemasks in the clinic, and we ask that patient’s do the same. Homemade or cloth masks are perfectly acceptable. We want to make sure that we take all steps to reduce airborne and particulate transmission as much as possible.

4. Touch Surfaces and All Patient Contact Points Sterilized after each Interaction

   Acupuncture clinics are already required to maintain clean work environments like any medical office which requires the use of broad spectrum disinfectants on any surface that comes in contact with skin or body fluids. We have expanded this mandate to include all chairs, tables, handles and anything else that patients or practitioners are touching. In addition, we are temporarily discontinuing use of sheets or face cradle covers so that those surfaces are easier to clean and there are fewer points of potential contamination.

5. Patients will need to review and sign new, Covid-19 specific paperwork before their appointment

   In keeping with guidance from our national associations and insurers, there is a Covid-19 specific form that your practitioner will review with you prior to your first appointment back and answer any questions you may have.

We look forward to seeing all of you again as we begin the long walk back to some version of regular life. Everyone at Root & Branch is committed to the safety of all our patients and staff and we ask for your understanding and patience as we get back to the business of health. Thanks for being part of our family.

Why You and Your Parents Don't Need To Suffer As you Age

By
Travis Cunningham MAcOM LAc

To listen to the audio recording of this article, click below.

The Curse of Aging

Does it bother you to think of yourself getting older? It bothers me. I can feel the aches and the pains already. I can feel the slow but definite decline in energy, flexibility and strength of my body. I can sense the descent of my intellect and the clouding of my memory. Fewer adventures and more routines. More trips to the doctor’s office and more need for my friends and family to take care of me. But that’s the reality, isn’t it? I mean, I guess we’re all going the same way, so why not just accept it?

If the above narrative doesn’t sit well for you, then you have made it to the right place. Somehow in the vast expanse of internet land, you made it here. Congrats!

Everything I have seen in my short but lively career as a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner suggests that most of the negative experiences we associate with the aging process need not come to pass. But in order to understand how our experience may differ from the common definition of aging, we must look at why suffering is a possibility as we age. Once we understand the problem, then we may understand its solution.

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Why We Suffer When We Age

Chinese medicine relates good health to the principles of change and transformation. When we can change and transform, we can grow. And as long as the possibility of change exists within us, the opportunity for growth remains. Each new experience provides opportunities to create and re-define ourselves. And when we do so, our lives become works of art.

When we cannot change, we get stuck. When stuck-ness exists in a person — in our bodies, in our organs, or in our emotions, problems inevitably occur. Because life is dynamic and ever-changing, when we are stuck and cannot adapt to those changes, we find the spontaneous movements of life turn to hazard and harm. We coil around and protect the stuck parts of ourselves hoping that they will not be touched. We try to control our experience and keep it from changing. And when the tender places within us are inevitably approached, we suffer the reminder of dis-ease that sticks within them.

Stuckness can occur in many forms within humans. Aches and pains in our muscles, joints, and bones result from poor circulation and blood supply. Our bodies may have a hard time regulating our temperature resulting in fever and chill sensations. Or we may have shallow sleep and have less energy throughout the day. We can think of these symptoms as a kind of hormonal stuckness. We may feel our thoughts becoming sluggish or foggy with a decreased desire to learn and understand which is a distinct type of mental stuckness. Even our hearts may stop pumping so well, and we resort to medications in order to remedy organ stuckness.

Luckily, There is Hope!
The Remedy to Stuckness Is Simple…

As we move through the years of our lives, collecting a wide variety of experiences across the entirety of the emotional and physical spectrum, we have the continual opportunity to cultivate wisdom. Wisdom requires the discernment to know which actions help us toward our goals and which actions are less supportive — a key skill harvested from our life experience. However, in order for wisdom to truly form, discernment must partner with a second quality: grace.

Grace comes from the ability to be soft and open to new ways of perception and action. Grace is a fluid quality, reaching into both the physical and psychic aspects of our lives. It comes easily to us as children when we are less certain and more trusting of our innate experience. But as we age and form belief structures, grace must be continually practiced or it will begin to fade.

As we age, we tend to lose touch with our sense of grace. We move less physically and do fewer new things. We stick to our routines, eat the same foods, and see the same people. The newness of our lives lessens, and so does our flexibility in managing it. This nascent rigidity is the root of future health problems.

While it’s true that there are natural consequences to the aging process, many of the aforementioned fates need not come to pass. With simple and gradual adjustments to a person’s lifestyle, the woes of aging can be lessened or avoided by a more graceful form of living. If grace can be adopted, then we may see the benefits of aging truly shine!

The Benefits of Aging
(What No One Talks About)

The benefits of aging lie within the possibility of cultivation. Because human beings have the opportunity to cultivate wisdom through life experience, we have the potential for greater levels of happiness, satisfaction, and discovery as we age. As our years pass, we can learn to harmonize the stability and creativity of human experience. We can become healthier this way, knowing ourselves in great depth and channeling the power of this depth to serve ourselves and others.

While our physical bodies become less abundant in mass, they may become more refined in quality. We may learn to require less in order to give more. Smaller amounts of food and fewer hours of sleep may be the result of this refinement, so long as does not cost us energy and clarity. Aging well gives the possibility for our minds to open, enhancing our contemplative powers as well as our spiritual ones. As middle age passes, the possibility of becoming not just old but an elder, arises. What a fantastic opportunity indeed!

In order for humans to see the benefits of aging, we have to participate in the things that make us human. In Chinese medicine, these areas of participation are the things that we must do in order to survive - breathing, eating, sleeping, moving, and resting. Participation may be thought of as a kind of rhythm, for when activities are practiced consistently, a power comes through them that begets more significance than that of a single beat. These activities compound in their effects and give strength to one another like links in a bond. They are the basis of good health, wisdom, and grace.

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Building A Foundation

In traditional Chinese arts, the foundational practices are where you start and often where you end. No matter how advanced you get within the art, good can always come from refining the fundamentals.

Breathing
As the most essential and immediate ingredient for health and vitality, breathing should be a priority. From time to time, check in with your breath and make sure it isn’t being held. Let your mind settle and let your breathing come naturally from your belly. Get out in nature by trees whenever possible and breath in that fresh air!

Eating
Keep eating as simple and as enjoyable as possible. Eat with people you love when you can. Eat at regular times. Slow down and chew your food. Eat lots of vegetables, with moderate amounts of grains and/or meats. Figure out what works and feels good in your body. Minimize overly heavy and sweet foods (but enjoy them when you do eat them). Breathe easy when you eat. Cook the majority of your foods (especially vegetables). If you have a digestive weakness, cook everything.

Sleeping
Go to bed as early as you can with consistency. Ideally, you would be asleep before 10:30 PM every night. Do the best you can with this. Sleep through the night, and make time in the day for a short nap (if possible). If you have difficulty sleeping through the night, try soaking your feet in hot water (described in greater detail below) before bed, and limit your food intake late at night.

Moving
Move every day without question. Do as much as feels good in your body. A little bit of pushing yourself in movement is good; alot of pushing is not good. Moving promotes circulation for the body and mind. Moving in natural environments is even better. Find something you like to do, and do it with regularity.

Resting
Throughout your day, plan periods of rest from your activity or work. These may be momentary at first - lasting 5 to 10 seconds. But hopefully will expand to a bit longer (15-30 minutes is about perfect). Do very little in your periods of rest. Avoid social media and mind stimulation. The basic idea for resting is to rest - not to be doing something. This practice will conserve your energy throughout the day and hopefully allow you to recycle it at night. This will both extend your life and enhance its quality.


Communing
Get your relationships in order. No, seriously! Good relationships can hold you together when you have no strength left. Bad relationships can demolish you even when you feel high and mighty. You can’t do this life all by yourself! Developing good relationships is essential to being a healthy human. If you don’t know where to start with people, try nature or animals first. Nature/Forest Therapy is an excellent place to start. Conventional therapy is also great and not only for advanced mental/emotional problems. If you need help, get yourself some help. You are a pack animal, you deserve to be with your pack.

Focusing
Humans need something to do in order to be happy and healthy. This need can be satisfied with something as elaborate as creating a non-profit to as simple as knitting a scarf. But you need something to do. And the more people feel that their work has value, the happier they tend to be. If you don’t know what your life’s purpose is, don’t worry about it! You don’t have to know all the secrets to be happy. Just start with today and do something that’s valuable to you.

Creating healthy habits in life without internalizing guilt and shame in the process is an art form.

Be easy on yourself, but do the best you can :)

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How to Refine Your Health
Or
Get Back Your Health
(When You’ve Lost It)

Step One: Build Your Foundation

As stated in the previous section, building a foundation of positive participation in life is essential for both getting your health back and maintaining (as well as improving) it. This can be done in the smallest of ways to begin, and it will compound and multiply as you continue. Follow the guidance in the above section to get started. If you feel you need assistance or further evaluation before you begin, make an appointment with a qualified healthcare practitioner. You can schedule an appointment with one of our experts here.

Step Two: Increase Your Circulation

Far and away the biggest problem I see in the clinic when people come in with age-related complaints is lack of circulation. As we age, we move less and the parts of our body that rely upon circulatory actions (like the heart) get tired. These organs work less efficiently the more tired they get, and the obvious problems of blood pressure, cholesterol, and fatigue, arise.

Poor circulation robs organ systems of their health by withholding the precious resource of nutritionally-dense blood. Anxiety, depression, and insomnia are only the beginning of the list of problems that can result. Similarly, old injuries with damaged tissues receive fewer resources because of this lack of fresh blood in supply. The tissues become achy and malnourishment or even form calcifications and masses which lead to further problems.

To stop this increasingly damaging cycle and begin turning the wheel in the opposite direction, you can start by working on your circulation in fun and simple ways. The most popular way to do this is by gently increasing your activity. Traditional exercises for circulation include walking, running, biking, swimming, lifting weights, playing sports, and other like activities. Softer methods can also be useful especially when the energy of the body is low. These allow for an increase in circulation without employing a taxing effect on the body’s resources. Yoga, tai chi, or traditional stretching are excellent places to begin.

Foot Soaking

To supplement your circulation even further, you can try one of my favorite time-tested treatments for the regulation of all human cycles: soaking your feet.

Soaking your feet in warm water helps the blood to flow all the way down to the furthest part of the body from the heart. During this transit, the blood passes around and through vital organs, cleansing and nourishing them before finally settling in the feet. Afterwards, the blood returns by way of the veins and a gentle pump for the whole body has just been created.

From a Chinese Medicine perspective, transferring heat to the lower extremity is considered highly beneficial and allows the Yang Qi of the body to go into storage, making it easier to fall asleep and allowing for more restful sleep. This knowledge may even have served as an inspiration for the Chinese adage, “Keep your feet warm and your head cool.”

How To Soak Your Feet

A) Choose A Basin
Use a container large enough to accommodate both your feet and deep enough to cover your ankles. Wood is best, plastic works as well. Do not use copper or iron containers.

B) Prepare The Soak
Bring 2 quarts of water to boil in a pot or kettle
Good Medicine: You can use hot water for your foot soak and receive many benefits.
Better Medicine: You can add medicinal ingredients to increase the effect of the foot soak. Simple medicinal add-ins are epsom salts or slices of fresh ginger.
Best Medicine: For an extremely potent foot soak, ancient formulas of herbs are used to increase and specialize the effect of the soak. To find out more of the specifics, check out our foot soak catalog here.
Place 1-2 herbal pouches (or, as directed by your practitioner) into a heat-proof, non-reactive vessel and add boiling water. Steep for 10 minutes. Pour tea bag and herb liquid into soaking vessel. Add hot water as necessary to cover your ankles.

C) Add liquid herbs to Foot Basin
Pour tea bag and herb liquid into soaking vessel. Add hot water as necessary to cover your ankles. Larger basins may require more water.

D) Confirm The Soak Temperature
Extremely important for those with impaired sensation in their extremities.The temperature should be between 105-112 degrees Fahrenheit (check using a thermometer). If this temperature feels uncomfortable when first starting to soak, it is ok to work up to this temperature gradually.

E) Sit & Soak
Choose a place where you will not be exposed to drafts and disruptions. It is best to avoid television or other electronics while soaking. Use the time to sit quietly, meditate, pray, or engage in pleasant conversation.

F) Maintain Soak Temperature
It is important to maintain the soak temperature in the therapeutic range of 105-112 degrees Fahrenheit for the duration of the soak (30-45 minutes). The easiest way to do this is to use an electric kettle to add small amounts of boiling water to the soaking basin every 5-10 minutes. Please Exercise Extreme Caution: Remove your feet from the bin when adding hot water and be very careful using electric appliances around water. Always confirm the soak temperature is below 112 degrees Fahrenheit before putting your feet back in the soak.

Other Helpful Treatments For Circulation

Acupuncture
Perhaps acupuncture’s greatest asset as a treatment modality is the precision at which, it can encourage the circulation of the body. Bad acupuncture can alleviate pain and promote general circulation. Good acupuncture can harmonize the organs of the body, extract and eliminate deeply held pathogenic influences in the tissues, and clear the mind.

Chinese Herbal Medicine
Chinese herbal medicine has an entire collection of herbs that may be used to increase the circulation of the body in both micro or targeted, and macro or general, sense. While the vast majority of these herbs are plant substances, there are a few medicinals that fall outside of the traditional category of plant. My article, How Bugs Can Heal Chronic Pain & Disease is a discussion about one subset of these medicinals.

Bodywork
Whether you’re talking Osteopathic, Chiropractic, or more traditional massage therapy, a good body worker is worth their weight in gold. Good bodywork can pinpoint the problematic area in the tissues of the body and remove it, restoring flow and encouraging the health of the entire person.

Step Three: Find A Health Expert & Comrade
(Not The Internet)

While the internet is an incredible place for the sharing of ideas, it is a terrible place for editing out bad ones. I’ve seen more patients damaged by following bad internet advice than almost any other source of information or treatment out there. Please be careful when receiving advice from sources that you have no way of dialoging with. Health advice should come with a platform of participation on both ends. It should include clear directions and signs of progress or deterioration. If the advice you’re getting is vague or lacking this basic partnership, do not follow it.

On the plus side, the internet can be a great place to find health comrades or experts to work with directly. There are so many good practitioners that can assist you on your path to health, wisdom, and happiness. You just need to find them.

Which Type of Medicine Is Best For me?
Stay connected for a future article dedicated to describing the strengths and weakness of various modalities of medicine. But in the meantime, rather than focusing on the type of medicine to try, I would recommend focusing instead on finding the right person as a practitioner, for you. This person should be trustworthy, intelligent, and credentialed within the context of their given field. They should be able to communicate well with you so that you can adequately understand your situation and what they think about it. They should also have a referral team of other practitioners whom they trust, that do different kinds of work than they do. In this way, finding the right practitioner can mean finding the right network of practitioners who are available upon need.

The best way to find the right practitioner is often through the referral of others, so don’t forget to ask trusted friends and family members about who could be right for you. If you happen to live in the Portland area or in the Pacific North West in general, me and the members of the Root & Branch team would be happy to recommend a practitioner who might be good for you. Feel free to book a free conversation with one of our experts here or virtually contact us via email or phone, here.

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Your Greatest Asset

One of the best things about being a human is not having to do it alone. In our culture we tend to think of our health as an individual thing, but it’s not! We exist in communities now as we always have. While it is, of course, important to cultivate the integrity of our health as an individual, it’s equally important to cultivate the health of ourselves as a people.

Please do not feel that you need to do this life alone. There are many humans as well as resources to assist you. And with such assistance, your journey of aging can be one of happiness and wisdom. Just give it some time.

How Bugs Can Heal Chronic Pain & Disease

By
Travis Cunningham MAcOM LAc

Ninety Percent of Chronic Pain Gone in One Week

“I hate to sound like a broken record,” said one of my teachers, “but a lot of her problem is due to blood stagnation.”

Dr. Greg Livingston and I were chatting before one of our herbal shifts at the school clinic. We were discussing the details of a diagnosis that one of our patients had been given on the shift the week before. Blood stagnation is the name of a pattern that we learn to identify and treat in Chinese medicine. According to the medicine, stagnant blood is the root of many illnesses. If blood doesn’t flow correctly, pain will result and various organ systems will become undernourished. Malnourishment and lack of flow will then cause other problems and lead to a whole host of diseases and bizarre symptoms.

I smiled at Greg’s remark. It was a familiar piece of advice, but one that bared repeating. Greg was one of the few westerners to go to China, learn chinese, finish a P.H.D. in Chinese medicine, and then study with various doctors who had decades of clinical experience. Greg got excellent results in the clinic. He consistently understood and could explain why he would give treatment the way that he did. He was one of the teachers that I had become closest to while in school. He is someone that I still consider a friend and mentor to this day.

“But why use the bugs Greg?” I asked after glancing at the patient’s herbal formula. “What would lead you to the conclusion that we need to break the blood?”

My question was linked to the way we learn to classify herbs as singular medicinals at school. The category in Chinese medicine that most of the insect medicinals are placed in, is called move the blood. The move the blood category has several gradients of intensity, the strongest of which is called break the blood. That is where the bug medicinals reside.

“Well,” he replied, “the bugs don’t necessarily move the blood any more intensely than Dang Gui 当归 (Angelica Sinensis) or Chuan Xiong 川芎 (Sichuan Lovage), what makes them unique is that they go to the luo mai.”

In Chinese medicine, when a person gets sick the disease is thought to go first into the main channels and collaterals of the body. These pathways are called the jing luo in Chinese. When the disease stays in the body for longer periods of time, it is thought to get into the tiny pathways and offshoots of the larger channels. These tiny pathways are referred to as the luo mai.

“Bugs get into tiny spaces, right?” he said, mimicking the movement of an insect with his hands. “So if you want to get into those tiny spaces of the body to get rid of that stubborn blood stagnation, you need the bugs.”

“Interesting” I replied.

Several weeks later, I was on a different clinical shift with one of my regular patients. This patient had had over ten surgeries on his abdomen leading to chronic abdominal pain. He had also been diagnosed with crohn’s disease, arthritis, and crohn’s-related arthritis. On a good day, his chronic pain was at a 5/10 intensity. On a bad day, it was 7 or 8/10. And it had been like this for years.

With weekly acupuncture, we had managed to get the scarring on his abdomen down “from the size of a dinner plate to the size of a salad plate,” he would say. Each week he would come in, we would needle around his abdominal scar in a technique known as “surround the dragon.” While progress was gradual, it was definite. Both the size of the scar and the local pain had decreased.

While our treatment had been somewhat effective, I wondered if there was more we could do to help him. That is when I remembered my conversation with Greg.

After convincing this patient to try a simple herbal formula that contained insect medicinals, we booked another appointed for the same time the following week.

As I went to greet the patient the next week, I could see he was smiling. When he got into the room, my patient said “Well, I think we’re on to something.”

“Oh yeah?” I replied, “How so?”

“Ninety percent of my arthritic pain has been gone since I’ve been taking the herbal formula you prescribed.”

“Ninety percent in one week?” I repeated, not fully believing my ears.

“Ninety percent in one week,” my patient confirmed.

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The Use of Non-herbs in Traditional Herbal Medicine

In the Chinese herbal materia medica, there are a vast number of medicinals listed that we would not normally consider “herbs” in the english language. Some of these are mineral-based substances such as amber, hematite, pearl, and oyster shell. While others may come from (or be) insects or larger animals. In modern times, it can be difficult to conceive of why anyone would want to use animal-based materials for traditional herbal medicine. Isn’t there a plant-based alternative, we ask? In our time of cultural change and technological advancement, it seems like almost anything can be replaced by something else.

But if we look from the perspective of traditional people, we have to admit that animal products are different from plant or mineral-based ones. Animals are slightly different forms of life. They carry unique features of nature and bear a closer resemblance to humans than plants or minerals do. This uniqueness was noticed by ancient people, and those ancient people sought assistance from these animals in their medicine.

A Doctrine of Signatures

The doctrine of signatures is a common method of investigation inside many forms of traditional medicine. This principle suggests that what something looks like in nature, suggests what it has an affinity for in the body. Fro example, Walnuts appear somewhat like the human brain and so tend to promote brain function. Beats are red like blood and contain vitamins and minerals that create healthy blood. Examples of this principle are numerous and found constantly in different cultures all over the world.

It’s important to remember that the doctrine of signatures is not the end of an investigation, but the beginning. After a similarity is witnessed with a substance and the body, experimentation begins. And after experimentation has been exhaustively conducted, there is debate about the usage and function of each particular substance in a given context.

Far too often, we ascribe a kind of archaic simplicity to the reasoning of our ancestors. But the more we examine ancient people, the less foolish they appear to be. The symbols earlier humans used to describe life often have a multidimensional meaning and function. The non-specific nature of each symbol allows it to outline a broad type of experience without being constrained by particular details. This makes a symbol the perfect articulation for a kind of experience instead of an individual one. The doctrine of signatures is just one way that the natural intelligence of bodies and their environments manifests.

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Worms for Wind

Worms move in a way that appears very similar to humans when we are convulsing (like in a seizure or stroke). Convulsions may come on without much warning and be chaotic in nature. This quality of movement and appearance is like wind.

Once the convulsions end, certain parts of the body may be closed down or opened inappropriately. Paralysis may ensue. The channels that the body uses to communicate information have become obstructed. This obstruction requires the influence of an agent that knows how to get into tiny places and unblock them. This is where the worms come in.

It’s Important to remember that the doctrine of signatures is a method of explaining the gesture of a medicinal and not necessarily a description of its physical action. The application of an insect medicinal takes place after the insect has died and been processed. In the case of Chinese medicine, our bug medicinals are most commonly put together with other herbs and then simmered in water to be taken in the form of a decoction or tea. In certain applications, they are charred and powdered for topical remedies but never used in live form.

The heading information for each medicinal was taken from Benskey’s Materia Medica (3rd Edition) unless otherwise stated. Please refer to this text for more detailed information.

Dì Lóng 地龙
Latin: Pheretima
English: Earthworm
Properties: Salty, Cold
Channels Entered: Bladder, Liver, Lung, Spleen
Functions: Drains Heat, Extinguishes Wind, Stops Spasms & Convulsions, Calms Wheezing, Unblocks the Channels, Facilitates Urination

One of my teachers in Chinese medicine school would emphasize that earthworms look a little bit like the bronchioles of the Lungs. This, he thought, gave them an affinity to deal with long-standing lung problems.

During the Spring, di long crawls through the soil and begins the aeration process for the season ahead. It’s important to note that including air, the soil is opened up for the water cycle of Spring rain. Unclogging the tight soil for air and water to flow is precisely what di long helps the human body to do; unblocking the body’s breathing and urination.

Internally, di long is most often used in post-stroke and seizure remedies to unblock the channels and help a person recover the functioning of paralyzed tissues. But di long can also be used in a variety of chronic lung problems. It makes a great combination with sang bai pi (mulberry root bark) and si gua luo (luffa) for folks who have a cough with lung weakness due to a history of suppressed lung problems (such as pneumonia during childhood).

Dosing di long does not even need to be that high! As few as three to nine grams per day is enough to make a substantial difference in a person’s case. The most common way for internal administration of this medicinal is through ingestion via decoction, powder, or pill.

Externally, di long can be ground with sugar and applied topically to treat burns and ulcerations.

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Jiāng Cán 僵蚕
Latin: Bombyx Batryticatus
English: Mumified Silkworm
Properties: Acrid, Salty, Neutral
Channels Entered: Liver, Lung
Functions: Eliminates Wind, Drains Heat, Transforms Phlegm, Disperses Clumping

Jiang can is a white silkworm in its cocooned stage. Not only does the silkworm move in a similar fashion to the earthworm (like convulsions or wind), but the processing involved in preparing this medicinal for use includes stopping its growth or life by wind. Because this medicinal has been mummified by wind itself, it has an extra affinity for treating disorders that appear wind-like in the human body.

Internally, jiang can is often combined with di long to treat post-stoke and seizure disorders. It can be combined with other herbs to treat acute febrile illnesses, especially ones that include phlegm and congestion.

Jiang can separates itself from di long in two ways. The first has to do with it’s white color and acrid flavor. These two characteristics allow for the ability to treat phlegm and thick fluids in the body. One of my teachers used to say that if you crush jiang can up, it actually looks like phlegm. While one might argue that this could be the case for many herbs, it is certainly true of jiang can.

The acrid flavor of jiang can also helps to vent superficial pathogenic influence. Sensation of itching or bugs crawling underneath the skin, can be treated by this medicinal (with or without the manifestation of a rash).

The second and perhaps more notable difference in the focus of these two medicinals is that jiang can goes to the throat and treats nodules of phlegm and stagnation there. It performs this action quite well when combined with xia ku cao (prunellas spica), zhe bei mu (fritillariae thunbergii bulbus), and mu li (oyster shell).

Similarly to di long, dosing jiang can does not need to be very high! Three to nine grams per day is a more than effective dose to begin in most cases.

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Yin Crawlers for Yin Problems

Some bugs happen to live and grow in the murky places of our planet. What may we deduce from this? Well, a creature who thrives in the cold, dark, and damp may have an affinity for Yin.

In ancient Chinese cosmology, Yin and Yang represent the two apparent opposing aspects of our living experience. All things may be divided into Yin and Yang. Yang can be classified by the qualities of brightness, expansion, warmth, and expression. Yin can be classified by the qualities of darkness, contraction, cold, and introspection. Both are needed for the other to exist. Both may create or destroy the other. Either may be used to antagonize the other. Studying the way Yin and Yang interact is a basic study for any of the classical Chinese arts - including medicine.

Bugs that live and grow in water have a special ability to treat problems that are water-like. These are Yin problems of the body - lack of movement, stagnation and decay of fluids, the formation of tumors and masses, and poorly circulating blood. These symptoms, while variant, often result in the creating same experience - horrible amounts of pain. For when Yin gets stuck without enough Yang, disharmony is conclusive.

Shuĭ Zhì 水蛭
Latin: Hirudo
English: Leech
Properties: Salty, Bitter, Neutral, Slightly Toxic
Channels Entered: Liver, Bladder
Functions: Breaks up Static Blood, Disperses Stagnation

As the primary example of a water bug, shui zhi crowns itself queen of the medicinals that conquer Yin pathogenic influence in the human body. As shui zhi’s nature implies, pathologies that have landed in the lower body are its specialty to work on. Shui zhi’s salty flavor enters the blood aspect of the liver, targeting patterns of static blood which have yielded masses in the abdomen.

Shui zhi is perhaps the most focused bug medicinal. In addition to its action of guiding other herbs deeply within the body, shui zhi is said to have the ability to “break up old blood stasis without damaging new blood.” (WAtR, 135) According to the revered physician Zhang Xi-Chun, the hirudo leech has an affinity for carefully finding old blood because it seeks out and consumes blood during the course of its life. Whatever the reason may be, shui zhi’s medicine seems to be the most precise and effective bug medicinal to use in the case of chronic blood stasis, especially in the presence of substantiated accumulations.

Because of the growing popularity of shui zhi as a medicinal, prices on the herbal market have begun to increase making shui zhi quite an expensive ingredient. In the interest of keeping the price of herbal medicine affordable, the practitioners at Root & Branch have discovered that adding even as little as one to two grams of shui zhi to an herbal formula per day is enough to make a huge difference in most cases. It should be noted however, that for best results, three to five grams per day is recommended.

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Tŭ Biē Chóng 土鳖虫
Latin: Eupolyphaga/Steleophaga
English: Wingless Cockroach
Properties: Salty, Cold, Slightly Toxic
Channels Entered: Liver, Heart, Spleen
Functions: Breaks up Blood Stasis, Renews Sinews, Joints and Bones

Salty and cold, tu bie chong lives in the ground or in the walls and floors of urban buildings. Its affinity for darkness makes it an ideal medicinal in the conquering of Yin based accumulations: static blood, masses & tumors in the abdomen.

In addition to Yin pathogenic influence, tu bie chong works exceptionally well at healing injuries, bone breaks, and sinew or tissue damage. This is because the cockroach heals itself well in life. If tu bie chong is cut in half and then re-attached, it will heal and continue to live! The doctrine of signatures suggests that this potential is activatable in medicine. This is especially the case when tu bie chong is combined with the resins of trees: Olibanum (rŭ xiāng) and Myrrha (mò yào).

The recommended dosage of tu bie chong is between three and twelve grams per day. One of the best things about this medicinal is that its cheap! For the time being, tu bie chong makes a great add-in to any herbal formula needing guidance into the deeper blood level of the body. It also makes for a good substitute for shui zhi or meng chong on a tight budget.

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Yang Fliers for Fast Action

Some insects can fly and are attracted to light. They move and exhibit a buzzing sound, rapidly flapping their wings. This activity makes these creatures more like Yang. Yang is fast, agile, bright and big in its movement. It transforms turbidity and stuckness through an excited kind of Qi. While Yang transformation is successful, it normally requires a more stable partner for its transformations to be lasting.

Méng Chóng 虻虫
Latin: Tabanus
English: Horse Fly
Properties: Bitter, Slightly Cold, Toxic
Channels Entered: Liver
Functions: Quickly Breaks up Blood Stasis

Widely regarded as the most Yang bug medicinal, meng chong specializes in its fast-acting approach to transforming static blood accumulations and masses.

Meng chong flies in the air, buzzing around with a high frequency in life. When taken as a medicinal, meng chong’s bitter flavor combines with its Yang nature to quickly transform and purge accumulations. Though fast-acting, meng chong’s activity is relatively short lived. For this reason, it is normally combined with a more Yin-natured medicinal such as shui zhi to lengthen its medicinal effect.

Because of the rarity of meng chong as a medicinal, prices on the herbal market have begun to increase making meng chong quite an expensive ingredient. In the interest of keeping the price of herbal medicine affordable, the practitioners at Root & Branch have discovered that adding even as little as one to two grams of meng chong to an herbal formula per day is enough to make a huge difference in most cases. It should be noted however, that for best results, three to five grams per day is recommended.

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Case Study: Chronic Cough

62 yr. Sys Male

History
Patient reported a history of chronic dry cough for ten plus years (no memory of initial onset). The cough was mild and unremarkable unless the patient would catch a cold. Once caught, the cold would move quickly into the chest and linger for as long as two or three months. The cold would typically manifest with a dry cough, extreme fatigue, and difficult to expectorate phlegm.

The patient also reported catching pneumonia when he was eight years old that was treated with antibiotics.

First Appointment
Patient caught a cold six weeks prior to the initial visit. Though the acute symptoms had mostly resolved, a dry cough and fatigue remained. The cough was bothersome throughout the day and only through the night if the patient awoke for a time. No phlegm was expectorated while coughing, but there was a sensation of fullness in the chest and the epigastrium. Patient reported a neutral body temperature, but a preference for warmth, and no sweating. “I never sweat,” he said. Patient was able to fall asleep easily, but would sometimes wake around 3 AM with racing thoughts and heart palpitations. Occasionally he would be unable to fall back asleep for several hours. The patient had to get up 2-3 times per night, on average to urinate. Appetite, digestion, and bowel movement were all unremarkable.

Tongue
Slightly pale, thicker white coat, red tip, engorged sublingual veins.

Pulse
Overall: tight, muffled, robust
Cun positions felt very muffled but robust and superficial.
Right Cun was slightly scattered, with a Yang Wei pulse indication.
Guan Positions were wiry and tight.
Chi positions were deep and weak.

Diagnosis
Wind-Cold Painful Obstruction of the chest (Bi Syndrome)
Obstruction of the upper burner resulting in clumping of the Qi
Lung Qi unable to descend

Formula
Zhi Shi Xie Bai Gui Zhi Tang (Granule)

Gua Luo Xie Bai Ban Xia Tang 60 g
Zhi Shi 8 g
Gui Zhi 10 g
Hou Po 8 g

Dosage: 6 grams 2 times per day for 7 days.

Second Appointment (one week later)
Patient reported improvement with both cough and energy level. He had expectorated some very thick yellowish phlegm throughout the week and was feeling much better. His middle of the night waking had also decreased, as did the palpitations and feeling of fullness.

Because the patient had to leave town for several weeks, I gave him two more weeks worth of the same formula and told him to get in touch with me once he was back in town.

Third Appointment (one month later)
Patient reported gradual improvement for the first week after the second appointment and then no more improvement. His cough had “gone back to normal” and was now mild, dry and intermittent throughout the day. His sleep had improved, but he would still wake up 2-3 times to urinate per night. He was slightly fatigued throughout the day. All other reviewed systems were unremarkable.

Tongue
Pale-red, dusky, thin white coat, red tip, engorged sublingual veins.

Pulse
less tight than before…
Cun positions were now deeper (about mid depth) and very scattered, but still robust.
Right Cun position still had a Yang Wei pulse indication
Middle positions had become more superficial but were mostly unremarkable
Chi positions were slightly stronger, but still deep and weak overall.

Diagnosis
Blood Stasis in the Upper Jiao
Kidney Qi Deficiency
Kidney failing to grasp Qi

Formula
Jin Fei Cao San with modifications (bulk decoction)

Xuan Fu Hua 9g
Bai Shao (Chao) 9g
Gan Cao 6g
Tao Ren 9g
Dang Gui (Chao) 9g
Di Long 3g
Sang Bai Pi 9g
Zi Wan 9g
Si Gua Luo 6g

Dosage: per day.

Result
After one week, the patient’s cough had completely subsided. I prescribed a similar version of the above formula over the next few months, slowly removing the stop cough and heat clearing medicinals and replacing them with herbs to supplement the Kidney and Lung Qi.

Six months later, the patient’s cough had not returned.

Analysis
The patient’s medical history indicated a long-standing lung weakness. This was likely due to, or aggravated by the occurrence of pneumonia during childhood. In my clinical experience, the Yang Wei pulse indication is a confirmation of this weakness.

The patient’s presenting symptoms of cough, feelings of fullness and pulse led me to believe that the pathogenic influence was stuck in the chest. Preference for warmth and lack of sweating made me lean toward a cinnamon based remedy. This case is clearly one of mixed excess and deficiency. I chose Zhi Shi Xie Bai Gui Zhi Tang to restore the functional movement of Yang Qi, dissipate clumping and expel phlegm.

Once the acute pattern of obstruction was addressed, the residual, more deeply rooted pattern of blood stasis began to show itself. The cun pulses got deeper and more scattered. The engorged sublingual veins and the continuation of the Yang Wei pulse all pointed to the need for herbs that could enter the luo mai.

Formula Breakdown
Xuan Fu Hua, Bai Shao Yao and Gan Cao were chosen as chief ingredients in the formula. These herbs were selected to liberate the Qi dynamic from obstruction and allow the descent of the Lung Qi. Xuan Fu Hua has a salty flavor and some sources say that it assists the Kidney in grasping the Qi. It is also commonly thought of as the only flower that directs downward. Bai Shao and Gan Cao make up the formula Shao Yao Gan Cao Tang, which is used moderate the spasmatic deficiency-related tendency for cough.

Tao Ren and Dang Gui were used to open the blood vessels and move the blood. These two ingredients also have a slightly moistening affect on the Large Intestine. The Large Intestine is the yang pair of the Lungs. Keeping the Large Intestine clear is a useful strategy when promoting the descent of Lung Qi.

Di long and Si Gua Luo are an herb pair used by Dr. Greg Livingston to drive the formula into the luo mai. Di long was selected because of its affinity for the lung and bladder channels - opening up the bronchioles of the lungs and promoting the smooth movement of the water passageways. Si Gua Luo is the luffa vegetable sponge. It looks like the lung’s bronchioles and is one of the only non-bug medicinals that is able to access the luo mai.

Sang Bai Pi and Zi Wan are dynamic cough medicinals used in cases of both excess and deficiency. Sang Bai Pi is sweet and cold, while Zi Wan is acrid, bitter, and warm. Together they are able to able to treat a variety of cough-related consumption patterns.

Why No Qi Tonics?
Because of the robust nature of the pulse in the cun pulse positions, I decided not to include medicinals that directly tonify the Lung’s Qi in the first formula. I felt that the salty flavor of Xuan Fu Hua and Di long were enough to encourage the movement of the Kidney’s grasping ability. In future renditions of the formula, I included various aspects of the formulas Sheng Mai San and Shen Qi Wan in order to tonify deficiency.

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The Cultivation & Understanding of Traditional Medicine

Practicing a traditional medicine in modern times has many challenges. One of the biggest challenges comes when we try to communicate the difference of perspectives between the ancient and modern worlds. Perspective shapes the reasoning for action. It creates a context for why a particular medicinal would be prescribed or not. Understanding perspective is necessary before judging the method. And far too often today, we learn to judge before attaining this understanding.

Using insect-based medicinals has been one of the most valuable clinical insights for me. In the short span of my career as a Chinese medicine practitioner, I have been able to help numerous people with the knowledge that I have shared above. I am certainly no where near mastery of the art and science of Chinese medicine. Even so, I hope that the information presented in this article may be of use to practitioners who have the intelligence and skill to employ it.

Let's be honest... You are lying.

The world of natural health and healing is no stranger to bold claims. Many of us stand at odds with the status quo in healthcare. We are trying to change the way people think about their bodies and their relationships to disease and to accomplish those changes sometimes we get loud. We rely on inflammatory headlines (like this one) to draw people into an article or to a video. Sometimes that reliance on bold text crosses over into hyperbole and then into unsubstantiated claims about this food or that drug; about how Monsanto is trying to kill us all because Round-Up was originally designed to clean pipes (it wasn't); about how the environment is so full of mold and toxic chemicals that we all need to be regularly detoxing to avoid the diseases of modern living (interesting idea but you're gonna need to support that with some data). Here's my favorite one lately and the inspiration for this post:

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"I would never feed me or my kids margarine. It's one molecule away from plastic."

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This handy little comparison has been applied to lots of processed foods to illustrate their deeply harmful nature.

"Cool whip is one molecule away from styrofoam or "Cheez Wiz is only two molecules different from garbage bags"

So here's the thing: that might be true. I actually don't know what the chemical composition is of margarine or Cool Whip or Cheez Wiz nor do I know how it compares to plastic. But that really doesn't matter. I know it seems like it might. But it definitely doesn't. Lots of things are just one molecule or one DNA pair away from other things and yet those things are not at all the same. They don't have the same properties or effects on the body or the environment. For example: Humans are just a few DNA links away from Chimps. Or how about Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2)? It is one atom (not even a molecule which is a collection of atoms and much larger than a single atom) away from water (H2O). How bout you fill me up a big glass of Hydrogen Peroxide since it is only one atom away from water, it must be roughly the same right? Or if you don't like thinking about it that way, you'll need to immediately stop drinking water since it is only one atom different from Hydrogen Peroxide and is probably subtly killing your gut bacteria leading to leaky gut syndrome right? The whole comparison is patently ridiculous. 

Ok but you never fell for those kinds of memes or chain emails. You're not an anti-vaxxer or a heavy metal chelator or a chronic detoxer. You like to be healthy, eat good food, be responsible as often as possible. Awesome! That is great news! But there are some things we need to talk about. Because margarine IS a terrible product. So are Cheez Wiz and Cool Whip. And we need to talk about why they are bad products in all the ways that they are bad -- the resources used to manufacture them, the actual ingredients they contain and the verifiable effect those ingredients have on health, the environmental cost to producing the food and its packaging, and let's not forget about the taste! Those products taste terrible, especially once you free your Patty Hearst tastebuds from the stockholm sydrome they're processing from years of eating crap food. But one of the reasons that margarine and all the rest are terrible foods is not because they are one molecule away from plastic (if that is even accurate). And making statements like that one ping hard on rational radars as indicators for people who are so far gone from reasonable discussion that they can be discounted. Perpetuating false narratives about problematic foods or chemicals or processes only leads us into folly where the people who could actually regulate those industries and make changes to benefit us all, see the people screaming hysterical alarm as poorly informed lemmings who listen to the opinions of the Medical Medium and Gwenyth Paltrow as gospel and internalize their fringe points of view to help foment their distrust.

Classically, in order for a person to tell a lie, the person speaking must know that what they are saying is false. There is a presumption in the word lie that there is some intent to deceive -- to misrepresent what the speaker knows is true for some particular gain, often a gain considered nefarious or at least self-interested. So when I tell you that it's time to stop lying, maybe I'm reaching too far. Maybe you didn't know that what you were saying was false, but so much of what I see repeated on the internet is so obviously false or can be determined false with about three minutes of Googling, that it's hard to not hold people accountable for the crap they are perpetuating. 

What am I talking about?

I work in an “alternative” medicine field. I practice Chinese Medicine in America where our medical system is at best dysfunctional and at worst actively working to prevent people from getting the care they need to live healthy and fulfilling lives. In this miasma of complex health pathologies, many people are looking for answers to their woes. They are looking to understand why they can’t stop coughing or why they always feel tired; why they can’t seem to sleep or why their libido is way lower than they would like. For so many of these conditions, biomedicine has little in the way of an answer. If all the blood tests come back negative and the symptoms don’t fit a known disease, well… just wait ‘til it gets worse then come back to see us. Maybe we’ll know what’s wrong then.

Trouble is, people want to know WHY, and they are going to look for answers wherever they can find them, and today that means going to Google and asking the question. You might find a forum for people with your symptoms or a WebMD article that hopefully doesn’t suggest you likely have cancer. You might commiserate with the online communities you have discovered and learn about different treatment options that “mainstream medicine” isn’t talking about. You might even learn about how some environmental toxin (mold, heavy metals, pesticides) or a food component (gluten, casein, fructose) is likely the cause of your myriad symptoms — how Big Pharma and Big Ag are conspiring with Corporate America to keep you sick because there is good money in your illness. You might start to feel beaten down, taken advantage of, and then a lot people start to get mad. They become zealots for a new “healthy” living movement. They listen to gurus and life coaches and many of them arrive at an “alternative” clinic wanting to know how Acupuncture can help them overcome the Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) symptoms that are manifesting as fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, and depression. They read about a woman in Boulder who was able to completely get rid of her autoimmune condition by eating only sprouted greens and bananas and using Chinese Medicine therapies. They want to know what herbs they can take to help purge the heavy metals from the fillings in their teeth and what sort of cleanses they can do to get rid of the unnamed toxins coursing through their bodies every day. And because people in medicine are usually in that business because they want to help people, we answer their questions and guide them along our own experiences and impart our own biases and points of view. It’s completely natural this whole process. And its completely misguided.

Don’t get me wrong. Heavy metals and pesticides are dangerous and harmful. Mold can set up shop in your sinuses and lungs and cause all sorts of problems. Unmanaged hormones and neurotransmitters can wreak havoc on people’s sense of health and well-being. The problem comes in when we start to assume that we are not actually part of the world around us. That we are individuals, fighting against other individuals, fate, and the poor choices of people in the past instead of realizing that we are a continuum. Not people in a continuum but the continuum itself. We are just as responsible for processing chemical contaminants, as we see them, as the rocks and the oceans, and the clouds. We are dynamic members of a complex web of living creatures and biomes, but we are constructing our realities. We give breath and life to our diseases. We give in to the idea, created millenia ago, that our bodies are corrupt and will ultimately betray us either through their irrepressible desires or through their inevitable mechanical failure.

Instead, we have to begin the practice of seeing ourselves as part of the global whole, not truly separate from other living things on the planet, certainly not separate from other humans, and definitely not independent of the people that have come before us. Our health is a complex constellation of factors that is more than a little influenced by our internal narratives, and commiseration can be empowering to know that you are not alone in your struggle but can quickly become a toxic echo chamber where a path out is beset on all sides by people selling snake oil. No matter what your suffering looks like, there is a way to feel better. It relies on you more than on celery juice enemas or high-quality supplements that cost a lot of money. It requires that you lean into your history and on the wisdom of humans collected over the 30,000 years we have been wandering the planet. Harmony with the world around you, not viewing disagreement as conflict and conspiracy, feeling the changes in the seasons and shifting your lifestyle accordingly, giving yourself the empowered permission to make big changes in your life that might at first glance seem impossible — these are just some of the practices that lead us away from the outrage that margarine is only one molecule away from plastic (factual reality still unknown) and into an informed intellectual position where we can truly assess the claims of healers and salespeople without the weight of conspiracy and exploitation at the front of our minds.

The time is now. Stop sharing BS articles that aren’t based in reality. Stop feeding your outrage machine. Embrace your life as it is and ease into change when it feels right. Cultivate your appetites for food and distraction. Give yourself permission to be powerful and in control but also know that leaning into the swirling river around you is often the best way to find satisfaction. You got this.

Bulk Herbs and the Power of Decoction

A Post for Practitioners

(but you can read it even if you’re not one)

When people think back to the origin of our medicine, images of people searching the forests and fields for special plants and minerals that could cure pathological conditions is certainly part of the imagery. Those ingredients, broadly referred to as herbs even though many of them are animal parts or minerals, became the cornerstone of the internal medicine components of what would evolve into Chinese Medicine today. Indeed, the use of powerful herbs is not unique to East Asia and not even unique to pre-modern people. Some assessments put over 80% of modern pharmaceuticals have their origins in compounds derived from plants and animals. Searching for balance or counterbalance in the natural world is perhaps one of the most unifying characteristics of human beings across all cultures and all times.

As a contemporary practitioner of Chinese Medicine, I lean heavily on the knowledge of our predecessors. I use their recorded insights as they refined their craft and documented their findings in the literal millennia of case studies and then commentary on those case studies that form the bulk of the classical basis for modern practice. I look to formulations of different herbs that have been tried and found effective in clinical practice nearly every time that I want to help a patient with their different problems and wellness limitations. And when I finally put together the treatment plan for those conditions, I almost always reach to whole plant medicine. In the same way that I want to eat whole foods as close to their form in nature as possible, so too do I want to build remedies that are as close to the natural world as possible. Our bodies are evolved to process and utilize that which it understands, and it struggles to make use of that which is unknown or unrecognizable.

Yet we all know that patient compliance is often a challenge when prescribing herbal medicine. Cooking herbs into medicinal tea can be time-consuming for people and confusing for patients to navigate on their own. Even patients with the time and intention find themselves forgetting to prepare herbs or using methods that don’t yield the most potent solution. So in our pharmacy we decided to cut out the compliance middleman and do the work ourselves. Using filtered and mineralized water, Root & Branch will cook your patient’s herbs for them to make sure they get the most potent brew to help resolve their ailments.

We use electric pressure cookers to decoct herbs in our shop. We have experimented extensively with cook times, temperatures, and water levels to create a process that produces potent extractions. We are able to maintain the volatile components of short boil herbs by condensing them back into the decoction or by using a more traditional “add at the end” method. If you use our decoction services, please specify “add at the end” when building your formula if that is your preference. All of our decoctions leave the shop in sanitized, reusable, tempered-glass jars that keep those decoctions food safe in the refrigerator for as many as 10 days.  But please adhere to the “Best-Buy” date in your patient’s herb packet.

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Talking to Patients about Cooking their Herbs at Home

Some of your patients might want to still cook their herbs at home. I have a few folks who really love the idea of brewing their own remedies, and they enjoy having an intimate connection to the process of their healing. For those people, we designed an easy infographic that lays out how to cook herbs on the stovetop using the traditional, double-boil method. But for a lot of patients, cooking herbs in a pot, especially cooking herbs everyday in a pot, can get cumbersome for even the most motivated of them. So we decided to share our pressure cooker methods too. We’ve reproduced them here as a way to help you talk to them about cooking herbs in a pressure cooker or maybe even trying it yourself:

Formula to Consider:

Dang Shen - root (tonic)
Cang Zhu - root (aromatic)
Fu Ling - rootesque (draining)
Gan Cao - root
Sheng Jiang - rhizome (acrid)
Da Zao - fruit (sweet)
Chen Pi - peel (aromatic)
Jiang Zhi Ban Xia - rhizome
Cao Guo - fruit (aromatic)

1. Determine which of your herbs are going in for the pressure cook stage and which might need to be short boiled

   As a general rule, herbs that are roots, fruits, sticks, or minerals go into the pot for the pressure stage. In particular, herbs that are tonic in nature, especially those that are sweet or slightly cloying definitely go into the pot for the pressure stage. For herbs that are more aromatic in nature, they are likely to be short-boiled at the end of the process. Such herbs might include Bo He (mint), Gui Zhi/Rou Gui (cinnamon), Sha Ren (grains of paradise fruit), or Jing Jie (schizonepeta), especially if you are using them for their ability to cut through turbidity or to expel the exterior.

   We have even taken this process of selection to a more specific level than I would expect from patients. Let’s use the formula to the right to highlight how we would create a decoction for our own patients:

   Herbs for Pressure Stage: Dang Shen, Fu ling, Gan Cao, Sheng Jiang, Da Zao, Ban Xia

   All the herbs listed for pressure stage are herbs that are heavy, dense, tonic, sweet, or are needed to harmonize the actions of the other herbs. These types of herbs can withstand the increased temperature of cooking under pressure and, in our experience, are more deeply extracted when cooked at a higher temperature.

   Herbs for Open-Lid Cooking: Cang Zhu, Chen Pi

   The herbs listed for Open Lid Cooking are herbs that would normally be cooked with the first group if you were doing stove top cooking but in the case of using a pressure cooking device, we have found that there more gentle aromatics are damaged by the added head and while some of their more volatile elements will condense back into the cooking chamber, side-by-side comparisons in our pharmacy show a more potent flavor profile when these herbs are not subjected to the additional heat of a pressure cook. These types of herbs should be set aside from the rest and soaked in just enough hot water to cover them while the first group of herbs is being cooked (see more details about how to do that below). Once the pressure has reduced and safety pin has released, open the pot and add this “open-lid cooking” group of herbs (and the liquid they have been soaking in) to the decoction. Set your cooker to saute, or whatever equivalent setting will get the liquid boiling again, and cook for 10-12 minutes.

   Herbs for True Short-Boil: Cao Guo

   This last group of herbs represents what most experienced herb cooks will recognize as a “short-boil” herb. That is, an herb whose extremely aromatic nature (i.e. high concentration of volatile flavor compounds)is lost with extensive application of heat. In order to preserve the potency of these herbs in a decoction they should be added once all other cooking is done and simmered for no more than 5 minutes. For some of the most aromatic ingredients, I will grind them into a coarse powder and add them to the hot, finished decoction and let the ground herbs steep like tea, with the HEAT TURNED OFF. Once they infuse for 5-8 mintes with no additional heat, I will strain the whole mixture and hot pack into sterile jars.

2. Figure our how much water you need to cook your herbs

   We use a basic calculation as a starting point for all of our decoctions and then make modifications based on the specific formula ingredients:

   Water required = final volume of finished decoction + 20%

   So to put that into context, we cook most of our formulas 7 days at a time, and we send out those 7 days worth of herbs in 7, pint-sized, glass canning jars. So for 7 days of herbs, we send out a total of 14 cups of finished decoction or 3.5 quarts. That means that for our water requirement calculation, we use the final volume of finished decoction (14 cups) + 20% (3 cups) for a total water requirement of 17 cups (a little more than a gallon).

   However, some herbs that might be in a formula could be more voluminous (i.e. Zhu Ru, Shui Niu Jiao, Tong Cao) or more dense and heavy (i.e. mu li, e zhu, dai zhi hi). This change in volume will require an increase or a reduction of water so that you can get a solid extraction but still managing the total liquid so you don’t have gallons to drink. This is where the art of herb cooking comes in and we recommend that as you start down the road of cooking your own herbs (stovetop or pressure cooker), you have a small notebook where you can keep info about the ingredients in a formula, how much water you put into the cooking pot, and how much yield you got in the end. That way you will have data points to use in informing your instincts around right amounts of water or not.

3. Cook the herbs

   Once you know the order of our herb cooking and how much water you are going to use, it’s time to get cooking. Add your pressure cook group to the pot. Put your open-lid group in a bowl near to your cooking station. Do the same with the short-boil group. Pour just enough water over each group of herbs to get them barely submerged (Be conservative here. We want them to start hydrating while the pressure group cooks, but we want most of the water in the cooking pot). Pour the remaining water into your pressure cooker with the pressure cook group of herbs, put on the lid, and set the cook time to 20 minutes of low-pressure cooking.

   Allow the pot to go through its complete cook cycle, and DO NOT vent the steam. Allowing the pot to cool naturally will force any volatile components in the chamber back into the solution and once the safety pin drops you can open the lid to add your soaked open-top group to the pot. Once you have the first two groups in the cook pot, change the setting to saute (or other equivalent setting on non-Instant Pot brand machines that will allow the contents to come to a boil) and cook at a very low boil for 15-20 minutes.

   Once you have finished cooking the second group, turn the heat off and add the short-boil group to your pot. Allow the short boil to steep for 5-8 minutes.

4. Strain and drink

   Strain out all the herbs you’ve used and compost them. Divide your finished decoction into the appropriate number of doses per your prescription, and store them in the fridge.

Important Points about Decoction Service at R&B

 1.) Because of food safety concerns with shipping, decoction Service is only available for patients who are able to come to the pharmacy in person to pick up their cooked herbs.

2.) R&B cooks  1 day’s herbs (usually also one bag) into one (1), 16oz jar of finished decoction. Dosing therefore is usually 1/2 jar (8oz) per dose, 2 times per day. Exact volume will vary depending on the herbs in a formula and the number of days being cooked. IF YOU NEED EXACT VOLUMES FOR YOUR PATIENTS, you may want your patients to cook their herbs at home.

3.) In order to guarantee that decoctions are fresh and safe to consume, R&B CANNOT decoct more than 7 days worth of herbs at a time (i.e. no more than seven jars of decoction at a time).

4.) From the time payment is received for herbs, it usually takes 2.5 hours for the herbs to be cooked, cooled, and packaged. Please advise your patients accordingly. They will receive a text notification that there herbs are ready for pick-up.

5.) Decoction service costs $5.00 which pays for a portion of the jars and carriers, as well as the labor to wash, sanitize, and restock the equipment

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.

Falling Leaves and Changing Winds

Travis Kern, L.Ac.

The transition from Summer to Fall is a marked one in most parts of the US. Not only do the days start to shorten and the temperatures get cooler but many people start to get excited about the coming holiday seasons. Whether spending time with family or loved ones, going on trips, playing out meaningful traditions, or just getting a few minutes of pensive reflection, the fall season reminds us all of the continuous change intrinsic to all of our environments.

Historically and still in many parts of the world, Fall is the time of harvesting and fruition; of storing away the potent Yang that has dominated these last several months so that in the coming months ruled by the dark and cold Yin, we have enough motive force to sustain our lives and activities. This process is easiest to see in the picking, processing, and canning of late summer fruits and vegetables. If you’ve ever grown tomatoes or green beans, you know that those four plants you started in May are now overfilled with ripe fruit, more than you could ever eat, and it’s time to pack their nutrients away to help satisfy your appetites come Winter.

But it is not only in food and eating that the Fall season can be experienced. Indeed, our activity and movement during this time of year also changes. Many of us know the feeling of wanting to curl up on the couch with a warm drink and watch our favourite films or read a great book. Humans start to feel slower and disinclined to make intense physical efforts. This tendency is our natural movement toward the hibernation of the eventual winter season when we need to conserve our energy and our effort because making big things happen during the cold of the coming Winter can be difficult and almost always depleting.

Fall is also the Chinese Medicine season of dryness and even though in many parts of the country fall brings increased rain, the air begins to chap our faces and lips and the ground starts to crack as the chill begins, reflecting the systemic dryness of the season. Foods that are moistening and supportive of the lung from a Chinese Medicine point of view are a must during this time of year.

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The Interaction of Yin and Yang

The classic Taiji symbol has been common in American consciousness since the early 90s at least. That swirl of white and black doesn’t usually draw profound contemplation from Western people but it is indeed a powerfully simple image of a very complex idea. It would be easy to imagine that Yin and Yang have moral qualities because of our Western dualistic mindset (for more on that check out this blog post). Yet, the dark and cold qualities of Yin are not bad things just as the movement and activity of Yang are not good things. They have no moral dimension and they are both absolutely required in order for life to move forward and flourish.

What is movement with no substance or earth with no animation? The interaction of Yin and Yang form the essential elements of all things both living and not. They are descriptors of things and of changes between states of being. They can be used as all the parts of speech and each aspect gives us more insight into the complexity of existence. Profound indeed.

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But it’s hot where I live. Like, all the time. In every season…

When we talk about the changes in season, the theories we expound on here are rooted in the the patterns and times of Earth’s Northern Hemisphere and a latitude roughly equivalent to central France. If you lived in Australia or Brasil, your seasons would happen in different months but they would still happen. And though most of us think of the change in season as a change in the temperature of the air, the ancient Chinese considered many more factors than the sensation of hot or cold in the air. Spring is the time when new plants sprout and grow powerfully. Summer provides the necessary sunlight to grow the bulk of our food. Fall is the time of harvest and storage. Winter is the season of conservation and contemplation. Regardless of the exact temperature of your particular locale, these qualities present themselves in every place, every year. OF course we have all experienced a warmer Christmas or a really wet autumn, but these weather based assessments are only one aspect of the season. Tapping into how you feel in your body, of what your experience is during any given month in the year is the best way to begin to sense the environmental and cosmic changes that are happening all the time.

This Moon and the Coming Qi Node

Knowing how cosmic changes affect us on our little blue planet is no small feat. I use calendar notes and updates to keep me in the loop and even then I planted my tomatoes two days after a full moon (those in the know are aghast and those that aren't, let's just say you're not supposed to plant things after a full moon). Knowing your seasons can continue to live in the broad strokes but if you are interested, the rabbit hole can go as deep as you like. 

2nd Moon of Autumn

September 9th was the second moon in the fall seasonal cycle. The first moon is when the season’s movement begins and by the 2nd moon, humans start to feel the qualities we associate with the season. By the 3rd moon, the season feels in full swing.

Qi Node: Autumnal Equinox (Qiu Fen)

September 22nd marks the even divide between daytime and nighttime where the cooler days and falling leaves mark the tangible presence of Autumn

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Things to Eat:

Pears and Apples
Winter Squash like Butternut and Pumpkin
Last of the veges from the garden
Sweet potatoes, carrots, and parsnips
Medium aged cheese like Brie and Roblochon
The best cuts of beef

Things to Do:

Eat lighter meals, maybe skip a dinner
Switch to darker brews of all your drinks
Start collecting your cool weather gear
Keep your neck covered when outside
Bake some pumpkin bread
Take a canning class in your area

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Things to Cook:

STUFFED SQUASH WITH BROCCOLI RABE AND QUINOA

serves: 8 as a side, 4 as a main

notes: You can make your own balsamic glaze by reducing balsamic vinegar in a saucepan, but I find it easier (and usually economically advantageous) to buy a pre-made, high-quality glaze. If you have dried rosemary on hand, you could substitute it for the fresh by reducing the amount to 2 teaspoons. Last one: I used the fancy, truffled marcona almonds from Trader Joe's for the garnish here and it was spectacular.

Ingredients:
2 small-medium acorn squashes
1 ½ tablespoons olive oil, divided
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary (from roughly 1 sprig)
½ cup quinoa, rinsed
1 cup vegetable stock
1 medium shallot, peeled and diced
1 celery stalk, diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 tablespoon minced fresh sage (from roughly 1 sprig)
1 clove of garlic, peeled and minced
½ bunch broccoli rabe, tough ends of stems trimmed
3 tablespoons dried currants
2 tablespoons balsamic glaze
3 tablespoons marcona almonds, chopped
Preheat the oven to 400°F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Directions:
Cut the acorn squashes in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and stringy bits with a spoon. Then, cut each of the seeded squash halves in half once more. You should have 8 evenly sized wedges once you’re done with both squashes.

Place the squash wedges facing up on the parchment-lined baking tray. Brush the squash flesh with about half of the olive oil. Season all of the squash with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the minced rosemary over top. Slide the tray into the oven and roast the squash for 35-40 minutes, or until the squash is tender.

While the squash is roasting, combine the rinsed quinoa, vegetable stock, and a pinch of salt in a medium saucepan. Place the saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and cook for about 15 minutes, or until all of the stock is absorbed and the quinoa has puffed up. Set aside.

In a large pot with a well-fitting lid, heat the remaining olive oil over medium heat. Add the diced shallots to the pot and stir. Cook until shallots are translucent, about 2 minutes. Add the diced celery and carrot and stir. Cook until all of the vegetables are slightly soft, about 3 minutes. Add the minced sage and garlic to the pot and stir. Chop the broccoli rabe into bite-sized pieces and add it to the pot.

Stir the vegetables to coat and season with salt and pepper. Add a ¼ cup of water to the pot and place the lid on top. Let the broccoli rabe steam in the pot for about 3-4 minutes. Then, remove the lid and stir in the cooked quinoa and dried currants. Remove the pot from the heat.

Place roasted squash wedges on a serving platter and carefully spoon the broccoli rabe and quinoa stuffing into the natural cavities of the squash. Drizzle all of the stuffed squash pieces with the balsamic glaze and garnish with the chopped marcona almonds. Serve immediately.

Recipe Credit: The First Mess
www.thefirstmess.com

Hazy Days of Summer and the Coming Change

Travis Kern, L.Ac.

Here in the Pacific NW, it takes a while for the weather to reflect the season. In fact, it's common wisdom in Portland that if you schedule an event outdoors before the 4th of July and it rains, well, you should have known better. It rains a lot here. After the 4th though, you're golden. Work and play outside to your heart's content. It will be dry, warm, and the sun will be shining. It is extra interesting to me then that the last moon of summer is today, July 12th. For the next thirty days we will experience the final moon cycle for this season that seems to have just begun. What is going on?

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Understanding
Chinese Cosmology

The way that the ancient Chinese understood the universe is incredibly complex. Like all developed ancient cultures, the sages of the past looked to the stars to understand what was happening on the earth, and they took cues from the cyclical movement of the cosmos. Over millennia, this observation developed into understanding and eventually into concrete systems to explain current events, guide healthy activity, and even predict what might happen in the future. The ancient Chinese were masters of patterns and applied what they found to all aspects of life. 

Based on ancient observations and teachings, the Chinese divide the year into four seasons which each have 3 moons. A moon is counted at the new moon, when the sky is dark and no moon is visible, and progresses through the full moon until the next dark sky and its new moon. This gives us 12 moons per year (roughly, there are exceptions like with everything).

Each of these moons is also divided into two qi movements or "qi nodes" that give us further insight into the movement of the qi during that part of any season. That gives us a total of 24 qi nodes for the year. Keeping track of these different movements throughout the year can help us dive more deeply into matching our food and activites to what is happening in the broader context of the season and the stars. 

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How Does It Work?

To create some context for all this moon and qi node stuff, let's look at some broad strokes first:

Every season's first moon is when the nature of that season is just beginning to take hold so it always still feels like the season right before. Then every season's last moon is when the season feels like it is finally in full bloom. So it takes the course of the three moons for the qi of a season to build up enough to push out into our environments. Of course one way to decide what season you are in has to do with the temperature of the air and the amount of rain or snow a place gets, but we all know that the weather is not the same everywhere in the world. But the nature of season is constant in every part of the planet, even if there might still be snow on the ground in Chicago in April. That is, there are other factors that describe any given season beyond the temperature and the amount of sunshine. We know, for example. that Spring is the season for renewal and growth (the plants come back, the flowers bloom), the Summer is a time of activity and change (it's generally warm out, the days are longer to get more done), the Fall is a time of harvest and preparation (an abundance of crops, a time to prepare and preserve for the lean months coming), and of course the Winter is a time for going slow, preserving your energy, and contemplating. And of course cuddles. Never forget about the cuddles, though they work well in any season.

Each season has is own nature that shapes what we do, what the plants and animals do, and finding harmony with that cycle is one of the paths to good living.

This Moon and the Coming Qi Node

Knowing how cosmic changes affect us on our little blue planet is no small feat. I use calendar notes and updates to keep me in the loop and even then I planted my tomatoes two days after a full moon (those in the know are aghast and those that aren't, let's just say you're not supposed to plant things after a full moon). Knowing your seasons can continue to live in the broad strokes but if you are interested, the rabbit hole can go as deep as you like. 

3rd Moon of Summer

The warmth of Yang Qi is everywhere. The season is in full swing.

Qi Node: Greater Heat (Da Shu)

July 22nd marks the culmination of the summer energy and the last build up to the Full Moon, when the qi will begin to descend to Fall.

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Things to Eat:

Peaches and Stone Fruits
Citrus of all kinds
Snap peas and Green Beans
Tropical Fruit
Fresh Cheeses like Mozzarella and Chevre
Fish and Seafood

Things to Do:

Eat lighter meals
Enjoy a nice lager
Sit on the back porch
Keep getting up with the sun
Bake something sweet and delicious
Start gathering your canning supplies

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Things to Cook:

Fish Tacos with Pineapple Slaw and Chipotle Cream

Ingredients:
12 oz firm white fish (Hake, cod, halibut, or sole)
2 slices of fresh whole pineapple, ½ inch thick (no need to core)
1½ cups cabbage, shredded
1 lime, zested and cut in half
½ cup plus 1 tbsp sour cream
¼ cup diced onions,1/4 inch dice
2 tbsp chopped cilantro
1 tsp sugar
¾ tsp sea salt, divided
½ tsp freshly ground pepper, divided
½ tsp red pepper, divided
¼ tsp cumin
½ - 1 chipotle, finely diced (according to taste)
8 Corn tortilla's

Instructions:
1. Heat grill.
2. Season fish with ¼ tsp pepper, ¼ tsp sea salt and ¼ tsp red pepper.
3. Squeeze juice from ½ lime over fish. Set aside.
4. Place cabbage, onions and cilantro into a medium sized bowl. 
5. Add 1 tbsp sour cream, juice from ½ lime, 1/2 the lime zest, sugar, ¼ tsp red pepper, ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper, and ½ tsp
sea salt. Mix all ingredients together. Then pour over the cabbage mixture and toss to combine.
6. Place ½ cup sour cream, chipotle, and cumin into small bowl. Mix well to incorporate all ingredients. Set aside. This will be your chipotle cream topping
7. Lightly oil a piece of aluminum foil for the grill and place fish on top of foil (prevents the fish from falling through the grate).
8. Cook fish for 10- 12 minutes, turning once during cooking time, or until fish is white and flaky (time is dependent
on thickness of fish fillet).
9. At the same time the fish is cooking, place pineapple slices on open grill, the amount of time to caramelize is
about the same time for the fish,10-12 minutes. Turn once half way through cooking.
10. Warm corn tortilla's on the grill (if there is room), or wrap them in aluminum foil and place in the oven to warm at
350 for 15 to 20 minutes.
11. Once fish is done, remove from grill and cover with foil to keep warm.
12. Remove pineapple from the grill and allow to cool a few minutes for handling.
13. Cut pineapple slices away from the core and chop.
14. Add pineapple to cabbage mixture and toss to combine.
15. Assemble tacos, evenly dividing the fish, pineapple slaw, and chipotle cream onto the warm corn tortillas.
16. Serve immediately.

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.  

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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.

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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...

Summer and the Command of Yang Qi

Travis Kern, L.Ac.

The Summer season is full of classic images and experiences like beach lounging, hiking and swimming, backyard barbecues, and outdoor fun. It's a season of adventure and exploration, energized by the warmth in the air and by the extra long days that make us forget how late the hour might actually be. Summer is the fruition of a promise made in earliest days of Spring when the long dormant seeds and hibernating animals just began to stir. The ground was still cold, and in some places covered in snow, when the movement of the seasons first whispered the words that reanimated the sleeping Yang. 

---

Understanding Yin and Yang

Imagine a burning oil lamp. The oil is dominated by Yin. It is substantive, slow moving, tangible. The fire burning on the lamp is dominated by Yang. It is hot, moving, and bright. The place where the fire touches the oil, where the oil transforms into the flame, is the point where we can witness the transformation of yin into yang. This relationship is infinitely divisible such that we can find Yin in things that are Yang like fire and we can find aspects of Yang in things that are Yin like oil. 

Yin and Yang are two forces at play in the entirety of existence. They are words that represent different aspects of substance and activity. Yin and Yang are mutually dependent, mutually consuming, and constantly changing into one another. They are not static qualities but instead are dynamic descriptors that work at the most macro and micro levels. They are not religious terms or even ideas that represent a specific belief system. They were imagined and codified by ancient people trying to understand the world around them, and they have stood the self-critical test of time. 

---

Summer is the time for doing, for achieving the things you thought about and imagined over the Winter and those same things that you started to make happen in the Spring. Now is the time to bring your ideas into reality and set yourself up for the leaner and colder times of the coming Winter season. 

For now though, enjoy the weather and your outside times! Get grilling. Harvest some backyard veggies or visit your local farmers market. In the summer season you can enjoy your favorite cold treats and indulge in the fruits of the season like Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Eggplants, and Zucchini. Get up earlier and stay up later. This is the time in the year when you can really flex your boundaries and explore the complexity of living. 

Eating

As always, foods in season and grown locally are you best friends.

Activity

Get Outside and Get Moving. Summer is the time of activity.

---

Things to Eat:

Berries of every kind
Tomatoes and Peppers
Snap peas and Green Beans
Eggplant, Zucchini, and Summer Squash
Fresh Cheeses like Mozzarella and Chevre
Bright herbs like Basil, Mint, and Cilantro
Fish and Seafood

Things to Do:

Eat lighter meals
Build that playhouse
Sit on the back porch
Enjoy a glass of rose
Get up earlier than you usually do
Enjoy the sunsets, even when they're late
Spend time near moving rivers and streams

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Things to Cook:

Grilled Beet, Quinoa, and Feta Salad

Ingredients

Salad
2 large red beets*
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
2-3 handfuls loose leaf lettuce (like Arugula, Red Leaf Lettuce, Curly Endive)
1 cup cooked quinoa, cooled
¼ cup roasted almonds, whole or sliced
1 ounce feta

Dressing**
2 whole scallions, minced
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons champagne vinegar***
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper

Toast
2 slices sourdough bread
1 tablespoons olive oil
1 clove garlic

Instructions
1. Light Grill to medium-low heat.
2. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Scrub beets well and slice off the top and bottom then remove any wispy parts of the
beet. Drop into the boiling water and cook for 12-15 minutes, just until the beet starts to be tender. Drain and rinse with
cold water. Let sit until cool enough to handle.
3. Take the parboiled beet and slice into ¼" slices. Toss with 1 tablespoon olive oil, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon
pepper. Place beet slices on the grill and cook until charred on both sides, 6-8 minutes per side (depending on heat.)
Remove and quarter each slice.
4. Combine lettuce, quinoa, almonds, and feta in a large bowl. Add cooked beets and toss to combine.
5. In a small food processor or blender, combine scallions, olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Run until dressing has
emulsified.
6. Dress salad if desired or serve dressing on the side.
7. In addition to the salad, to make the garlic toast, brush sliced bread with olive oil. Cut the end off the garlic clove and
rub on the bread. Grill along side the beets but only for 30-60 seconds on each side (if grill is hot.) Serve salad with
slices of toast or cut into cubes and use as croutons.
Notes

*Beets are one vegetable that if it looks healthy, I won't peel. However, if you want to peel the beets. Let cool after parboiling
and peeling before cutting into slices.

**This makes a little extra dressing but I find the blender/food processor handles it a bit better. Store extra dressing in an
airtight container in the refrigerator for 2-3 days.

***I love the light, refreshing taste champagne vinegar adds to vinaigrette, however, if you can't find it, apple cider or white
balsamic works as well.

Recipe by Naturally Ella at http://naturallyella.com/2014/05/20/grilled-beet-quinoa-and-feta-salad/

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. 

How Tea Healed Me

Travis Cunningham L.Ac.

When people ask me, “Travis, why are you so into tea?” My answer inevitably points to my experience that tea is Medicine.

“You mean like, it’s good for your digestion?” they ask.

“Well, yes… but that's not quite the extent of it,” I say. It is at this point that words usually fall away from me. How could I possibly communicate just what tea has meant to me? What simple and precise words would paint a picture worthy of my own intimate experience? The truth is, that tea has changed my life. A story might be as close as we come to delivering our experience to another person. And so, If I know that person well enough, I usually tell them the following one:

The second time I drank tea with my teacher was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life.

As I climbed up the steps to the mystical tea room, I was a mix of turbulent emotion. My heart had just been broken by a woman with whom I was in love. The sting of those final moments of her memory haunted me. She was everywhere I went and would be nowhere, ever again.

As I passed through the doorway, my teacher greeted me with a smile. “It's good to see you again my friend,” said he.

“It's good to see you as well,” said I. My smile was an act of protection while I shook his hand in greeting.

“How are you?” He asked.

“I'm doing alright,” I replied, showing nothing to the tea master. “How are you?”

He looked at me for a moment and then smiled. “Not too well, actually,” he said, almost humorously. “It's been one hell of week.”

“Yeah,” I said, now smiling back. “It has.”

He leaned forward slightly as if speaking to a child. “But I think,” he said, “things are going to get better very soon.”

At that moment, the second and third guest walked through the door and the night began.

As the first, second, and then third tea were served, I relaxed into the glowing atmosphere of support. I was upheld by the people at the table, the tea plants, and the master himself. He was flawless. Telepathy was an understatement. Every time I had something to say, he knew. He would stop his “orchestra” of service, and ask for my thoughts.

The teas pulsed within me. Currents of magnetic and electric force seemed to rearrange my twisted heart. They took me into a place that was foreign to my recent experience -- a place of quiet and a place of peace.

Was this the tea? Or, was it the master? Was it the room, or its people? It was impossible to say. All I knew was that it felt good to be me again.

As my awareness came back to the room, the master pulled out a container from one of his back shelves. “This is something that I never serve,” he said. “But for whatever reason, it's calling out tonight.”

As he placed the precious tea into a bamboo cup, my eyes lit up at their site.

“These are flowers,” he explained, “from very old trees. We're going to drink this tea and see what they have to tell us.”

The flowers were pink and golden. They were the tiniest of things, and they seemed incredibly delicate. I had never seen such flowers in my life, nor have I seen them since.

As he poured the water into the flower-filled pot, my mood shifted. I became aware of my recent experiences and the darkness that characterized them. I could feel my emotions clearly, but somehow was not a part of them. They were objective; detached from me, but still present. They were like the smoke from an incense stick.

The master poured the tea into my cup. It smelled sweet and floral, like plums and orchids. I sipped it and savored the flavor - so sweet! So kind!

My eyes closed and I went inward. And then, I saw...a field!

My vision was as clear as the room I was in moments ago. It was a field filled with plants, valleys and hills. Most prominently, it was raining. It rained and it rained. All of my dread became clouds, and my sadness, the raindrops. There was no sunlight, and no flowers. How could there be?

“When will it stop?” I asked. “Will it ever stop?” But it went on and on.

It was then that I saw something. I saw the flower of one little plant. Except, the flower wasn't there yet. It was as if I were looking at the spirit of the flower to be.

The spirit of the flower was in the stem of the plant. And the closer I looked, the more I saw. The rain fell to the ground and into it's cracks. It found the roots of the plant and quenched their thirst. As the rainwater was absorbed, the spirit of the flower rose.

Suddenly, I became excited. The rain wasn't blocking the sunlight, it was helping that light turn into flowers! With every drop, the spirit of the flower rose. And though the flower came into sight only when the sun shone, it was nurtured in every moment by the rain. The flower was as much rain as it was sun!

It hit me then, that my dreaded and painful experiences were just like the rain. They were helping me make flowers.

I opened my eyes and tears fell down my cheeks. I smiled and wiped my face, concealing my private journey.

The tea master closed with a final tea. It was grounded and full. Soon after, we all said “thank you,” and went our separate ways. Though I did not share my experience with anyone that night, I am forever grateful to those that were there. Several of them would eventually become my close friends.

For me, tea is a medicine of the spirit. It is a friend which has stood by me long enough for me to give myself a second chance. I think any friend that can do this is one worth keeping around.

I work with tea because it has become a part of me. Every time I pour it, I am saying thank you - for all that tea has given me. It has given me relationships, teachers, friends, fun, and the ability to look at myself.

Demolition Days: The Metal of Something New

The remains of the walls after Day 1

As a modern American practitioner of Chinese medicine, I have often wondered just how relevant an ancient perspective can be in contemporary life. How much of the symbolism and language that we call “Classical,” can touch and feel our present situation? Is Chinese medicine, its cosmology and approach, able to grasp who we are and what we do? Or is it merely a relic to who we have been?

“Loud noises!” shouts my friend and business partner, Travis Kern, as he turns on a saw, that buzzes like a ferocious bumble-bee orchestra. I watch, as it cuts a line through the Sheetrock of the wall in front of us. There’s nothing quite like sharp metal going to work.

Our newly acquired clinic space is being rearranged. We are doing the “build-out” ourselves. And the first stage in the process? Demolition. The unnecessary walls have to come down before the new walls can go up.

Several hours before, I am standing in my back yard in a very uncomfortable pose. My neigong teacher and friend Brandon, calls it Wuji stance. Though you wouldn’t know I am uncomfortable by looking at the “slight smile” on my face, you might be able to tell if you looked close enough to see my entire body “slightly” shaking.  

Wuji is one of the first practices taught in traditional neigong. It is considered a basic practice, because it builds a kind of essential conductivity in the tissues of the body. Unfortunately, in order for this conductivity to be built, the body has to become song.

Song is a term in Chinese associated with the idea of relax or release. Brandon says that it is not just a quality of relaxation within the muscles, but a stretching of the tendons and fascia: “Like steel wrapped in wool.” If a person is able to become song, they can more easily conduct qi. Once qi can be conducted, then it can start to be worked with and used for other purposes.

In order to become song, the person has to learn to “sink the qi” downward. Downward, is always the first direction when learning neigong or tai chi. “Sinking,” is associated with the Metal element in Chinese medicine. And it always seems to be the most difficult.

Why is sinking so difficult? I’m not sure… maybe it’s because the modern body is conditioned by chairs and unnatural movement patterns to favor above and not below; maybe it’s because the modern mind is conditioned to exist only from the neck up; maybe it’s because modern culture worships expansion and growth and shuns contemplation, receptivity, and allowing. Why is sinking so difficult? I’m not sure. But trying to sink the qi sucks! It sucks big time.

In neigong, sinking the qi must be done first. If sinking isn’t done first, then too much qi can “rise” to the head, and cause problems such as insomnia, anxiety, and even mania or delusion (if extreme). This is because the goal in neigong isn’t simply to go up to the head, it is to go into (and become) the whole.

Becoming song, and thus “sinking the qi,” requires a person to give up all of the unnecessary tension that they are used to holding, in order to rest upon the basic structure of the body. Our points of tension are difficult to let go of, because they are what we have been using to “hold us up” for a long time. It makes sense then, that we have to let go of the things that hold us up, in order to sink and go down.

As I watch Travis’ metal saw cut through dusty Sheetrock, I am reminded that Sheetrock is made from gypsum or, in Chinese, Shi Gao. Shi Gao is used in Chinese herbal medicine to treat the Lung (which happens to be associated with the Metal element), when certain patterns of pathology “attack” the lung in form of a cold or flu.

Seeing that metal saw cut into the metal wall after trying to “sink my qi” (the direction of metal) all of that morning, provided me with a direct example of how the symbolic language of Chinese medicine is still relevant today.

There is something, perhaps innate, about beginning, that requires Metal. In the case of the clinic, Metal is taking down unnecessary walls and clearing the space of what was. In the case of neigong training, it is releasing the unnecessary tension and holding patterns of the body so that the tissues become more able to conduct qi. In both cases, we start with Metal.

As Travis and I sat back and enjoyed a not-quite-cold-enough but still enjoyable beer, we reflected upon the accomplishments of the day. Our work was shown back to us by the newly minted openness in our store, and in that moment, we drifted into feelings of serenity. As it turns out, “sinking the qi” is not always so difficult.