Ancient Medicine Modern World

There is a method of telling fortunes in Taiwan. Actually, there are many methods of telling fortunes in Taiwan. 算命先生 fortune tellers in Taiwan are as numerous as psychotherapists in any trendy west coast American city, and for the most part serve the same function. Which is to help us ask the questions that get us to the right answer.

Shortly after arriving in Taipei in 2001 I found myself at one of the thousands of temples that polka-dot the island. I was drawn by the riot of color, clouds of incense, the feeling of something foreign and far off my map of the world. There, a man who spoke English asked “would you like to read your fortune?”

“Sure, why not.” After all, when in the midst of a jet lag and culture shock cocktail, any kind of sign from the divine could be of service.

I had no idea I was about to be introduced to the Taiwanese version of a Rube Goldberg Ouija board.

The first step is to hold in the mind a question. A clear question. The question that will facilitate an answer that opens the next fork in the road, the question whose answer will invite a fuller and deeper experience of life. First you need the right question. Then, from a brass canister, a stick with numbers is chosen. This is will direct you to the answer.

The question here is not “is this the right answer”, the question is “have you choose the right question for this particular stick?”

Did you get the question right?

To find out- grab a pair of wooden smile shaped blocks, hold them along with your question and drop then to the floor. Should they land one up and one down, that stick you pulled is right for your question. But, should they land both face down, or both face up, then it is your question that is not right.

Put away the stick. But, more importantly, put away that question. You are barking up the wrong tree. Pop the frame, narrow the focus, ask about something else, rethink the situation. Ask the question before or the one you thougth would come later. More important than the answer is the question. It is like building a house with the wrong set of plans. Get the question right, and a whole new set of possbilities opens up.

Of course, we all do.

Dreams elude us.
Troubles dog us..
Inspiration evaporates into drudgery…

I suspect John Dane knows a thing or two about following a journey to its guiding star. He has been trying to get into the Olympics for 40 years.
He is now in Qingdao competing!

John Dane 加油啦！

Thanks to 37signals for the lead to this inspiring man’s story!

This you feel in your bones, or it comes as an irritation like a stone in the shoe, a constant non-ignorable ongoing frustration that wears you slowly down down down.

Cold is that which reduces the speed of life, it stagnates and freezes. It is like forgetting your spirit. It is constant like joint pain that whispers a crippling hymn.

Oddly enough, when effecting the digestion it masquerades as acid and twisting dull pain. Think about the last time you could not get warm. The numbness and desire for warmth. The frustration of being bundled up like a February Beijing baby, but the ice in your bones was stubbornly present. This is cold.

In health, cold is not just a climatic condition, it is can act as a pathogen. It stagnates the flow of blood, and freezes the micro-circulation. Ices up pathways of nutrient exchange. Turns our joints into rusty hinges. Anyone who desires hot drinks, has aversions to uncooked foods, tightens their shoulders in a vain attempt to ward off a chill, or finds they rarely sweat, all know something very personal about the effect of cold on the body.

Those people who in the summer hated air conditioning. They are suffering from internal cold. Ask them if they have trouble with their joints, and many will affirm they do. Ask them if they like iced drinks, and most will wrinkle their nose in disgust. The body, unless it has been believed the propaganda of advertising or culture habit, usually knows what it needs.

How to banish cold? There are a number of methods that have come down through a few Chinese centuries. One is moxibustion. The other is use of warming medical herbs. Acupuncture can also help, but to really expel cold, moxa and herbs are your best friend.

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I don’t know where I found this quote. But, it makes sense. People often ask me what to look for in acupuncturist; I think they should seek a practitioner like the one described below:

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I don’t think a doctor needs to be particularly clever.

He needs to be moderately intelligent, but he doesn’t need to be anything like a physicist or mathematician, although if he is it does no harm.

But he must have a strong common sense, and a feeling for people and their lives, and a sense of sympathy, and at the same time, he mustn’t be too sentimental, and think he must love medicine.

My first clue came in Taiwan when I was teaching English.

I’d approach the grammar portion of the lesson with fear and trepidation. Give myself a glancing review of subordinate clauses, predicate adjectives and past perfect participles.  Relying as much on my students inability to understand English, as my own well honed skills in extemporaneous speaking and sleigh of hand in changing the subject.

The only thing that really qualified me to teach English in Asia was my American accent and white skin. That and the willingness to trade the sounds of English for the local currency. Most of my students would never go deeply into English grammar. For them, it was enough just to open and their mouths and attempt to string together a few words, or learn a bit of slang, figure out how to hold their own in a job interview, or simply please the parents who were paying for their lessons.

I never learned grammar, the same way I never learned English. It was just the soup in which I swam. So long as I could communicate and write well enough I figured I was on solid ground.

Then I started translating “The Ten Major Formula Families in Chinese Medicine.” That is when I found that that commas and periods go inside of the quote marks, that there are rules and agreements of grammar that may not be casually ignored. For the first time grammar, and the proper use thereof, became important. And it was way way too late to return my high school English class and bone up on the nuts and bolts of how to parse the English language.

As they like to say in Chinese 失敗是成功之母, defeat is the mother of success. Luckily a writer friend of mine recently confided her own struggles with truly understanding how we structure our language. So it was off to Barnes and Noble. For her, a 5th grammar workbook and for me, The Mountain Man’s Field Guide to Grammar.

That darned book actually makes the rules of grammar both frisky and fun.

We all have had this experience. It may come suddenly as we step between downtown buildings, or as we push up over a mountain ridge, or as a blast that heralds a storm. Formless yet powerful, it hits not with a strength, but as a force. That gust which suddenly changes the directional lean of our steps, or throws an irritation of dust into our eyes, or causes us to refocus our movement .
Wind has a scattering disorienting feel about it doesn’t it?

We know this from our experience of it.

And we know it in our bodies as well. Dizziness, itching and irritability, eyes that water and itch, sneezing and headaches that rove around like a breeze blows a tree full of leaves. These too, are wind. Notice how it has a nature that comes and goes. How it tends to disorient like an interrupted conversation. Wind, it has immediacy like the twig snapped borderline between placidity and anger. Wind does not flare like fire, it is more like an encompassing rush that leaves your feet solid on the ground, while from the waist up there is a tilt off center.

Wind blows through all the cracks of life, carrying dirt and grime and disease. Ever notice that a few days after a particularly strong windstorm lots of people have colds? Water may seek the lowest level, but wind slips through the cracks.

Watch for anything that has a scattering come and go nature, and you will notice the influence of wind.

Unless we have been involved in some accident, we don’t get to our current state of health overnight. It often a journey of years of slow accumulative action. Days slide into weeks, slide into months, then we wonder where the years went. Along with our agility, digestion, flexibility or mental clarity. It is a not short to journey to our lives as they unfold right now.

Being better likewise is a journey. There are herbs that can help, and acupuncture with its unique ability to call a balancing and healing response out of the body is of tremendous value. Ask anyone who has used it to aid in a transition between stages of life.

And due to acupuncture’s ability to heal and help us feel better, we often stop treatment just as we have gained a certain momentum.

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There is a difference between feeling better and being better.

And generally speaking, feeling better comes sooner, but to actually be better it sometimes takes a little bit more treatment to consolidate the changes.

If you have been to see a practitioner of Chinese medicine then you already know that most diagnoses sound more like weather reports than an explanation of a medical condition. Seemingly more poetic than prognostic it can lead to a sense that Chinese medicine is more art than science. Oddly Asian, we either accept it as mysterious, or reject as lacking in rigor.

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Truth be told, it is science.
Chinese science.

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Old science that is consistent within its frame, but unlike Western science includes a flexible frame.

Everyday Acupuncture is a new occasional series that will appear here on “Ancient Medicine Modern World.” It is an attempt to translate Chinese thought not just into English, but into experience. Check in from time to time to get a better idea of what your acupuncturist is talking about, and if you have questions, but all means, add them to the comments.

Remember what it felt like on September 12th?

The sense of shock and loss?

The way the mind refused to wrap itself around so many deaths?
The way numbers would numb the imagination?

The Chinese Sichuan earthquake is 17 American 9/11’s.

Seventeen.

OK is not good enough.

I’m not talking here about the nitpicking endless knot of perfectionism. Nor, about a careless disregard for what does indeed require our attention and concern. The problem with OK is that it has no teeth. It is comfortable enough to allow years to slid into oblivion because it lacks the spark and agitation to demand that life be more than our compromised dreams.

OK holds things together when disintegration and change is called for. It keeps us moving along in the comfortable groove that we misread as life rewarding us for good behavior. OK keeps the wild wind from our door, and allows us a peaceful sleep when daringly dreams are our true bread.

OK is the enemy of daringly alive. It is good enough, and that is the problem!