Expressions of the Heart

My most recent article with my colleague and good friend Brandt Stickley has just been published with the Chinese Medicine Times relating to the Heart in Chinese medicine. You can access it here.

Living Without Reference Points

What would your life be like if you could live each moment in the moment without judging it based upon your past experiences or projecting it into the future? Experiencing things as they truly are with no bias or duality or theoretical constructs......

Breaking Bad Habits

This is a response I wrote to a comment from a post in June on the Effects of Lifestyle. As comments from older posts are not as accessible, I thought I'd re-post it here. It was essentially a question on how to motivate oneself to make change in one's life:

Your question is significant and, of course, hard to answer. I can only discuss what motivates me and how I approach this subject, understanding that there are many roads to travel.

My first step is to come to the conclusion that I am not as healthy as I'd like to be. If you believe that you are healthy and feel great and can't benefit from changing your habits, then it is hard to make the change.

Secondly, you need to be confident that what you have learned about healthy living and eating, etc. can make the improvements you are seeking.

You see, it's not about sacrifices. We are not looking to deprive ourselves. We are looking to nourish ourselves. The difference is huge. One needs a shift in perspective. People think, oh, the ice cream tastes good, it makes me feel good, etc. and not having it feels like deprivation. A different perspective would suggest, what is the long-term (or even short-term, not immediate) effect of what I am doing? Knowledge would tell us that the ice cream which is filled with refined sugar, chemicals, empty calories, etc. is restricting our circulation in the stomach and intestines, draining out our adrenals, creating a mucus lining in out gut that prevents assimilation of vitamins and nutrients necessary for our well-being, etc. When I think of it that way, I don't feel deprived. I feel empowered.

Understanding the tremendous difference between pleasure and happiness is crucial. Yeah, ice cream tastes good to many, but it also leads to suffering/illness/imbalance in the future. Is it worth it?

These are the kinds of questions to ask oneself to help motivate change. But, yes, you are right. Change isn't easy. It's really difficult. And the best way to do it is to make small changes daily and commit to the process for one's own sake.

I hope this helps. Maybe it's too vague? Let me know. I'd love to continue the discussion.

Ross

State of Mind

There is no more important determinant of one's health than the state of mind. Of course, genetics, constitution, lifestyle habits, etc. have a large impact, but the power of our minds has the most pivotal of roles. In Chinese medicine we differentiate causes of disease into multiple categories: (1) internal: emotions and state of mind (including, anger, fear, grief, overthinking, etc.); (2) external: climactic factors (wind, cold, damp, heat/fire, etc.); and (3) miscellaneous (which is not meant to minimize its importance): habits, trauma, toxins, etc.

Of these three categories, the emotions make up the largest percentage of the etiology of disease. Controlling one's emotions, therefore, would seem to have a tremendous impact on our health and the prevention of disease (or treatment thereof). Listening yesterday (again) to a series of lectures that Taoist priest Jeffrey Yuen gave on cancer and Chinese medicine, I couldn't help but notice the correlation between what Jeffrey states and Dharmakirti's psychological law (see previous post). Essentially, Jeffrey was mentioning how the diagnosis of cancer is viewed as a death sentence by most of us and that it is, in fact, how one handles this diagnosis that has tremendous influence on whether or not someone will heal. So often, people get so overwhelmed by the fear of death that they are constantly focused on death. This reinforcement perpetuates negative states of mind and set a vicious cycle in which the disease grows stronger and the patient's health deteriorates (mentally and physically). Jeffrey even goes to say that cancer support groups are for the most part detrimental in that they give credence and power to this deadly disease. He advocates for support groups which foster hope and the desire to heal.

As always, our minds have the greatest power and potential to either bring us towards happiness and health or towards undesirable states of mind and illness. It all depends on how much attention we give positive thoughts and emotions or negative thoughts and states of mind. On a website I visited recently, I read the following tale:

One evening an old Martial Arts Master told his young students about a “Great Battle of life and death” that goes on inside all Human Beings.
The wise man said, "The battle is between "Two Dragons" … They are battling for dominance inside us all.
One is Dark, it represents Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Light, it represents Good. It is joy, love, peace, hope, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, serenity, compassion and faith."
The students thought about it for a while and then asked the Master: "Which Dragon wins?"
The old wise man simply replied, "The one you feed."
Unknown Author

Ben Shen

These two words have much import in my medicine (and in my personal life: it is the names of my first two children). Ben is the root or the source. Shen is the spirit (consciousness). They reflect an important principle in acupuncture therapy as recounted in Chapter 8 of the Nei Jing Ling Shu (one of the earliest texts on acupuncture dating back thousands of years ago) which is (and I'm paraphrasing) "above all, the most important thing is, with every needle not to miss the rooting of the spirits."

These words weigh on me daily. Ninety plus percent of all the patients that come through my doors have their roots in emotional and spiritual causes. The effects of the emotions on our physiology is complex and beyond the scope of this blog post, but excesses of the emotions have profound impact on our health. Without rooting the spirit, what kind of therapy are we actually giving? While I do see benefit in relieving the symptomatic discomforts of my patients, without getting to the root, we can affect no real lasting or meaningful change. If the spirits do not reside peacefully, one cannot be truly healed.

And while I am very mindful that to truly heal oneself is a life-long pursuit which entails significant exploration of our minds, the above titled post is a reminder of where our intentions should be while we treat each individual. Often, patients who seek care are unaware of the lack of rooting of their spirits and it is this disconnect which often perpetuates their imbalance. Whether it be the elderly patient suffering from depression regarding what he can no longer do, or the mid-life crisis as one begins to contemplate one's mortality, or the young adult who was the victim of an early life trauma, everyone needs the stability of a rooted spirit to maintain and ensure vitality and health.

Of course, as you can imagine, this puts a tremendous responsibility on the practitioner of eastern medicine. And I can attest, I have yet to live up to this ideal. I try daily, and fail often. But when the rooting of the spirits can be facilitated, it is as if a miracle has taken place. This keeps me on the path.

The will to change

In the previous post I mention how acupuncture and herbs spark the process of change by bringing awareness of the root of one's struggles. This awareness is a linking of our hearts with our kidneys (the storage house of our essence) to provide the impetus to change.

Often, without this connection/knowledge, we linger in samsara, creating an endless vicious cycle of making poor lifestyle decisions, or lack of good decisions. We struggle to find our way and lose perspective of the path. This taxes the liver and gallbladder, our planner and decision-maker. The liver and gallbladder sit between the heart and kidneys and is a mediator between our consciousness and our innate primordial self. When the connection is blocked, stagnation develops creating the sequelae of health problems that stem from stress, irritability, frustration, anger, and the like. Enhancing this connection is crucial to establishing a healthy bodymind. One of the many benefits of acupuncture and herbs is to regulate the smooth flow of qi and blood, a function typically under the auspices of the liver and gallbladder.

But there are many of us who despite this knowledge/awareness resulting from our linked heart and kidneys cannot make a fire of this spark. Why? The ability to tap into our essence depends on the health of our kidneys. In Chinese medicine, all of the organ systems have an inherent spirit motivating/animating it. For the kidneys, it is the zhi -- the willpower. Often what is required is to nourish the kidneys, thus bolstering the will to enact the changes that one seeks to make. This can be done in a multitude of ways, some of the best including: acupuncture, moxibustion, herbal medicines, qigong and taiji, proper rest and lifestyle modifications to prevent further depletion, etc.

What one is essentially looking to do is to provide the fuel for the alchemical process that must take place. Alchemy takes place in the kidneys and relies on the yang-fire to catalyze it. Stoking the fire of kidney yang provides the will with the power to see change through.

How does one change?

None of us is spared pain in our lives, whether it be the pain of being born, the pain of losing a loved one, the pain that comes from illness, injury, old age and eventual death, or the pain from a deep discontentment in our lives. Many of my patients will come suffering from at least one, if not more, type of pain, and as my job requires, I strive to figure out the major source of that pain.

All too often we see the pain rooted in improper (based on what causes imbalance/pain/suffering/illness, not a judgment) lifestyles, traumatic events, conditioned emotional responses and wrongviews. Without going into the particulars of these causes, the thrust of true healing begins with bringing awareness of these issues to those suffering from them. Of course, this is not as easy as it would seem as most of us don't want to be informed that our belief systems or thought processes are causing us pain. Acupuncture and herbal medicines have a unique capacity to break through those barriers and give us a glimpse of our true nature, a connection between our hearts and minds with our truest essence.

So trying to bring that awareness is step one. In so doing, one moves past the appearances and recognizes the deeper truths. For example, one recognizes that despite the facade of anger and hostility, one is masking a deeper sadness; or one is feigning aggressiveness to cover insecurity and fear. This understanding is key to the second step of motivating people to make changes. Otherwise, one simply controls the anger or aggressiveness, but never is able to correct the sadness or insecurities.

The outward manifestation is the yang expression. The inner catalyst for the emotion is the yin state. Trying to change the yin state is the more difficult challenge. To do this requires more than just self-control, it requires adopting a new paradigm. Swapping one state for another. One needs another option. One that is appealing. One that offers a better future. Acupuncture and herbal medicines, by giving one the awareness, sparks the search for a new paradigm and gives one the capacity to make the necessary changes. It provides a deeper perspective and allows one to make choices based on our internal knowledge and helps guide us along our path in life to achieve what we are meant to: our destiny.

Fate vs. Destiny

Wondering what others think about fate and destiny. To me it's a very interesting concept. What are we meant to do, to become. So often these concepts are used interchangeably. I think of fate as something we have become resigned to. Destiny is more of what we are meant to achieve and become. What we are here for. Both seem to be out of our "control" in the sense that we either achieve our destiny by recognizing it, accepting it (surrendering), and then living up to our potential, or we either fail to recognize, accept or achieve it (fate).

I am open to others thoughts on this.