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A discussion of many diverse topics within the realm of Alternative Medicine and Healthy Living, some of which include: Acupuncture, Chinese Herbal Medicine, Eastern Nutrition, Pulse Diagnosis, Psychology and Bodymind Medicine, Aromatherapy, Philosophy, Spirituality, Buddhism, Meditation and Family.
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February in the Year of Sagely Living
As February is the month of business, it would at first glance seem that I have an easy month, as much of my days are spent running a busy practice. However, I take this month as a challenge to redefine my goals of what exactly I want this practice to be; how I want it to run; the kinds of treatments I want to do; the kinds of connections with patients that I want to foster; the community that I want to build.
It is also very fitting that at the end of the month I go on vacation, back to a place that my family loves: Costa Rica. For us, there is no better place to get in touch with our essence; to truly be inspired. I will use this trip to help me solidify my truest goals for what I want in my life.
In addition, in the spirit of business, I have spent the last couple months updating/modernizing and augmenting my website for the sake of attracting more individuals to the benefits of acupuncture, herbal medicine, Contemporary Oriental Medicine, Contemporary Chinese Pulse Diagnosis and alternative medicine in general. Please take a look and browse the new site at your convenience: Center for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine website.
Saturday 16th of February 2008 10:01:37 AM | Comments
year of sagely living change Center for Acupuncture business
Everything Changes, Can You?
To be healthy requires that we experience a balance between yin and yang, and have a smooth flow of qi and blood throughout our bodies. This is best maintained by living a moderate lifestyle in accord with the energies of nature. As summer is not afraid to end and transmute into fall, so we too must be willing to let go and change where appropriate. Part of my path as a Buddhist and practitioner of Chinese medicine is to recognize when I fall prey to attachment towards particular behaviors, thoughts, emotions, etc. Likewise, I must point these issues out as they become relevant to my patients in the course of their healing.
While watching my dvd lectures from my teacher, Jeffrey Yuen, he discusses how so often patients come to see practitioners to rid themselves of their symptoms, but never see the connection to their lifestyles. Most look forward to getting back to their lives pain -free, cancer-free, or free of whatever ailments are plaguing them. But we must instruct our patients that their lifestyles are the problem. To do otherwise, we are simply treating the branch, the manifestation.
To heal, we need to change. We need to be brave enough to change our lives in a way that is conducive to health. On a spiritual level, this means non-attachment. It means cultivating a way of life that transmutes our physicality towards spirituality. The goal of qi gong, for example, is to alchemically transmute our jing (essence) to qi, then from qi to shen to expand our consciousness and experience emptiness, the non-duality of all things.
On a physical level, healing requires significant lifestyle modifications. Dietary changes (avoiding cold, damp, greasy, fried, preservatives, chemicals, refined sugars, etc. and eating for health, not pleasure, eating live whole foods, etc. (see the Resources page on my website for a really good introduction to Eastern nutrition), habitual patterns of movement (ie, sitting all day at a desk leaning over our keyboard which kills the qi in our chest), and perhaps most importantly our habituated emotional responses. If we are living lives of quiet desperation, unhappy in our marriage or work, unhappy with how we look or feel, we must make radical changes to secure our health. If we are having difficulty containing our anger, if we are experiencing depression, we must seek out their roots.
Dealing with roots of our habituated responses is incredibly powerful and the entire subject of humanistic psychology as detailed in Dr. Hammer's Dragon Rises, Red Bird Flies is very well laid out. Learning how one's behaviors, rooted in early life, shape our health across the entire bodymind spectrum, and gaining the tools to make the appropriate changes can spark a profound healing.
So, as we have decided this is the 'year of sagely living' we must strive towards this ideal by rooting out our behaviors that are synonymous with imbalance, and replacing them with habits that foster health and well-being.
Friday 04th of January 2008 10:33:45 AM | Comments
chinese medicine Jeffrey Yuen nature qi gong Buddhism year of sagely living change Daoism health and healing alchemy spirituality