This comes from the smoky lobby of a Beijing hotel. Perhaps it will take more than patriotism to advance the cause of public health.

Somewhere on the road between Wuyi Shan and Jiuhua Shan there was a town that involved in a bus change. It was the summer of 2005. Anwei Province Chinese summer hot, with a roasting heat that vied with the humidity and gritty air. Restrooms in Chinese bus stations are by definition a moment of endurance. But, this one due to the lack of running water was a collection station for buckets of piss. Having already been weeks on the road at this point it did not register as disgust or surprise, more like that initial feeling of something being not quite right, like when your car has been broken into, and your first clue of an ajar door registers simply as “oh, that’s odd.”

Today boarding American Airlines flight 1593 conjured up an image of what a Russian Aeroflot flight in the 80’s might have been like. The seats are ratty and frayed. The cabin is dirty. Obviously a family with small child recently occupied these seats; there are telltale cracker crumbs and a nebula of cookie dust. As we taxi out to the runway the head flight attendant informs us there will be no coffee or tea on this flight, nor water to wash our hands in the bathrooms. This plane is not carrying any water.

It registers as odd, but surprisingly without a feeling a surprise.

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.

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!

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!

Plenty of time to have lots of bad ideas, along with the good ones.

I always get concerned when I hear people deciding that Chinese medicine must be good simply because it is traditional. Tradition, all too easily can simply be a nostalgia coated wish, or blind faith in the face of a reality that demands open eyes, even as we wish to shut them tight.

There is a difference between tradition and traditionalism.Traditionalism is accepting on faith the teachings and ways of those who have come before. It is a quaint anachronism at best, and at its worst an unthinking regard for the present and our own place in it.

Tradition on the other hand, offers something different. It is not the tradition itself that is important. What matters is that spark of understanding, that comes from one generation to another, and kindles in the present moment that which also illuminated those in the past. It is not a worship of the past, nor a belief that we are fallen, and must hark back to a more golden time. It is the recognition that each generation must have lit in themselves that fire which is being passed along.

Tradition is only as alive as it flourishes anew in those who receive and carry it forward!

Travel can easily be broken into two general categories. The time you are in places and the time you are between them. One is about settling, the other, movement. The Chinese would just say it’s Yin and Yang.
I see it more as Doing, and being Done To.

“Brakes bu ling” 刹車不靈

This is NOT what you want to be hearing from your driver as you are heading down a winding mountain road. I thought the driver was just paying more attention to his cigarette than his steering as we rounded a bend, skittered past a pile of road work gravel and smacked a dent into the back of the big bus in front of us, thus slowing us down and preventing a careen over the edge.

Driver, what the hell are you doing?
“The brakes aren’t very lively.”

They don’t work?
“Don’t worry, it’s not my truck!”

Oh, I feel much better now, that is certainly going to help us get down the mountain in one piece.

“The truck belongs to Xiao Chen.”
Somehow dis-owership is going to save us.

Dissociate, and crank up the electronic Nan Wu Ah Mi Tou Fo box.

Call on Jesus, Buddha, Moses or your favorite saint, as if their dusty bones will make a difference. I suspect that should they really have god status, they’ve got bigger fish to fry.

I notice that the trees are all perfectly summertime green, and hoping that those “ping an“ amulets stashed in my luggage riding in the back with the bags of fish and chickens, are doing their thing.

Mercer Street down by the south end of Lake Union is a ruffian of potholes, bumps and disgravity. It has been that way for as long as I can remember, and I can remember at least 20 years of driving that stretch of road.

Imagine my surprise to see Mercer Street with it’s top level of pavement scraped off, and ready for resurfacing. Oh, that would be the west section of Mercer Street, not the bump infested east section.

Maybe it like our health, we work on the stuff that is doable but does not take much effort. Easy to put a smooth gloss on the uptown, but that annoying section of town that we drive through, but don’t inhabit. That we ignore.

Inhabiting our health, especially the places we don’t want to. Usually for those, we require a little help!

It is a curiosity. Perhaps it is because Yong Kang clinic looks like something from outside the brittle borders of our country. The walls are lined with assorted jars full of bark, leaves, twigs, and roots. This stuff looks like it means business. I should not be surprised when people walk in and ask:

So, what you have you got for diabetes?
Twenty year blinding migraines?
Intractable insomnia?
Infertility?

As if it was that easy.

I wish I did have a formula. A few leaves, some roots, a branch of twigs. Cook it up and suddenly blood sugar stabilizes. A quick cure for modern disease, that is the promise sold on TV. The secret wish we all have that maybe we can escape the consequences of our lives.

If it was that easy. Then these illnesses would not be a problem.

Diabetes would have gone the way of polio. Migraines would be a chapter in some dusty medical history book. Those jars at Yong Kang hold substances that look like magic, but they are just medicine.

But, they are a different kind of medicine. They work on the root of the problem. Unlike western pharmaceutical drugs, they have few side effects. They tend to work slower, like easing into a new habit. The change can be profound.

In my experience the best answer to treating illness is to call on the wisdom of the body, and it’s built-in capacity to self regulate and cure itself of disease. The Chinese have a term 調理, it means to regulate and adjust. To call on the innate wisdom of the body to heal itself.

This is what we offer at Yong Kang, ways to encourage healing, balance and health. There are no simple answers to complex problems, but we often have some options, where other medicines only offer a lifetime of drugs, and their side effects.

Asking an acupuncturist about acupuncture can give you plenty of information about the use and curative effects of acupuncture, but to get at the experience of acupuncture, ask a patient.

Recently, I had a patient tell me this about the experience of acupuncture:

The sensation is like that of food prepared with just the right amount of spice.

Makes sense to me, acupuncture is about waking up our body and being to the vitality and enjoyment of life!