Yong Kang Clinic has changed hands and become Ageless Acupuncture. My address again is Beijing. There is a new chapter as I again dive deeper into language, and work to bring more of the medicine written in Chinese into English. This particular chapter draws to an end. But, the journey that began eight years ago on Yong Kang Street in Taiwan where I first began my study of Chinese and learned to drink Pu-er tea continues.

It can be followed……HERE

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 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.

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.

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.

It is not that time changes things. But, that things change as they flow through time.

Seven years ago about this time of year I boarded an airplane with the destination of Taiwan. Armed only with determination and desire to learn enough language to engage the medicine in Asia. Tonight in the deep beyond midnight I return to the beautiful island. Return by invitation, return to join in a symposium on medicine.

From seven years ago, this moment is unimaginable.

Einstein is credited with saying that imagination is more powerful than knowledge. And the mystery of life itself surpasses both!

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It is a common question,

These herbs, will I need to take them forever?

It is a usually a question asked by someone that is already taking pharmaceutical drugs. Taking drugs for a problem, and then other drugs to allievate the side-effects of the cure, and sometimes even others to deal with the side effects of the drugs for the side-effects.
I wish I was making this up.

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But, it this is often the case.
We have a drug problem in this country, and I am not talking about the crack cocaine that is being sold a few streets over on Second Avenue.

I’m not here to rail against the awash in cash and power drug companies, like any business, they are looking to supply a solution to a problem. Nor, am critical of those who must keep a filing system of colored pills, capsules and gels. We are all looking to feel good, and keep the process of disintegration at bay.

What I am curious about is the willingness with which most of us will take a western pharmaceutical for uncounted calendar months, while a few weeks or months of a generally side effect free herbal formulation is as suspect as a foreigner at airport security.

Perhaps it is a matter of culture and habit, Chinese are used to having herbs as an accompaniment to the various slides, falls and fortunes of life.They know that herbs not only can chase away disease, what is more, they can boost and nourish the vitality. That essence which allows life to perpetuate itself through the challenges and grace of life, and the seasons and changes of years.

Indeed there are cases of incurable disease. The experience of diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, and other long term illness that can be controlled and reduced, but rarely disappeared. For, these yes, herbs are usually a long term relationship.

But, they are one that tend to coax the body into a partnership, rather than foster dependence.

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!

In China people talk about having a stuffy feeling the chest and dizziness.

In the US we talk about anxiety, and depression.

We all have that about which we are concerned. We all have symptoms and difficulties that to us make sense.
Regardless of which side of the pond upon which we live, I suspect our experiences of ourselves is not that different. We just give it different meanings.

This sometimes makes practicing Chinese medicine in the West a particular kind of challenge. There are experiences which in China are taken for granted. Language, culture and the shared understanding of what is assumed without words. Those words however, slipped into English don’t even begin to make sense.

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Wind invasion, receiving cold, rising fire, these all in Chinese make sense. But, wiggling them into English requires a translation not just across language, but through culture and habit as well. Being bi-lingual helps.

Being bi-cultural is helps even more.