Introduction to Chinese Medicine

This weekend I made the kicharee recipe from The Way of Chinese Herbs. Apparently a 10-day brown rice diet (TCM) or a kicharee diet (Ayurveda) returns a person to a balanced state at which the mind and body become peaceful and the Yin and Yang of herbs have a more pronounced efffect. The reason for this is partly because rice and beans are seeds, which are naturally Yin-Yang balanced foods.
I feel the recipe asked for too much turmeric, so I will add less of it next time. Other than that, it’s a deliciously plain and simple meal.

This week I started to use tuning forks. Finding the exact points is still hard, since people’s bodies don’t have markers on them and it all kind of looks the same. Learning points and how to find them might teach me as much about anatomy as it does about meridians.
Some things I have learned:
There are points down the back running along the edges of the scapula that correspond with the different organs, and help with balancing emotional disharmonies.
Yin organs generally run on medial and anterior on the body. Yang organs generally run lateral and posterior on the body.
Qi and blood runs more superficially on the hands, feet, and head.
Herbs are thought to enter the meridians of the organ system they are drawn to.
Dong Quai nourishes Blood and tastes delicious. Dong Quai is a traditionally smoke dried root of Angelica sinensis (Chinese Angelica), which is in the Carrot family (Apiaceae).
C# is the tuning fork pitch most commonly used for balancing and grounding.

Reading this week:
- Chapter 6 The Way of Chinese Herbs
- Chapter 2 Wood Becomes Water
- Chapter 9 The Web That Has No Weaver

My sore arms are have been a constant reminder over the past few days that fall is here. It takes me three hours to rake up a walnut tree’s entire summer work. Leaves fall as the tree lets go of the summer to withdraw into winter’s cold hibernation. It drops its fruit to bear the hope of another cycle to begin in spring. This is the season of the Metal element.

The five elements are still elusive. They make sense intellectually but I want them to sink deeper into my mind. Reading and listening are easy. Explaining what one’s read and heard to someone else is hard. When I can do that I know I’ve really understood it.

Chapter Five (”Diagnostic Systems”) of The Way of Chinese Herbs gives an overview of 10 different diagnostic strategies, and describes the three major ones: Eight Principles, Symptom sign organ diagnosis, Three Humor diagnosis.
The Eight Principles are External/Internal, Heat/Cold, Excess/Deficiency, Yin/Yang.
The Organ Diagnosis is based on the 6 Yin organs and the 6 Yang organs.
Three Humor diagnosis is based on Blood, Qi, and Fluid.
The chapter describes common patterns of disharmony of each system. None of the diagnostic systems should be seen as completely separate, since their classification of signs and symptoms overlap to create a comprehensive picture.

Reading a more simple but very “down to earth” introduction to the Tao, Yin-Yang, and the Five Elements, and how they shape the healing arts of Acupuncture, Dietary Therapy, Qigong, and Feng Shui in Wood Becomes Water is very refreshing. I really enjoy this book for the way they way it brings out the essence of this philosophy without getting lost in detail. This book uses a Feng Shui map call the Ba-Gua to weave the connection between the five elements, their correspondences, and space in the macrocosm (around us) and the microcosm (the body).
I really enjoy learning the different ways five element theory and Taoist thought is ingrained into every aspect of Chinese culture. The usefulness of deeply understanding these philosophies seems to span across every aspect of life.

Reading this week:
- Chapter 5 The Way of Chinese Herbs
- Introduction & Chapter 1 Wood Becomes Water
- Nourishing Destiny – Water

“If you understand a pattern, you understand everything. ” These were the approximate words of one of our teachers at Herb Pharm this summer. To know a fact is to have knowledge. To know a pattern, to truly and deeply understand a pattern, is wisdom. Chinese medicine is pattern medicine.

Chapter 8 in The Web That Has No Weaver explained common patterns of disharmony of Blood, Qi, and five of the yin organs. It also lists common diagnoses of these disharmonies if people were to be evaluated by a Western medical practitioner.  The pericardium and triple burner are not discussed in this section. I did not attempt to memorize the specific signs and symptoms of each disharmony, but rather to understand the pattern behind the disharmony. I might revisit this chapter with its specifics at a later time.

Chinese herbs are generally categorized by their flavor, energetic quality (hot, warm, cool, or cold), and the organs and meridians they enter. They may also be categorized by their color, shape, growth habit, texture, or other characteristics, but those are usually secondary.
The five flavors include

• salty (water, kidney/bladder)
• sour (wood, liver/gallbladder)
• bitter (fire, heart/small intestine)
• sweet (earth, spleen/stomach)
• pungent (metal, lung/large intestine)

Michael Tierra (The Way of Chinese Herbs) explains his view on the five flavors and how they function by using western thought. For example, he explains that the sour flavor in foods often points towards a high vitamin C content, which can act as an anti-inflammatory, or to high enzyme content, as in fermented food. He points out that the action of the chinese liver can be compared to enzymatic action in the body and that this might be one explanation of the correspondence between the liver and the sour flavor.

Reading this week:
- Chapter 8 The Web that Has No Weaver
- Chapter 1-4 The Way of Chinese Herbs

Pulse diagnosis is one of the Four Examinations. Tongue diagnosis falls under the Looking examinations, because the tongue is something the practitioner looks at. The other examinations are Listening/Smelling, Asking, and Touching, the last one being mainly an examination of the pulse.
I tried reading through the descriptions slowly, then quickly, then repeatedly. Then I realized that the only way to really know a pulse is to have felt it many times. Being so used to feeling the pulse only to count its beats for 30 seconds, I need a lot more practice in being able to feel all three positions of the pulse, and to feel its texture.
I would like to start taking my friend’s and roommate’s pulses to get a better feel for the subtle differences.

The way a tongue reflects a pattern of disharmony is by its body and moss (the coating of the tongue). Things to notice are the body shape, movement, color, and moisture, and the thickness, color, and texture of the moss.
Tongues and Pulses seem to be the most important indicators in determining a pattern.

A few other thoughts:

How a needle is put into a point (whether it be intention, twisting, or both) determines whether Qi is being dispersed or tonified at the point. This is one of those questions I didn’t realize I had, but that clears up a lot of confusion.

If cold is the absence of heat in Physics, then if Yin is deficient, is there an absence of an absence of cold? Do chemical and physical theories still apply in this manner? I think I have a harder time understanding Yin than Yang.

Excess/Heat, Deficiency/Heat, Excess/Cold, and Deficiency/Cold sound a lot like the Hippocratic Temperaments: Sanguine, Melancholic, Choleric, and Phlegmatic. I haven’t yet developed this thought to conclusion.

I can’t wait to start the reading on herbs. During this weeks acupuncture visits, I have wanted to connect what I learn and observe to what I already know about herbs. Unfortunately, my western herbal background seems inadequate for me to be able to match herbs to these patterns of disharmony. I have received my SUMMIT order of The Way of Chinese Herbs, and will start reading it this week.

I have to remind myself often to think in cyclic patterns, not static and linear. Yin and Yang are not separate entities that can exist independent of each other. They define, create, and turn into each other in a constant cyclic movement. This is easier to remember in Five Element theory, since the five elements are often portrayed in a circle.

Reading this week:
- Chapter 5-7 The Web That Has No Weaver

This first week of learning was somewhat of a humbling experience. After reading three lengthy poetic descriptions of Yin-Yang theory, and finally getting a reasonable grasp on its meaning, I somehow thought that I had figured the hardest part out already. It didn’t take me long to realize that while every disharmony in the body can be essentially described as an imbalance of Yin and Yang, “learning Chinese medicine is like going from simple drawings to fine paintings. The whole is always present; the Yin and Yang can only be refined, never abandoned.” (pg. 43, The Web That Has No Weaver)
With its circular philosophy, a lot of patience is necessary until all the pieces fall into place and the whole starts to make sense.
One of my favorite correspondences of Yin and Yang is the one of structure (Yin) and function (Yang). In Molecule to Organism, which used to be called Structure and Function, the overall take-home message always went back to the distinction between structure and function. This helped me jump a hurdle in conceptualizing what Yin and Yang are and what they describe.

On the practical side, I am entering the realms of tongues and pulses. Feeling the seemingly endless possible qualities of a pulse seems daunting now (choppy, wiry, sinking, bounding, … is a pulse by any other name still a pulse?), but part of this whole experience hopefully includes getting to take pulses until I can feel more than just its strength. The same applies to tongues. However, tongues seem to be a little easier to read. I might make it a point to look at my tongue every morning before brushing my teeth.

Learning about this ancient healing art is thoroughly joyful so far. With every new description of the human landscape and working with its imbalance a piece of the puzzle easily falls into place and the whole picture is taking shape.

I would like to find out how tastes affect the different organ networks. There are five flavors and five elements. Which flavor harms which organ, which flavor tonifies each organ, and how does this relate to the five flavors of herbs and their use?
I also want to understand the 5 element points on each meridian and how they are used.
I am also looking forward to using tuning forks soon and slowly learning one acupuncture point at a time.

Reading this week:
- Chapter 1-4 The Web That Has No Weaver
- Chapter 1&2 Foundations of Chinese Medicine