Chinese medical texts and confused students

Right. Today we had a go-through of Chinese medical texts. Which turned out to be only an intro to the Daodejing and the Neijing. Daodejing – the Book of the Way and the Power – is a core text of Daoism, and since Chinese medicine is very based on Daoism it is often included as a medical classic too.

We were recommended to read a version which was rather strangely translated (to me, who can read some of the original, and who have studied Daoists texts). The students were then given chapters which they were to discuss. For some, it was the first time ever they read anything Daoist, even Philosophical Daoism, (which has as much to do with the real version as a picture of a car has to do with driving one). But we´re still in...the first month, I think, of the course. Hopefully, we will read more and in depth further on.

The discussion ranged widely and all over the place. Some students were very grounded, some critical, some took a conscious stance of not knowing enough to comment. It bothered me that several questions were due to the bad translation of some characters in the text, as well as some simply bad translation of the concepts. One of the main examples in one chosen passage was the character de, power.

This weekend, I attended two lectures with Elisabeth Rochat De la Vallée, a famous and very skilled translator of chinese medical texts (see previous post on Studies of the Heart). I can really recommend her series of books for those interested in Chinese medicine, or those who want more of the background depth in written format about qigong and meditation. (You can get an overview of them here: http://www.monkeypress.net/ and buy them online at several places. If you´re in the states, http://www.redwingbooks.com/ might be easy. Don´t think they´re on Amazon, but you can check.) She did one lecture on the concept of Phlegm (tanyin) in Chinese medicine, and one on Healing and transformation in Chinese medicine. I took the chance to ask her specifically about de and its background in the early texts.

Through Chinese history, different groups have had power at different times. It has always been a kind of tug-of-war between Daoists, Confucians and Buddhists. During the late 100´s BC to 100´s AD, confucian thinking had more of a rise. Many Daoist texts were re-written or re-commented along confucian lines, something that has happened a lot through Chinese history. Daoism has, as a general rule, never wanted to be on the stage, but rather standing around practicing in the backdrop.

The character de is one of the more typical mistakes. De in its old, Daoist explanation, means ”power”. The connotation is of spiritual power, the huge amounts of energy and power that is built through the practices of living Daoism and then channeled to make a being more free, relaxed, complete and compassionate, with a living heart and individuality. It is slightly different to moli, magical power, the old, shamanic power. De can also mean the active choice of using de: moving with the universe in a conscious act, linking your energy and intent to de in Dao.

Confucianism is a Metal tradition. It is big on lines, hierarchies and clear structures in society. Everybody should know their place and support the places around them so that society as a whole functions well and wisely. They retranslated de as ”virtue”. This is the reason you can see some older, Western translations call the Daodejing ”The Book of the Way and the Virtue”. Even most scholars these days will translate de as ”power”.

I think the two terms are, well, slightly different. In a Confucian society, a person with power and lots of spiritual energy would be seen as a risk to the stability that confucian thought wants.

But so it was translated in the recommended version at the course. Many questions were around this specific thing, and how it could fit with Daoism: the teachers didn´t know the old meaning of de, which means that the students left the class still thinking Daoism talked about building ”character” and ”virtue”, when the text itself used de all the way through.

Oh well. These teachers are not specialists in Daoism, or how the texts actually still work in the living traditions. I have to give plus points that they even talk about them, and for the intent they have in linking the course to the old classics that is the root of Chinese medicine. Many courses would simply go for the TCM version straight off, and scoff at the old knowledge in CCM, losing the root to wave with the branches.

Here is my recommended version of the Daodejing: http://www.amazon.co.uk/TE-Tao-Ching-Lao-Tzu/dp/0345370996/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288251475&sr=1-1

And for readers who want more, the oldest version of it, the Guodian Daodejing written on bamboo slips, translated by the same translator and translated well: http://www.amazon.co.uk/TE-Tao-Ching-Lao-Tzu/dp/0345370996/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288251475&sr=1-1

In it, Henricks also compares the now three extant versions of the DDJ. Personally, when reading the comparisons, I found the Guodian (older, 350 BC) DDJ slightly more daoist than the first one, which was found in the tomb at Mawangdui, sealed at 168 BC. Something had changed already, or simply changed between the different scribes who copied it. Very interesting. Well, for geeks like me.

Rain

Rain over London.

Mistranslating the character qi, and then running with it

Qi is the tone that all of Chinese medicine is played around like chords in a beautiful piece of music. Qi is a very complex thing, and one of the major hurdles in thought between Chinese medicine and its much younger cousin the current version of Western medicine.

Since Western medicine is linked to Western science, and since Western science during the early 1800´s decided to start linking its knowledge to machines as measuring devices, this means that Western science is always locked at the current level of technological development. Any answer from research can only be ”As far as we can decide in this trial with the current equipment we have today as of 4.03 in the afternoon”. The full scope of qi is not measurable by technology yet. Maybe it will be some day.

Chinese medicine went the route of training its clinicians to consciously feel the various levels of qi and health in a human being, and to do so with great skill and precision. The system they work from is huge. It is based on experience, theory and research over 2500 years, on one of the largest populations on the planet. It is repeatable again and again, with different physicians following the same system. Like one of my teachers commented when we were discussing the Heart: ”They had bamboo models of the heart and how it pumped in China at 100 BC, but they never focused on this. I think that´s interesting. Instead, they went, yes, so it´s a pump, but what´s it really about? What´s in it?”

Many people who work with Chinese medicine make the mistake of excusing themselves to Western practitioners or Western medicine in general and adopt their language. Often this means they throw out qi as a concept, and treat ”health” or ”the nervous system” or similar things. A bit sad, but there you go. Chinese medical politics have actually veered towards this as a whole in China. Since the first university courses in Chinese medicine in China, after the ”cultural revolution”, Chinese policy seems to have made the choice of trying to adapt to the West and thus also to Western medicine. This has meant that in the universities, TCM is taught, not CCM: that is, chinese medicine as seen through a Western medicine lens instead of the old system in its entirety. Diagnosis is made in Chinese medical terms but through a Western medicine eye, and treatments work the same way. This then spread to the West, where it became – if possible – more watered down, and is now nearing the level of extinction.

Books have been written about qi, and uncountable texts over the past 2500 years of Chinese history. I´ll not go too deeply into it now, since it would make for a very, very long post.

The point was that different schools in the West teach this in different ways. I found out the official line of the course I´m at a few weeks ago, where a teacher informed us in no uncertain terms to ”not call qi ”energy”” but instead ”vitality”. There are indeed problems with the fact that New Age has taken the word ”energy” and, well, turned it into New Age, but adapting your language to something else usually means you have lost, unless it is very consciously done. Here it´s probably done partially to please the biomedical and academic side of the university. Pity. Adopting the language of an opponent means that they already won. Good Western science is not an opponent to good Chinese science, but the bad Western science I have met in scores surely, and unfortunately, is. To be fair, the fluffy, untrained New Age-version of things is as much of an enemy to CCM too. Adapting your thinking and language to please them is a long way down the slippery slope of losing skill and quality in Chinese medicine.

(Note: today we were berated by another teacher for calling it ”energy”. It should be called ”universal energy”. ”And still she turns”, as Galilei said.)

Qi has been mistranslated by many Western writers. Instead of the original meaning of ”energy”, as in the energy that makes things alive, as in the energy that is everything and exists at different frequencies of matter, it has been translated as ”breath”. So, all texts where you see ”breath” in relationship to a translated text on qigong, meditation or the Internal Martial Arts, substitute for ”energy”. Please. A panda that eats, shoots, and leaves, is dangerous. Remember: punctuation and good translation saves lives.

Qi contains both energy, vitality and some way of moving very complex information. It also weaves together with your mind, at several different, clearly defined levels, and into your organs and all through your body. It then weaves your being into the organic whole of the universe. All this, is what Chinese medicine have systemized, researched skills for, and aims to understand, diagnose, and help treat imbalances in.

Qi. Without it, you´re dead. With it, you can drink coffee.

So why are the students at the course stuyding Chinese medicine?

Many reasons. Some have a burning desire to learn and practice Chinese medicine. Most in that group have a clear sense that they want to practice the older, more complete version of it, CCM, instead of the Western medicine-influenced versions that many schools teach. They (ummm, we) also react quite badly to the implied views of Western medical influence from some teachers. But the course is better than most on this, and a half-way point between Western influenced acupuncture (TCM) and the older versions is where most of the teaching is done.

Some students have turned up out of the blue, quitting their previous job ”to do something completely different”. Some don´t know. Some seem to have an interest in Chinese medicine but not actually know all that much, they want to learn more and see.

Some think that you can learn just a little acupuncture and then start practicing, with the kind but perhaps misplaced view that ”people don´t try to treat what they don´t know.” Others of us blanch at the idea that four years is more than just a good start and thank you for turning up.

And there are students from all over: many of course from London or around the city, but also from Germany, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Lithuania, Slovakia and – winner of the long-range persistence cup of 2010 – Canada.

It´s a very wide range. What we all have in common is this idea that we want to study Chinese medicine full time at a Western university for at least three years. Three for the Bachelor; four for the Master. I think there are five similar courses in Great Britain: there are none in Scandinavia.

So what are people learning right now, on this Master of Chinese Medicine: Acupuncture?

Ummmm...a lot, all at once. And we are only fifteen students left now, compared to last year´s class of 30 or so.

The classes have covered basic Chinese medical concepts, mostly concerned with history at the moment. What is yin and yang, what´s their history, what are examples of them. What are the Five Elements, what´s their history, what are examples of them. A little chinese medical history, but not much yet. Vague intros to Chinese philosophy, including very definite matter-of-fact descriptions of Daoism through using Philosophical Daoism as the rule (like defining and teaching what driving is after having read about it in books but never driven a car).

There have been discussions a little bit about clinical practice. Not much, yet. More will come. There is a project for ”Nourishing life”, in where the students are to think through how they can nourish their own life to help them as medical practitioners (the things discussed in the post about the Heart were mostly not present). This might be through anything: swimming, hobbies, taking walks, finger-painting, training qigong or meditation, Tai Chi, making food, and all this is supposed to be put into an E-portfolio. Pictures are appreciated. There will be a presentation before Christmas. The general idea is good that they emphasize, but many students in the class feels this section might be a teensy bit over-represented with time.

Very, very basic qigong has been taught. Not basics – there are no basics taught, just very basic qigong of the simplest versions with very little information to it. The students are however told that to be skilled at what they do, they should practice qigong.

Points and channels have been taught, the first three yin-channels of the arm (Lung, Pericardium, Heart). So far, it is just the point and placement that is taught. There´s no information on what the points do or how they weave together in a treatment: all this comes later. Next up is the first yang-channel, Large Instestine. Students have been taught how to find them and mark them on other people, and this has been corrected and judged. The Five Transporting points of those three have been taught and checked in a test. It has been lots of information, if someone knows nothing to begin with.

There has also been some go-through of channel theory, lessons done at quite high speed with more lots of information in. I have to say I admire those who have come to the course with little or no pre-knowledge: if they are following everything that has been said, they have much better skills at learning than I ever did.

The basics of needling has been taught, and taught quite well. Students are not yet needling others, but have trained on fruit, needle-pads, and various other objects. This was done in one class. I hope there will be more. It´s up to the students if they practice at home. Nothing has been taught about how to withdraw needles yet. Nothing has been taught on pulse diagnostics (there is a lesson in one week´s time, I think) or tongue, except that it has been mentioned.

We have had classes in Anatomy, also at quite high speed (no wonder; they only get four lessons) and on Physiology, which we get lots of the whole first year. This later weaves into pathology and differential diagnosis in a module on Western diagnostic views. The course in Physiology covers basics of biochemistry, cells, and then into the nervous system and other stuff. We are going to spend some time on cells, monomer chains, structures, and the periodic table. The teacher told us today that many from the acupuncture course have, over the years, ventured an opinion that this course might not be necessary for being good at Chinese medicine. This was wrong, she stated: we would need it for later modules.

The module is absolutely not necessary for becoming good at Chinese medicine, but it is of course necessary if someone wants to take a degree here. The reactions from most students in my class to the Physiology course are like to that of the Nourishing life section, but a little stronger.

At best, the Physiology might give a basic knowledge and understanding of how Western medicine is constructed in its current shape, which perhaps will be useful sometime in the future. Most likely not, but perhaps. The good part of learning pathology and differential diagnosis later, is to better understand if a patient turns up after having been treated in Western medicine and pulls out a list of medicines or a diagnosis. You really don´t have to know physiology – at all – to be a brilliant chinese medical practitioner and perform virtual miracles of medical skill on your patients.

There is also a class on Therapeutic Relationships which I haven´t attended, since I´ve done it and trained it before. And taught it. And written about it. For years.

So it´s a mixed bag of modules and information. The quality of teaching has been fairly OK, if a bit fast. The general tone has been OK, as seen over the whole spectrum. It will be interesting to see how it develops over time. I personally study in huge amounts on the side too, and try to make my expensive days in London count.

Found out that my phone

wasn´t working. Or, well. Things are so complicated in life. I was changing my account to another one, which would have another number. So, I sent the written and signed note that would transfer my old number to the new one. They promptly changed it to the wrong number. I phoned them from London then, and got them to change it on the spot.

Now the accounts merged yesterday for real, and I found out that suddenly – ta-naaa! – I had been blessed by a third number not mentioned anywhere else.

So, when you saw a restrained and irritated and bearded scandinavian guy holding an axe with white knuckles on a bus in central London this morning, he was on the phone to the company for a third time, getting the account changed back to the right number ASAP.

It seems to work now. Well. For the moment. It´s com-pli-ca-ted.

Having a cold in London

is a very surreal experience. The city becomes like something out of Harry Potter, hazy and unsolid. People seem to move at strange angles (or maybe you do), lights jump out at you constantly from passing traffic and bicycles, like waving hands in front of your face.

I got on a bus that only went half-way of my trip and had to get off and wait for another one. That was ten very long minutes of my life, on a bridge in London with streaming traffic and rushing pedestrians. In that region, there are also building-works, so traffic is shut down, and there seemed to have been a multiple car pile-up since ten cars in a row where standing still and un-used next to the sidewalk in one of the lanes. I saw the scared face of a middle-aged woman in one of them, the only one with people still in them.

Very strange. But London is, normally: I just discovered it seems like some kind of hallucinogenic trip when you have a bad cold.

Scene: sitting on a bus, in central London, a black double-decker passes us by and stops a bus further down. I almost think it is a hallucination – but no, it´s the Ghost Bus who does ghost tours through London on an old Routemaster bus, painted all over in glossy black...

Whispers of winter

 The chill is coming. It hides in some city streets, it hits you, unexpectedly, like a slap in the face, when crossing some corners. The cold is coming. It seems to be a cold winter coming, like last year. This will be hard for the homeless in the city. Darn.

More on the Lungs and Lung channel

I meant to do this before but didn´t have time. Oh well. Humans still have lungs and lung points and lung channels, so let´s do it now. Let´s do the show right here.

The lungs are often the first channel taught in Chinese medicine. Same in the Internal Martial Art of Xingyi, where the Metal Element, which the Lungs belong to, is the first learned and the one the practitioner will put the most work into. In Xingyi it´s called Piquan, Splitting Fist.

The lungs are seen as very important because they take external energy from air and refine it in the body, and they produce the weiqi, the Protective Energy, the most external layer of energy that Chinese medicine sees as a first, energetic layer of the immune system (what New Age people call ”aura”, and I don´t). The lungs are linked to the Metal element. The Five Elements in Chinese medicine contain huge amounts of information; we will look at the basics in a post further on. Metal is the element that creates boundaries, lines, precision. When the weiqi and Metal element works well, you have a stable, neutral boundary with your surroundings. Everybody is born with a makeup of three of five elements who shape our body, mind, energy, and personality. People who have Metal as their primary element like things in straight lines, tend to be fairly black-and-white about life and often say ”No, that´s incorrect.” When balanced in a person, Metal has a great capacity for logical, incisive thought and a brilliant ability to think. Metal, when it works well, is drawn to systems, both understanding them and seeing the beauty in them.

The main Lung channel itself goes from the lungs and out into the thumbs. It has eleven points on it. It links further to the large intestine, and the Large Intestine channel and points, just like the Metal element contains a process between Lung and Large Intestine.

Points on the Lung channel are often used for clearing up and balancing the lungs and their organic connection with the rest of the person. This can also be done through supporting them or opening them from other points on other channels. On the lung channel itself, you have points that will open the lungs (it usually takes only a few seconds before someone starts taking deeper, freer breaths), that can clear heat out of the lungs, relax them or balance them with the season we are in or going towards. Depending on the skill of the practitioner, points here can also be used for releasing locked grief in the lungs, just like with several other points on other channels. If we take Peter Deadman´s book on acupuncture points as an example, the section on the Lung Channel, its points, their various functions and ways of weaving them together, covers 18 A4 pages. In Classical Chinese medicine, this would be seen as the very basics on the subject. (The whole book is a nifty 675 pages, making it a pet peeve among us students to lug around London.)

Let´s use the current season as an example. Each of the Elements are linked to a season. Right now, we are still mainly in that of Metal: autumn. We are heading towards winter, linked to Water. Old chinese medicine would use precisely applied acupuncture to balance the shift between those two seasons in a patient, so as to minimize any health-issues that might arise from a person´s health not being in phase with the season. It would also clear up the emotions linked to that season, and let the person move more in harmony with it and appreciate it for what it is. Ideally, treatments like this are done starting two-three weeks before the season has fully shifted. For the autumn, Metal and the Lungs, an important issue would be that the system is healthy and protected, and that there are as few imbalances in the lungs as possible before the winter. Otherwise, a cough or lung imbalance in the autumn easily transfers and becomes something worse and more permanent in winter.

The lungs are linked to the emotions of grief and sadness, and to the joy of being alive. We need to be able to feel grief, it´s an important part of life, this fact that it will end. But if grief is locked, kept, held, ignored, it can eventually damage the functions of the lungs and weaken them. If the Metal element works well, there is a clarity and an ability to really enjoy that we are alive, alive, now, alive and know this, and know that we will die, but now, right now, we are alive. That is the joy of Metal. Alive, on this edge of life and death.

Waking up in London

 Depends on which London you live in.

London never sleeps. There are always lights on somewhere, always steps going down alleys and streets in central London, sometime. Always things happening, parties being held or darker things, like crime, being committed.

Most of London, waking up might have been after a restless sleep, filled with other people´s voices, cars going by outside, or lights playing along your house during the night. Wealth. If you want silence, in central London itself, this will mean wealth.

If you´re in central London, you are surrounded by a sussurus of noise that never stops. For a few hours in early morning, it just draws breath, that´s all. During the Dogwatch, the worst watches of the night for sentries and guards and people who stand guard: 0200-0400. The time when our body tells our mind with the force of a sledgehammer: YOU SHOULD SLEEP NOW. Sleep can have a heavier hand than gravity, and it´s an older hand, weighed down with time.

London has been known for its continual noise all through the ages - it seems to have been even worse, way back when, than now. Standing in Picadilly Circus during the 1800´s meant that you had to shout to even be heard to someone standing next to you, so great was the din of horses and carriages and hawkers and people living their lives in the city.

If you´re in the suburbs, you might have a more quiet life. But even here, movement never quite stops, sirens are usually heard to and fro during the night, cars, the occasional voices.

All this is of course if you are lucky to have some place to sleep. The homeless of London keep increasing, especially with the financial crisis that has seen people become homeless very fast, from having one to losing one.

All this is if you can sleep. Insomnia is one of the worst problems of the industrialized West and something good acupuncture treats very well. And all this is if you want to sleep. If you are a veteran of a war or something else, and went through more than your system can handle, you might not want to. Ever. Again. In Britain´s armed forces the numbers of mental ill-health is rising and rising, with more voices raised and questions asked than they used to be. I guess if the war isn´t just, there is more reason to feel protective of the soldier´s against the goverment who is sending them out. A British military police officer was killed in Afghanistan last week. He had been reposted to a battle posting, which he shouldn´t have, and was shot dead by a British sniper. The man was standing in a watchtower, 20 meters up, had been observed for an hour and was surrounded by infra-red markers on the tower that marked it as Friendly. The sniper who shot him says he thought the MP was standing on the ground. The more senseless waste of life that goes on in all the wars across the globe, the more you see the reason for feeding money into the hungry, slowly chomping maw of the UN.

Waking up in London. It´s early morning now, a grey glimmer on the horizon.

And London waking up, yawning to its inhabitants.

In class this week...

 ...students are learning the basics of the Therapeutic Relationship, what yin and yang are and what the Five Elements are, we have tests on the Heart channel and the Sea and River points of the Lung, Pericardium and Heart channels, and on Friday we are doing something in Physiology. And for next Friday, we have a test on the muscles of the body in Anatomy. And there is a class with discussions and group work on how you nourish your energy as a medical practitioner. And there is the possibility of doing clinic on Monday and Wednesday. I will probably try to be in clinic all day Monday.

I think that´s all this week.

Oh, and in Points, after the tests, we´re doing the Large Intestine channel. And there are tutorials we have to attend as part of university policy, and a tutorial as part of Physiology too.

And we have a teacher who does Reiki and who tries to fill students with energy in class without asking them. Energy ethics are so complicated to learn: never add energy to someone else´s system, it will charge all blockages they have too. Never treat anybody energetically (or otherwise) unless they asked you to do so first. And always look both ways before crossing the street.

I think that´s all this week.

The Heart channel and xinshu, the study of nourishing the Heart

There is a translation in the incredible series by Claude Larre and Elisabeth Rochat de La Vallée. It is called Rooted in Spirit – the Heart of Chinese Medicine, and it translates only one chapter from the Lingshu, the second part of the Neijing, but does so in great depth and with full commentary.

The chapter is called Benshen, Rooted in Spirit, and it is mainly concerned with the health and healing of the shen, consciousness, which resides in the Heart, and how you live so that you protect and nourish it.

If you haven´t read the post on the Pericardium channel it would be useful to do so before reading this.

In the Lingshu, Benshen is chapter 8. It was later considered so important it was put in as chapter 1 in the encyclopedic Systematic Classic of Acupuncture (Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing) from 282 AD (a couple of decades after the death of Zhang Zhongjing who wrote the Treatise on Cold Disorders we spoke about before, the Shang Han Lun). The Systematic Classic collated many earlier texts to help practitioners deepen their skill. Today, it is available on Amazon both in English and French at the click of a button. It´s a strange old world sometimes.

In this post, we will talk about both the Heart channel and the Benshen, because chapter 8 contains some very good information on what is called xinshu: the Study of Nourishing the Heart.

The Heart meridian itself, the shou shaoyin xin jing, is fairly straightforward. It´s just the treatment and knowledge of the Heart that is extraordinarily complex. The main meridian goes from the heart, out through the very pit of the arm pit. From there, it continues down the most protected inside of the arm on the bicep, down to the elbow crease and down just off center down the arm to the wrist. From there, it goes out and ends in the little finger. Nine points total.

It is treated for direct issues to do with the Heart – angina, tachychardia, irregular heartbeat, tension in and around the heart and out into the arms, etc – but by older Chinese medicine, the Heart channel was rarely treated directly unless absolutely necessary (see the post on Pericardium for the discussion about this). It is worth noting that Chinese medicine can treat heart-attacks and their aftermath, but would prefer to treat the person way, way, way before the blockages become that bad, or before an operation is necessary. (Since I personally know and then also have talked to quite a lot of experienced hospital staff the last decade, ranging from OR to ER to Ambulance to Radiology and Gyn, I´ve always personally wondered how much a skilled acupuncturist and chinese medical team could cut down the uneccessary surgeries done, and let the really necessary ones actually get to the top of the line instead. We´ll probably never find out.). An unbalanced Heart would also often be linked to issues of shen: panic, anxiety, hysteria, epilepsy, insomnia, emotional trauma, and specific kinds of forgetfulness. Treating the shen can also clear up more subtle problems in how a person might be locked into not so useful ways of perceiving reality around them. The Heart is linked to the element of Fire together with the Small Intestine. When working well, the Heart brings joy and presence and consciousness to the world.

Shen is a much-debated subject in chinese medicine. Classical chinese medicine, CCM, sees it as very important to be aware of. When necessary they treat it, either through supporting it or treating it directly. TCM, the Westernized model of chinese medicine taught in most Chinese universities and in the West, rarely cares about it other than treating the heart for physical problems and sometimes mentioning the state of a patient´s shen in a diagnosis. Western acupuncture, WA, has no knowledge of it or treatment of it at all.

Daoist practices have specific ways of nourishing the shen. Chinese medicine approaches it mainly through the spectrum of intent, needling or herbs. Some sayings about it are quite common, though, like, ”Avoid loud or obnoxious people, as they will be disturbing for your Heart”.

”Having shen is the splendour of life; loss of it is ruin.” Neijing Suwen, chapter 13.

Xinshu is the Study of the Heart. The connotation is multi-layered and complex, like most chinese, Daoist or Chinese medical terms are. It has meanings of nourishing the life we have and the ability we have to be present and joyous in it; the balance we have in our heart and its relationships with ourselves and the rest of the universe; of nourishing joy, the ability to be joyous in life and our manifestation in it, and of our ability to fully manifest our own personality, with less ego and programmings and red dust. The definition of the term xinshu varies depending on who is talking and who is adressed: a Chinese doctor might be talking about it in treatment, or as a guide for a patient to lighten their spirit and heal it, while a Daoist adept might do the same, but add larger dimensions of spirituality, compassion, and techniques for nourishing the shen through very specific techniques in qigong and meditation.

”For every needling, the method is above all not to miss the rooting in the Spirit.” Benshen, Neijing Lingshu, lines 2-3.

This is rarely seen today. The people who follow this advice consciously as part of treatments are few, and the ones who know the actual techniques for diagnosing it will mostly be found on the rarer side of Classical Chinese Medicine. As part of that, it is important to emphasize that it has to be rooted in the Spirit of both the practitioner and the patient, not just the latter – what Ecological NLP would call the need for having both internal and external Ecology checks.

”...that being so, when there is apprehension and anxiety, worry and preoccupation will attack the Spirit.” Benshen, Neijing Lingshu, line 40.

All these risks unbalancing the Heart and shen. In the long run, they will injure them. Shen-imbalances are very common in the Industralized Western world. Our society spends a lot of time in the mental and emotional realms of our lives, and deals with huge amounts of pressure on the nervous system and mind, all affecting the shen. There is also less of an emphasis on the physical body and actually enjoying physical life, which means that the house our shen lives in doesn´t become particularly inviting. It can be like living in rented, second-hand bedsits, with the previous owners furniture standing around and a row next door – not exactly the kind of place you want to spend a lot of time in.

Nourishing the shen, nourishing our Heart, is something we should keep doing consciously all through the different stages of our life. Up until the age of about 30, it is likely that many will not understand the point of it as they still are so much in the age of Wood and the energy of youth. Our full personality and empathy is still not in place until the shift at about 25-30, and it´s often not until this happens that the nourishing of the Heart is understood. There are exceptions to this on an individual basis.

If life hits us with trauma, grief, or long periods of problems, this often injures our shen, our spirit, and this needs to be treated too. It will often take a long time before it is better and more stable again.

Nourishing the Heart can be through hobbies, or music, or art, food, friends, trips, etc; there is a specific feeling to it, a lightness in the Heart and a sense of completion in doing this. Nourishing shen is slightly different to just nourishing life. It is the matter of nourishing our very consciousness and presence, the joy we have in the life that we have. In Daoist training and in Chinese medicine, it is very much something that you train. Some people have it naturally, but most of us have to train it a little bit every day to become better at Nourishing the Spirit of Joy.

The oldest acupuncture needles

Stone.

  From the Shang dynasty, almost 4000 years ago. There are needles the archeologist think predates this, maybe by as much as another 6000 years. The stone needles aren´t really needles as such, just sharpened, thin stones, probably used more to poke and activate points than actually put them deeper inside the body. The oldest characters for yisheng, doctor, combines doctor with the characters for a spear and arrows. This might have come from that the earliest acupuncturists were shamen who did exorcist practices of activating points to release bad energy, let in good, or clean out the effects of ill-tempered ancestors or bad spirits. It might also have the connotation of intent, as in the doctor and shaman having a clear intent into the point and into the effect the treatment was meant to have. Shamen in most cultures are associated with feathers, or feather shrouds, as a sign of their ability to leave their body ”and take flight” into this or other realms to protect the village or clan. This is seen in the character fangshi, which later became daoshi, Daoist priest. Maybe the arrows in the pictogram had connotations of wingpens, or of arrows used to guide rituals.

Bronze.

  Bronze needles, crafted during the Zhou dynasty, 800 BC. These were made by smiths at the same time a lone Daoist looked at the last of the Oracle Bones, and with a shrug dipped his brush in ink and wrote the first character of the Zhouyi, the original version of the Yijing, the Book of Change.

Gold

  Gold needles, made during the Han dynasty, 200 BC., the same time that Zhang Zhongjing wrote the Shang Han Lun, the Treatise on Cold Disorders, and saw so many villagers die from typhoid that he made specialized studies and treatments of the disease. Several dozen medical treatises from 200 AD have been lost over the millenia, but Zhang´s book was famous already from the next generation and onwards. 140 years before Zhang refused a post as Imperial physician so that he instead can treat more people freely, Bodicea, the Celtic queen, attacks and burns down London to punish the townsfolk who kidnapped her women and children to sell as slaves. There is still a layer of oxidized red iron, wood and ash from her fire, in the layers of that time under London today. 

Gold and silver needles have been used in Daoist acupuncture for as long as they have existed. There are specific effects from them, and specific sequences they are used in. These skills are almost gone today.

The 2012 Olympics in London

If I stay at the course, if I can afford it, I will be in London during the 2012 Olympics.

Ummmmm.

Hooray?

Overheard today

Russian. French. Japanese. Korean. Chinese, many times. Serbo-croat. Different dialects of English. Finnish. Yesterday, Lithuanian.

And a single line, by a black man walking past me, talking on his cell phone: ”Well? Did it make you tingle inside?”

The skilful doctor

A saying by Zhang Zhongjing:

"The skilful doctor knows by observation, the mediocre doctor by interrogation, the ordinary doctor by palpation."

Zhang Zhongjing wrote the Shang Han Lun, the Treatise on Cold Disorders during the Han dynasty, 200 AD. The book is one of the Chinese medical classics. Zhang himself is known for his virtous life and his passion for becoming ever more skilled at Chinese medicine so that he could serve his patients better. In the Preface to the Shang Han Lun, he exhorts his contemporary doctors to work harder, saying that many of them are criminally lazy in their work 1800 years ago.

Observing (wang zhen) is the highly trained and precise method of looking at a patient to see their health. The more skilled a doctor becomes over the years, the more he or she sees within seconds of meeting a patient, or seeing a shift in a patient since last time. This is trained (like I talked about in a previous post about airports) and trained and trained. This blends with the skill called Tingjin, or Listening Energy, of the Internal Martial Arts of Baguazhang, Taiji, and Xingyi, but in chinese medical practice it inhabits the middle ground between martial skills and the tingjin that a Daoist adept would use to read much more in a person than that which is visible.

Interrogation is usually a little more mildly called Asking (wen zhen) when translated. Here, the doctor asks questions that elicit specific views into the patients health. There is a youtube clip of Peter Deadman, a well-known acupuncturist, talking about seeing one of his teachers, a laoyisheng, a senior doctor, diagnose patients. He would usually ask them one, maybe two questions while taking their pulse, then treat with a very small number of needles and get an incredible effect. But that doctor had been actively training and practicing his skills for 40 years.

Palpation, or touching, (qie zhen), covers both taking the pulse and sometimes touching and diagnosing a patient´s body, organs and skin. The pulse is a tool that the doctor uses to verify information already gained through looking and asking. This later transfers into the ability to feel points through touch, a skill that is getting more and more lost in acupuncture today, as it depends on the doctor or practitioner having good, stable qigong-skills, and these are rarely taught nor emphasized today. Acupoints move, both sideways and in depth, so knowing only a physical placement - ”In the center of the flesh between the 1^st and 2^nd metacarpal bones, slightly closer to the 2^nd metacarpal bone. If the transverse crease of the interphalangeal joint of the thumb of one hand is lined up with the margin of the web between the thumb and the index fingers of the other hand, the point is where the tip of the thumb touches” - for Large Intestine 4, Hegu, placed in the middle of what is called Hukou or the Tiger´s Mouth in qigong and the Internal Martial Arts is not enough. Hegu is a point that has been quite popularized and misunderstood in the West. Knowing the language for where it is in physiological terms doesn´t mean the practitioner will feel where the point actually is and truly activate it with a needle.

With years of training and clinical practice, a skilled doctor picks up most of the information with the trained skill of a actively looking at the patient. Then this is verified by specific questions, tounge, and verified yet again in depth by carefully taking the pulse. All are techniques aimed at getting a diagnostic view of the organic system and organic change that is a living, breathing, human being.

I was sitting on the bus on my way home

On the bus, there is a child screaming

at its mother; someone talks russian

loudly on a cell phone,

three people are reading newspapers

and five are reading books.

Some

sit staring out, or in front of them

at nothing, at everything, at

suburbs passing by, or the City:

it doesn´t matter much. This scene,

with its yellow poles and chequered seats

with black rubber borders along the windows

of the red double-decker bus

was what explosives blew up

on 7/7. Shrapnel ripping flesh,

shattering windows, pressing out steel

mushrooming buses

and Tube trains

fringe fundamentalists

trying vainly to

validate their lives

through killing others

only to find out that if there is a Heaven,

there is also

Hell.

Daniel Skyle © 2010

Another gentle moment

On the way home today, I saw another one of those gentle moments that are like gold in the big city.

The bus was packed, all seats on the upper floor taken. I´m at the far back, on the right. Suddenly someone´s cell-phone rings, one of those old ringing signals. It goes louder, louder, louder – until several people are looking around to see whose it is.

Then we discover that it comes from a man at the far left, all the way in the back, who is sleeping soundly as a child, despite his loudly ringing mobile. And there it is, suddenly: people nod, smile, exchange kind glances and grins full of compassion for the sleeping man.

Embracing the Emperor: the Pericardium channel and points

In Chinese medicine, the heart is the center of consciousness. Not of thought; they have many different levels of mind and thought. The heart would be the center for a specific kind of thought, but more related to consciousness itself. In Daoist practices there are clear distinctions made between the heart, the xin, the heart of the mind and being, the middle dantian, and the shen. They all interweave, but are technically speaking slightly separate things.

In chinese medicine, each organ has three levels. The first would be the physical organ itself – what Western medicine currently sees as the organ. The second is the qi of it, the energy of it that moves through it and is linked to it. The third is specific emotions and mind-states linked to the organ. So, the physical heart, but the chinese medical organ the Heart, which covers all levels. Then all this is taught in organic relationships of change with everything else in the person. Later, this is in turn taught in how these organic changes in the system are specifically affected by seasons, times in your life, changes in the year, and changes in weather.

The Heart is called the emperor of the body, since the Chinese saw the energy of it as ruling everything else. Chinese doctors around BC had small bamboo models of how the heart pumped blood, but this never really interested them as much as it does in Western medicine: to them, the interesting part with the heart was the consciousness of the person it held and how well this worked with the rest of the person´s health and life.

In old China, the Emperor was sacrosanct. There are schools of chinese medicine for all the other elements (Metal, Water, Wood, Earth), all except Fire, which is linked to the heart. No-one dared have a school linked to the emperor. And partially due to this, one rarely treated – nor treats – the heart directly, nor the Heart channel directly. This is also more common sensically due to the possible risk of directly interfering with the function of the heart.

The way to treat the heart is instead often indirectly, through other points and organs. Primary of these would be the Pericardium and the channels and points linking to it. The pericardium cradles the heart and protects the heart. In Chinese, it is called xinbao, ”heart embracing”. Many treatments to nourish or balance someone´s shen is done through using points on the Pericardium channel.

All channels have several different levels, but the primary part of the Pericardium channel goes from just a finger´s-width above and to the right of the nipple, and then continues out into the arm via the biceps, down on the inside crook of the elbow, and on the midline of the lower arm out to the wrist. From there, the last two points are the laogong and the tip of the middle finger. It goes like this on both arms.

The laogong is often talked about in qigong and Taiji-practices, but most of the time also misplaced as being in the middle of the palm. The real laogong – the acupuncture-point laogong – is found if you curl the middle finger. At the point of the tip touching the palm, inside there is the laogong.

The Pericardium channel is clearly seen worked on together with the Heart channel if someone does Paoquan, Cannon Fist, in Xingyi, which nourishes, balances, and cleans up the Fire Element in the practitioner. A similar movement in Taiji would be Fair Lady Works the Shuttle, but it doesn`t work therapeutically in quite the same way as does Paoquan.

Points on this channel focus on treating things like angina and disturbances of the heart, but also all kinds of blockages or problems of this region and the chest. It also treats disturbances and imbalances of the shen, the mind and emotions who is linked to the core of us, the Heart. Symptoms of shen disorders would be unstable emotions, an inability to think clearly, an inability to perceive reality clearly, memory-problems, insomnia, especially with excessive dreams, etc etc etc. Treating the shen is part both of the immediate and latter treatment done on PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, when you treat the it through acupuncture. In best case, this is done directly or soon after the stressful event. It can also be treated after or a long time after, but then the person will have been much more affected, and there is a risk of the problems from the traumatic event making a deeper imprint on the person´s body and mind.

The Emperor – the Heart – is incredibly important. The health of is it felt in the blood coursing through our body, the joy we have in life, and the light of shen – presence and life – that is visible in the eyes as we meet the world.