What are Chinese Herbal Formulas?

If I had to answer in one sentence the question, “What are Chinese Herbal Formulas?” – My answer would be, “They are an herbal tea”.

The ‘Chinese herbs’ used the most in Herbal Formulas are:
Ginger
Cinnamon
Licorice
Rhubarb

Yes, these are the same ingredients found at your local grocery store. You didn’t know you were buying Chinese Herbs, did you?

Most of the formulas are made of those items above and other common dried
Fruits
Leaves
Flowers
or Roots of Plants

Around Portland, OR you can buy the dried ingredients and boil them in water to make “Herbal Tea”, that’s what Chinese Herbal Formulas are – a tea.  The Kan Herb Company (the company I send my patients to exclusively and have used for over 10 years), located in California, has devised an even more convenient way to ingest the formulas.  Kan Herb makes a huge batch of the tea, then they evaporate it, and distill it with a small amount of alcohol to keep it fresh. That way the herbal formulas don’t have to be refrigerated. And someone only needs to take a few drops of the formula instead of drinking a whole cup of tea. They also offer most of the teas in pill form too.

Upside of Chinese Herbal Formulas
They are Subtle (compared to western medicines)
They are more like food than like western medicines, so the body assimilates them much better
They are designed so there are no side effects
There is an Energy component and a Physical component to the formulas
They have been used and perfected for over 3000 years (if we lived in the year 1019, I would prescribe the same formulas to you as I would today!)

Downside of Chinese Herbal Formulas
They are Subtle, you might not be able to notice they are working. You will just find that you are getting better over a period of days or weeks.  Unless you have an acute problem, like a sinus infection, then the formula you would take will be a lot faster acting, and you would definitely notice it is working right away.
They usually have a bitter taste to them. In the USA we are not used to eating/drinking bitter things.
You can’t patent them, since they have been available for 3000 years – so drug companies can’t make any $$ off of them. This is actually an ‘upside’ for the consumer as it keeps prices low in comparison to patented drugs.


Stop Smoking Point

Know any one that wants to stop smoking but can’t?  Consider telling them about this ear point commonly used to stop or seriously reduce the body’s addiction to cigarettes (chewing tobacco, pipe smoking, cigars, etc.).

Screenshot 2017-12-17 13.49.03

 

Buy a sweet red pepper at the grocery store, cut out the seeds, dry them on the counter and they are ready to use.  Wear one seed on each ear at the yellow dot location 24/7.  The seed provides pressure on the acupuncture point and activates the point.  This is a more subtle way to activate the point than having an acupuncturist put a needle there, so it could take up to 6 hours before you notice an effect.  If it does not work for your body then I would suggest going to a Chinese Medicine Practitioner or Acupuncturist for more insight on your specific situation.  Every body is different and no treatment works on 100% of people, 100% of the time.  If the seed(s) are aggravating to you or you feel they produce an unwanted effect (for example nausea or dizziness) simply remove them and throw them away.  Your body should recover from having the seed on within 10 minutes.

If you are taking any prescription drugs or have any health issues talk to your doctor/healthcare provider about this idea and before trying to activate this energy point on the body.

Post any comments, questions, or results here.

Energy Medicine and Pregnancy

Yes its safe!  I have several patients in various stages of pre-pregnancy/pregnancy/post-partum and they all wish they had started Energy Medicine sooner because of how much it is helping them.  Energy techniques are gentle and non-invasive.  Besides inducing a feeling of relaxation (that lasts for days after the treatment), Energy Medicine can help resolve issues at all stages of this unique and challenging time.  Fertility problems, pregnancy back pain, fatigue, breech presentation, inducing labor, postpartum depression, lactation issues, baby jaundice, failure to thrive – no issue is too great or too small for Energy Medicine.  Screenshot 2017-10-19 12.33.30

Pregnancy is a huge time of growth for the Baby and the Mother.  There is no better time to get extra help keeping both Mother and Baby balanced and healthy.   This post is the start of a series of blog posts on Energy Medicine in Reproductive Health.  Follow this blog to be notified of new posts.

 

Namaste

My favorite translation of Namaste:

The Spirit within me honors and respects the Spirit within you –  that Spirit within you that resides in the place that is of love, of truth, of light, and of peace.  When you are in that place in you I can more readily be in that place in me.   When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me – we are one.

Love for a Friend

A friend and I were almost 5000 miles apart, one of us was on vacation.  The prose below is adapted from a text I wrote to that friend:

The friends are separated by a great distance…but really they are not separated at all…

Because they can never again be apart,

Because they have each given a space in their heart for the other to reside.

And while it appears to others to be a small space,

Upon closer inspection, it’s so large as to be incomprehensible…

It gives them all the room to be anything and everything they want to be…

As you move closer to the space to inspect it, it expands again, just like a fractal in motion…

It is, in fact, infinite.

-AMB, July 2016

The Shen 神

    In Chinese Medicine the Shen is energy located in the center of the chest. The Shen is said to be the equivalent of the Emperor or Empress and as such he/she is in charge of all the other organs in the body (which also have ‘jobs’ in the Emperor/Empress’ Court).  When the Shen is present in his/her Palace – located over the physical heart, then the Shen can be seen in a person’s eyes and in their face.  The Shen indicates the overall health of the body.  

    Through energy balancing the Shen (and the body) becomes healthy and happy and the ‘face’ a balanced person shows the world can be strikingly different than the face they had when they were ill/imbalanced.  To illustrate this concept I’ll share here an email I wrote to a friend that I was doing energy balancing with:  

Hi,

I wanted to make sure I mentioned this before we got too far away from yesterday…
But I saw what I would describe as your Shen being fully in your body yesterday – and it is so amazing.

You’ve said in the past you can’t see or feel the difference but to me it is so striking, so amazingly different. So much so I feel I have to tell you about it.

What does it look like?  I’ll try to explain…
Mostly I see it in your face.  And it is definitely like how seeing people’s Shen has been described in class.  Your skin tone has more color, more yellows and pink tone rather than blue and beige.  Your smile is much broader and wider. Which then makes a difference in your cheeks and the overall shape of your face…being rounder/softer shapes.

And your eyes are the nexus of it all.  They are so alive and full of joy.  They seem to be so many colors at once.  And actually when I see this in you and look in your eyes it’s so captivating I loose track of what I am saying; 

And the feeling you emit is open, inclusive, and warm.  Other times you lead with your boundary layer but at these times it feels like your heart and compassion are shining out from beyond your boundaries and that’s what greets people in the world.  Your boundaries are still there, but underneath.

It’s really incredible. And I’m so reminded of the line in that Chinese poem I showed you….  ‘When there is light in the Shen, there is beauty in the person’.

When I see what I feel is your Shen in you, like yesterday…..You are so beautiful.
And I mean that in the most celestial way.
It’s that Universal beauty you may have seen when you look at the night sky, far away from city lights…the beauty of thousands of stars forming the Milky Way….a beauty so great that it fills you with awe and wonder.  And you are immediately captivated and speechless.

That’s what I saw yesterday when I looked at you.

-Amy.

Qi and Vibration

In its broadest sense, qi can be thought of as the vibratory nature of reality: how at the atomic level, all of manifest existence is energy – an intelligent, luminous “emptiness” appearing as this form and then that, like waves rising from and then dissolving back into the ocean. Our perception of solidity – of forms as fixed and lasting “things” – is just that: a perception, based upon habitual ways of conceiving of ourselves and our world.

From: taoism.about.com

Global Clearings

In 2012, while at school for Chinese Medicine, I started to pick up on patterns of energy ‘clearings’ that appeared to affect many people at the same time.

How I discovered the patterns:   I would start having physical trouble – a headache or pain somewhere in my body, for instance.  So I would figure out what acupuncture points to press or flower essence to hold (this puts the energetic signature of the flower essence in your energetic space and can cause changes in you without ingesting the essence) to get rid of the pain.  I then noticed members of my family (there are 5 of us) would start to have trouble with the same acupuncture channel or have the same symptom.  And doing what helped me get rid of the problem also solved their issue(s).

A few days later I would be in school and multiple people would mention similar problems to me.  I would ask them to try what helped me and voila! they would immediately get relief from the issue as well.  This happened enough times with different acupuncture channels or Chakras that I got the idea that there was something similar affecting multiple people in a definable pattern.

So I used my own ‘ways of knowing’, as we call it in Chinese medicine, to further discern what was potentially happening.  And here is what I found out:

What the patterns were:  I discovered quite an organized system of affected energetic systems.  I created an Excel sheet to hold all the data:

Screenshot 2017-05-11 11.14.28

The chart illustrates the patterns I found.  For simplicity I have only shown the affected systems from Dec 2012 – April 2013.  I perceive that the overall patterns I was picking up on were part of clearings that began in September 2010 and ended January 15, 2014.  After January 15, 2014 a new set of clearings began but I have not taken the time to discern their patterns (for reasons given below in ‘For further study’).

The pattern details:  For the dates, these clearings followed a pattern more similar to the Mayan Calendar than our current calendar system.  So there were 5 day blocks of time that would be equivalent to a ‘week’.  There were 5 ‘weeks’ in a ‘month’.  The months are designated by the different colors in the date column.  There were 7 ‘months’ in a ‘year’ – whereupon the colored months repeated.  This whole block of clearing therefore went on for 7 ‘years’, ending January 15, 2014.  (I perceived there to be no clearings on the final ‘week’).

Two Chinese Organs (and the Shen) were affected in a repeating 13 week pattern as shown above in yellow.  The Emotions did not display a discernible repeating pattern in the time period that I observed them.  Other emotions that were cleared but not shown in the chart above were; Grief/Sadness/Depression, Despair/Optimism, Fear/Fright, Joy/Scattered, Happiness, Worry/Focus, Anger/Patience, and Love.  Clearly these ‘Emotions’ very closely follow those ascribed to Chinese medicine organs.  The Chakras were also cleared in a repeating pattern with one Chakra clearing per ‘week’.  There was a 19 week pattern that repeated. Note the ‘Special’ Chakra sub-category was whatever Chakra needed extra clearing at that time.  So ‘Special’ could stand for any Chakra 1 – 7 (Red – White).  The Body Fluid category consisted of Chinese medicine sub-categories; Blood, Jing, Meridians, Qi, and Essence.  Meridians cleared for 5 ‘weeks’, Qi cleared for 3 ‘weeks’, Essence cleared for 4 ‘weeks’, Blood cleared for 9 ‘weeks’, and Jing cleared for 5 ‘weeks’.  Then this Body Fluid category of clearings would repeat in it’s 26 ‘week’ block.  The final repeating pattern that I picked up on concerned the Chinese Phase Elements.  Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, and Wood repeated in a mixed block of 21 ‘weeks’ and then this mix would repeat.

Effects of the patterns:  From the perspective of the Earth itself being thought of as a living and breathing organism, then this Excel sheet is a log of the Earth’s cycles. I feel these patterns show what subtle energy the Earth was clearing and when.   This idea can be extended to show its impact on the human population in two ways.  1. Perhaps the Earth calls upon it’s inhabitants to help with the clearings.  So humans would feel extra stress in the energetic parts listed above.  This extra energy moving through a human’s subtle body might over stress it, causing new physical issues. Once the human cleared the issue/blockage the subtle body part would be more open and the extra energy could pass through easily and unnoticed.   2. If the Earth was clearing it’s subtle body parts listed in the chart and the energy went from the Earth’s core outward to space then those Earth energies would travel through the dirt, plants, and animals on its surface.  We, humans, would then be affected by this energy passing through us.  If we had a blockage or issue with that particular area then we would feel the pain from the extra energy trying to get through but getting restricted.  If we cleared our own blockage then we would stop feeling the pain.  If we refused to help our selves then we would continue to feel the pain or problem until the Earth clearing was over.  In either of these scenarios the result is the same – an opportunity to further clear our own subtle body parts.

Other ‘Evidence’ of patterns:  Sometime after I had established my Excel chart and began to share it with other people an instructor at my school unintentionally offered up support for my patterns. He shared with the class a website that used to monitor patterns in Chinese medicine organ systems!  The site was no longer kept up but he showed us some screen shots he had taken.  I looked up the date he showed on my chart and the organ system the website listed was one of the organs on my chart for that day!  The idea of the website was to let practitioners know which Chinese organ systems were being stressed on which days or weeks of the year.  Additionally many of our instructors would mention how they would see patterns in the type of illness that ‘walked in their door’.  That is to say, one week 5 new patients would show up – all with liver issues.  Some weeks later everyone seemed to be having small intestine issues, etc.  If you asked any aware healthcare provider if this phenomena happens to them I’m sure they would say yes.

What did I do with the information?:  Besides initially finding ways to help myself and those around me after the clearing was already underway – I started to be able to work ahead.  Once I had the chart and saw that the patterns I had predicted were happening ‘on-time’, I started to discern if there wasn’t something I could do ahead of time to prepare for the clearing.  To my relief there was.  I established and performed energy clearings ahead of time (I couldn’t work too far ahead, just a few weeks).  And then I intended for the clearings to be done on those around me as well.  If I ran into someone with the ‘issues of the week’ then I let them know about the clearing I figured out.

For further study:  Once I saw these 5 day week, 5 week month patterns that were going on for 7 years….I began to wonder about longer term patterns.  Were there 1 year patterns? 10 year patterns?  10, 000 year patterns? (we are talking about the 3.5 Billion year old Earth).  And, as you may expect, I found the answer to be yes.  So I intended clearings for all those times as well.  I won’t write all the clearings I found here but I will say, as with many other types of clearings…when I had found ‘enough’ clearings and performed the clearings ‘enough’ times…my intention of always clearing these additional patterns was solidified.  And I no longer had to clear these items daily or weekly, it was done automatically.

What is Energy Medicine?

Energy Medicine is based on the understanding that any physical, mental or behavioral problem has a counterpart in the body’s energies and can be treated at that level.

Every conceivable health problem, psychological challenge or dysfunctional habit can be improved, if not overcome, by intelligently shifting the energies in the body that are maintaining that condition.

This extends from treating cancer or multiple sclerosis to losing weight to increasing your vitality to improving your performance at something that really matters to you.

And in the process, you become more consciously, intimately and joyfully involved in the deepest workings of your physical body, a journey that extends down to your soul.

– From Donna Eden, David Feinstein, and Ben Hart.