As a student learning Chinese herbs, I was impatient. Already having been in higher education for 8 years straight, I was eager to get on with it. I didn’t understand the process, and I didn’t understand (nor respect) the ancient traditions of learning that, despite it all, still have something to teach us. I got…
In which I am reminded again that Chinese medicine theory can save my life
I’ve been reading a couple of interesting books. One, which I’ve read a couple of times before, is called The Diamond Cutter, which elaborates a Buddhist view on business and life management. I’m not done with it, yet, but it is subtly shifting my consciousness in a new direction. Actually, it is more accurate to…
Making the medicine our own
I teach about business to Chinese medicine students at NUNM. As is typical, I’m learning more from them than they likely learn from me. One of the things that continually inspires me about these students is the way they feel utterly free from the trappings and expectations of the received wisdom in the business world….
Mastery, striving for a goal, and the four S words
All my life, I have been trying to do my best at whatever I am doing. I am very interested in the way we humans learn, how we retain and recall information, and how we reach great heights in performance. In some way, that’s why Chinese Medicine Central exists. Certainly, it’s why all the posts…
Chinese medical symbolism: the organ clock
Alert : This is a reposted article from previous versions of the website. I’ve kept it up in mostly unmodified form as people have found it helpful. Newer content may be more complete, accurate, or may represent more matured theoretical and clinical understanding on my part. Proceed accordingly. Chinese language is symbolic – it uses…
The Yijing and Chinese medicine : Hexagram 11, Tai 泰
As Chinese medicine students at NUNM, we are grounded in Chinese symbolism and cosmology before anything else. Because of the research interests of one of the school’s founders, Heiner Fruehauf, we chiefly use the “organ clock” or holomap as a way to organize our thinking about these symbols. Along with the many other layers of symbolism…
Phenomenology and Classical Chinese medicine – opening doors for further exploration
Here are the last few paragraphs of my thesis in Chinese medicine for my MSOM degree at National University of Natural Medicine. As you can probably tell, I did not go as far with any of my research topics as I would have liked. I saw it mainly as a way to learn what resources…
Phenomenology and Chinese Medicine – lifeworld, holism and integrative medicine
Here is the third of four portions of my thesis, written for completion of my degree at NUNM in 2009. Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 According to Svenaeus, important information that penetrates the clinical encounter is, in a way of speaking, pre-scientific. It is prescientific insofar that is minimally…