It was a transformative year we’ll never forget, and the history books won’t either!  As the New Year rolls around, many of us take a moment to reflect on the passing year — and find that this past year gives us lots to reflect upon!  The pandemic, the social convulsions, the everyday changes.  We adapted; we fought the adaptations.  We surrendered; we raged.  We looked for silver linings; we got depressed.

Sounds a lot like yin and yang to this health care provider!  So let’s take a look at 2020 though the lens of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and see if we can find some useful insights.

Let’s start with yin and yang, the theoretical foundation of TCM.  Yin and yang are the endless opposites that compose the world:  light-dark, wet-dry, male-female.  The list is endless.  But let’s pick one pair that was significantly altered in 2020.  Yin is stillness.  Yang is activity.  Americans live in a very yang  (and therefore out-of-balance) culture.  Activity is hugely valued over stillness.  What did you DO today?  I didn’t get anything DONE.  Working overtime is expected in many fields of employment.  And then shutdown happened for all but “essential workers” (and we’ll get to them in a moment).  I remember a day, way back in March, when I thought, “Wow, almost everyone in the world is at home today”.  When has that happened in my lifetime?  Never.

There was a stillness.  No traffic jams.  No aircraft flying overhead.  Empty airports.  Empty streets.  Wildlife loved it.  The lagoon in Venice turned blue from the cessation of pollution.  You could see Catalina Island from L.A. and Beijing had blue skies for the first time in decades.  We missed the social gatherings, but also learned to love the spaciousness of fewer social commitments.  Our habits were broken.  Which ones do we want back?

Insight:  We need a balance of yin and yang, activity and stillness, for planetary and personal health.  Many people are looking at that fact as we move forward.  Perhaps I can work more from home?  Can I use my car less?  Maybe I don’t need to jam my social calendar in order to feel loved and important?  How can I rearrange my priorities to reflect a commitment to personal and planetary health?

“Essential Workers” became a buzz phrase in 2020 that most of us had never used before.  Suddenly we became aware of all the people we never think about who keep the wheels of our lives turning.  Power company employees.  Garbage collectors.  Postal workers.  Agricultural workers.  The beleaguered health care workers.  Grocery store clerks, caregivers of all kinds, truckers.  We can’t talk about “essential workers” without talking about entitlement — because these are the people we take for granted without thinking about them or their needs.  Except now we saw that these people still had to go to work every day, exposing themselves and their families to a dangerous virus, while the luckier among us got to stay safely at home.

Who are the essential workers of the body?  The organs.  Those hard-working citizens of your body that you almost never think about until a malfunction occurs.  We just assume they’ll do their jobs no matter what we throw at them and frankly, we often abuse them without a second thought.

Insight:  Stop taking your body for granted!  Stop acting like an entitled trust-funder and give your essential workers the gratitude and protection they deserve!  The number one personal thing each of us can do in response to the presence of Covid-19 in our world is get rid of our co-morbidities.  This is the year to improve our diet, drop the weight, commit to the exercise, the meditation.  Our essential workers will thank us by working better than ever.  They love their jobs, but they don’t love mistreatment, same as the essential workers in society.

The word “pandemic” means an epidemic that affects the whole world.  It’s useful to remember this when we think the media reports are overblown.  Take a look at Britain, at Brazil, at India, at the Los Angeles hospitals.  It’s bad alright, and we’re citizens of the world, not just our little locale.

Lesson:  In TCM, everything is connected to everything.  It is a very “pan” medicine!  Your body is a world which lives within a larger world within a larger world . . . to infinity.  What this means is that everything affects everything regardless of what your blood panel shows.  If your lungs are compromised, everything in the body is affected.  Same with heart, the kidneys, etc.  The pandemic is telling us to be a little more aware of our choices and their consequences — on our own body, on the environment, and on the welfare of others.

This is a good thing.  I can’t think of a time in my life when the longing — worldwide! — for connection with others was so strong.  The pandemic has made us long for the old venues of connection:  parties, concerts, cultural rituals, meal-sharing, sports events.  TCM says you ARE connected.  You can’t NOT be connected.  It is inherent in your being.  The problem comes when we make choices as though we were separate.  Traditional Chinese Medicine can help point to a healthy way of living the truth of our connection both within our bodies and our communities.

Happy spring everyone!  All around us, nature begins her shift to new life, new growth, an emergence from hibernation.  And we humans, an integral part of nature according to Chinese medical wisdom, are . . . in quarantine and social isolation!  Wow!  It’s a lot to wrap our heads around.  A lot of fear is roaming about.  Let’s see if we can move to the Spring place of hope and balance.  We all know about hand-washing, keeping distance, staying home if we’re feeling poorly, etc.  So, let’s focus on some of the more mental/emotional/spiritual aspects of our well-being since they’re so intimately interconnected.  The whole planet just got kicked into self-reflection, and kicked out of our daily habits!  How cool — and essential — is that?!  This is an opportunity to take stock of our lives and how they’re working (or not).

QI FOLLOWS THOUGHT:  If you’re thinking negative or fearful thoughts, your experience of life will be negative and fearful.  Take time each day to affirm the strength of your body, its infinite healing capabilities.  Affirm your ability to cope creatively with the weeks ahead with humor and inspiration.  Sing.  Pray.  Dance.  Spring is New Life; let yourself have new thoughts and habits.

LOVE YOUR LUNGS:  Covid-19 affects the lungs.  The lungs of the planet are its forests.  And the emotion associated with the Lungs in Chinese medicine is grief, taking in and letting go.  There is much grief worldwide with refugees from social upheaval, from climate disruption and environmental destruction.  What keeps you from present-time enjoyment and contribution in life?  What do you need to let into your life?  What do you need to let go of?

SUPPORT YOUR HEALTH WITH WISE LIFESTYLE CHOICES:  Your immune system is not separate from the rest of your body.  If you’re tired your immune system is tired.  If you’re overwhelmed, so is your immune system.  Eat well, but don’t overeat (it stresses the system).  Exercise but not to exhaustion.  Other stressors include lack of sleep, processed food, sugar, alcohol, little exercise and, once again, negative attitude.  This is an opportunity to shift some of those habits!

A word about DEPRIVATION:  I hear a lot of “I don’t get to . . . go to the city, take that trip, get married, have a party, go to a restaurant/bar, see a movie/sporting event.  etc.  You get the idea.  You have been given a gift of time.  Use it wisely.  What do I really want from life?  What do I have to offer?  How could I offer it?  How do I hold myself back?  Suddenly, “business as usual” and “a normal routine”  have been upended!  This is an opportunity!

BE A LITTLE OLD-FASHIONED:  Commit to finding activities for yourself and your family that don’t involve obsessive time with an electronic device.  Play board games, knit, do yoga, read aloud, indulge your artistic/musical sides, bake goodies and leave them on your neighbors’ doorsteps.  What would your grandparents have done?  Again, this is an opportunity to break habits that don’t serve you.  And don’t obsess about the news.  Check in periodically with a quality news source for updates, then get off the site.

SPEND TIME IN NATURE:  We are so blessed up here to have access to the out-of-doors.  This is safe, healthy space!  You can spend time with friends on walks and hikes, bike rides, etc.  This will help you attune with nature which is the true healer.  Any walker will tell you the mind-clearing effects of a good walk.  And deep breathe — there is a lot of qi/prana in the air!

  WE ARE ALL CONNECTED:  I can’t think of a time in my life when this has been more obvious.  The whole planet is affected.  This may be one of the most important take-aways from the whole Covid-19 scenario.  We are not alone with our fears and concerns — or the creativity and compassion of others.  Our choices affect others; we want to be mindful and caring.  Think of yourself as a pebble in a pond, sending out ripples of gratitude and caring everywhere.  Feel yourself receiving those ripples from others.

Spring is the time of growth in Chinese medicine and nature.  How do you want to grow at this point in time?  That is your personal response to Coronavirus!

Yours in health and happiness,

Lynn 3/20/2020

Well folks, I turned 65 this year.  Many of my friends have already passed this milestone, and increasingly, our conversations turn to the challenges of the aging process.  I’m reminded of the saying, “You know you’re old when you stop asking your friends how they’re doing unless you’ve got a lot of time on your hands!”

But I wanted more than humor (although I fully embrace its power in difficult circumstances!)  I wanted the Wisdom Teachings.  No matter how much we exercise or eat broccoli, or undergo plastic surgeries — our bodies age and die.  I trust that each phase of life has its particular gifts, and I wanted to find them for the last third of life.  I searched internet sites, ordered books, listened to talks, and had innumerable conversations with people who are at various points along the aging road.  I learned a lot, some of which I will share with you:

People are terrified of aging.  I’d never really thought much about this but there it was, in myself and others.  We’re afraid of debility, pain, memory loss; we’re afraid financially, we’re afraid of scary diagnoses — cancer, stroke, Alzheimer’s, etc.  Aging involves tremendous amounts of loss — of loved ones, of beauty and prowess, of social worth, of sexuality, of mental acuity.  Older people often have to leave their homes and communities; they have to adjust their lifestyle to less income and inability to care for themselves, they feel invisible and often worthless.  A woman said to me, “No one looks at me and sees the amazing life I’ve had.  They just see a little old lady”.

We live in a culture that does not value aging and endlessly brainwashes us into thinking that we must somehow continue to look young.  I got really angry about this one as I did my research.  Why are we not allowed to physically age — to have wrinkles and gray hair, to have a body that changes shape, skin that shows our years?  The cosmetic, fitness and surgical industries make billions from these attitudes and our — ultimately fruitless — efforts to obey.  We live in a culture that “values people in terms of their products, their achievements, and their ability to consume, instead of for cultivating the quality of their being” (Ram Dass).

We have a ton of denial.  I encountered ad copy like, “You’re not getting older, you’re getting better”.  Or, just the other day, a catalog proclaimed, “you’re not older, you’re bolder!”  To which my response was B#%$SH#T!  I may be getting better and bolder in some ways (I can only hope so . . . ) but I most assuredly am also getting older and so are the persons who wrote those ads!  People will “compliment” you by telling you that you don’t look your age.  Why is it not ok to look our age?  Many people arrive at retirement age without savings or IRAs, perhaps because of financial circumstances, but also because they simply were in denial about the realities of aging.

Aging is often accompanied by an increased level of physical self-absorption.  As a health provider, this one is disturbing — if understandable — to me.  Happy people don’t spend all their time thinking and talking about their ailments, aches or pains.  And yet we all have experienced the older person who simply can’t talk about anything else — their world has shrunk to the unpleasant experience of being in a body.  How do we confront the humiliations and pains of the aging body — and still maintain a vital interest in life?  How do we remain interested in others/ideas/events when our daily life revolves around medical appointments, medications, and pain management?  These are questions we must ask with great honesty if we wish to live until we die rather than dying before we’re dead.

Where to look for meaning and direction as we enter our final decades?  As a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, one of the first places I always look is to Nature.  The cycles of nature give an intuitive, innate meaning to aging.  The cycles of a human life are much longer than one planetary trip around the sun, but the metaphor holds:  autumn and winter must come with their purposes and beauty.  I strongly suggest meditation/contemplation on these cycles.  We are not meant to “forever young” physically and it’s important to make peace with this.  Life cannot exist without death and each of us is part of that relationship.

Look for elders who are living meaningful lives.  You may already have one in your life.  If you don’t, look for public figures:  Jane Goodall, Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Jimmy Carter.  These are people of advanced age who have remained involved and passionate.  Certainly there are many more in all walks of life.   Talk with them (if you know them), ask questions, listen to lectures, read their books.  These people are our guides and we can learn much from them.

Can you find a place to stand in relation to change where you are not frightened by it?  This is ultimately a spiritual question that can only have a spiritual answer that each of us must find in our own way.  There is no external security — bank accounts, family members, vitamins — that can fend off the changes of the last years of life.  To me, this is a Homework Assignment that we each must complete.  When you are at peace, you get an A.  If you’re a worrier, you’re flunking and need to keep at it.  Talk with friends, write a journal, see your spiritual advisors, get on the internet (Ted Talks!), but don’t live in fear and denial.

I’m aware that I have given more questions than answers in this article because at present that’s how I feel about the process of aging.  The following is a string of quotes from Polishing the Mirror, by Ram Dass.  He is an old and wise warrior and I found his writings on aging to be some of the best.  These are for your contemplation and discussion.

Much of the suffering of aging comes from holding onto those memories of who we used to be.

The nature of aging has to do with change.  Old age trains you for change — change in your body, change in memory, change in your relationships, change in energy, change in your family and social role — all leading to death, which is the big change of our lives.

Use the new uncertainty and negative feelings about aging as a wake-up call.  Have compassion for yourself and allow yourself to open to the changes, and all the rest will follow.

Give yourself the opportunity to grieve — for the end of dreams, the end of childhood, for all the people that go away, for all the sorrow of parting.

The only real preparation for death is the moment-to-moment process of life.

And my favorite, which I may frame and hang in my office:  Curing a disease of the body is not always an option, but healing from the soul level is always possible.

In health and happiness in all stages of life,

Lynn LLoyd, L.Ac.

From the desk of Lynn Lloyd, L.Ac:

Spring Equinox 2015 Newsletter:  Dysfunctional Eating

Recently, while researching eating disorders, I learned of a relatively new eating disorder syndrome.  Orthorexia refers to a syndrome of behavior where the person is so obsessed with eating healthfully that they become . . . unhealthy.

My heart cringed as I read of this.  Sometimes, working day in and day out with people and their food issues, it seems like our nation is one giant amalgam of dysfunctional eating patterns.  We overeat, or we deprive ourselves of food, or we eat in an obsessive way.  What is going on here?  Why are we so obsessed — with weight, with food, with our bodies?  Is anyone simply content with their appearance?  Where does this self-focused discontent come from?

We live at a time and place in food history that is unprecedented:  As middle-class Americans we have access to unlimited amounts of food of overwhelming variety literally any time and any place.  We can eat at home, in the car, on the job, at the movies, walking down the street, at sporting events, in bed, watching TV, shopping.

Abundance without discernment can be disastrous.  There is a reason why we don’t give credit cards to children.  We have been given unlimited access to food but we haven’t learned discernment.  And what many people substitute for discernment is a very fundamentalist, fear-based approach to eating and exercise:  I’ll obey a bunch of rules to govern my behavior without really asking whether they’re reasonable, working rules or not.

You’ve probably noticed that everyone seems to have a different set of rules!  I don’t eat meat, I only eat meat and vegetables, I don’t eat grains, I have to have oatmeal every morning, I don’t eat cooked food, I only eat raw food, I don’t eat fruit at the same time with vegetables, I can’t eat beans, or nightshades, or dairy, or processed dairy, or gluten, or unsoaked nuts . . .

You get the picture.  You — or someone you love — may be somewhere in that picture.

As I’ve said in other newsletters, I’m not here to tell you what to eat (although I admit to giving tons of suggestions!)  My job as a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine is to promote balance and wholeness.  One of the Chinese medicine classics, the Ling Shu, gives a definition of “spirit” that I just love:  our spirit is the part of us that seeks completion.  I don’t think any major religion in the world would argue with that definition.

I bring this up because I believe that many of these dysfunctional eating patterns point to an imbalance of spirit:  we are not allowing our spirit to seek completion.  We’re looking for love in all the wrong places — either in food or the deprivation of food, in thinness and media-driven body image.  If you are an over-eater, stop and ask yourself, “What is it that I’m really hungry for?”  Love?  Self-worth?  Appreciation?  Comfort?  Companionship?  Parental approval?  If you are a food-depriver, ask yourself, “What do I think I will receive when I am (finally) thin enough?”

When I talk with a young woman who is exercising/starving herself to obtain 6-pack abs, my heart contracts.  Women listen up:  the female body was designed by nature (a brilliant designer!) with an extra adipose layer (“adipose” is the medical term for “fat cells”).  It is what makes us soft and curvy and sexy.  It stores necessary hormones to balance our cycles.  If you starve that layer of fat off yourself, you are, by definition, unhealthy and out-of-balance with your biology.  If you think that is beautiful, you are defining beauty as “unnatural and out-of-balance”.

Who tells us we need to look like that?  No one who is interested in our health!

I believe we have to have the courage to go to the source which is FEAR.  We’re afraid of food, we’re afraid of being fat, and we’re afraid of not being loved.  That’s the biggie, right there.  Look it in the face for the monster that it is:  we have connected the right to be loved with our appearance and that is about as mistaken a concept as we’ll ever find.  I won’t be loved if I’m too fat or too old or if I have a big tush or a tummy or small breasts or a big nose.  I won’t be loved for me unless my body meets certain requirements.

This is cause for weeping, ladies and gentlemen.

On the other side of that coin, some of us substitute food for the love we crave.  It’ll never work, it never has.  If you consistently overeat, you’ve got some personal self-inquiry homework to do.  You may need assistance — from a counselor or a weight-loss support group.  You may need to journal, pray, make some life changes, do what it takes to give yourself what you really want — and deserve!  Then you can stop using food as a stand-in for your deepest desires.

Isabelle Allende wrote a beautiful book, Paula, about her daughter who died of an illness that leads to coma prior to death.  In it, she poignantly speaks of how illness stripped away all the things she thought she loved about her daughter — her beauty, her intelligence, her sense of humor, her talents.  “But I discovered that I only loved her more when all those things were gone,”  she wrote.

That’s real love folks.  That is how we should love one another and how we should love ourselves.  That is the completion that our spirit seeks.  I deserve love simply because I am.  Others deserve my love for exactly the same reason.  And now, we can sit down to eat in gratitude and fulfillment, in community and wholeness.  We are complete and we know it.

This past winter has given us a stunning example of stagnation in the weather —  that big high-pressure system that sat over us for months preventing any precipitation!  When things don’t move, whether they are fluids, emotions, toxins, or the weather — that’s stagnation in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and stagnation always causes problems!

Stagnation is a very big concept in TCM , but to understand it we need to look at its opposite which is movement.  Chinese medicine pays enormous attention to how things move both in nature and in the body (they are quite literally the same thing in TCM), and the quality and quantity of that movement.  We know that the human body was designed for movement, not only muscles and bones, but the movement of blood, interstitial fluids, food through the digestive system, the breath, nerve impulses, etc.  The list goes on and on.  Everywhere you look in the body you will find movement on multiple levels, unless of course . . . you find stagnation.

When movement is appropriate we feel good.  Food gets processed and delivered, toxins get removed, our emotions stay balanced, tissue gets nourished with blood and oxygen, our mind is open and alert.  Movement that is too fast might result in tremors, hyperactivity, lack of concentration, diarrhea, insomnia, mania.  Slow it down and we get constipation, weight gain, depression, brain fog, menstrual cramps, bloating, swelling, lethargy.  Stop it altogether and we get pain.  That pain may be physical, but it can also be emotional.  We have all known someone (perhaps our self) who hung on to feelings of grief, anger, betrayal, etc. far past the point of usefulness.  The pain can also be mental anguish or rigidity.  We all run the other way when someone begins to proselytize about their ideology.  Why?  Because their mental qi is stagnant!  TCM sees all these pains as being interconnected.

A little boy once visited the mountains with his parents.  Together they drank the delicious, clear water from a mountain stream.  The little boy was so delighted by this water that he filled his canteen to take home with him.  At home, he took just a little sip every day so it would last a long time.  Imagine his distress when, after a couple of weeks, that water became stale and stagnant.

So it is.  If we’re going to keep our streams of qi and blood fresh and delightful, we must keep them moving.  At the physical level, exercise obviously plays an important role.  The heart drives the blood and muscle contraction moves the lymph.  Eating habits contribute:  When we eat too much food it cannot be processed optimally by the digestion which results in stagnation and weight gain.  Emotionally, we must learn to “get over it”, “move on”, or “let it go”.  Notice how every one of those common colloquial statements implies movement!  Healing mental stagnation requires openness to new ideas, new input, the possibility of being mistaken or limited in our thinking.

Some stagnations are large and require medical assistance or intervention.  Injury and trauma are classic causes of stagnation (again, this can both be physical and/or emotional).  Acupuncture is famous for its ability to reduce pain, precisely because the needles move the qi.  Moving qi cannot stagnate so physical pain levels go down and the emotions feel refreshed.

You may have a habit you wish to get rid of — habits like smoking, drinking, excessive television, or negative thinking will definitely stagnate your qi, although most “good” habits will move it!  Many New Year’s Resolutions are actually a recognition that we need to move stagnant qi.

We all have at least a little stagnation lurking somewhere in our body-mind-spirit.  The red flag that gets our attention is simply discomfort in some way.  We feel sluggish, stiff in the body, stuck.  We’re aware of suffering, whether physically or emotionally.  Something isn’t moving the way it should.

What to do?  I often tell clients, “If something’s gonna change, something’s gotta change”.  What are you willing to change?  How are you going to get your qi moving?  If the answer is “nothing”, then you’re going to have to live with the discomfort of your stagnation.  But often we’re uncomfortable enough to make a change — go for that walk, wake up early enough to pack a healthy lunch, make that dreaded phone call or email, make a concerted effort to change our mental/emotional habits, register for a class, find a new job, and so on.

Back to that painful high-pressure system that sat on us for months and ruined our ski season:  Suddenly Californians couldn’t get through the day without talking about the weather.  Newspapers began running daily articles about the drought.  Every city and town held meetings to discuss water usage and conservation.  Jerry Brown declared an emergency.  All over the state, we became hyper-aware of water issues, water usage, water conservation that wasn’t happening, tragedies that will happen if we don’t change our ways and fast.  We realized how wasteful and unconscious we have been about our most precious resource and vowed to change.  Californians started conserving water.  We went to City Council meetings.  We began designing our drip systems for the yard.  We looked into low-flush toilets.  We turned off the tap when brushing our teeth.  We let the yellow mellow.  We had conversations like, “So honey, how could I use the laundry water to keep my peonies alive?”  In other words, we began taking actions which moved qi on a statewide level.

It started raining.  Now there is much on a global scale that went into that change, but it is a statement of fact in Chinese medicine that movement and change break stagnation.  It is also a statement of fact that the same laws of nature operate inside of our bodies (Body!   Mind!  Spirit!) as outside.  So I’m just sayin’.

May we all move freely, consciously and lealthfully into a beautiful wet spring!

Yours for clean, clear and moving qi,

Lynn Lloyd, L.Ac.

We are in full-blown Spring here in Siskiyou County, and for many people that means headache season.  Why?  Because our sap is rising and going to our heads!  Remember, we are a part of nature — what’s going on in nature is also going on in us!

Let’s talk about headaches a bit.  Most of us have been visited by headaches.  They come in many varieties from mild to severe, from tension headaches to agonizing migraines.  They can be one-sided, whole head, frontal, occipital, at the temples.  They can be connected to diet, weather, teeth-grinding, dehydration, tight muscles, emotional upset and more.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a headache is an expression of “qi deviation” — qi flowing where it shouldn’t, qi moving upward that should be moving downward.  When I treat headaches, the question is always, “WHY is the qi deviating?”  We can give pain-killers, analgesics for the pain, but if we are going to prevent headaches, if we are going to cure the REASON why someone is plagued with headaches, we must answer that question.

The most common reason for headaches is tension in one form or another.  For our qi to flow correctly we must be relaxed!  When we overwork, when we strain (physically, emotionally or mentally) the qi cannot flow in its proper pathways at its proper rate.  This is why relaxation techniques, meditation, yoga, gentle exercise, breathing techniques can help the simple common tension headache.

Some people experience migraine-type headaches after a period of high tension — at the completion of a big project, at the end of finals week, after the family reunion, etc.  They have been pressure cooking themselves through the event itself and now the lid is off the pot and whew, it’s a biggie.  These people need to learn to release tension as it’s happening rather than storing it all up.

Another cause of headaches is fatigue — it takes qi to move qi!  People who are deeply, chronically fatigued will often wake up with headaches.  The cure here is going to take more time — more sleep, better food, herbs and supplements to help us build back up.  Fatigue is also usually related to tension — tension tires us out, so we may need to look at larger lifestyle choices, attitudes and situations that literally tire us out.

Emotion often plays a role in headaches.  People call it “stress”, but that stress often has a charge on it.  Deep down, they’re angry, frustrated, worried, fearful.  If we don’t feel safe or capable of releasing that deep emotion, we begin to pressure cook ourselves till the steam has no choice but to blow out our heads!  People with chronic headache patterns can often point to a stressful time of their life when their headaches began.  “They started when my mother became ill.”   ” They started when I was going through a divorce.”  “They began in high school when I was experiencing abuse.”  It requires a deep personal commitment to clearing these old emotions; it may require some counseling.  But it’s well worth the effort!

Food allergies contribute to many headaches, especially the migraine variety.  If you frequently experience headaches I strongly suggest you experiment with eliminating the most common allergens from your diet:  wheat, cow’s dairy, soy, corn.  Many substitutes for these products exist so it is not as hard as you think.  I have seen many serious headaches clear up once the person identified their food sensitivity and eliminated it from their diet.  Generally their digestion also improves at the same time — less gas, less bloating, more regular bowel movements.  Food allergies are on the rise, so give this one some thought.

Chinese medicine (acupuncture and Chinese medicinals) is really marvelous with headaches, with changing those patterns of  qi movement.  Acupuncture helps to attune our bodies to the qi of the changing seasons.  The medicinals help strengthen qi and keep it moving appropriately.  We can strengthen digestion for people with food allergies.  Acupuncture helps relax the emotional body as well as the physical body.  Let me know if I can be of assistance!

Autumn 2012 Newsletter

I am friends with a woman who, years ago, practiced acupuncture for a while in Mount Shasta (she has since moved away). When I told her that I would be setting up shop in Mount Shasta she shook her head and confessed that she found it a difficult place in which to practice. “All those diets!” she groaned.

Continue reading →

Winter 2021 Newsletter        

                2020 Through the Lens of Traditional Chinese Medicine

It was a transformative year we’ll never forget, and the history books won’t either!  As the New Year rolls around, many of us take a moment to reflect on the passing year — and find that this past year gives us lots to reflect upon!  The pandemic, the social convulsions, the everyday changes.  We adapted; we fought the adaptations.  We surrendered; we raged.  We looked for silver linings; we got depressed.

Sounds a lot like yin and yang to this health care provider!  So let’s take a look at 2020 through the lens of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and see if we can find some useful insights.

Let’s start with yin and yang, the theoretical foundation of TCM.  Yin and yang are the endless opposites that compose the world:  light-dark, wet-dry, male-female.  The list is endless.  But let’s pick one pair that was significantly altered in 2020.

Yin is stillness.  Yang is activity.  Americans live in a very yang (and therefore out-of-balance) culture.  Activity is hugely valued over stillness.  What did you DO today?  I didn’t get anything DONE.  Working overtime is expected in many fields of employment.  And then shutdown happened for all but “essential workers” (and we’ll get to them in a moment).  I remember a day, way back in March, when I thought, “Wow, almost everyone in the world is at home today”.  When has that happened in my lifetime?  Never.

There was a stillness.  No traffic jams.  No aircraft flying overhead.  Empty airports.  Empty streets.  Wildlife loved it.  The lagoon in Venice turned blue from the cessation of pollution.  You could see Catalina Island from L.A. and Beijing had blue skies for the first time in decades.  We missed the social gatherings, but also learned to love the spaciousness of fewer social commitments.  Our habits were broken.  Which ones do we want back?

Insight:  We need a balance of yin and yang, activity and stillness, for planetary and personal health.  Many people are looking at that fact as we move forward.  Perhaps I can work more from home?  Can I use my car less?  Maybe I don’t need to jam my social calendar in order to feel loved and important?  How can I rearrange my priorities to reflect a commitment to personal and planetary health?

“Essential workers” became a buzz phrase in 2020 that most of us had never used before.  Suddenly we became aware of all the people we never think about who keep the wheels of our lives turning.  Power company employees.  Garbage collectors.  Postal workers.  The beleaguered health care workers.  Agricultural workers.  Grocery store clerks, caregivers of all kinds, truckers.  We can’t talk about “essential workers” without talking about entitlement — because these are the people we take for granted without thinking about them or their needs.  Except now we saw that these people still had to go to work every day, exposing themselves and their families to a dangerous virus, while the luckier among us got to stay safely at home.

Who are the essential workers of the body?  The organs.  Those hard-working citizens of your body that you almost never think about until a malfunction occurs.  We just assume they’ll do their jobs no matter what we throw at them and frankly, we often abuse them without a second thought.

Insight:  Stop taking your body for granted!  Stop acting like an entitled trust-funder and give your essential workers the gratitude and protection they deserve!  The number one thing each of us can do in response to the presence of Covid-19 in our world is get rid of our co-morbidities.  This is the year to improve our diet, drop the weight, commit to the exercise, the meditation.  Our essential workers will thank us by working better than ever.  They love their jobs, but they don’t love mistreatment, same as the essential workers in society.

The word “pandemic” means an epidemic that affects the whole world.  It’s useful to remember this when we think the media reports are overblown.  Take a look at Britain, at Brazil, at India, at the Los Angeles hospitals.  It’s bad alright, and we’re citizens of the world, not just our little locales.

Lesson:  In TCM, everything is connected to everything.  It is a very “pan” medicine!  Your body is a world which lives within a larger world within a larger world . . . to infinity.  What this means is that everything affects everything regardless of what your blood panel shows.  If your lungs are compromised, everything in the body is affected.  Same with the heart, the kidneys, etc.  The pandemic is telling us to be a little more aware of our choices and their consequences — on our own body, on the environment, and on the welfare of others.

This is a good thing.  I can’t think of a time in my life when the longing — worldwide! — for connection with others was so strong.  The pandemic has made us long for the old venues of connection:  parties, concerts, cultural rituals, meal-sharing, sports events.  TCM says you ARE connected.  You can’t NOT be connected.  It is inherent in your being.  The problem comes when we make choices as though we were separate.  Traditional Chinese Medicine can help point to a healthy way of living the truth of our connection both within our bodies and our communities.

Solstice Newsletter, June 2012

“One who contains contentment remains content.” — Lao Tzu

“When you realize that there is nothing lacking, the whole world
belongs to you.” — Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)

The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, lakes are sparkling and filled with laughing children. Joggers run past your house, chatting amiably. Trails have melted out, ready for hikers. The ice cream parlor is staffed with giggling high schoolers.

And you’re sitting on the sofa, staring into space, having a dreary conversation with your old friend: depression.

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