You know, vaccinations are an interesting example, far from straight-forward, and peculiar among (western) medical therapies. Maybe evolving our immune response to epidemic disease has a broader historical purpose for human civilization. Try checking out David Clark's "Germs, Genes, and Civilization."

Yet, that really isn't the point. Something bother you about my contention that various experiential phenomena have an impact, both for better and worse, on "physical" health?

Do you know anything about this "magical nonsense," or are you just practicing your invective?

That's some serious invective you got going there. What scares you so?

Wow, so many misunderstandings! I hardly know where to start. You seem to suggest that I disparage medical professionals in some way. Quite the contrary! I have boundless respect for the HUMANITY that many medical professionals are able to maintain, even with their intensive scientific training. I'm not writing about the people who practice western medicine, but the worldview from which it arises. The power and utility of (western) scientific medicine needs no further apology for a public that is already well exposed to its strengths.

The "embodied spirit" is my translation of a classical Chinese medicine idea (精 神, jingshen), which has been largely eliminated from modern CM doctrine. I use it to make the point that individuals are more than complex biochemical machines. They have individual volition, which may be either consciously expressed or seen in somatized stress, which has certainly been shown to contribute to many diseases.

Well, we agree on one thing. Pharmaceutical companies are trying to maximize their profit. As such, they have a vested interest in maintaining the current consumption model of temporary control of "abnormal" physiological metrics. They constantly look for new substances, including many used by various herbal traditions, and they make their money by having many diseased individuals having continue their therapies indefinitely. Even when they were not originally designed for such long term application, such as many psychiatric medicines, that has become their most common application because curative therapies are too labor-intensive and expensive.

I understand that the FDA is charged with approving therapies based on their proven safety and effectiveness; I'm asking: What does it mean for a therapy to be "proven effective?" How do we measure effectiveness? Might we be missing something, such as restoring the physiological function that led to an individual's disease in the first place, rather than simply providing a temporary patch?

Can you be more specific?

I think science is a systematic investigation of nature, and how to interact with it to pursue some goal. What many of us know as "science" is just the FORM of science based on the "modern western" worldview. Both our language and 'common logic' conceptualize our world consisting of objects with fixed measurable qualities. So, the science we know is the science of that world. But, it that the only coherent way of seeing the world?

My approach to CM sees the world (and each individual) as dynamic and responsive. This world consists of directional movements, rather than "objects with fixed measurable qualities." The main focus of this worldview is to identify and differentiate stagnating influences (邪 - xie), rather than classifying the manifestation of distress expressed in various symptoms and signs.

Thanks for the question, Charles. Of course, such queeries are very challenging to respond to with any definitive answers, though I can make a few comments here. Perhaps we can talk about it more during the last day of the series, which will focus more specifically how to integrate the info we discussed in the series in clinical practice. I suspect that Tourettes syndrome is more a matter of wei qi uncontrollably floating out (with less of a ying qi component) than is typical of fullness of the yangming luo. I don't particularly see that condition as a mild form of "madness," as can be treated with the stomach luo, but more as an uncontrollable expression of wind caused by inability to contain wei qi. Yet, that expression of wind is very deeply embedded, so I'm thinking it important to evaluate this patient's extraordinary vessels that regulate the expression of yang, especially yangwei. We'll discuss that topic in a few weeks, during the last weekend of this series. There are also several channel divergences that I'd consider evaluating more carefully from that syndrome presentation, especially the third and fourth, though also possibly others.

Hi Jennifer et. al.,

I'm sorry about my delay in posting this response. I wrote a really good one, which disappeared into "cyber purgatory" when I tried to post it. I didn't have time to rewrite it until this morning, and copied it so it wouldn't be lost when I was informed that my session had expired. I've learned that the system is set up for such extensive and carefully thought out responses should be new postings (because "comment sessions" expire).

Your first question goes to the issue of how guasha works. It stimulates the patient's wei qi to:
1. raise the sha (sedimentations), which are blood/fluid stagnations that have been allowed to settle into the flesh and accumulate (in the channel divergences)
2. stimulate the breaking up of deeply habituated patterns of wei qi activation, which are stored in (and projected by) the channel distinctions onto all of an individual's experiences.
The somatic results of guasha a clearly visible in the apparent sha. The emotional/spiritual impacts are just as profound, though they are also influenced by the individual's previous process of suspending and storing unresolved emotional conflicts (IPF's). Sometimes the individual experiences no emotional impacts from guasha, because sometimes the sha had been formed by suspending external pathogenic factors, so the apparent blood stagnation has been holding EPF's rather than IPF's.

Raising sha that had contained unresolved IPF's brings them "out of the closet" into the flow of wei qi, where they are engaged by one's present flow of wei qi. Whatever stagnations they have somatized are now "charged" by the individual's current qi, yet that process cannot force the spirit to be aware. Individuals express whatever degree of resistance (generally somatized as dampness) they have toward conscious awareness of their deep emotional and/or spiritual conflicts.

People often feel irritability when there is a build up of "pressure" in their IPF's, but not sufficient conscious awareness to specifically identify them. While the process of raising sha (and the IPF's contained in them) is initiated by guasha, there is still a process to work through. In cases with a delay of more than a few hours (most often individuals are aware of irritability by the next morning), I'd look for dampness impeding that movement.

While wei qi moves/changes immediately, when we treat the channel distinctions/divergences (aka divergent channels), we are treating deeply habituated wei qi activation patterns rather than simply wei qi (as in treating the sinews). That imparts a "snow ball rolling down the hill" quality to many treatments. While many of the patients with musculo-skeletal pain that I've treated over years with these channels have gotten off the table feeling substantially better, some patients have said the effects of such treatments build over several days. One regularly says that the fourth day is the strongest.

I often tell patients that treatments stimulate their embodied spirits to move (and hopefully release blocks), rather that blocking the expression of symptoms. I encourage them to just watch what happens, and that whatever happens we can learn more about the specific nature of how their embodied spirits are struggling with life. I enlist them in helping me gather data to refine my understanding of their struggles, including asking them to observe what comes out of their bodies, as a way to supplement my efforts to learn pulse-reading. I guess I can get away with what some might consider a "non-prognosis" because of my reputation as a "bulldog" who won't let go, until I figure out a case. See you next month,

Steve

Hi Grace. No problem about not seeing the earlier posting. Email me if you\'d like to hear some more of my impressions on your pulses, or we could just wait until the end of March. I\'m glad you enjoyed the first weekend of the series. It seems from your comment that you\'ve been looking for something like the Lingshu approach to acupuncture that I\'m sharing with interested members of our profession.

You\'re welcome. I enjoyed my time at your conference, and hope to participate more with IVAS in the future. Thanks for drawing my attention that problem with the link. It should be fixed now.