Traditional Chinese Medicine
Returning to Source: Surrender into Certainty
Photo by Sebastian Engler on Unsplash
“Returning to the source is stillness,
which is the way of nature.
The way of nature is unchanging.
Knowing constancy is insight.”
~~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Greetings to all my precious people,
The geese are gone now. What’s left behind is quieter work, and it happens where no one can see it.
Above ground, the trees look like they’re dying. Leaves gold, then rust, then gone. But below ground, something else entirely is happening — the sap that spent all summer reaching upward toward light is pulling back down now, into the roots, into the deep dark storage the tree has been quietly maintaining the whole time it looked like it was only reaching up. Nothing about this is loss. It’s consolidation. The tree isn’t disappearing. It’s remembering where its life actually lives. continue reading
Acupuncture for Stroke Recovery: Rebuilding the Brain
When a stroke hits, life can change in an instant. One moment you’re preparing breakfast before work, and the next you’re on the kitchen floor unable to move one side of your body. The weeks that follow are then filled with hospital visits, rehabilitation appointments, and often frustration. Tasks once performed automatically like buttoning a shirt, lifting a coffee cup, or speaking clearly, become daily battles.
Months of physical therapy can then follow, but progress is often slow. Speech can remain slurred and fatigue can be relentless. Many are desperate for additional help and can look to acupuncture to help with recovery. While acupuncture is not a replacement for emergency medicine or rehabilitation therapy, growing clinical research suggests it may offer meaningful benefits for some patients recovering from stroke. continue reading
The Equinox and Liminal Spaces: Surrender to Certainty
Photo by Paul Pastourmatzis on Unsplash
“You’re afraid of surrender
because you don’t want to lose control.
But you never had control;
all you had was anxiety.”
~~ Elizabeth Gilbert
Greetings to all my precious people!!
Right now, we are standing in a doorway.
Tuesday brought us the Autumn Equinox — the exact moment day and night stood equal, the cosmos balanced for one instant on a knife’s edge before tipping toward the dark half of the year. The Celts called places like this “thin places” — shorelines, riverbanks, the hush of dusk — locations and moments where the veil between worlds goes porous. What most of us haven’t considered is that a day can be a thin place too. This one was.
But a threshold isn’t a place you stand still in. It’s a place you either walk through, or resist. continue reading
From Tension to Relief: Rethinking Headaches with Acupuncture
For some, it comes after a long day at work. The symptoms come after a day sitting behind a desk. First, the dull ache creeps up from the base of the skull, wrapping slowly around the temples like a band tightening. By the end of the day, it’s blossomed into a full headache, paired with a stiff neck that makes even turning the head painful. Over-the-counter pain relievers, stretching, ergonomic pillows are all purchased with the hope they will make a difference. Some days are better than others, but the cycle always returns. continue reading
The Harvest and The Hinge: Surrender into Certainty
“Most experiences are unsayable;
they come to fullness
in a realm that words do not inhabit.”
~~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Greetings to all my precious people,
There are some things I’ve been sitting with lately that don’t really fit into words, which is, I think, exactly what Rilke meant. But I’m going to try anyway, because it’s been coming up again and again in conversations with my patients, and I don’t want to keep it to myself.
Before you were you, there was an errant sperm and egg, colliding. And then — with no coach yelling instructions, no manual, no one standing over the process telling it what to do — that collision replicated itself, over and over, in the most intricate and masterful sequence imaginable, until nearly ten months later, an entirely unique being took form and opened its eyes. That is happening right now, in bodies all over the world, and it has been happening since the beginning of everything. We almost never talk about it. We need to talk about it more. continue reading
