Acupuncture
Smart Discipline for Smart Phones
Most blessings in life bring particular challenges, often in the form of implicitly required discipline—other times in the form of added responsibility and/or reliance from others. Think fame, wealth, or parenting. Most of us are familiar with the inverse Buddhist principle, that every challenge brings particular blessings, in the form of greater wisdom or opportunity for growth. Think… parenting again? I beg your pardon for my present tunnel vision.
Smart phones, technology, and even social media, in my opinion, have been enormous blessings in many ways. We no longer need to write down geographic directions or suffer the inconvenience and frustration of getting lost on unknown roads. We no longer need to get into unnecessary arguments with loved ones over “what year that album came out,” since every such debate can be easily and definitively resolved within seconds. As for social media, I’ve personally used it to reconnect and mend old friendships, as well as to further my Chinese Medical studies in groups online.
On the other hand, most of us are familiar with the troubles caused by modern technology, whether directly or indirectly, neurologically, psychologically, and/or socially. First, from a Chinese Medical perspective, staring at a screen for the better part of everyday depletes the body’s blood and healthy body fluids. From a neurological perspective, we know that frequently checking any device is a form of constant, miniature gratification, and that our brain’s neurotransmitters do not operate as well under constant stimulation. Not to mention the potential psychological and intellectual drawbacks of viewing the world largely through this particular filter, as opposed to good old-fashioned, interactive reality.
I’ve observed my own relative addiction to social media in the past, never spending much time scrolling, growing easily bored, nevertheless checking the apps quite often through each day. On my commute, on any elevator, upon waking up, even while watching sports on TV (I mean, how sad is it that it has become normalized to multi-task technological distractions? We are truly in the future); obviously it doesn’t sit well with my goals for self-discipline.
In many cases complete abstinence is a form of non-discipline and/or an emotionally induced over-compensatory response to a pathology. Moderation is often not only more logical, but more difficult. To that end, for some time now I’ve made it a point to turn off email notifications only on weekends, which doesn’t mean I don’t check my email at all, but my brain gets spared a couple of days of unnecessary constant dings.
Second, I make it a point while watching TV in the evenings, to not keep my phone within arms’ reach, but instead on the other side of the room with the ringer turned on. My rule is not orthodox, in that I might still occasionally bring it over to read or search something, but once finished I return it to its “station,” instead of mindlessly using it as another distraction.
I almost never text while walking (down the street), which I think is as irresponsible to our own neurology as drinking and driving is to the safety of others. With obvious exceptions, I try to keep my text and email responses to three times out of each day. My opinion and observation is, if you reply to everyone/everything as it comes in you’ll slowly lose your mind.
Finally, I’ve taken to abstinence from social media on Friday through Monday every week. This ensures that I look at it less than half the days in the week, but on those days I don’t restrict myself from popping on as much as is organic (although since self-implementing this restriction I genuinely think the urge or idea to check them comes up less frequently). There have been many times in these days that I note the proverbial light go off in my mind—“time to check Facebook”—reminiscent of when I once quit smoking—and much like my once nicotine victory I simply ignore the light until it perpetually pops up less and less. My wife’s taken a different approach, by requesting her phone limit the amount of time spent on certain apps in each day. You can do this under Settings – Screen Time – App Limits. Either approach makes sense.
I think smart phones and social media are or can be very positive things, but much like automobiles and animal protein, they should be used mindfully, cautiously, with the understanding that just as in medicine, anything that has the power to help also has the power to harm.
6 Ways to Stay Mentally Strong
Just as we develop our physical muscles to gain strength and maintain our health, we also need to pay attention to strengthening our mental muscles. Learning to develop mental strength can help in many ways from overcoming challenging situations, to learning from and bouncing back from failure to viewing these challenges as opportunities for growth. Read on for six healthy habits you can develop to maintain your mental strength. continue reading
Sleep Supplements (for Temporary Use)
To non-insomniacs, insomnia is as foreign a concept as indigestion is to those of us with iron stomachs. The latter have experienced nausea maybe a few times in life, they’ve had food poisoning or diarrhea, so they know the feeling—but they have no idea what it’s like to be in a perpetual state of gastrointestinal vulnerability. To have to always be aware of what they’re eating or have a lesser capacity for the holiday indulgences that others seem to be able to “stomach” relatively easily.
Conversely, most non-insomniacs have experienced sleeplessness on at least one occasion. Having caffeine too late in the day, an exorbitant amount of life stressors on one’s mind, or just a random night of anxiety, feeling inexplicably wired in anticipation of a potentially exhausting day to come. However, they don’t know what it’s like for this to make up the majority of one’s nights, for it to become a vicious cycle of neuroses around sleep hygiene and schedule decisions, nor the cumulative effect of chronic insomnia versus a bad night here and there.
Insomnia is considered one of the most difficult pathologies to address, not just in Chinese Medicine, but in western medicine and most medical paradigms. There are many moving etiological parts, from the brain’s pineal gland and vagus nerve to adrenal hormones, parasympathetic function, and of course the “food stagnation” pattern. Anyone ever eat a huge meal late at night and sleep poorly? This might be a pile of pizza clogging up the vagus nerve’s pathway for sleep neurotransmitters to smoothly travel along.
While it is important to remain vigilant in uncovering the root cause and holistic pattern of any disease, symptom management, in my opinion, can be equally important in the interim. Diet, sleep, and exercise are a trifecta agreed upon across all medical paradigms, as the holy grail to avoiding disease, so when one is compromised it should be addressed with urgency.
If breathing exercises work for you it generally indicates a less severe root pattern, also offering an opportunity to hone your meditation skills. I recommend either the 478 Breath or this silent kundalini yoga mantra.
If yours is more of a “blood deficient yang ming” kind of insomnia (think waking in the middle of the night or early in the morning and feeling wide awake, but somehow still exhausted), breathing alone will likely not be enough. This is a difficult pattern to treat, albeit do-able, but during the trial-and-error healing process I’d recommend any of the following supplements:
DOC PARSLEY is a melatonin blend, not advisable to use long-term but according to my most respected teachers it is relatively helpful and harmless off and on for brief interims.
SHIZANDRA DREAMS combines western and eastern herbs, the former of which includes valerian root. Again, we do not believe any medications should be taken in perpetuity, but this is okay to use briefly while getting your life and/or brain back to normal operating mode.
Finally, and I have mentors who’d smack me for writing this, but SUAN ZAO REN TANG is a generic formula that has personally helped me in the past. It includes poria mushroom, licorice, chuanxiong root, anemarrhenae root, and zizyphi seed. Its imperfections lie in the fact that zizyphi seed is nourishing, hence sticky, so if the patient bears a great deal of systemic damp heat it may aggravate this. Also, anemarrhenae is very cooling, so if the patient is already cold they might become colder. Western medicine has the luxury of not having to consider such factors. “Some people experience side effects. Some don’t (shoulder shrug).”
Please consult me if you’d like to order any of these or once you begin taking them, so we can execute intelligently, in spite of the reductionist medical recommendations I’ve just shared.
The Mutual Interdependence of Yin and Yang in a Toddler
Putting our baby, Peyton, to sleep, whether for a nap or for the night, has never been easy… especially for me, who lacks my wife’s physiological advantage to match what is probably her more calming energy and cooling constitution. Thus far we suspect, for better or worse, that our daughter’s constitution is more similar to mine.
There was an entire three-month period, somewhere between her 10th and 13th months if I remember correctly, that no matter what I tried failed—she wouldn’t sleep for me—and it drove me insane with all of the typically childish new parent emotional extremes: Frustration, exhaustion, resentment, etc.
I tried bouncing her, rocking her, petting her on the upper back, petting her on the lower back, doing more of a tushy pat than a pet (supposedly the key for our babysitter), and feeding her until she finally and predictably refused the bottle completely. Almost nothing worked during this interim, until one day I came up with a different idea.
One day in mid-tantrum, instead of trying to gently calm her I decided to cradle and hold her tight on my lap, restraining her from squirming away from me while screaming and crying with that rageful fatigue seemingly unique to babies. I squeezed her close so she knew I was there, so she knew that I cared, but at the same time I wouldn’t let her go—at least not for a few minutes. I’d hum into her frontal lobe, gently kissing her forehead, to contrast my fully grown man arms locked around this poor 25-pound angel when all she wanted was off my lap. When I finally let her go she’d collapse face down on the bed next to me, and I’d return to yin. I’d lay next to her petting her back and she’d fall asleep almost instantly. It was the perfect depiction of the mutually interdependent relationship between yin and yang.
In order to enter yin, to fully relax and go to sleep, Peyton had internal yang fire that first needed to release. Maybe we didn’t get quite enough out running around on the playground, or maybe as I prefer to think, her fire was so fueled by the excitement of being with Daddy, that my task was a much taller one than the likes of the babysitter. In any case, she was dealing with a very normal amount of hyperactive central nervous activity that had to vent, and by restraining her physical movements while allowing her to vocalize frustration, she was finally able to viscerally experience the fatigue subdued beneath her heat.
As adults we are no different. If we do not nourish our body’s yang, our yin will eventually suffer, and vice versa. A lack of movement or physical exertion over time may engender an inability to calm down, which can manifest in any way from insomnia to anxiety, irritability, or systemic dryness, as our healthy metabolic fluids dry out due to systemic inflammatory heat.
Conversely, we must nourish our body’s yin in order to experience healthy yang energy long term. Yin is best represented in life’s pauses, as many yoga teachers instruct us to be mindful of the moments between breaths, the end of our exhales and beginning of inhales. Taking a pause while eating our meals, pauses in the middle of each day, periodic vacations, lunch breaks, or 15 minutes to simply lie down and close your eyes. Every form of stoppage will nourish our yin, which will then logically allow us to fully experience our healthiest yang.
After a long nap, a stoppage, Peyton’s energy levels return to infinite, and our cycle continues. I take her to the playground, chase her up and down slides, play full-contact swings, and sometimes just let her run around the periphery of the park. My own yin is as under-nourished as it’s ever been, so I must compensate in other places. Going to sleep earlier, stealing naps whenever possible, eating a bit more animal protein, and ensuring to stay hydrated, as fluids are yin. Fortunately, we’ve since passed the phase of restraint strategy while segueing into her apparently close to complete understanding of language. Now I just do the petting and patting, cuddling next to her, and whisper to her: “I promise I’ll be here when you wake up.” Lately that’s what works best. But check back with me next month. Surely, it’ll be something different.
The “Unresolved Exterior Pathogen”
I think one of my favorite concepts in Chinese Medicine is that of the “unresolved exterior pathogen.” What does it mean? When we catch a cold, whether bacterial or viral, most cases should be vented, sweated out, while we rest as much as possible and consume warm foods, such as the classic chicken soup to support our “wei qi,” or immunological cellular energy.
Obviously most modern people do not do this. We take over-the-counter cough suppressants, congestion suppressants, anti-pyretics, and every other suppressant to make us feel as comfortable as possible until the cold resolves… or at least appears to.
This is a totally understandable mistake. First of all, most people don’t know that Chinese Medicine can treat the common cold (along with nearly everything else under the sun), and even if they did herbalists and herbal medicine are not readily available to most.
From a Chinese Medical perspective when a cold is suppressed it gets pushed deeper into the body, from the “wei qi” or immunological layer, to the organs and metabolic layer. Anyone have digestive issues since having Covid-19? This is an “unresolved exterior.”
More common symptoms of unresolved pathogens include rheumatological, dermatological, or orthopedic; autoimmune joint pain being the most self-explanatory, which makes orthopedics not far behind it. Lingering “dampness,” residual plaques or mucus from an exterior pathogen go latent, and if we’re lucky enough that they don’t create the kind of molecular mimicry to over-activate our immune system they may lodge into our muscles, tendons, and ligaments. While neck and back pain during a common cold are well-known, pay more attention to such symptoms that linger in their wake. It usually indicates fluids that should have been sweated out are trapped wherever we happen to be orthopedically most vulnerable.
Thankfully, we’ve gotten to a point where few people are any longer terrified or paralyzed by Covid-19. Most of us are more or less going about our lives taking varying precautions—this doesn’t mean we cannot at the same time respect our opponent.
After I had Covid I continued to consult and get treated by mentors for at least one month after symptoms resolved, with the obvious intention of prevention and full resolution, not just from a biomedical standpoint, but from a more neurotic, perfectionist Chinese Medical assessment. I wanted to ensure that my tongue looked like my tongue again—also that we took steps to avoid any of my own constitutional proclivities from rearing their heads as a result of any unresolved inflammation.
While going through Chinese Medical school it was fascinating to think that my eczema and ski conditions that I’d had all my life may have been a result of an improperly treated cold I had as a baby. Or to view my low back or knee pain as not something relegated exclusively to the orthopedic surface and/or old athletic injuries, but connected to my systemic inflammation. I beg your pardon for my broken record tendency in refutal of one my greatest pet peeves:
“Holistic” does not mean everything alternative, “New Agey,” nor related to spa treatments, nor gentle or weaker than biomedicine. It means analyzing all symptoms and systems as interconnected and the incredibly more challenging task of treating accordingly.
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