Illness and Pain - an Effective Teaching Tool

I'm not a big Luo practitioner. I do Longitudinal Luos when I find them, and they relate to the health issue a patient is concerned about. Back in school days, I found the Luos kind of overwhelming. I am embarrassed to say that I got my worst grade in my Daoist Master's area of specialty, the Luos Vessels. So when I graduated, I decided to focus on Divergent, Sinew and Eight Extra Meridians in my private practice, all of which I feel very competent to practice.

But then, for the past few weeks, I've been getting joint aches all over, which is not usual for me. When I had fibromyalgia, I had pain all over but it was in the connective tissue, not the joints. So I searched of Jeffrey Yuen class notes to try to determine what meridian system would be the best to resolve my problem. After a few hours spent reading through various class notes, I ended up doing a Longitudinal Luo tx for chronic digestive problems, beginning with ST-40, then the Yang Luo related to the signs & symptoms (for me, PC-6), finishing by harmonizing blood with SP-3, the Source point of the ST Luo's sister meridian. Sure enough, my joint aches of the past several weeks were gone within 5 minutes. Wow! This stuff truly works, even when you are just learning how to use it. It's really kind of thrilling to see something work so perfectly. It feels almost like I am seeing a miracle occur right before my very eyes. But of course, it isn't a miracle at all, it is the result of having access to a profound and effective system of medicine. With no side effects, no less!

I sometimes wonder whether those of us who have chosen healing as a profession perhaps get an illness or health issue as a way to teach us, a presentation of a challenge, a test case for us to solve. Every time I treat myself, the problem gets fixed, but even more important than that, I have opened the door to a whole new area of medical understanding. Illness forces me to go back to my notes to research what the possible treatments are (which meridian system is most suited for this particular situation?), and then I am always amazed to see the problem resolve, usually immediately.

Is this stuff the bomb or what? I can hardly believe my luck. I am so blessed to have found Chinese medicine, and Daoist medicine in particular. It is almost unbelievable at times.

"Write your life."

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you feel as upbeat as I do.  I know the world is facing enormous political problems, due to a long-standing childish denial of the realities of living on a planet that is not infinite, yet I feel excited by the new year.  I've been spending time reading notes from various courses I have taken with the Daoist master Jeffrey C. Yuen, with whom I studied in graduate school, and invariably that fills me with a sense of awe at the deep beauty that is ancient Chinese medicine.

I'm working on two books at the moment, both of them involving Daoist medicine, and despite knowing how long it may take to complete them, I am very happy about both of them.  Twenty some years ago I took a course in "Core Shamanism" with Michael Harner, Ph.D. at The Open Center in lower Manhattan.  It was an eye opening experience, and I found that I felt completely at home performing shamanic journeys.  In one journey, I asked what I should do to make money in a way that was completely in line with who I am and what I have to offer to the world, and my spiritual guide at that time picked me up like a paintbrush, and with my hair as the brush, wrote across the sky "Write your life" in paint that was all the colors of the rainbow.  Quite a psychedelic vision, but a very direct answer.

You would think that might be an easy instruction to follow.  Not so.  What could I possibly write about my life that would be at all interesting?  Yes, I've lived a rather unusual life and worked in quite a wide variety of professions, beginning at a young age.  I sat down to write the actual story of my life beginning in childhood.  There are some fascinating stories there, but I couldn't seem to find a thread on which it all would hang.  Who am I that anyone would care to read my story??

Also, writing about my actual life stories was simply not interesting to me, and I felt certain that I should enjoy the writing of my life, not just grind something out to fulfill the requirement.  And so, 20 some odd years later, I still had not written my life.  Until now.  Finally, at along last, I have begun the real story I was meant to write.  In a dream a couple of weeks ago, I finally found a form for telling my story, in a way that I would enjoy the telling.  While it will be the story of my life, of who I am and who I have been and can be, it is also a fictional story.  And in this form, it is finally a story I think others will enjoy reading.  I have never read a story anything like this one, and so I am happy to be telling a story no one has heard before.  How fun to work on it and see where it goes!

The new year looks very promising.