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New Year’s Vision
January 9, 2012 | 
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This time – don’t make a New Year’s Resolution. Resolutions such as ‘quit smoking,’ ‘lose weight,’ or ‘take up tennis’ don’t work. You know this from a personal perspective. You’ve made them, you’ve tried and you’ve failed. Instead, construct a New Year’s Vision.
Take the next 12 months and think about all the things you’d like to achieve. What does it look like? Who is with you doing these things? What does it smell like? Perhaps it tastes like something, too. Build up the most complete image in your mind and come back to it often.
The difference between a resolution and a vision is that a resolution doesn’t have any context. It’s just a statement. A vision has feeling – true emotion behind it. In simple terms, whatever we think about we bring about. So imagine if we didn’t just think about something coming to fruition but felt from the very core of our being with images, feelings, tastes and smells present. Wouldn’t that be something?
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Protect your neck to stay healthy – A Chinese Medicine Perspective
The ancients used different language and ideas to explain what happens to us when we get sick. Looking at the elements outside, we see Wind, Damp, Dryness, Heat, Cold and Fire. Thought to invade the body, Wind, Damp, Cold and Heat can combine in any fashion to make us feel ill.
Still to this day, in western medicine, we use the word ‘cold’ to refer to symptoms that include: body aches, stuffy head and/or nose, and the inability to get warm. This is called Wind-Cold in Chinese medicine. Flu refers to sore throat, thirst and fever. This is called Wind-Heat in Chinese medicine.
The key thing to notice is that Wind is the primary factor when bringing other elements into the body. Commonly, in September, the temperature changes due to wind bringing in a new season. It was theory that Wind can enter through a specific acupuncture channel, and what was thought 3000 years ago, I can still remember my grandmother telling me not too long ago. What was once common knowledge has gone by the wayside, but it’s important to bring it back.
Protect your neck – especially the back of the neck and head, but it is good practice to wear something to protect all around it. It is also important to protect the back, especially the lower back. Lastly, stay warm in the cold wind when sweating. Open pores also can lead to Wind entering the body.
What once was folk medicine still holds true today from Chinese to western culture.
Dog Day Foods of Summer
We’ve already seen a lot of heat out on the coast and we’re bound to see some more throughout the month of August and creeping into September. One of the biggest things to keep in mind for those hot days in the car or on the beach is to stay hydrated.
Water is the fluid of choice for everyone, but not everyone likes the taste. In order to increase my own as well as my family’s intake I like to do a couple of things to ‘sweeten’ the deal. Putting in about 1/3 or less of fruit juice is an easy fix to flavour the water without having to resort to flavouring packs full of aspartame, etc. Another personal favourite is squeezing some fresh lemon juice and adding a pinch of sea salt.
In Chinese medicine, there are two great foods that you can have on hand to keep you hydrated and cool. Watermelon is not only on everyone’s grocery list in the summer, but is one of the best foods in my line of work. While most people enjoy the pink/red portion due to its sweet-tasting nature, it’s actually the white part that is the most cooling for us. Another super-summer-food is cucumber. Also very cooling in nature (revered for its ability to cool puffy eyes), it’s a great treat to take with when you’re having your fun in the sun.
Momentum
According to Newton’s words, an object will stay at rest or stay in motion unless acted on by a net external force.
Momentum is a funny thing for us human beings. As much as we like to mix it up on a day to day basis, we do enjoy our habits and patterns. For those of you who have children, you all know how hard it is to get the ball rolling on a new food in the house. But once over that speedbump, momentum picks up speed and everything is running smoothly again.
The interesting bit, for me at least, is the fact that if I miss one session at the gym I’m almost guaranteed to have a battle in my head when it comes time the following week. And because I’ve skipped a session once, it’s a heckuva lot easier to do it again. If I give in to that feeling, two becomes three and so on until I’ve missed an entire month of fun fitness and I’m looking back wondering where the time went.
There’s an upside to all of this. Momentum works both ways. Once I do even the littlest bit to get back to fun fitness, it starts to build on itself again. It builds and builds until I’m right back where I was and maybe even a little further along the path because now I know from where I came.
Go do 10 push-ups right now and see where it leads.
A Chinese Medicine approach to seasonal allergies.
Allergies in Chinese medicine are closely tied to what we practitioners call Wei Qi (pronounced ‘way chee’). Wei Qi is a theory that we have a protective energy that wards away evil influences. This can include naturalistic factors such as Wind, Cold, Heat and Damp (which may cause symptoms associated with cold and flu). This also protects us from the energies of other people (think about people who try and pull you into their mood or drama).
When the Wei Qi is weak, it allows us to become affected by these external influences and for some this occurs at different times such as allergy season. When treating allergies, it’s a two-track treatment strategy. On the one hand we have symptom relief – which needs to come first in order for the patient to resume normal life functions. On the other hand we have a long-time deficiency in the Wei Qi department that must receive treatment at the same time. As we can imagine, symptom relief doesn’t take that much time at all while jacking up the Wei Qi takes longer.
So no matter whether you are experiencing a flare-up of allergy symptoms or you want to get ahead of them before the season is upon you, Chinese medicine can help.
Chinese Medicine and Emotional Health
In this 5000 year old system, we practitioners believe that there are many causes of illness. Injury, poor dietary choices, lack of exercise and organ dysfunction can all contribute to physical problems. However, the Seven Emotions can cause a direct injury to the bodily processes. The Seven Emotions are: anger, fear, fright, grief, joy, worry and pensiveness. Let’s take a look at how these emotions interact with the energy of the body:
1. Anger moves upward. I’m sure we can all confirm this as many of us feel a rush to the head or get a headache when we are angered. Other symptoms that can occur are raised blood pressure, blurry vision, dizziness and/or even stroke.
2. Fear moves downward. We’ve seen in movies where someone gets scared and wets themselves. Fear can also affect other systems reflecting in anxiety and/or confusion.
3. Fright moves in all directions (scatters). This can be seen in depression, confusion, lack of courage and/or can lead to outbursts of anger.
4. Grief makes us weak. When we are sad, we feel weak and vulnerable. This can also cause shortness of breath, excessive crying, frequent colds and/or skin conditions.
5. Joy is not a problem per se. Excessive joy, or over-excitement/mania, surprisingly slows everything down. Symptoms include: palpitations, insomnia, unclear thinking and heart attack.
6. & 7. Worry and pensiveness tie us up in knots. Overthinking, brooding and rumination all lead to a weakening of digestive processes and what they represent. Poor digestion, prolapse of organs and poor sleep are some of the symptoms that can occur.
As we can see, Chinese Medicine closely relates emotions with health and wellbeing. When treating patients, I can’t help, by nature of the acupuncture points, but not treat a person on a physical and emotional level at the same time,
Exercise, your way.
It’s no secret that staying active and fit is all part of keeping a healthy heart. So many times, in talking with patients, they tell me how they dread the gym. Or perhaps how they don’t like going for long distance runs. And so many other times I hear how someone is getting their exercise by walking or gardening. But there has to be a happy medium and this is what I stress in all situations. Nowadays, there’s no excuse for raising your heart rate but not enjoying what you’re doing. Some patients are quite shocked when I suggest dance, kickboxing or swimming as options for leading a healthier lifestyle. There’s so much more out there than the boring ol’ gym So get out there and find a new passion – one that just happens to burn calories, too!