The Autumn Season | Chinese Medicine
Within the cosmology of Chinese medicine, human beings are regarded as microcosms of the natural universe. We are subject to the same cycles that occur in nature. Autumn follows on the tail of the harvest, signaling that it is time to prepare for winter. The sap of trees settles into the interior, sinking down toward the roots. With fall comes a sense of gathering in, stocking up, mingled with a sense of loss as the light begins to fade and the air chills. It is a time to eliminate what is unnecessary and become aware of what is essential.
The organ system that shares the power of this season is the Lung. Corresponding to the temperament of autumn, the Lung pulls in and refines the Qi, (energy) sending it downward to nourish our roots. Ruling the skin, the outer limit of the human body, the Lung protects against external invasion and safeguards internal resources. Since autumn is a dry season, we need to protect ourselves from cold air evaporation of moisture from our skin. Moistening, softening, and nurturing foods for this time include white rice, white beans, pears, radishes, sea vegetables, potatoes, cabbage, turnips and parsnips.
The Lung is also responsible for our capacity to discern and discriminate, defining and refining our sense of what is right, morally and ethically. It is the Lung that nourishes our capacity to be analytic, critical, methodical, efficient and disciplined. Autumn reminds us that we reap what we have sown, that all of our actions have consequences. The clarity that comes with autumn enables us to distinguish between the things that contribute not only to our own well being, but also the benefit of others, reminding us that we live in an interdependent world. This capacity will serve us in this election season as we choose leaders who represent our higher aspirations for a peaceful world that equitably shares resources, and a natural environment that can sustain us all.
This article is borrowed from a blogpost by Harriet Bienfield, L.Ac., author of Between Heaven and Earth: A Guide to Chinese Medicine
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Autumn Rituals
Someone sent me a lovely article on the Autumn Ritual of Americans as well as in those cultures around the world, and I thought I would pass it along. I will soon post a Chinese medicine note about Autumn, but this gets us to think about today, the Equinox, as well as the descending of the yearly cycle:
Autumn Rituals
In almost every corner of the world, autumn is a time for harvest, reflection, and reverence for our ancestors, and many fall holidays reveal those very themes.
One of the purposes of the changes of seasons is to notice changes we might not have if everything stayed the same. Each season prompts us to reflect and go inward. It is a time to pause and review our lives. As we take the time to stop and honor the life changes we are experiences, we build a bridge between our everyday existence and the sacred.
Whether we’re aware of their deeper significance or not, even our most simple and commonplace autumn traditions, such as apple picking and dressing up for Halloween, reflect the ancient themes of harvest and ancestor worship.
In Melanesia, people make rice dollies out of the last plants of the harvest; in England, they make corn dollies. Both practices represent the belief that the spirit of the grain will stay alive, thereby ensuring another good harvest.
This year on Oct 3rd the Chinese will celebrate the Harvest Moon Festival by eating special moon cakes and catching the moon’s refection in a bowl of water. A similar holiday is observed in Vietnam-the mid-fall festival of Trung Thu-where people celebrates the beauty of the moon by eating moon cakes, lighting incenses, and making special star lanterns. And in Korea it is called Chu Suk- Korean Thanksgiving.
Fall is also a tie for honoring the connection between the living and the dead, as well as the natural order of life, death, and regeneration. It’ no accident that after the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, comes by Yom Kippur, the day of atonement and also a time when the deceased are honored, and then Sukkot, the harvest festival.
Autumn Equinox (September 22nd)
The Equinoxes are the two days out of the whole year when the northern and southern hemispheres receive the same amount of sunlight and the days and nights are the same length. It represents balance and a pause between the summer –a time of lots of activity—and winter-a time of hibernating and slowing down. From now on the days will be getting shorter and the nights longer.
This is also the time when the ancient Greeks celebrated the sacred Eleusian rites – a time when the Goddess descends into the underworld. This was the most important goddess festival in all of Europe
Celebrate the Harvest:
Get together with friends and family to create a special meal using food of the season: use corn, squash, root vegetables, and grains
Decorate your home with symbols of autumn: colored leaves, Indian corn, cranberries, apples.
Dunk for Apples
Create an altar and fill it with symbols of what you have personally harvested at this time: your new script, a miniature car or home, a picture of you in vibrant health, money. Let your children participate and acknowledge their successes even if they are small.
Give Back: Make sure to take time to make a contribution to your community for the blessings you have this Fall season. The more we give the more we receive. Give to the local food bank, volunteer you time to tutor a child, donate clothes, books or toys to your Temple, Church or local community center. It is important to appreciate what we do have and not focus on lack. Life is a precious gift and we need to value every moment.
Autumn Rituals
In almost every corner of the world, autumn is a time for harvest, reflection, and reverence for our ancestors, and many fall holidays reveal those very themes.
One of the purposes of the changes of seasons is to notice changes we might not have if everything stayed the same. Each season prompts us to reflect and go inward. It is a time to pause and review our lives. As we take the time to stop and honor the life changes we are experiences, we build a bridge between our everyday existence and the sacred.
Whether we’re aware of their deeper significance or not, even our most simple and commonplace autumn traditions, such as apple picking and dressing up for Halloween, reflect the ancient themes of harvest and ancestor worship.
In Melanesia, people make rice dollies out of the last plants of the harvest; in England, they make corn dollies. Both practices represent the belief that the spirit of the grain will stay alive, thereby ensuring another good harvest.
This year on Oct 3rd the Chinese will celebrate the Harvest Moon Festival by eating special moon cakes and catching the moon’s refection in a bowl of water. A similar holiday is observed in Vietnam-the mid-fall festival of Trung Thu-where people celebrates the beauty of the moon by eating moon cakes, lighting incenses, and making special star lanterns. And in Korea it is called Chu Suk- Korean Thanksgiving.
Fall is also a tie for honoring the connection between the living and the dead, as well as the natural order of life, death, and regeneration. It’ no accident that after the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, comes by Yom Kippur, the day of atonement and also a time when the deceased are honored, and then Sukkot, the harvest festival.
Autumn Equinox (September 22nd)
The Equinoxes are the two days out of the whole year when the northern and southern hemispheres receive the same amount of sunlight and the days and nights are the same length. It represents balance and a pause between the summer –a time of lots of activity—and winter-a time of hibernating and slowing down. From now on the days will be getting shorter and the nights longer.
This is also the time when the ancient Greeks celebrated the sacred Eleusian rites – a time when the Goddess descends into the underworld. This was the most important goddess festival in all of Europe
Celebrate the Harvest:
Get together with friends and family to create a special meal using food of the season: use corn, squash, root vegetables, and grains
Decorate your home with symbols of autumn: colored leaves, Indian corn, cranberries, apples.
Dunk for Apples
Create an altar and fill it with symbols of what you have personally harvested at this time: your new script, a miniature car or home, a picture of you in vibrant health, money. Let your children participate and acknowledge their successes even if they are small.
Give Back: Make sure to take time to make a contribution to your community for the blessings you have this Fall season. The more we give the more we receive. Give to the local food bank, volunteer you time to tutor a child, donate clothes, books or toys to your Temple, Church or local community center. It is important to appreciate what we do have and not focus on lack. Life is a precious gift and we need to value every moment.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Chinese Medicine's Approach to Cold and Flu
Chinese medicine has great advice to offer when it comes to enhancing immunity and keeping the body strong against external pathogens (including flu viruses). Because the Ancients didn't have electron microscopes to differentiate viruses and bacteria, the focus is less on the pathogen (the virus or bacteria) itself and instead considers the body's ability to protect and heal itself. The weaker person will receive the pathogen and generate "cold," while the robust person will generate "heat." (See a further explanation, below.)
Here are some ideas gleaned from the Chinese medicine tradition to consider incorporating in order to stay strong and healthy this fall and winter:
Avoid being exposed to cold temperatures and wind when possible. This includes central air conditioning and fans that may blow on you at work or in your sleep. The perspective is that a sudden and stressful change in temperature can lower our body's defenses. (Grandma was right about this one!)
Avoid wearing wet clothes. Change into dry clothing at the gym, don't go out with a wet head after a shower or after sweating, don't expose open pores (sweaty skin) to cold temperatures.
Avoid over-work and exhaustion. This one should come as no surprise. Seems every medical tradition can agree that fatigue makes you more susceptible to illness.
Decrease your dairy intake. Dairy (as well as sugar and oily foods) is thought to create a thick phlegm environment in the body, which makes fighting a cold or flu an uphill battle. If you feel you are getting sick it is a good idea to eliminate dairy altogether.
Get Acupuncture. Acupuncture can be very effective at warding off a bug if caught early (usually within the first day of onset of symptoms). The point selection will vary for different people. Acupuncture is a great to way to support your immune system before cold and flu season.
Keep certain Chinese Herbs on hand. Chinese herbs are an incredibly effective way to combat a cold or flu. It's interesting to note that different people exposed to the same pathogen may react with different symptoms based on the person's constitution and the stage of the illness. In Chinese medicine the person's symptoms are the guideposts to the way to treat. They are thought to have either a "cold" or "hot" quality and the "vehicle" of delivery is seen to be the wind:
Wind-Cold (This reaction to a pathogen is typical of a weaker immune system, often seen in middle aged or older adults, and weaker children):
Characteristics: mild fever, chills, inability to get warm, achy joints, no thirst, nasal or sinus congestion with clear mucus, runny nose with thin mucus, cough with clear mucus, stiff neck and shoulders, headache [usually back of head]).
Remedies for Wind-Cold:
Diaphoretic (sweating) therapy is often recommended for this condition, since it warms the body and pushes the pathogen out through the pores. Hot liquids and foods, including miso soup and ginger tea (using minced fresh ginger)
Wind-Heat (This reaction to a pathogen is typical of younger children, adolescents--especially males--and robust young adults):
Characteristics: the fever is worse than the chills, sweating, swollen and sore throat, headache [usually top of head], irritability, and thirst. If there is a cough, it is usually dry or nonproductive, with occasional expectoration of yellow mucus.
Remedies for Wind-Heat:
Avoid sweets and stimulants (such as caffeinated beverages). They aggravate the condition by feeding the pathogen.
Drink Chrysanthemum and/or peppermint tea (both are cooling).
In my next post, I will give you a recipe from the Chinese Kitchen school of flu and cold remedies. (I made up that name; don't go Googling it!)
Here are some ideas gleaned from the Chinese medicine tradition to consider incorporating in order to stay strong and healthy this fall and winter:
Avoid being exposed to cold temperatures and wind when possible. This includes central air conditioning and fans that may blow on you at work or in your sleep. The perspective is that a sudden and stressful change in temperature can lower our body's defenses. (Grandma was right about this one!)
Avoid wearing wet clothes. Change into dry clothing at the gym, don't go out with a wet head after a shower or after sweating, don't expose open pores (sweaty skin) to cold temperatures.
Avoid over-work and exhaustion. This one should come as no surprise. Seems every medical tradition can agree that fatigue makes you more susceptible to illness.
Decrease your dairy intake. Dairy (as well as sugar and oily foods) is thought to create a thick phlegm environment in the body, which makes fighting a cold or flu an uphill battle. If you feel you are getting sick it is a good idea to eliminate dairy altogether.
Get Acupuncture. Acupuncture can be very effective at warding off a bug if caught early (usually within the first day of onset of symptoms). The point selection will vary for different people. Acupuncture is a great to way to support your immune system before cold and flu season.
Keep certain Chinese Herbs on hand. Chinese herbs are an incredibly effective way to combat a cold or flu. It's interesting to note that different people exposed to the same pathogen may react with different symptoms based on the person's constitution and the stage of the illness. In Chinese medicine the person's symptoms are the guideposts to the way to treat. They are thought to have either a "cold" or "hot" quality and the "vehicle" of delivery is seen to be the wind:
Wind-Cold (This reaction to a pathogen is typical of a weaker immune system, often seen in middle aged or older adults, and weaker children):
Characteristics: mild fever, chills, inability to get warm, achy joints, no thirst, nasal or sinus congestion with clear mucus, runny nose with thin mucus, cough with clear mucus, stiff neck and shoulders, headache [usually back of head]).
Remedies for Wind-Cold:
Diaphoretic (sweating) therapy is often recommended for this condition, since it warms the body and pushes the pathogen out through the pores. Hot liquids and foods, including miso soup and ginger tea (using minced fresh ginger)
Wind-Heat (This reaction to a pathogen is typical of younger children, adolescents--especially males--and robust young adults):
Characteristics: the fever is worse than the chills, sweating, swollen and sore throat, headache [usually top of head], irritability, and thirst. If there is a cough, it is usually dry or nonproductive, with occasional expectoration of yellow mucus.
Remedies for Wind-Heat:
Avoid sweets and stimulants (such as caffeinated beverages). They aggravate the condition by feeding the pathogen.
Drink Chrysanthemum and/or peppermint tea (both are cooling).
In my next post, I will give you a recipe from the Chinese Kitchen school of flu and cold remedies. (I made up that name; don't go Googling it!)
CDC Advice for This Flu Season
The CDC has posted the following recommendations on their site as ways of staying healthy against the H1N1 flu virus this year:
Influenza is thought to spread mainly person-to-person through coughing or sneezing of infected people:
*Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
*Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. *Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
*Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
*Stay home if you get sick. CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
*Follow public health advice regarding school closures, avoiding crowds and other social distancing measures.
*Find healthy ways to deal with stress and anxiety.
Stay tuned for more news from my office on how to stay healthy during cold and flu season!
Influenza is thought to spread mainly person-to-person through coughing or sneezing of infected people:
*Cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze. Throw the tissue in the trash after you use it.
*Wash your hands often with soap and water, especially after you cough or sneeze. *Alcohol-based hands cleaners are also effective.
*Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs spread that way.
*Stay home if you get sick. CDC recommends that you stay home from work or school and limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
*Follow public health advice regarding school closures, avoiding crowds and other social distancing measures.
*Find healthy ways to deal with stress and anxiety.
Stay tuned for more news from my office on how to stay healthy during cold and flu season!
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Getting Rid of Yesterday: Constipation and Its Remedies
Constipation is a common complaint that I hear from clients in my office. I have learned to ask clients what they mean by constipation, because it is not always immediately obvious that we are using the same definition. Many years ago, I had quickly skimmed over asking a client about her elimination when she said that she had “regular” bowel movements. Much later, I found out that “regular,” to her, was at least once every two weeks! THAT is constipation! By not getting out the residue from yesterday, we are setting ourselves up for a toxic today. We should eliminate feces at least once per day in a well-formed, easy-to-pass bowel movement. There should be no undigested food observable in the bowl, and the shape should be a “gentle S” curve, mimicking the shape of the intestine.
In this article, I want to spend a few minutes talking about the types of constipation, and what we can do about each kind. There are 4 main kinds of constipation:
1. Not enough fluids
2. Not enough fluid absorption
3. Not enough fiber
4. Not enough motility
1. Not enough Fluids: Sometimes, we just don’t take in enough fluid to make the waste in our systems “passable” in our intestines. The symptoms of this condition are constipation (non-daily stool) and sludgy, hard, dry, tarry-consistency stool that is hard to pass, requiring strain and effort. If you think you are drinking a lot of fluid, let’s just review some basics about fluids so that you will be able to determine if what you are drinking is the right kind of fluid, and enough of it to boot:
a. List your body weight in pounds. Divide that number in half and write it down. Now add 8 for every caffeinated beverage you drink each day; add 8 for every carbonated beverage; add 8 for every alcoholic beverage you drink in a day. (Each of those kinds of fluids is DE-hydrating, so you lose fluid when you drink those, and end up with a net deficit.) The resulting number (after all those additions) is the net number of fluid ounces of fluid (water) you need to drink daily.
b. The best fluid to drink is water, but sometimes it’s hard to down that much water, especially if you are carrying excess poundage. To make it easier, you can flavor the water (with decaffeinated tea, fresh lemon or lime juice, non-sweetened flavored additives, etc.). You can also add in the soup you “drink” (brothy, not creamy).
c. This strategy should loosen up the stool considerably to help it pass easier.
d. Beware, however, that at first, you will urinate A LOT before the water stays in the intestine long enough to fully moisten the stool. The water first will be claimed by all the cells in your body to help rid the cells of toxins that have been building up through your period of dehydration. Once you get re-hydrated on a cellular level, the water will stay in the intestines and work to soften the stool. This can sometimes take a few weeks.
2. Not enough Fluid Absorption: Sometimes you drink a lot and your intestines simply don’t absorb the fluids enough to help the stool move. This is akin to watering a dried out plant, where the water is simply not being absorbed by the dirt and roots, while it drains out the bottom of the pot. Fluids will make you urinate but won’t ever loosen the stool in the intestine. If this is the case, then you might have to help yourself absorb the liquid by using products meant to keep the water in the intestine. Possible products are Mira-Lax or similar, non-flavored powders that you add to drinking water, so that water is absorbed INTO the intestine. The hitch here is that you must drink a lot of water, so that your cells are not left dehydrated when the body’s fluid goes into the intestine to moisten the stool.
3. Not enough Fiber: Most of us do not get anywhere near the 25-30 grams of fiber per day that is recommended for the adult diet. Before you assume that this is the case for you, however, take a count of how much fiber you are getting. If you are not eating enough daily fiber, seriously consider changing your diet, because in addition to not getting the requisite fiber, you are most likely not getting the vitamins and minerals that you need either. After a diet change, if you are still having constipation issues, then you might have to add a fiber supplement to your diet. Products such as Metamucil, Benefiber, Citrucel, or similar products or their store-brands might help. Some of these products create uncomfortable gas for some people, so you might want to try a couple of brands to see which is right for you. It has been the experience of my own clients that Citrucel capsules (or its store-brand equivalent) don’t have the same gas-potential that some of the other products have. The caveat to be heeded however, if you take fiber supplements, is that you MUST take them with a LOT of water. If you take a fiber supplement and do not drink enough water, then it will be like adding cement to your system—and you will create painful, hard-to-pass feces.
4. Not enough Motility: Sometimes, your intestines just don’t move. We naturally have a gentle “wave” of movement in our guts (called peristalsis) that causes food to descend and waste to pass through our intestines in a smooth, even way. For some people, this “wave” doesn’t have a lot of energy (or qi) behind it, and as a result, the stool can’t move. Often, this is where things like acupuncture, massage (including self-massage), and exercise come in. Your acupuncturist can discuss these techniques with you and show you how to employ them.
Motility of the intestine is also what gets “moved” with many laxatives. Laxative dependence can be a huge problem, however, so you might want to discuss the other, more drug-free, natural ways to “get moving” with your healthcare provider. And don't think that "herbal laxatives" are free of risk--some of the most addictive laxatives on the market are "herbal" or "natural."
If these strategies don’t describe your issue, or if applying these strategies doesn’t work, there might be something serious going on (like an obstruction or intestinal paralysis), which might warrant a visit to your gastroenterologist.
An acupuncturist can work with you to help you with determining which of these strategies (together or in combination) can help stimulate the movement potential of your intestines, and can help with a re-balancing of the fluids in your system so that all the organs are working smoothly to get you feeling better—cleaner, healthier, more robust and ready for your life.
(*Note: This article is not intended to endorse any product. The reader is responsible for applying any advice listed herein. A visit to the appropriate healthcare provider may be warranted before taking any of the advice listed here.)
In this article, I want to spend a few minutes talking about the types of constipation, and what we can do about each kind. There are 4 main kinds of constipation:
1. Not enough fluids
2. Not enough fluid absorption
3. Not enough fiber
4. Not enough motility
1. Not enough Fluids: Sometimes, we just don’t take in enough fluid to make the waste in our systems “passable” in our intestines. The symptoms of this condition are constipation (non-daily stool) and sludgy, hard, dry, tarry-consistency stool that is hard to pass, requiring strain and effort. If you think you are drinking a lot of fluid, let’s just review some basics about fluids so that you will be able to determine if what you are drinking is the right kind of fluid, and enough of it to boot:
a. List your body weight in pounds. Divide that number in half and write it down. Now add 8 for every caffeinated beverage you drink each day; add 8 for every carbonated beverage; add 8 for every alcoholic beverage you drink in a day. (Each of those kinds of fluids is DE-hydrating, so you lose fluid when you drink those, and end up with a net deficit.) The resulting number (after all those additions) is the net number of fluid ounces of fluid (water) you need to drink daily.
b. The best fluid to drink is water, but sometimes it’s hard to down that much water, especially if you are carrying excess poundage. To make it easier, you can flavor the water (with decaffeinated tea, fresh lemon or lime juice, non-sweetened flavored additives, etc.). You can also add in the soup you “drink” (brothy, not creamy).
c. This strategy should loosen up the stool considerably to help it pass easier.
d. Beware, however, that at first, you will urinate A LOT before the water stays in the intestine long enough to fully moisten the stool. The water first will be claimed by all the cells in your body to help rid the cells of toxins that have been building up through your period of dehydration. Once you get re-hydrated on a cellular level, the water will stay in the intestines and work to soften the stool. This can sometimes take a few weeks.
2. Not enough Fluid Absorption: Sometimes you drink a lot and your intestines simply don’t absorb the fluids enough to help the stool move. This is akin to watering a dried out plant, where the water is simply not being absorbed by the dirt and roots, while it drains out the bottom of the pot. Fluids will make you urinate but won’t ever loosen the stool in the intestine. If this is the case, then you might have to help yourself absorb the liquid by using products meant to keep the water in the intestine. Possible products are Mira-Lax or similar, non-flavored powders that you add to drinking water, so that water is absorbed INTO the intestine. The hitch here is that you must drink a lot of water, so that your cells are not left dehydrated when the body’s fluid goes into the intestine to moisten the stool.
3. Not enough Fiber: Most of us do not get anywhere near the 25-30 grams of fiber per day that is recommended for the adult diet. Before you assume that this is the case for you, however, take a count of how much fiber you are getting. If you are not eating enough daily fiber, seriously consider changing your diet, because in addition to not getting the requisite fiber, you are most likely not getting the vitamins and minerals that you need either. After a diet change, if you are still having constipation issues, then you might have to add a fiber supplement to your diet. Products such as Metamucil, Benefiber, Citrucel, or similar products or their store-brands might help. Some of these products create uncomfortable gas for some people, so you might want to try a couple of brands to see which is right for you. It has been the experience of my own clients that Citrucel capsules (or its store-brand equivalent) don’t have the same gas-potential that some of the other products have. The caveat to be heeded however, if you take fiber supplements, is that you MUST take them with a LOT of water. If you take a fiber supplement and do not drink enough water, then it will be like adding cement to your system—and you will create painful, hard-to-pass feces.
4. Not enough Motility: Sometimes, your intestines just don’t move. We naturally have a gentle “wave” of movement in our guts (called peristalsis) that causes food to descend and waste to pass through our intestines in a smooth, even way. For some people, this “wave” doesn’t have a lot of energy (or qi) behind it, and as a result, the stool can’t move. Often, this is where things like acupuncture, massage (including self-massage), and exercise come in. Your acupuncturist can discuss these techniques with you and show you how to employ them.
Motility of the intestine is also what gets “moved” with many laxatives. Laxative dependence can be a huge problem, however, so you might want to discuss the other, more drug-free, natural ways to “get moving” with your healthcare provider. And don't think that "herbal laxatives" are free of risk--some of the most addictive laxatives on the market are "herbal" or "natural."
If these strategies don’t describe your issue, or if applying these strategies doesn’t work, there might be something serious going on (like an obstruction or intestinal paralysis), which might warrant a visit to your gastroenterologist.
An acupuncturist can work with you to help you with determining which of these strategies (together or in combination) can help stimulate the movement potential of your intestines, and can help with a re-balancing of the fluids in your system so that all the organs are working smoothly to get you feeling better—cleaner, healthier, more robust and ready for your life.
(*Note: This article is not intended to endorse any product. The reader is responsible for applying any advice listed herein. A visit to the appropriate healthcare provider may be warranted before taking any of the advice listed here.)
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Free Class at the Acupuncture Institute in Laurel
This week, I'm posting an announcement of a free class being taught by a colleague of mine at Tai Sophia Institute. It's free; all it takes is "just showing up." To learn more about it, go to the school's website:http://www.tai.edu/IntroPrograms.aspx
You can register online at that web address.
Here's the Announcement:
Bring more wellness into your life with FREE wellness classes. Join us the week of September 14 to sample practical wellness information and wisdom from Tai Sophia’s exceptional graduate programs and Natural Care Center wellness clinic. The week of September 21, preview a selection of our popular movement, bodywork, and meditation class series.
FREE — Powerful Practices for Everyday Living
Monday, September 14, 2009
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Learn three simple practices to unleash profound change in your work, your home, and yourself. Participants in this course will gain practical tools to take effective action, let go of unnecessary suffering, find vast possibility in all situations, and create greater ease in relationships with work colleagues, friends, and family.
Join us for an evening class rooted in over 45 years of training and experience. Author, educator, and acupuncture practitioner Tom Balles teaches in all three of Tai Sophia’s master’s degree programs and has practiced acupuncture for 25 years. Co-Program Manager for Tai Sophia’s Workplace and Organizational Wellness programs, Cheryl Walker, has 20-plus years of experience as a business owner, educator, and leadership coach.
Instructor(s): Tom Balles LAc, MAc (UK), and Cheryl Walker, ML, MCC
You can register online at that web address.
Here's the Announcement:
Bring more wellness into your life with FREE wellness classes. Join us the week of September 14 to sample practical wellness information and wisdom from Tai Sophia’s exceptional graduate programs and Natural Care Center wellness clinic. The week of September 21, preview a selection of our popular movement, bodywork, and meditation class series.
FREE — Powerful Practices for Everyday Living
Monday, September 14, 2009
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Learn three simple practices to unleash profound change in your work, your home, and yourself. Participants in this course will gain practical tools to take effective action, let go of unnecessary suffering, find vast possibility in all situations, and create greater ease in relationships with work colleagues, friends, and family.
Join us for an evening class rooted in over 45 years of training and experience. Author, educator, and acupuncture practitioner Tom Balles teaches in all three of Tai Sophia’s master’s degree programs and has practiced acupuncture for 25 years. Co-Program Manager for Tai Sophia’s Workplace and Organizational Wellness programs, Cheryl Walker, has 20-plus years of experience as a business owner, educator, and leadership coach.
Instructor(s): Tom Balles LAc, MAc (UK), and Cheryl Walker, ML, MCC
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Saving the World
I'm taking a bit of a break for a week or so, and wanted to post something that someone sent me that I found to be profound. It is the Welcome address to freshman parents at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory. However, as you read, maybe you can insert your own calling to the work you do on this planet, and think of it as "world work" that brings more to the world than just your paycheck.
Saving the World
“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not
properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had
very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and
they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I
might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still
remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to
music school—she said, “You’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level,
I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music
was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to
classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its
function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a
society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the
newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in,
has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s
the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music and
how it works.
The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient
Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music
and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the
study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects,
and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible,
internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible
moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the
position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this
works.
One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet
for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi
Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across
Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.
He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper
and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a
cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet
with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941
for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is
one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.
Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps,
why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or
playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food
and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would
anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we
have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic
Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where
people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the
obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The
camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without
recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is
part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable
expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am
alive, and my life has meaning.”
On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I
reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world.
I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practically routine; I
did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the
cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands
on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought,
does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the
piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems
silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a
musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I
was completely lost.
And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of
getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in
fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano
again. And then I observed how we got through the day.
At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We
didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop,
we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity
that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People
sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people
sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I
remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center,
with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of
grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a
concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US
Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by
music in particular, that very night.
From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not
part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us
believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers
of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pastime. Music is
a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense
of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have
no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we
can’t with our minds.
Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece
Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you
may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone
movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of
music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open
like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had.
Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really
going on inside us the way a good therapist does.
I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely
no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have
been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And
something very predictable happens at weddings —people get all pent up
with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where
the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or
something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t
good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at
a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The
Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of
ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel
even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones
or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it
about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all
the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I
guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it
wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the
relationship between invisible internal objects.
I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of
my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand
concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were
important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris;
it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have
played for people I thought were important; music critics of major
newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my
entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years
ago.
I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We
began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written
during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a
young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our
audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing
them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the
concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the
program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.
Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the
front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was
clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair,
square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his
life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would
be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece,
but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went
on with the concert and finished the piece.
When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to
talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the
circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its
dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience
became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly
figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage
afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.
What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was
in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I
watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the
Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across
the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and
I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was
lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that
first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly
that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this
was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this
piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little
more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find
those feelings and those memories in me?” Remember the Greeks: music is
the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This
concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to
play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron
Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help
him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music
matters.
What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman
class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will
charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical
school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies,
you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some
night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and
you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8
PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind
that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary.
Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do
your craft.
You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell
yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician
isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an
entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue
worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a
spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who
works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if
we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and
well.
Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I
expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on
this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual
understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come
from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even
expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem
to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future
of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these
invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come
from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration
camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able
to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”
Saving the World
“One of my parents’ deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not
properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn’t be appreciated. I had
very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and
they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I
might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still
remember my mother’s remark when I announced my decision to apply to
music school—she said, “You’re WASTING your SAT scores.” On some level,
I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music
was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to
classical music all the time. They just weren’t really clear about its
function. So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a
society that puts music in the “arts and entertainment” section of the
newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in,
has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it’s
the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music and
how it works.
The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient
Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music
and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the
study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects,
and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible,
internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible
moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the
position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this
works.
One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the Quartet
for the End of Time written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.
Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi
Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across
Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.
He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper
and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a
cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet
with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941
for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is
one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.
Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps,
why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or
playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food
and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture—why would
anyone bother with music? And yet—from the camps, we have poetry, we
have music, we have visual art; it wasn’t just this one fanatic
Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where
people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the
obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The
camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without
recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is
part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable
expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, “I am
alive, and my life has meaning.”
On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan. That morning I
reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world.
I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practically routine; I
did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the
cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands
on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought,
does this even matter? Isn’t this completely irrelevant? Playing the
piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems
silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a
musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I
was completely lost.
And then I, along with the rest of New York, went through the journey of
getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in
fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano
again. And then I observed how we got through the day.
At least in my neighborhood, we didn’t shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We
didn’t play cards to pass the time, we didn’t watch TV, we didn’t shop,
we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity
that I saw in New York, that same day, was singing. People sang. People
sang around fire houses, people sang “We Shall Overcome”. Lots of people
sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I
remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center,
with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of
grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a
concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US
Military secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by
music in particular, that very night.
From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not
part of “arts and entertainment” as the newspaper section would have us
believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers
of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pastime. Music is
a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense
of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have
no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we
can’t with our minds.
Some of you may know Samuel Barber’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful piece
Adagio for Strings. If you don’t know it by that name, then some of you
may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone
movie Platoon, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of
music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open
like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn’t know you had.
Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what’s really
going on inside us the way a good therapist does.
I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely
no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have
been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And
something very predictable happens at weddings —people get all pent up
with all kinds of emotions, and then there’s some musical moment where
the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or
something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn’t
good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at
a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The
Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of
ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel
even when we can’t talk about it. Can you imagine watching Indiana Jones
or Superman or Star Wars with the dialogue but no music? What is it
about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all
the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I
guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it
wouldn’t happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the
relationship between invisible internal objects.
I’ll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of
my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand
concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were
important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris;
it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg. I have
played for people I thought were important; music critics of major
newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my
entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo, ND, about 4 years
ago.
I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We
began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland’s Sonata, which was written
during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland’s, a
young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our
audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing
them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the
concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the
program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.
Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the
front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was
clearly a soldier—even in his 70’s, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair,
square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his
life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would
be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece,
but it wasn’t the first time I’ve heard crying in a concert and we went
on with the concert and finished the piece.
When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to
talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the
circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its
dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience
became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly
figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage
afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.
What he told us was this: “During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was
in an aerial combat situation where one of my team’s planes was hit. I
watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the
Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across
the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and
I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was
lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that
first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly
that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn’t understand why this
was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this
piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little
more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find
those feelings and those memories in me?” Remember the Greeks: music is
the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This
concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to
play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron
Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help
him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music
matters.
What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year’s freshman
class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will
charge your sons and daughters with is this: “If we were a medical
school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies,
you’d take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some
night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and
you’re going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8
PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind
that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary.
Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do
your craft.
You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell
yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician
isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I’m not an
entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue
worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a
spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who
works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if
we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and
well.
Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I
expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on
this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual
understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don’t expect it will come
from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even
expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem
to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future
of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these
invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come
from the artists, because that’s what we do. As in the concentration
camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able
to help us with our internal, invisible lives.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
