Why work with me?

Look around you. Do you see a thriving community of both human and non-human beings filled with vibrant health and joy? If you’re open to seeing reality as it is, then it is likely that your answer to this question is “no.” There is nothing in our current paradigm that is in balance. The earth, exhausted and exploited by wetiko disease, is burning like never before while spawning storms of record-breaking proportions as well as new diseases to put humans in check. The oligarchy of the USA has made it clear that they do not care about us, or our well-being, while they hoard the world’s resources. As Starhawk asserts, we must remake the world. We begin the hard work of remaking our world by bringing our own health into our hands and back to balance.

It is clear by now that Biomedicine is a wonderful tool for acute heroics, but not for more chronic issues or long-term health and wellness. As we join forces to remake the world, we must also remake our health systems, ensuring access to health and well being for ALL, realizing that our health is our own to be shaped and molded by our own actions. This, indeed, is our power from within our selves, our birthright. We are not victims - we have the power within ourselves to make different choices for ourselves, choices that remold and reshape our communities into the healthy and balanced visions of true communal wholeness that we all desire for ourselves and for those to come.

Is Chinese medicine magic? No, not in the common understanding of the word “magic” but the medicine works in ways that aren’t always understood through the eyes of reductionist materialism that we have been trained to view life through here in the West. Chinese medicine is a simple yet elegant, ancient science where the inner world is observed to operate like that observed in nature. The microcosm reflects the macrocosm and vice versa.

Chinese medicine is the vehicle, the tool that we can lean on to restore our inner balance and harmony within our bodies by way of Yang Sheng – “nurturing life”. Yang Sheng was featured prominently in the early Chinese medical literature, with a key focus on the idea that disease prevention is the superior form of medicine. These early Daoist documents show that living in right relationship to the cycles of nature, eating healthy and life-affirming foods, and proper body movement all go a long way to maintaining good health. If these three steps aren’t enough to maintain a healthy balance in the body, then we can turn to herbs and acupuncture. These are the steps that we will take together to restore your health and well-being. This work on the individual level is not in a vacuum from the whole; the steps we take to overcome ancestral trauma and restore our inner balance help us to heal our communities collectively.