Nothing: the best medicine

Whenever we suffer from some ailment, our first response, too often, is ‘What can I do to make this problem go away?’. Our knee-jerk reaction, at least here in 21st century America is what can I take to make this condition disappear?’ What drug, what herb, which vitamin, what pain-killer, which treatment will make me stop suffering and allow me to carry on as though nothing ever happened.

Oddly, the most effective treatment we can do is nothing. ‘Gee! That sounds easy!’ you might exclaim, though whenever I suggest it to someone coming down with something, you’d think I just asked them to drown their favorite pet.

We trust our doctors. We trust our drug manufacturers. We trust our alternative health providers and our herbalists, but what we have a hard time is trusting our bodies, which are far more intelligent and sophisticated than all of the others put together.

When I say nothing, I don’t mean ‘nothing’ as in carrying on as though… well… nothing has happened. The key element in Chinese medicine as I understand it is change. So when I say ‘nothing’ I mean think of subtraction rather than addition. It’s been my experience that we get our selves more into trouble through addition than we do through subtraction.

At least in terms of day to day illness, the symptoms let us know that our bodies are engaged in battle with one hostile invader or another that probably entered our borders as we were busily engaged in addition. But instead of helping our bodies by leaving them alone, we complicate matters by continuing to add. It would be as if our house was on fire and the fireman came to put it out, so we lit our car on fire, hoping that would help somehow. It would be much better if we stepped out of the way and let the fire fighters do what they do best.

I’m not sure exactly when I discovered my cure for the common cold, but it was quite a while ago and it works almost 100% of the time. As soon as I am aware of symptoms, you know, low energy, scratchy throat, runny nose, I take nothing. Nothing passes my lips until I’m restored which usually takes between 8 and 10 hours. Typically I wake up, feeling the cold or whatever, coming on and I commit to nothing. This is the hardest part, because you don’t want to be sick and it hurts so you try to kill the illness and comfort yourself, hoping to make the pain go away. So at this stage you have to be stubborn and let nothing pass your lips, no food, no medicine and the hardest one, no water. Nothing!

As the day wears on, though, it gets easier. Then about 3 in the afternoon, you feel a sensation as though something is lifting off of your shoulders. You feel lighter and really start feeling better. This can also be a difficult time because the better you feel, the more you feel like working at addition again. If you do that too soon then you can easily slip back into feeling bad. Better to play it safe and waiting until the following morning is probably best before eating or drinking again at which point you should feel quite normal again and can resume your addition though with some moderation. You may have a few lingering symptoms – for me it’s usually a touch of laryngitis – but they are usually negligible and short lived.

By actively allowing nothing to enter, we are allowing our body to fix the problem and it’s really pretty amazing what a good job our bodies do.

New beginnings – 2013

 

In about 45 days, it will be time to plant in the ground, peas for sure. However, two years ago I planted all my hardy veges when I planted the peas. Risky? I suppose in some small way, but everything I planted came up that year and it wasn’t a particularly mild spring.

I like to take over one of my raised beds (4′ x 10′) and use it as a tightly packed seed  bed, then when plants are strong enough I transplant this stock to wherever there is room in the garden. This method works anytime of the growing season and keeps new crops coming way into the late fall and provides quick, if not comparable, restoration when calamity strikes. In many ways gardening is a numbers game and backups are most welcome.

Even sooner than that I will be planting indoors. One of these days, there will be a greenhouse of sorts, but indoors is fine for now.

After recently coming out of our January deep freeze the temps rose into the 50′s F. followed by rain. When I woke up this morning my garden was back – a welcome sight. The Einkorn wheat crop is wintering over fine and is four times the area of last year’s planting. I suppose being able to see the garden again is why I’ve begun counting days. Also I love February because the light really starts making a comeback and with the light comes the urge to plant.

Speaking of planting, seedlings and nurseries, my son and his wife have also been hard at work and before I can even get my peas in the ground I will be a grandfather to identical twin girls. Boy is that bringing back a lot of memories! I can’t wait to meet them.

Balance and Food

 

The one thing missing in the conversation about food is dynamic balance. We understand nutrition and we understand all kinds of contradictory scientific information about food and of course we have our appetites which are constantly getting us into trouble because the food industry preys on all our weaknesses about food. We understand diets and dieting, but we’re left feeling pretty confused about which way to turn, so we try this and that for a while but in the end seem to fall prey to food industry manipulation.

The above chart gives us something else to consider that I touched on in an earlier post. It is the use of our intuition to help us understand balance and make choices that create harmony. As that post stated, this is something we already engage in on a daily basis. For instance, when we’re freezing, our intuition guides us to balance that condition by seeking heat. When we’re hungary we seek food. When we’re tired we seek sleep and so on.

Applying this dynamic to food is tricky because the kind of food our food industry provides us with clouds our judgement and we get stuck in extreme cycles.

For instance, the next time you are at the drive through at McDonald’s, I challenge you to get through the next several hours having eaten only a burger or two or three and a good portion of very salty fries.

Maybe I’m wrong, but my guess is that you will be strongly attracted to the other end of their menu. Give it an hour and you’ll begin to imagine a nice tall Coke with lots of ice and one of their deadly desserts. Don’t give in so soon, though, stretch it out to get the full effect of the craving. Once you succumb to that craving, chances are in several hours you will be back to the burgers and fries.

The food industry wins big, because eating this way is easy and the temptations are quite powerful. It’s quick, relatively cheap, it’s fun because of the strong flavors and sensations and particularly because of the pleasure that comes with balancing extremes. When you are very cold, there is nothing as pleasurable as a warm fire. Try drinking five large Cokes in a row. It’s almost impossible to do because it becomes increasingly extreme. Drink one Coke, however and follow it up with a burger or salty fries and you actually might manage the five cokes as long as each one was balanced by its opposite.

To better understand the diagram above first pour a little salt in your hand and then pop it in your mouth. Hold it there and consider the sensation. To me it has a sharp contracting  sensation. Now do the same with some sugar after first rinsing your mouth with water. To me the feeling is expansive. The stuff we put in our mouths each has its own nature and effect on us.

I remember having a severe toothache after eating something very sweet while nursing a bad tooth. To stop the pain I swished my mouth with warm salted water and the pain subsided almost instantly. So we’re not just talking about each food having it’s own unique taste. The food effects us in other ways as well. The sugar inflamed the nerve, like gasoline on a fire and the salt put that fire out. Expansion/contraction.

It’s this understanding of the dynamic balancing of food that we are missing. With it, we can make informed choices and break deadly cycles such as those designed by the fast food industry and help us find a more harmonious, beneficial and satisfying way to eat. It’s simple, very practical, and available to anyone and everyone. It requires about the same skill sets as having the sense to find warmth when we are cold.

The above chart demonstrates in a very general way some of the dynamic balancing of food. Once understood, it serves as a really useful map of the food terrain, allowing us to maneuver with flexibility through life. The point is not to live in safe harbor, but rather how to get back to safe harbor when we find ourselves running into trouble.

Study the chart. It’s not complicated. But use your own experience of food to see if the chart makes sense instinctively. If it does, then you have a map that could prove to be quite helpful.

 

 

 

 

 

Addendum: A vision for health care

To set the record straight, I am not suggesting that everyone should stop seeing doctors. If a tree fell and crushed my leg, I would probably welcome the skill, knowledge and technology available to get me back on my good foot at least.

What I envision instead is a multi-tiered system for health management, the foundation of which would be health (not disease) education focusing on diet, exercise, and for lack of a better word, mind, encompassing all kinds of esoterica including, spiritual practices, meditation, and the list goes on. Most of these things can be practiced by anyone with little harm done and for free. Given my own experiences and those of many friends, I believe a majority of the population would lead full, productive lives without ever having to visit a doctor.

The next tier would be in the form of what we call today alternative health therapies such as herbology, acupuncture, massage and again the list goes on. Such therapies require skills and knowledge beyond that of the average person but are focused on aiding the body’s innate healing capabilities rather than waging a war on disease.

The third tier would focus on technology and the surgeons knife as a means of repairing broken bodies through catastrophic events. You never know when that meteor might come crashing through the roof.

The fourth tier would use the same tools as the third, but this time directed at illness. However, this is where the water starts to get murky and also why the stages are so important. The emphasis on this level should be last resort. “We’ve tried everything, but the problem continues to get worse.” or “The problem is so acute, something has to be done immediately.”

The last tier would be the administration of drugs. Again this would fall into the last resort category. The reason I put this category last is that drugs, while accomplishing a specific mechanical task within the body also interfere with the body’s innate systems for self recovery. You might be killing the disease but you may be destroying the body’s natural defenses at the same time. Side effects are known risks listed with every medication.

My guess is that the first tier would solve most of our problems (perhaps as much as 50% as an intuitive guess), the second tier less so and the third fourth and fifth tiers would address the smallest percentage of our health care needs.

Funny, or actually, not so funny that our current health care system flips the above on its head. There are many reasons for this, money, being chief among them. But that is all coming to a head, because as amazing as science, technology and industry are when combined into the current health care system, it is failing us because we can’t afford it. It is a very expensive way to approach health issues.

Because money seems to be the driving force, I have little hope that my proposed health care system will be adopted soon, but the good news is, we are all pretty much free to make choices. We can choose to move our bodies, we are free to chant and meditate and sing and dance, we can grow at least some of our own food and make careful choices about the rest and as we begin to do these things, we are then free to make drugs and medications especially, and the surgeons knife, last resort options.

One political change, that could help flip the current system, is single payer health care for all, because the role money plays in health care would change dramatically. There would be incentive at least to adopt adopt tier one of my plan. Worth considering.

 

Balance and intuition

Human beings as a species have done quite well for themselves – tens of thousands of years old and still kickin’! Yet, it’s only been for the past 200 years or so that science, as we know it, has been at the root of our health care system. We were already on the way to overpopulation well before the objectivity of science came along, so we must have been doing something right, all those years before science.

One explanation is the miracle of the human body, itself. It not only does wondrous things, but it is constantly fixing itself when it breaks down or gets broken. Everything about the way we are put together is dedicated to self preservation.

Secondly, our minds are capable of sensing how to resolve problems, even though we might not consciously understand the reasons behind our actions. It is a process known as intuition and we often use it long before our minds are capable of reasoning out why. After the fact, we can sometimes figure out why our actions produced great results. However, why and how, though interesting and valuable for future reference are less important than getting good results.

One key factor that guides our intuition is our innate awareness of balance. Our perception of the world around us is informed by complimentary opposites such as up/down, cold /hot, happy/sad, life/death and on and on.

For the past week here in New England we’ve had extremely cold temperatures along with significant wind, such that, without shelter, clothing or heat we would most likely not have survived the week. It doesn’t take a masters degree to seek a heat source when the temperature drops low enough. We sense the imbalance and our intuition guides us to a solution to the problem. Before science, before thermometers or books, that’s how we solved our problems.

The attraction between complementary opposites is not a theory, it’s quite real and can even determine whether we live or die. Whenever there is a problem, we try to resolve it by making choices. Sensing which choice will solve the problem and restore harmony requires using our intuition which is driven by our sense of balance.

When we’re freezing, the choice is pretty obvious, however there are problems and imbalances in which the solution is not so clear. We need to change something in order to restore harmony. Informed by our sense of balance our intuition guides us towards a solution.

Science seeks to objectify knowledge and establish certainty. In terms of illness we want to know exactly what the problem is and attack the problem with a surgeons knife or with chemicals. Before science, the focus was less on the disease and more on restoring health, on supporting and strengthening our bodies through the healing process.

I stopped seeing doctors when I was in my 20s and now I am in my 60s and along the way raised a big family using an approach to health focused more on intuition and balance and less on science. I’ve remained in touch with many others who have followed the same approach with similar outcomes. Having lived it and knowing others who have lived it as well, I want to try to share some of what I learned along the way.

In the posts that follow, I’m going to show some simple remedies that served us well over the years to complement the body’s natural healing process and try to demonstrate how these were used to help restore balance.

Walking the human…

Hi. My name is Lilly. In the photo, I’m the one with the cute smile.

My older sister, who is now walking that great dog trail in the sky, played an important role in helping Jim, our pet human, recover from a serious case of arthritis. I wasn’t there then, but I understand he was barely able to make it up the steps leading to our house and feared he would end up in a wheel chair.

This was my older sister, Geisha.

He reversed this debilitating condition, by first engaging in full body yard work from early spring through the summer and into the fall. Then, a few years later, Gish (shortened from Geisha) arrived on the scene and immediately began taking Jim on regular walks three times a day, totaling 2-3 hours, and getting him out into the fresh air and using that body of his, he had neglected for so long. Too much computing and commuting while pursuing the elusive dollar.

Then I came along when I was just a puppy and worked closely with my older sister to learn how to properly care for this human who had lost his way. Once Gish moved on then it was all on my shoulders, but she had done such a good job that Jim was really pretty cooperative and easy to care for. Now Chester has just arrived on the scene to lighten my load and together we keep Jim moving.

This is my younger brother Chester.

Humans are amazing creatures, but sometimes they get so wound up in their heads, they forget they are animals, and that they have bodies that work much better when they are active and not abused or neglected.

We often walked Jim up Mt. Sugarloaf in South Deerfield, here in Western Massachusetts and we ran into quite a few other humans who were walking the mountain daily and some several times a day, following their doctor’s orders and they were doing it without a dog to guide them. You could see how much good it was doing them as well.

However we need the walks as much as Jim does, so I guess if you are going to have a human to care for, extensive walking does everyone a lot of good. Humans are so much easier to be around when they are well exercised.

Well, gotta run! It’s time to take Jim on his final walk for the night. We never miss a day, rain, snow, hot or cold or even VERY COLD, like tonight with temps hovering around 0 degrees F and with lots of wind. It takes a while to bundle him up, but he’s always eager to get going and that makes our job much easier. Humans! Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.

The garden that’s still giving…

… and it’s far more than I deserve. I’m not beating myself up, but the fact is my weekdays are devoted to my business and my weekends are focused on the continuing renovations to the house we moved into a year ago June. So the garden has been sorely neglected, squeezing in a planting here, a weeding there in between other more pressing matters. I do see the day coming, however when I may be able to start turning that around.

But here it is December 17 and though for New England it’s been a pretty mild winter so far, we have been getting some pretty cold nights lately along with heavy frosts. Part of the garden is buried in leaves and part is exposed. In the exposed areas the ground is frozen, but only down to about two inches. I broke through that layer to retrieve a few radishes that continued to develop after I had given up on them and unearthed some potatoes in an area I hadn’t gotten to earlier in the fall.

The part of the garden I had mulched included my carrot beds and under those leaves the ground is still soft. And that is where my biggest score of the season resides. I started harvesting these in October and now it’s mid-December and I’ve hardly made a dent in the supply. Each week I dig up enough to get us through the following week and that’s turned out to be about a shovel full, because within that small area, I’ve been pulling up the fattest, healthiest looking carrots I’ve ever grown. I’ve never been able to grow a carrot before and I’m astonished.

On the recommendations of a close friend, I prepared the bed then made small impressions with my finger about four inches apart in every direction, then dropped one or two seeds into each impression and covered it over. About mid-July I weeded the two beds each about 4′ x 6′ and transplanted duplicates into any areas that didn’t take, so in both beds the seedlings were pretty evenly distributed.

Planting this way encourages a canopy cover as the leaves develop, that holds in moisture, without mulching and discourages weeds. By late August and September, this little carrot forrest was well established. Though tempted, I resisted pulling any up, maybe more out of fear that they weren’t going to develop, as had been my experience in the past and then in about mid-October, I felt around in there and couldn’t believe my fingers as I Pulled out a carrot over two inches in diameter at the top with a well developed, tapered body. I was so excited I did a carrot dance right there in the garden and I don’t even want to guess what that looked liked.

Growing carrots might seem like an unremarkable thing, but it has been my most satisfying and practical accomplishment this summer, particularly because it is making a real contribution to our food supply and during a season we don’t associate with gardens. I have lots of these little cabbages as well that are dense and really delicious. I can’t believe I’m still harvesting from this little garden. What a joy. By the way the large carrot in the photo is 2″ in diameter at the top and 7.5″ long not including the tap root. Ah…I don’t deserve this. Thank you garden!

The mini-rice harvest is in!

    Well, here it is, my long awaited rice crop. Not bad considering I started with only a single stalk for seed. I will actually count the new stalks, but I’m sure it’s well over one- hundred. Not a bad return on my investment. This is now curing, hanging from the rafters in my garage. When it is dried, I will thresh it and save the seeds for planting next spring in a much larger paddy. Here are some shots taken a few days before the harvest and some taken on harvest day, September 09, 2012.

         

The mini-wheat harvest is in, dried and ready to plant!

About a month ago, I harvested the mini wheat crop and hung it up to dry from the rafters of my garage. This is Einkorn wheat, one of the oldest varieties dating back thousands of years. On September 4, I took it down and trimmed the heads off of all the stalks after grading it for seed quality (size, disease-free, etc.). I’ll use the best seed for planting next year’s crop,  hopefully in a week or two. Here’s a close-up…

We’ve got Rice!

Last week I noticed a change in my rice plants. The leaves were veering off to the side instead of the usual upward trajectory. On closer inspection I noticed that the stalk they were veering off from had terminated abruptly and a little pricker-like finger was emerging from the center of that stalk. Was this the first appearance of the rice head?

Well the answer was yes, because yesterday when I checked out the paddy, that little finger had turned into a stalk with a tightly clustered array of young grains.

Here’s a closer look.

When you do this for the first time, it seems a near impossibility, so this is big milestone. I now know it’s there. The rest will be fun… watching it mature and seeing what kind of yield I’ll be getting.

What a strange world. Instead of a one way ticket to Viet Nam in the 60s, I instead changed to a grain-based diet that has served me well. Now I am growing rice in my back yard. Today I got a haircut at a salon. Instead of the usual staff members, the owner was the only one minding the store. After a while I discovered that he was from Viet Nam. He must have been a boy back in the 60′s. We didn’t discuss when he arrived in the states, but we had a wonderful conversation about growing and harvesting rice, something he remembers from his early years with his grandfather. We spoke as though the war had never happened.