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The long, frustrating road to healing chronic disease
“Am I ever going to feel better?” If you’ve struggled with a long-term illness, you may have asked yourself this question. Maybe you’ve suffered with chronic pain, or a challenging digestive disorder, or a recurrent skin problem or some other ailment for so long, you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be well. To be…
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The Lung organ network & resonance with the breath of autumn
As an accompaniment to the movement studio’s focus on the breath this month, we’ll be offering articles looking at the themes surrounding the breath and the lungs through the lenses of our other practitioners, modalities and various perspectives. Enjoy! In Chinese Medicine each anatomical organ is associated with an entire energetic channel network that runs…
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Chinese medicine for ankle sprains and other exercise-induced injuries
As spring comes into full bloom with the approach of May, people are flocking outside to run, jump, play… and get injured. Such is life! So now is the perfect time to discuss the most common varieties of common exercise-induced injuries: the sprain and its sibling the strain. When you pull a muscle or roll…
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An introduction to acupuncture for acute pain
One day as a medical intern during my schooling, a faculty member came in for a treatment for acute pain. He had just rolled his ankle outward, which is the harder and more painful way, and it was swollen almost to the same size as his knee. He wanted to know if I knew how…
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Treating the common cold with Chinese herbal medicine, or on when not to reach for Yinqiao san
My Chinese herbal lineage focuses on deep understanding of the most venerated text of Chinese herbal medicine, the Shanghan za bing lun. The first, and most well known, part of this text (often referred to simply as the Shanghan lun) contains information about treating diseases that are caused by factors outside the body. In particular, the vast…
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The Effects of Compression: Binding, Chinese Medicine, and You
It’s a dilemma that trans-masculine people know all too well: the need to reduce the painful experience of dysphoria on the one hand, and concerns about longterm health on the other. At first, the decision is easy; we strap down our breast tissue somehow some way, whether with ace bangs, commercially-made binders or compression shirts.…
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How to Prepare for Top Surgery Like a Pro (with a little help from Chinese medicine)
Top surgery, like so much of trans healthcare, is a subject about which much information in desired, but little is available from trusted sources. Every surgeon has their own particular instructions on how to prepare and heal, and most of them do not have good websites. I personally don’t know how anyone transitioned before the…
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Chronic pelvic pain, East Asian medicine & the LGBTQ+ community
The lower abdomen is sometimes referred to, in kinesthetic medicines of various kinds, as “the basement of the body”. It’s where issues that we can’t deal with at the moment, whether emotional or physical, get put so that can work on them later. Hopefully. This dynamic can be illustrated in a few ways: sexual assault…
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A basic primer on the Chinese medicine view on living seasonally
From a Chinese medicine perspective, it is essential that we learn to live in harmony with the seasons. There is, of course, no monolithic “Chinese medicine perspective” but all lineages and even more modern interpretations of Chinese medicine theory discuss the health benefits of seasonal awareness. The recent movement around local and seasonal foods is…
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Trapped underwater – kidney yang deficiency, cold & chronic pain
In the last installment of this series of articles, let us to turn to the all-important kidney yang. If you’ve missed them, you may want to check out some earlier articles in this series, such as this one about terror and the Chinese medicine heart, or this one about the liver and depression. As…
