The Journey to Well-being is paved with good intentions

Perhaps if I make fewer good intentions, and just go with the Tao (that is, not become attached to the result), I won't have to deal with fallout :)

Since writing the last post, I went to an herbal consultation at the school. I was given two types of treatment, and provided with some instructions:

1. The following point prescription was used:

• HT8 on the left, and HT7 on the right hand were chosen, based on palpation of which was most tender between HT8, HT7, and HT4
• CV17 was chosen between KD25 and CV17 based on palpation
• KD7 was added to due to KD Yang xu, and cold extremity symptoms
  

1. Moxa Box was applied around umbilicus area to heat the Middle Jiao and Lower Jiao
2. Bag of nutritive herbs was given to make into stew, and a book on Jook/Congree was lent from the library

The instructions were to make a rice porridge with very mild and tonifying medicinal herbs - goji berries, longan fruit, lotus seed, black dates, red dates, astragalus, job's tears, honey fried licorice, and cinnamon. I did not have the right kind of rice to make the porridge, plus the porridge has to be cooked overnight so as to imbue it with the most tonifying Qi. People who have Qi and blood deficiency and who cannot digest herbs, normally have to first tonify the Spleen and Stomach very gently.

Following the treatment, I went home for a few hours, and then left to go to Kona. I needed to get out of the cold clammy weather, buy a few other tonifying ingredients for the Jook (porridge), and to buy a space heater for my room. Generally the instructions were to eat only very easy to digest foods, and to avoid all cold foods for a while, so I decided I needed to go to Kona for one other reason - Pho. It was yummy and I felt great for the rest of the evening even though my heart was still giving me some issues. Upon returning home, I put the ingredients in the crock pot and went to bed.

Evaluation of the Treatment:

Only five needles were used in my treatment given how low my Qi was and general state of my Spleen. The needles created a very interesting sensation of the heart pain and tightness moving out of my chest and heart area into my posterior axillary region around the area of SP9/SP10, and moving down and against the normal flow of the small intestine meridian.

Its interesting to note that my recent weeks of stress led to constrained emotions which the heart was no longer able to spill out into other organs. My body was spilling this into the small intestine channel over the past two weeks as a way of expunging the heat built up from emotional constraint. This pain was most acute in the week prior to the two days of angina-like pain. Apparently the small intestine was no longer able to handle the constraint the heart was attempting to shed. This led to the posterior axillary pain stopping and being replaced with the angina pain in the hours directly preceding the onset of the heart pain.

It is was strange to notice the change in pain during the treatment as the prior two day's worth of heart constraint were driven out of the heart back out through the small intestine channel under my armpits. While the treatment was effective in changing the nature of the pain away from the heart and back into the small intestine channel, it did little in the way of clearing the heat and constraint out of the system. At that juncture I assume that the highest priority was to protect the heart - and in that, it was mildly effective as the heart pain remained with me in a greatly decreased capacity for a day after the treatment.

Saturday:

After eating my nasty-tasting porridge in the morning and doing some half-hearted attempts at studying, I decided I needed to go to the beach and to take a book along with me. I took the Zen of Oz, a great little book which actually helped me realize that I had let myself loose the spark in my life, and as a result I've been shifting the blame and frustration outside of me at the people I am surrounded by on a day to day basis, and the circumstances around me. That realization alone was enough to lift a bit of the burden I was feeling and the deadness resulting from the lack of decisiveness and frustration over my situation. After leaving the beach I went to the Queen's shops to eat fresh hot ramen soup. There was a Mardi Gras celebration taking place, and a 7-member group of old-timers were playing New Orleans Hot Jazz. It was so great to hear - it was exactly what I needed - some great music to feed my soul an nourish with music what hasn't been nourished for so long.

I've not been looking after myself and complaining a lot about what I don't have here, what's missing, and what I don't think I will be able to get. That complaining and frustration, grief, and worry over the future created all of these constrained emotions to build up and cause my health problems. I've known this, but up until Saturday I was not seeing the whole pattern and its interrelationships. The realization has not released me from the realities of my circumstances, but it did allow me to become present to how I am at choice with how I react to my circumstances. My emotional situation is still tenuous, but I'm not going to let it deteriorate further.

Sunday:

I cooked borsch and medicinal chicken soup during most of the day. The borsch is light, and full of favor, and the chicken soup is thick and nourishing. I'm continuing on my Spleen regimen, and both Sunday and Monday have seen marked improvement in my energy. I first decocted herbs in cheese cloth - codonopsis, atractylodes, poria cocos, dioscoria, jujube dates. To the broth I added goji berries, then my vegetables, browned chicken, and spices. At the end I added a cup of rice and a cup of barley. It turned out extremely well and everyone in the house very much enjoyed it. In fact, there's enough soup for the whole week. I'm glad its good because basically all I can eat for a week is medicinal rice porridge, and medicinal chicken soup. Porridge for breakfast, and soup for lunch and dinner. I hate mono diets, but my body is reacting well to it and craves it, so I'm not complaining.

A new friend, one of the 2nd year students came over to watch the Oscars in the evening, and upon seeing me trying to massage my sore shoulders came over and worked on them for a little while. After hearing my whole story about the angina pain and shouldr pain, she recommended to bleed the Small Intestine Jing Well points to clear the heat from the channel, and to add PC6 to open up the Yin Wei Mai and add LI4 and LV3 to smooth my Liver Qi and drain some the heat down. After I performed the above, I felt all the pain wash away. It was amazing - I was so happy. Not only did I sleep the best I had for weeks, the pain from my shoulders was gone. Moreover, I was so happy that I understood why she recommended what she did. It made complete sense based on my studies, even with symptoms as odd as mine. Something must be sticking :)

Monday:

After taking a long walk around the residential streets of Waimea, I felt rejuvenated. The pain in the shoulders reasserted itself in the evening. I drained the Jing Wells again, but it did not work quite as well. Probably because I didn't have lancets, so I could not get them to bleed as much as I needed to both nights. I did not repeat the other points this time. I had my roommate massage my back and in so doing he found that both of my back Heart Shu points were completely hollow, empty and cold to the touch. My other roommate commented that the indentation at those spots could be visibly seen, even without palpation.

This coincided with what I had known through study with my Sensei during clinic. One woman had come in who had suffered from severe depression and grief all of her life. In her case I saw and felt that her Heart Back Shu points were also impacted. Sensei stated that while western medicine had diagnosed her condition as arthritis of the heart, she diagnosed it as a broken heart. A condition of grief and sadness after years of emotional pain.

Though seeing this similar pattern play out on my back was a disconcerting, in many ways it was reassuring. There was visible tangible and repeatable evidence of this medicine's analytics and diagnostic methods matching the reality of what the body indicates through palpation and simple observation.

Years of frustration, and most recent 6 months of acute grief and worry had completely worn out my heart, and caused heat to build up in my system as indicated by the red tip to my otherwise pale and dusky tongue (a sign also indicative of blood deficiency with some stasis).

Tuesday:

During lunch today, I asked my roommate to apply moxa to my heart Back Shu points. He also found a deficiency on palpation in my Large Intestine, and Spleen Shu points. After the application of moxa to the the heart Shu, I became very emotional and tears started to well in my eyes. Upon addition of the other points, I became exhausted but settled, and took a 20 minute nap before class.

By the end of the evening, the stimulation to my heart Shu points caused me to again experience frustration and anger, and for a little while worry - emotions that were not being expressed but rather repressed for weeks. Though I don't like the result, I think its healthy, as my heart pain has not returned since Saturday, and my shoulder pain today is greatly diminished.

I have another appointment on Friday. I hope to receive moxa daily on my Heart Shu, and Spleen Shu in the meantime.

Summary:

I have a choice - I can either rebel and be angry at the collateral circumstances resultant from my choice to pursue this career, or I can choose the collateral circumstances. I chose to do this program. I did not choose the circumstances and repercussions of doing this program, living on this island, and living with other people. I'm still suffering over it. And once I accept and choose my suffering, perhaps the suffering will unravel into conscious acknowledgment of what I'm attached to which is creating the suffering in my life. I've not let go of these attachments, and they've been very strong. I am not yet sure whether I want to let go of the attachments, or continue harboring them. What I do know is that if I continue to hold onto these attachments I will either have to leave this island and this program, or I will suffer and have these or worse health problems in the future.

I have not brought full awareness to this topic, and I've not meditated on it. I've not had the time, nor energy, nor desire to do so. I know that I will have to confront these issues, but I am suspending doing so until I've regained some of my former strength. Right now I'm avoiding doing so, but I know I'm avoiding doing so consciously and for a reason. It takes intellectual effort - at least for me. And right now, I'm fresh out. I'm happy to have come this far in my realizations, even though I know its not far enough to become content with my lot, let alone happy and confident in my decision. I've been resigned to it for months.

In summary though - I believe that all of these events are helping me learn very practically and personally the inner workings of this medicine, how it diagnoses and treats disease. I just wish these lessons weren't so hard to learn. I thought I was through a hard lesson patch with Saturn retrograde for two years of my life in 2006-2007 - but little did I know that I'd be signing up for more so quickly, and with so little rest in between.

My health has reached an all time low

The long week of midterms of trimester 2 is over. 5 midterms and several weeks of prior exhaustion have brought me to my knees health-wise. I think I got A's on each midterm save for the one in A&P. I'm not sure what grade I will get, but I'll be happy with a C. I don't think anyone got A's in A&P, and its unlikely that anyone scored a B. Many I'm sure will get D's. This is the first time the teacher is teaching this course, though we've had her before in prior subjects, and ran into similar but not as acute set of problems. The class is very angry at the teacher and her teaching method - or lack thereof, and we plan to collectively respond in writing.

I have three more midterms next week.

I have developed such a deep fatigue that various very painful and debilitating symptoms have resulted. My Earth element has lacked proper support since I moved to the island, and with recent stress of dealing with roommates, school mates, administration, lack of rest, lack of sound sleep, lack of sound thoughts, and lack of recuperation, several very disturbing symptoms have developed. The Earth element is in charge of the Spleen and Stomach. Among many things, Earth element is in charge of digestion, separation of pure from impure, and the nourishment of one's body. The Spleen in particular is in charge of the intellect, memory, concentration, etc. All individuals performing heavy intellectual work are subject to Spleen deficiency, and most people in the Westernized and sped-up world, and improper nutrition, sleep, rest and relaxation have Spleen deficiency to various degrees of severity - with symptoms differentiating based on other deficiencies and pathologies of other organs. It is very common for acupuncture students to follow a frequent regiment of self-medication with Spleen tonics throughout their scholastic careers, and frequent needling and moxibustion of tonification points such as ST36 and or SP6 to maintain their Spleen functions.

All of my Spleen's mental faculties have been bent on either solving my dilemmas, or on heavy work associated with work for many years - but most heavily so over the past 4 months. Emotional and mental issues have become the internal cause of development of illness and have resulted in my having symptoms such as:

• Complete fatigue and loss of mental focus, energy and recall within half an hour after eating, for a duration of 4 hours, to a point of nearly wanting to pass out.
• Generalized whole day mental fogginess, and lack of intellectual capacity.
  
• Inability to digest food in the evening, leading to fullness and restless sleep.
• Excruciating shoulder pain lateral to my shoulder blades, around acupuncture point SI9, and SI10.
• Constriction and sharp pains around my heart, pains reaching my arms. This is the most disconcerting - because it sounds like angina: "chest pain or discomfort that occurs when an area of your heart muscle doesn't get enough oxygen-rich blood. Angina may feel like pressure or squeezing in your chest. The pain also may occur in your shoulders, arms, neck, jaw, or back. It can feel like indigestion."
• Sharp pains around my spleen and stomach at night
• Extreme fatigue, lack of luster in my eyes, and lack of energy during the day, hunching over of the body, and a desire to close eyes
  
• Inability to maintain conversation with people, and generalized reclusivity
• Extreme cold of the hands and feet, general feeling of internal coldness, and aversion to cold, and dampness. The cold and damp climate of Waimea in winter has been further adding stress on my system - leaving to go to Kona or sitting in the sunlight feels better.
  
• Nasal discharge in the morning, occasional sneezing, and dryness, thirst, and parched lips in the evening
  
• Periods of anger, despondency, crying (though there's been a lack of energy even for these to be acute), indecisiveness
  

Many of these are not directly Earth-element related - but the earth element is at the source of nourishment of the whole body. Many symptoms include Liver Qi stagnation, Liver Blood deficiency, and symptoms of the Heart, Small Intestine and Gallbladder.

As a result of these symptoms, I've had no energy to reply to emails, and phone calls, and maintain the relationships with my friends and family back home, and I've especially been avoiding calling back my grandmother because of how much strain it is for me to task my brain with recalling and conjugating in Polish - something that isn't as taxing when I have my energy. I feel like I've neglected being there for my friends and family out of a need of self-preservation of my limited energy reserves, and have made conversations with my classmates and short as possible. It is unfair to them, and I feel like I'm pushing away those very people that care the most for me, and for this I feel responsible, sad, and sorry. I know this cannot last, this phase must pass, and I know they will understand.

Many thoughts have come to me including dropping classes, or not signing up next trimester so that I can give my body time to heal from the past years of intellectual and emotional strain, so that I can start again in the fall. Some people in prior years have been forced to take time off, or go to school part time due to work or family-related issues. The idea of losing step with the rest of my classmates, however, and prolonging my time on island is not one I wish to think about, but given we only have 10 days between trimesters, I have no idea how I'll physically and mentally survive if I don't do this for myself.

I also can't imagine getting the healing that I need while living in the hustle and bustle of this house. I don't think returning home to Maryland would give me the rest I need right now either. I need 'cave time' as my friend Melanie suggested. For me, that means a vacation somewhere - but who's going to pay for that.

I've been modifying my diet to only hot-temperature foods, as cold foods further damage the Spleen, including sugary or cold foods like salads. I feel like bland and easy to digest foods are the best for me right now, but they are so unappetizing. These changes have helped on the days I've applied them. When I eat any kind of protein or fat, all of my body's blood and qi goes to my digestion, leaving me nothing with which to support my intellectual or physical function. It has gotten to a point where I am scared of each next meal time, because I don't want to deal with the consequences of eating, yet my hunger is there indicating I'm undernourished.

I've been completely forgetting to take my home-made spleen tonic, and when I do take it, I tend to feel better for a few hours with some mental focus returning. A teacher spoke with me out of concern for my appearance and lack of energy and asked me if I've been taking spleen tonics. I told her that I've not been able to digest the tea-pill patent formula tonics like Four Gentlemen Decoction, or Six Gentlemen Decocton - decoctions that most students take throughout their scholastic careers as it helps with intellectual focus. I get heartburn and constipation when I take them, so I've been taking my own raw herb formula when I remember. Unfortunately, any kind of tonification regiment will take as long as 4-6 months in cases of severe depletion. It also takes rest. Rest is one of the commodities I do not have, and will not have if I continue at the pace I am.

At the suggestion of my friend Melanie, I'm going in for an herbal consultation tomorrow so that I can be fully evaluated and given an herbal formula which treats my current condition of depletion. I don't know if the formula will be any stronger than the one I'm taking, as what I'm taking is based on the herbs found in the Four Gentlemen Decoction, with modifications like Shen herbs for Worry and Grief. I look forward to getting a confirmation that what I have come up with myself is on the right track, and will want to know what type of treatment protocol, and length of time the treatment will take. Overall I think I need some advice on how to proceed with school - take time off, or try and push through?

Right now, my body's Qi is so deficient that any acupuncture treatment I've been giving myself has been scattering my Qi and leaving me more depleted than prior to the treatment. Any treatment that did not scatter my Qi consolidated it enough to get me through the next day of exertion.

I've really done myself in with the path I've chosen, at the time I chose it, and the place I chose to follow it. I've been on the go for years, and abusing my body for years. It is catching up with me. Every few weeks when I think I've reached the bottom, something new happens. On top of this, I don't know how to answer the concern of my friends and family. I know they're worried for me, and wish they can help, and I wish I knew how to make use of those resources. I've never been good at asking for help, partly because it occurs to me that if I ask for help, its an inconvenience, and secondly, that I don't know what I really need. I need lots of thoughts and prayers, to start with.

When my energy returns to me, I know that I will have to tackle the bigger questions of my life decisions: What is it that I really want to do with my life? The truth is, I'm not happy here. Can I really see myself living here and thriving for four years? Will I want to do this as my vocation after I graduate? Should I take a break of a year to examine what program I really want to be in? How will I support myself for four years while in school? Will I have the energy to do this as my vocation? These questions beg for an answer. Today I don't seek to answer them, because writing this blog is as much intellectual effort as I plan on executing today.

As far as those questions are concerned - I don't know how to start answering them. I don't know when I'll have the energy to start answering them, and I'm worried about what the answers will be. Yes, there are people with bigger problems in their life than the ones I'm having. But perspective has never really helped me with disappearing my concern.

I want to thank my mom and dad for their kind emails filled with pictures of travels, and their great encouragement and love. I wish we could be together. I love you and I miss you!

This weekend, I must juggle rest, and study - with enough success to pull off a personal miracle. Tomorrow I may tackle the question of why I don't ask for help, and what blocks me from knowing what I need, and pursuing it for myself - but no promises!

Luke, I sense a disturbance in the force...

Yesterday I completed my exit interview for my company and today I got my final check and paperwork concluding my relationship with them.

Today I volunteered at the Cherry Blossom festival open house at my school and helped in handing out horoscopes, herbal teas, assisting with body work realignment exercises, and helped out in t-shirt and produce sales.

Interspersed in these events where voicemails calls from my grandmother saying that she misses me, and calls from my mom informing me about a family member's surgery, and a text message from a friend stating that she dreamt that I was returning home to visit her.

Amongst these random events, three occurrences stood out amongst the most perplexing to my mental process of reconciling the great changes I've put myself into and my decision process about the future.

A visit with a re-invented friend...

I was contacted earlier in the week by a friend who was to be in Hawaii studying with a master of a lineage of Kahuna / Hawaiian Energetics down in Captain Cook. She invited me to spend Friday with her and her teacher. It was great to meet with them and escape from my routine to enter into a life so different and yet so familiar as that which my friend and her teacher are weaving separately and together in their personal journeys and practices of healing the world and themselves. The subject of the content of the discussions may be for another post, but suffice it to say - I am deeply thankful for the time we spent together and I am honored to have been invited to spend time with them.

Carol - thank you for you kind words, your advice, and your compassionate understanding - my dear kaikuahine and fellow traveller. May your stone arranging be happily thwarted by random acts of self-abandon!

No Regrets. Live! Live!! Live!!!

An email from my first Acupuncturist...

I had emailed Jeremy, my Acupuncturist friend from back in Maryland who inspired me to this work, and several weeks ago asking him to share his thoughts on his Tai Sophia experience. He give me some interesting things to think about including contact information for a friend who is attending the school Five Element school in Colorado which I was looking at, because Tai Sophia will not accept me without my bachelors. As many of you know, I've been terribly conflicted as to whether I am in the right place, studying the right thing, whether I should even be here on this island, or whether I should return home.

I know switching to Tai Sophia will not solve all my problems. Neither will returning home. There are fundamentals needs that that returning home would satisfy, and when compared with what I am actually learning here, Tai Sophia would not be able to compete with my apprenticeship with my Sensei. There are opportunities here which are unique and would not be replaceable - my Sensei who studied along side Kiiko Matsumoto in New England, and often collaborates on projects with Kiiko,and Shudo Denmei - two gods of the Japanese acupuncture world.

If I were to leave, I would be giving up an opportunity of a lifetime as a result of the pain and insecurity I am experiencing about my being here. And what would it be replaced with? Study of an unfulfilling bachelors degree for 2 years in order to attend Tai Sophia, or forging into another unknown community of Boulder, CO in order to pursue my desire of the Five Element philosophy.

Jeremy suggested I think about what is it that I really want to achieve, and that in many ways Tai Sophia provided him the means to attain the professional certificate he needed in order to pursue and practice several other healing modalities. A conversation with my roommates today further stressed the need to answer this question for myself.

What I Need, v.s. What I Want...

What I need is some peace in my life about these things. I do not necessarily need the right answer - for there may not be an answer in any school at all. What brings me a lack of philosophical fulfillment in TCM is the lack of viewing the person holistically, which I believe Five Element philosophy does.

I know that what I wish to work with the most is the Shen (the Spirit-Mind), for I believe and find that what makes any modality truly effective is the psychoemotional results that it produces in the present regardless of whatever underlying pattern, or physical problem a patient is manifesting. I.e, can you transform the universe an individual is experiencing surrounding their condition in the present moment, and assist their emotional healing by transforming the emotional stuckness they may be feeling through changing the energetic shift in their body? Ofcourse, the flip-side is also true. Healing the person's psychoemotional body is only one aspect of the healing. If you heal and do not know how to cure the underlying disease, the psychological transformation is the only result you have attained during your healing, and the physical healing with be slower to come.

My experience however is - if you heal the Shen, you heal the body. I've not seen evidence that the opposite is true. A person may be terminal, and at this point, that which needs healing is the Shen, and not the body.

A person can have a perfectly healthy body and still live in ignorance to the problems in their life being a disease pattern in itself - their dysfunctional attachments, their anger, their jealousy, their lust, their powerlessness, their greed, their despondency, their despair, their lack of meaning and purpose, their lack of willpower, their guilt, etc. The Chinese believe that normal emotional patterns are processed through the heart, but when the heart is stressed, these e-motions (or energy motions) spill out of the heart and affect specific organs - Anger, the Liver, Sadness and Grief, the Lungs, etc. It is normal for the Shen to process all of these emotions on a daily basis - it is the stuckness of these patterns that eventually show up physiologically. Similarly, physiological diseases of organs, or their physical compression due to improper alignment and lifestyle will generate the emotional correspondences reciprocally.

You can fix the body, but if you cannot heal the Shen, the body will revert back into the disease pattern or will simply not release the disease pattern, in order to perpetuate the sickness within the Shen.

But people generally do not come to an acupuncturist because they feel a little down about their life, feel a sense of lack of fulfillment, or simply are a little tired, and down and out. They come when they have problems that noone else seems to know how to fix. It is for this reasoning why a healer must know how to heal both Shen and Body.

The healing of the Shen is what attracts me to Five Element, and I know I am not getting that training here. With Five Element, perhaps I cannot cure their pain completely, but I can transform how they are about their disease. Or on the flip side, perhaps I can heal their body, but they're still am angry, melancholic. What good is that? I've just given them a body which is healthier so that they can continue to be a stronger and more resilient angry melancholic? Some have said that Five Element is excellent at healing emotions, but does not do a good job of dealing with acute conditions. This may indeed be true - as the focus is Shen based.

Perhaps what I seek is also beyond the scope of Tai Sophia's training. While I also seek the knowledge and tools to cure the underlying pattern, what I seek is to heal the person, and not just heal the disease the person is manifesting - to heal their confusion, to heal their sadness, their grief, their melancholy, their anger, their powerlessness, their helplessness, their many facetted emotional pains. What I seek is the ability to recognize and heal all of those things in myself.

I am learning tools at TCM, and especially from my Sensei that are phenomenal in how they handle pain management and relief through addressing the pattern clinically, practically, and efficiently. They heal the disease quickly and efficiently while also handling all presenting physical symptoms. The healing of the patient with truly chronic emotional issues, however, takes much much longer, or is staved off from deteriorating further. To date, I have not seen these conditions primarily healed with any acupuncture modality other than Five Element.

Sensei has stated, and other teachers at my TCM school have stated "You are not a psychiatrist. You are not qualified to psychologize someone and be their therapist or psychiatrist. You refer out for that, and help shift their emotions through acupuncture therapeutics as best you can based on how the pattern presents itself". I agree and disagree with this. I know what the healing presence, the healing touch, and the art of listening, and art of speaking are capable of doing! They are the magic of the work of transforming a person's experience of being alive. This is the very work that the Landmark Forum taught me is possible. It is also the very work that psychoemotional healing such as that experienced through Reiki is possible! I've seen it, I've felt it, I know it exists. I crave it because my disease patterns present themselves primarily through the Shen - through my life long battle with depression.

Perhaps this cannot be taught, and develops only with age. But then I hear the same TCM teacher say "Boy can those Five Element people pick out constitutional imbalance and address the emotional pattern.". Thats what I'm talking about!

My experience in clinic is so limited thus far, that I'm not even qualified to make these conclusions or assertions - but this is the intellectual fight I am fighting right now to win the battle in my own mind.

Patience is a possible for those who do not suffer, and a virtue of those who do.

Can my own emotional healing wait 4, 6, 10 years? Will what I learn here teach me how to heal myself? Will I know how to see the complex patterns of the Shen within this education, and learn how to flow with the seasons of change that Five Element philosophy embraces and embodies in its practitioners?

I can always study at a Five Element school after finishing my work here - this is true, but what I need is healing in the present, and assurance that my future will contain therein the power to heal emotions for myself and for others for that is what I need most of all. I live in confusion, information overload, and in depression. My yearning for Five Element is out of hope that that modality offers some peace. Perhaps its an illusion I have created out of anger, grief and frustration at my situation. The idea of quitting my life here and pursuing Five Element now instead of many years down the line is the only possibility I have seen thus far to control my own destiny in my healing.

In terms of community and support here - I do not have that, neither am I surrounded by people of like mind and sensitivity to these kinds of things. In many ways I feel like the island is testing me to a point of really trying to kick me off. And there are many days where I feel like an island adrift in a world that is not my world, a school that is not my school, and a philosophy that is not my philosophy, and modalities that do not heal what I suffer from.

The advice I am getting is to give this place a year, and to stay strong. I'm fresh out of that, so I'm gonna have to fake it till I make it, I suppose, and wait until an answer to my prayers for healing comes from heaven. Others have said, will say, and I have said in the past - if you want a miracle for yourself, you have to go out and get it yourself, rather than sitting and waiting, inert, waiting for lightning to strike you. Be the master of your destiny, take responsibility, and take action! It is through this lens that I can justify my lack of patience about this school, this program, and this life - and justify leaving, and leaving quickly to in pursuit of the healing of my spirit, and the tools to heal the spirits of others.

I found a short article on the differences between TCM and Five Element which sums up the philosophical differences. This is another good resource site which explains Five Element theoretical principles and therapeutics.

Immediate Wants...

Immediately I know I want rest, peace, silence, reassurance, and nurture. I do not know whether I will find what I want at Tai Sophia. I am therefore reserved about quitting this program to study a bachelors for 2 years on a very very strong hunch just so that I can go to Tai Sophia. I also know that the school in Colorado is small, and it would be yet another adjustment. Further, I know that I will not have the opportunity to learn how I'm learning from my Sensei in private clinic as I am learning here. I will be an excellent acupuncturist when I leave her clinic. That I know. I will be able to fix people's diseases problems from day one. I believe her.

After years of taxing my spleen with work, and months of dealing with grief, and sadness, and adding more spleeny work with starting school, I've driven myself into a state of exhaustion that I'm managing with some herbs, but only so far as preventing the bouts of spontaneous crying, and dyspnea. I hope to regulate myself and get the mental and emotional rest I need which I know I did not have between switching from my career to this field. My mind is not at peace, and after leaving my friends, family, career, and home, alas, I comfort myself with truisms of knowing that I'm human, this too shall pass, and all I need to do is find my still point amongst the chaos. I had that skill once, with time, it will return - but I'm not sure that it will as a result of continued mental gyrations, and certainly it seems it will not return soon if these gyrations continue.

When divining on the question of whether this is the place I should be, or whether my path lies elsewhere, the I Ching speaks "A swan lands on a tree, but lands on the wrong branch. Its position is not correct, but there is no fault."

I Am...

Exhausted
Trapped
Confused
Angry
Frustrated
Defeated
Resigned
Hungry

What Do I want?

To have my cake and eat it too
To know all the answers
To be home with my friends and family
Infallibility
Wisdom
To hear and sing classical music
To see the fall colors
To see deciduous forests
Indian food

What Do I need?

Reassurance
Faith
Confidence
Strength
Sleep
Quiet
Peace
Safety
Security
Nurture
Tranquility
Abundance
Patience
Fulfillment
Love
Joy

And probably therapy.