Why Traditional Chinese Medicine is Needed during this Time

These are hard times. On varying levels, we are being confronted with deep questions about death, health, family, community, livelihood, and our responsibilities towards ourselves and to one another. We are stripped from our usual comforts and diversions and we are living into these questions at a distance from one another. 

What does Traditional Chinese Medicine have to offer at times like these? While most of us think of TCM as needles and herbs for ailments, there is a value to TCM that runs deeper. The depth and breadth of TCM is immense. As prevention, TCM works with the present moment to understand where we are in relation to things. It brings our attention to what we do daily, to the foods we eat, to our day to day movements, to the feelings we have, to the thoughts we think, to the rest our bodies crave and connects the day to day things to a greater cosmology. This is a powerful step to recovering the integrity of our body and our place in the world. TCM points the way to yourself and to the world around you to find the ground beneath your feet.  Its great wisdom and power lies in the understanding and cultivation of connection and relationships that optimize health, integrity and resiliency. TCM is a medicine more focussed on living and thriving than on the prevention of dying, although it has powerful medicine and guidance even for the last stages of life.

How are you feeling this very moment?  If you are feeling scared, take a deep breath and gently hold the area that feels scared.  Nourish yourself with good food, good thoughts, good company and good humor. If you are feeling anxious, take a warm bath, listen to relaxing music, take a nap. If you are feeling angry, vent, run up a hill, sing loudly. If you are feeling sad, cry, share, hug. If you are feeling lonely, reach out to a friend. While these things may seem basic, almost too common sense, the often overlooked key here is to check in with yourself. Feel into and trust what is real for you now and have a willingness to take that seriously. Then empower yourself to shift it with the tools you have within yourself. 

Yes, TCM has more sophisticated tools and guidance about what to do as well. That is where the needles and herbs come in. But if you learn how to do the very basic things regularly, it may be enough to take care of yourself. If it is not enough, you can avail yourself with a TCM  practitioner who can guide you back to balance and harmony. 

TCM evolves from an ancient body of knowledge that emphasizes humans as inseparable from the natural world. Living in harmony with Nature and the environment is essential for health and healing. Harmony and balance are emphasized to cultivate strength, flexibility and resiliency. TCM, by its very nature, is adaptive and capable of giving guidance and remedy at all phases of illness and in every situation. 

Keep an eye out for self care video #2 on diet and qigong!

Many Medicines, One Healing: BCA Navajo Healing Project

“Hozhoo bae nana dolthdoo: With this (healing) may you go forth in the world in beauty.”

On the first morning of the second annual Navajo Healing Clinic, Justice Yazzie summoned us to an opening prayer. We pulled ourselves from our tasks --food prep, organizing clinic space, setting up outdoor intake--and collected ourselves in front of the large metal broiler that was heating the rocks for the morning sweat lodge. It was cold that morning and we were gathered around like children, hugging ourselves, shaking and marching in place to warm ourselves. The sun had broken the horizon not long ago and I was enjoying the serenity of the desert plants in the morning light.

Justice Yazzie started by asking us to repeat a blessing in Navajo. We didn’t know what we were repeating, but tried to keep up the best we could. We had already spent the earlier part of the morning trying to commit to memory a simple blessing in Navajo to say to our patients after we treat them. At the time, it seemed easy enough. But it’s amazing how quickly forgetfulness and confusion descends. Throughout the morning the simple one line quickly devolved into nonsense mumbling, mnemonic silliness and conflicting corrections between us. So when Justice Yazzie again started with more Navajo for the opening prayers, I felt defeated before I began. After what felt like a long time of speaking and repeating Navajo, he finished the blessing in English. He said all things are medicine, even hardship is medicine and that one medicine speaks to the other medicine so they know what to do.

As I thought about what Justice Yazzie was saying, I realized that it was a succinct articulation of our entire project from the beginning. It’s hard to say how something like the Navajo Healing Project gets birthed and grows. Perhaps projects begin with an idea. But where do ideas come from? Marley Shebala, the journalist of the local newspaper, led me to trace the project as far back in time as I could go when she came to interview me about the Navajo Healing Project for the local paper.

She began with basic questions: where were we from? What were we doing there? After some time explaining my chance meeting with Justice Yazzie and telling her about our project, she directed her questions to me personally. Tell me about you, she kept insisting. I gave her my usual professional answer, I’m the owner and director of BCA, etc. She stopped me mid-sentence. No, she pressed, tell me about you. I paused, not sure what she was getting at. What brought you here? Where did you come from? Why are you doing this work? How do you know what you know? I saw from her direct and insistent questioning that she wanted the whole story, my real story. And I could feel from her presence that I could tell her the real story and she would get it.

I began the story with me as a baby being born in a time of war, of the impact of forced and violent displacement, of the incessant search for home, community, healing and the search for who I am and what was taken from me. I emphasized that to me, re-claiming myself is not just learning about where I came from, but actually starts from affirming all the things that make me who I am in the present moment. In the present moment, I am a Vietnamese-American woman and I find myself on Navajo Lands, with my Navajo family offering healing with Traditional Chinese Medicine to the Navajo community. While there is a different kind of displacement that perhaps I cannot understand--the trauma is familiar to me. As I spoke an unexpected torrent of emotions came through me as Marley held my hands. Through my tears, I could see tears in Marley’s eyes too -- a shared springwell of tears and recognition emerging from our eyes.

After that interview, I thought about the medicines that we all carry inside us talking to the medicine of another. I wondered how everyone’s journeys brought them to Window Rock, Arizona that weekend and I thought about the medicine each of us gives and the medicine each of us receives. I felt that healing is the alchemy of medicines informed by stories. I saw everyone with new eyes and marveled at every interaction, including my own. I saw a medicine man give our bodyworker a healing before she gave him a treatment because he sensed she picked up a pain from a patient the day before. I saw people approaching the clinic with the traumatic reflex of suspicion and caution and leave with openness and trust. I saw a small child eager to step in and perform massage on our team members in the way she experienced and watched us through the weekend. I saw elderly men emerging from the adjacent sweat lodge relaxed and joyful like children and people emerging from acupuncture and body work in the same way. I heard laughter all around, broken Navajo from our team members, words of gratitude and encouragement, greetings of kinship, offers of help and support, all carried by the tones and sounds of the healing instruments our sound healer brought back from her own healing journey to Tibet. I saw people magically appear and volunteer for crucial roles to help the clinic run smoothly-- a local bodyworker to take the place of our BCA bodyworker who couldn’t make the trip, an elder to run the women’s sweat lodge when the person who was supposed to do it had to leave, relatives to gather sacred wood in the mountains late at night to run the sweat lodge, and our last minute addition to the BCA team who had a knack of knowing exactly what each person needed at the right time and was there to offer it. I saw everyone working in magical synchronicity, naturally as things are intended in Nature and I thought of my BCA community at home, people there stepping in to keep the clinic running smoothly in our absence and the support of all kinds that made our trip possible. In this flow, give and take is blurred, your medicine or my medicine is blurred, each person’s story becomes the other person’s story and we merge into one medicine, one story of healing.

By the end of the weekend, our team had treated almost 80 people of all ages. Most received both acupuncture and bodywork. We offered healing medicinal balm that one of our patients from BCA made and donated, educational materials and instructions on self-care, food that we prepared with our Navajo family and offered to everyone who came through the clinic, and a final blessing that by the second day of clinic we more confidently spoke to our patients (perhaps because we came up with the idea to tape it to the wall): Hozhoo bae nana dolthdoo: With this (healing) may you go forth in the world in beauty. Upon hearing our linguistic attempt, some people thanked us, some laughed, some were confused. But I think everyone understood the underlying intention we all had in common, that of healing.

In community.

Latest Musing on Navajo Healing Project

“My intention was to introduce TCM to the Navajo population as an effective alternative to alleviating many common ailments.”

I recently travelled to New Mexico on a research trip for BCA’s Navajo Healing Project*. I had some concerns about bringing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to Navajo Lands. Is it  beneficial for the Navajo people overall? I wanted clarity before moving forward. 

 I arrived in Albuquerque past midnight and was grateful to see Justice Robert Yazzie at the airport. I was tired, but we ended up talking into the wee hours about health and justice. My intention was to introduce TCM to the Navajo population as an effective alternative to alleviating many common ailments. To make it sustainable, we would integrate self-care and train local practitioners in basic acupuncture procedures. I was also interested in integrating  native healing practices into the education because I was deeply concerned about the survival of Traditional Native Medicine. Less and less healing knowledge was being handed down and more people were moving towards modern medicine. I was afraid that native wisdom would be lost forever. 

The next morning we set out to meet as many medicine people as he could find. Driving to Gallup, my senses were flooded with the painted landscapes and expansive skies. I didn’t know yet then, but it was only the beginning of what would be a most magical trip. As the days unfolded, I would meet and spend time with people and places that would address my deepest concerns about bringing TCM to Navajo Lands and how to preserve Native knowledge. 

I wanted to get to know the people I was introducing TCM to in order to understand if it would be an acceptable medicine.  While I felt good about the project, there was a part of me still unsure it is the right thing to do. “Right” being respectful, a good fit, sustainable and beneficial. 

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to meet 4 Medicine people, attend a medicine ceremony and talk to many Navajo people about healing: young folks and elders, men and women, city folks and Navajos on the reservation. As with many populations, there is a variation on beliefs and lifestyles. Even amongst the Medicine people, outlooks and understandings differ. There are 4 primary avenues of medicine that the Navajo population use: Native American Church which uses peyote as a sacrament for healing, Navajo Traditional Medicine which uses ceremonies by a Medicine person to promote healing,  traditional medicine based on folk knowledge of local herbal medicines and Western Medicine (which one medicine man referred to as “everyday” medicine). The population in general is moving away from traditional native healing knowledge and practices towards Western Medicine. Very few people know anything about Traditional Chinese Medicine beyond having heard of acupuncture.

There were moments during my trip that gave me pause,  Like when I suggested to one medicine man that acupuncture would help the knee pain he complained about. He shook his head. I pressed on. He said, I can’t do that medicine because it would mean I don’t have faith in my own. Or when I was told by medicine people that one cannot elect oneself to study medicine. It’s a gift endowed upon a person by the Creator. I wondered how this would impact my idea for training Navajos in basic acupuncture.

As I collected information, I thought about my own relationship to the medicine I practice. And then it dawned on me why this Navajo Project was so important to me and what I have been trying to do all this time. Back in the day, TCM was not taught like it is today. Similar to what the Navajo Medicine people were telling me about Navajo Medicine, TCM apprentices in ancient times were chosen or had to prove themselves worthy in rigorous ways. At that time medicine was intimately connected to, in fact inseparable from sacred knowledge of the world. Today sacred knowledge is interpreted as theory and principles to be implemented towards practical knowledge of curing disease. TCM has been through many different ruling systems, governments, revolutions, practices and popular thought and each time has changed and adapted itself to the times. Is it a coincidence that In my own personal journey to uncover the sacred roots of Traditional Chinese Medicine, I find myself connected to the Navajo community where medicine is still being practiced upholding sacred principles? 

During one meeting with a medicine man, he told me that there was no one to pass sacred knowledge on to because there is no one eligible for the rigorous training he had in mind. Up until then, I shared little of myself, always keeping in mind to listen. But something took over me during that conversation and I shared with him my personal journey. I told him I was always searching for sacred knowledge, but as a young person, the closest thing I could find was to enroll in an institution that taught TCM. In retrospect, I can see that my education was extremely reductive, distorting and perhaps even misleading about the full depth and breadth of TCM.  Despite that, I am very grateful for the training I did receive---breadcrumbs that allow me to pursue a path of deeper knowledge if I so desire. At the very least, I have a medicine I can practice that can be more effective and less damaging than modern medicine for many common ailments. 

I told him that maybe there is no one worthy for him to pass total knowledge to, but if there are no breadcrumbs left, the knowledge may disappear altogether. The young people need some breadcrumbs. He listened quietly and we were interrupted by someone coming into the room. The conversation turned to something else. Even though I felt disappointed for the interruption, I did not feel it was appropriate to force the conversation. When it was time to leave,  the medicine man turned to me and said, I want you to know I heard what you were trying to say to me. That simple acknowledgement encouraged me to stay my path. The introduction of a completely foreign medicine (TCM) and the suggestion of passing on knowledge different from what has always been and considered right are very sensitive, complicated matters. I didn’t know if the mere suggestion of doing things differently would be an offense. The best I could hope for was a consideration of what I was proposing. 

After that, things fell into place one by one. By the end of the trip, I was sitting in a room with Justice Yazzie, his son and another medicine man working out the details of our return clinic and making plans for a future training and certification program. When I returned home, things continued to fall into place. 6 members of the BCA team - 3 acupuncturists, 2 bodyworkers and one sound healer - agreed to accompany me at the end of October to do another pop-up clinic and initiate an education and training program. This year, with the help of our Navajo friends, we will integrate traditional native healing into the clinic. There will be a sweat lodge concurrent with acupuncture and body work. Local herbal medicines will be provided and traditional healthy Native foods will be prepared. Also, an emphasis on reverence, intention and the power of words will be part of our clinic procedures. We look forward to creating this healing space that will heal, connect and grow all communities and peoples involved. Thank you for being a part of this! 

*The research trip was made possible by BCA donations. Thank you!