One of my students had a long term sleep problem. She tried pharmaceutical sleep aids, aromatherapy, craniosacral therapy, massage, exercise, professional talk therapy, anti-depressants, white noise machines, and more—pretty much exhausting the gamut. In a Daoist training session, we discussed the idea that her yang, conscious, waking mind was somehow intruding on her yin, quiet, sleeping mind, and rousing her repeatedly in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.
I suggested that she might try to address what’s bothering her. She said there was nothing in her conscious mind that seemed an issue. I asked about her work, family, relationships, health, finances—all the usual suspects. She replied that, although no life was ever perfect, she did not feel she had any big, pressing problems. All the same, I could tell her yin and yang were not in balance, that something that belonged on the yang side (wakefulness) had migrated over.
We practiced wuji meditation together as a solution. Standing quietly under a large oak tree, a light, sub-tropical wind blowing and the salty aroma of the nearby ocean enveloping us, we sank deeper and deeper into a relaxed state. I felt the energy flow up my spine and neck, over the top of my head, down the line of my nose, across the frenulum of my upper lip, and then turn in to meet the tip of my tongue where it rested on my hard palate, against the backside of my front teeth. From there, the energy traveled down my throat and followed the center line of my body. Visualizing that flow, feeling it, gave my mind something to do.
My focus was interrupted by the sound of my student weeping. I allowed her to feel what she needed to feel, to release her emotions without comment. After our session, she shared that her husband had taken a job in another city and was insisting they sell their house and move, something she had no wish to do. More discussion revealed her overall dissatisfaction with her marriage and other, deeper feelings of dissatisfaction with her life. Talking about them helped her decide on a course of action—confronting things rather than running from them, sharing her feelings rather than hiding them. Her meditation sessions grew more frequent after that, and she learned to go deeper and explore herself ably.
She started sleeping like a baby, too.
Nourishing Ourselves
How can we rectify a malnourished body? Contrary to popular opinion, a healthy diet need not be more expensive than an unhealthy one—it does require mindfulness, though, and careful selection of plant rather than animal protein sources. Historically speaking, human beings began to gain weight and get sick when we stopped preparing our meals from fresh and raw ingredients and came to rely on processed food. These days, agribusiness has trained us to accept fruits, vegetables, and grains packaged in plastic and transported long distances, sometimes thousands of miles. When we harvest directly from the garden rather than the package, we eliminate preservatives, additives, and genetic modifications that may have untoward consequences. The idea of growing local hasn’t yet caught on big-time yet, but it must. New, small-scale agricultural technologies such as hydroponic tanks and computer-controlled plant nutrition, lighting, and watering, now make it possible for us to grow food in new ways and in places never considered suitable for farming before—vertically, in urban warehouses, for example, and in converted office buildings, patios, and small, green spaces. Growing our own vegetables, fruits, and herbs can be anything from a fun, healthy, and satisfying hobby to a small business. So can growing and harvesting certain species of seaweed, which are increasingly recognized as important, sustainable, and viable food sources. Such enterprises can save us money, improve our health, and conserve energy. Too, complementary growing strategies—you grow corn, I’ll do tomatoes—unite communities. Let’s all join the movement and grow!
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A plant-based (vegan) diet is now the only environmentally sustainable option we have, and it lends us the mental clarity for our self-cultivation, too. Most people greatly misunderstand veganism, believing it to represent a paucity of choices; in fact, it is a far richer and more varied diet than any meat eater can embrace. Eliminating meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, and fish, a mere five-ingredient group, leaves us with a vast array of foodstuffs. Plant-based eating is a creative and marvelous lifestyle embraced by millions around the world. Paired with the elimination of refined sugar, it is also nutritious and enjoyable, and counters many degenerative diseases, including dairy-fueled cancers and the malignant effects of pesticides and hormones concentrated in meat. As if that were not enough—and, of course, it is—veganism also encourages foraging, a growing trend in rural areas and an opportunity to both spend more time in the woods and to learn about the nutritional value of local plants. Last, but by no means least, when we choose not to eat animals, we make a stand against wholesale cruelty and institutional torture. Veganism represents an awakening of compassion. Those who still eat animal products often resist admitting they are harming themselves, and live in denial about needlessly causing suffering. Let’s all try this diet, despite our varying protein needs, preferences, and genetics. Even if we need supplements such as vitamin B12 to make it complete, most of us can make it work.
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Dairy products are morbidly unhealthy. How appealing would it be to put your lips to a cow’s teat? Yet, a maleficent industry drives our appetite for milk, cream, butter, cheese, yoghurt, and dairy desserts, convincing us in a ubiquitous, daily, high-budget blitz that the secretion of an animal species evolutionarily and phylogenetically distant from our own is essential for our well-being. Dairy-industry-funded studies on the necessity of milk for bone density and calcium color the way even nutritionists see the role of dairy, while millions suffer from calcified arteries, lactose intolerance, joint and auto-immune diseases, and obesity, all to keep Big Dairy rolling in profits. As if all of this were not enough, the life of a dairy cow, trapped, penned, artificially fattened, injected with antibiotics, and milked, is a fate far worse than death. Add the looming human health crisis associated with antibiotic-resistant organisms, killing more of us every day as a result of consuming so many drug-tainted foods, and we have a real house of horrors. Let’s boycott dairy products and eliminate these poisons from our diets.
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It is believed that sugar cane was cultivated back in New Guinea in Neolithic times. When European explorers came across sugar, they brought it back to their native lands as an intoxicant, as a sculpture medium, and as medicine. Nobles of the European courts carried it around in little boxes and used just a pinch—like snuff or cocaine—for the rush of taste and energy. Now sugar is in absolutely everything, from our bread to our cold cuts. Yes, that’s right, it’s in our hotdogs. Don’t believe it? Take a look at some labels. It has proven to be the most dangerous plant we have ever domesticated and has given birth to one of the most pernicious industries Planet Earth has ever seen. Not only is it a dirty and destructive crop in the sub-tropics and tropics, evidence points to sugar’s links to cancer, obesity, diabetes, and, most recently, Alzheimer’s Disease. Make a life-saving change and beat the Big Sugar lobby at the same time: boycott any and all products containing added sugar. Not buzzing from sugar all the time, we can begin to relax.
The role of the so-called “bonesetter” in China is sometimes compared to that of the chiropractor in the Western traditions. It is actually different, and arguably more important. The advent of regional hospitals is a recent one in China, a country so vast and lacking in infrastructure that, even today, large swaths of the population do not have reliable access to modern medical care. For millennia, village healers were the only medical resource for rural populations. Because these individuals might see anything from diabetes, venereal disease, amputated limbs, anaphylactic shock, cancer, heart disease, breach births, to skin lesions, they were trained to offer a wide range of medical services. They couldn’t cure everything, of course, but then neither can even the best doctors in our own cutting-edge hospitals.
During one of my frequent visits to the south of China, I went with my tai chi master to rural Guangning county in Guangdong province. Traveling with us were a few of my master’s other students, and a few of my own as well. The purpose of the trip was to visit a relative of my master, the latest in a line of bonesetters, stretching back many hundreds of years. Some healing lineages are noted for herbal potions, and others for treating chronic diseases such as asthma or ulcers. My teacher’s family is