Acknowledgements: This book represents 8 years of writing and much re-writing. I was very blessed to have the patient help and guidance of my editor, Ms. Terry Wolverton throughout the process. She sauntered into my life 15 minutes before I was planning to throw the only saved disk of my original manuscript into the trash bin. Without her I would never have completed this book with any cohesion, as I entered into the project with a great deal of aspiration and inspiration, but little to no real writing experience. She must have torn her hair out when I sent her extensive re-writes of the material she’d already edited! I thank my stars she stuck with me. To my Father Harold Edmond Thomas, who was an inspirational figure for me. He believed with all his heart that I would do good in the world, despite my lapses of sanity as a youth. His illness and death set me on'my path, as you will soon read. To my teacher and mentor, Master Ron Teeguarden; a man who should be considered a Copernicus of the 20th Century, he was so ahead of his time when in the early 1970’s he wrested the secret healing art of Taoist Tonic herbalism from its Asian hiding place and introduced its highly sophisticated precepts onto a niave and clueless western culture. This man saved my life and showed me my true road, the Tao’, and I will always consider the evening I met him to be the most important turning point of my life. His wife Yanlin has been a special person in my life as well. I would also like to thank the many great herbalists I worked with while at Dragonherbs. Many of them were far more accomplished than I and helped teach me. Michael McGuire, Borna Illich, Heather, George, Susan, Donavan, Daniel and Angel. To the two Chinese women in my life; my ex wife Sharon Leong, who was my first Guru, and took me to China in 1985, which began

my transformation into an Eastern-thinking person. She watched me battle many demons, and I thank her for staying by me during 10 years of struggle to find myself. It is Sharon who in 1979 first put the book, ‘Tao Te Ching’ into my hands. And to Michelle Wong, who taught me how to use a computer, and has calmly nurtured my efforts as a writer. . To my Mother back in Kentucky, Joyce Thomas. She may never have quite understood her eccentric son, who ran off to crazy places like California and hung around with those crazy liberals, but she always retained her love and acceptance of me, even during my darkest, wildest days. And my brother Barry, the silent conservative who surely finds my escapades perplexing, yet I know his love for his brother is unconditional, and I appreciate that more than he can know. To my older brother Dave, the intellectual who encouraged to use more of my mind. Also, my cousin and boyhood brother, Dony Erwin, now a content mountain man in Kentucky. We spent a lot of quiet time listening to the woods together. To my aunt Marlys, who lent me money to get my herb company off the ground. To film maker Ron Cabrera for diligently film documenting my work. Cameron McGehee and Brenda Rex for helping me get the message out. To Ella Vong for running our elixir bars. Copy editor Jocelyn Graf did an excellent job finding and correcting the hard-to-see technical mistakes and inconsistencies. A1 Stone, L.ac., DAOM suggested some technical revisions. Special thanks to Nick and Jesse at the West Coast Bindery, who really helped me do my early self-published printing, running small batches for almost no profit, and to Bobby at Classic Printing in Sherman Oaks CA. I am blessed to have so many friends and associates; Brynn Booth and Nico Darnese, my sidekicks at Shamanshack. Rykk Mesure, who has seen my potential from early on and has greatly helped me get my message out to the world. Tim Martin at Izo Cleanze.

Baratunde & Kayah Ma’at-Alexander of - The ForGotten Foods...Remembered. Melissa Mango, the masteress of raw desserts. Sarah Gribaa, who assisted me in the early days of Shamanshack. Gurumukh and the staff at Golden Bridge. Lois Arkin, founder of Los Angeles Eco Village, where I have lived for 15 years. Charles and Phillipo Francini for their long-standing friendship and generosity. Apprentices Nature Hogan, Akenaton Florez, Niki Hadani and Perry Englebert. My first customers and supporters: Nadia Tene, Glenn and Ginger with their excellent water systems at pristinehydro.com, Aryana and John Gibbon, Kavel and Bagvant of the Bliss Bar, Jeff Fetzer, Janet Baghoomian and Luchi Estevez of La Luchi Foundation. Truth Calkins and the whole gang over at Erewhon Natural Foods. Mariko Gifford with her beautiful Moringa For Life. Sharon Heart for her awesome astro/wisdom/logic. Kerry, Joy and Rebecca with Eden Retreats. Dr. Gabriel Cousins and everybody at the Tree of Life Healing Center. Janabai and Matt Amsden and the staff at Euphoria Loves Raiwolution. Mikki and Nadia Willis of Elevate Films. There are so many others that I will wish I had mentioned. But please know that I will always appreciate you for supporting me and my work. Preface When examining my name on the front of this book, you will notice that there are no initials following it. I am not a doctor, and I am not interested in imitating one here, nor could I by law. It is even appropriate that I am not a medical professional, because the purpose of this book is to encourage you, the reader, to take responsibility for your own self-care and lifestyle choices, not to replace your doctor in times of illness, but to maintain your wellness to the greatest extent possible.

I am just a man who has had the opportunity to learn a great dealabout life and health, and many events have transpired which allowed me some glimpses of truth, insights all too often veiled for inexplicable reasons. I remember the Native American elders at a Shaman conference saying that accessing other levels of consciousness can be as simple as going through a curtain; it can be that easy. I’ve walked through some curtains, and found some great wisdom on the other side, which I hope to share here. I see this book more as an adventure than a graph of do’s and don’ts.I wasn’t interested in writing a textbook on health. Many of my observations are backed by scientists and health professionals, who have obtained documented results, and in many cases I have derived my insights from acknowledged health masters of past and present, to whom I will refer and whom I will quote. However, a number of the concepts and subjects I cover are presented entirely from my own view, and I encourage you as the reader to reach into your own intuition—you know, the wisdom inside you that knows—to determine if what I’m saying is truth for you. Learning to trust and live by one’s basic intuition about how organisms survive and thrive is a key part of this journey. While at times I may appear to criticize allopathic1 medicine, in the early chapters, I must acknowledge that my life was once saved by western surgical techniques, and that should I again experience calamity, I would welcome the sight of the ambulance and the relief of anesthesia. Modern western medicine does have redemptive qualities and value, but from my experience and research, I have observed that medicine works better when combined with nutrition, herbal therapies, and exercise. I also see that the medical system is slowly warming to 1 According to Webster’s New World Medical Dictionary, Allopathic medicine is “the system of medical practice which treats disease by the use of remedies which produce effects different from those produced by the disease under treatment. MDs practice allopathic medicine. Also called conventional medicine.”

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the idea of integrating alternative treatments, and many doctors do give valuable advice on healthy diet and exercise. One may any copy of the Townsend Letter or Wellness Journal to see that many doctors are “rediscovering” natural health applications. Still, nutritional curriculums in medical schools are scant, and studies on herbs and natural remedies non-existent. Should an M.D. incorporate ancient plant medicine, with the many awesome innovations developing within the nutraceutical2 world, the wisdom accumulated from ancient Chinese medicine, and good nutrition into her/his lexicon of healing, I’m convinced he or she will have a highly successful practice. Most of the remaining ambivalence about disseminating information about nutrition and prevention seems to be coming from elements in the top of the allopathic medical establishment. In my observation, nutraceutical advocates and researchers are ready and willing to work with the medical establishment toward the goal of preventing disease with a combination of nature’s remedies and modern technology. Nothing in this book is intended to represent a cure for disease. Only a doctor may lawfully diagnose or treat disease. I am committed to helping people to live in ways that will reduce the potential for illness. Prevention of disease and general empowerment comes through an understanding our own unique health nutritional needs, and it is that understanding this book is designed to provide. — Rehmannia Dean Thomas April 2009

From Webster's New World Medical Dictionary: Nutraceutical: A food or part of a food that allegedly provides medicinal or health benefits, including the prevention and treatment of disease. A nutraceutical may be a naturally nutrient-rich or medicinally active food, such as garlic or soybeans, or it may be a specific component of a food, such as the omega-3 fish oil that can be derived from salmon and other cold-water fish. 2

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The world is made of abstraction with sinews of perspective and music. Its waves gather knowledge and instruct the universe. Its melody is more than notes, its poetry more than words. Its stars are as much seeds as earthly acorns are seeds of time - for if acorns unfold into oak trees after many years, so may stars 'planted' in space be considered spores of mysterious potency space seeds that we cannot fathom from here but which, if the unraveling of space allows, may soon draw near and blossom into our ken. Guy Murchie, from Music of the Spheres

Introduction I am in the light and all beings are in the light You are standing at a threshold. At first, this may not seem extraordinary. Every organism encounters moments in its existence where it must undergo change in order to survive. The pupa cannot stay in its dormant state; it must metamorphose into a butterfly. The child cannot remain a child; he or she must undergo puberty and become adult. These shifts are not only necessary for the individual organism, but for the survival of its species. Today you are standing at a threshold, and all life on earth is standing with you. We find ourselves—whether we know it consciously or whether we intuit it as a vague feeling of promise or dread—faced with a need to change the way we are living and the way life is conducted on this planet. This begins with the way we think about health, how we take care of ourselves, how we take care of one another, and how we take care of the planet. In his book, Rewilding North America, EarthFirst! founder Dave Foreman states that the Earth has previously experienced five great extinctions, the last one occurring with the dinosaurs, and that we are now rapidly entering a sixth. Many of the structures of modern life cannot be sustained: the waste of natural resources, the increasing toxicity, and a model of healthcare that overlooks an unhealthy lifestyle and then treats the resulting disease. We are entering into a stage of our experience which philosopher Thomas Berry refers to as the “Ecozoic” era: a state of existence where living ecologically and as an inter-dependant, nurturing, conscientious survival-based collective 1

will no longer be a choice but a necessity. Hopefully, we can work to remedy the present scenario, which scientist Michael Soule calls the “catastrophozoic” era. We are witnessing evolution, and at this stage in history, humans have the capacity to consciously adapt, to choose new modes of behaving and new ways of fostering our survival. Modern research concludes that the human organism cannot sufficiently adapt to nutrient deficient foods and harmful toxins. Will we choose to modify, will we be forced through planetary conditions to adapt, or will we cling to the old ways? This is the threshold at which we stand. Some individuals have been gifted with the foresight to perceive this threshold, to understand what will be required of us, and to adopt new ways of taking care of ourselves, not only for our personal benefit but also for the benefit of others. These individuals—and by picking up this book and absorbing its information you have become one of them—are the healers, the “light workers,” those who will help to spread the consciousness of the new era that is dawning. During one of the early sessions with my teacher, master herbalist Ron Teeguarden, he made a statement, “You are not only a teacher, you’re not only an herbalist, not only a healer, you are the light.” He was implying that we must seek to be a source of positive inspiration for others, and to show the way to the abundance that is every person’s right to experience. Since that day I have concentrated on how I might purify the light within me, removing psychic, physical, and spiritual obstacles in order to help it shine most brilliantly—for my own health and to help inspire others to unveil their healing potential, for this is something we all possess. We can all heal others and ourselves. It doesn’t matter how far gone we might think we are, we can heal. It matters not how advanced the disease in another; we can be a light of healing energy in their 2

lives. And we can start with little more than the sincere intention to do so. I knew nothing when I was thrown into the healing world, but I started working with what knowledge I had. This, along with a lot of intention, made a difference not only to the one I was attempting to help but to myself as well; these first simple gestures of giving helped instill a sense of purpose in my life. This book is about starting with yourself, and then passing on whatever you know to help someone else in a time of need. Your success in giving another hope and confidence will open up your desire to learn more. You don’t have to rush. The truth will come. Cultivating the art of healing does eventually lead one to a certain “threshold” of understanding about the steps required in order to attain health, wisdom, and insight. * Throughout my early stages of work as a green juicing therapist, followed by my eight7year apprenticeship with Master Teeguarden, I have learned the art of healing: helping others to develop and cultivate what the Chinese Taoist masters call Shen, which simply means “spirit.” It is the most precious gift we can give, to help open other’s cognition of and connection to the bigger picture—the light. In my work I have seen people’s light get brighter. It’s a beautiful sight. I’ve seen it many times and am convinced anyone can do it. What could be greater than to see a previously sad, gray face suddenly beaming with the excitement of emerging into a new life, charged with limitless possibilities for happiness, love and fulfillment? This transition into a cycle of fulfillment can happen in a heartbeat. The Chinese say, “It takes a great illness to make a great person.” I’ve seen it; people who’ve survived near-death experiences almost always revive to become more adventurous, creative and progressive. 3

One’s first simple act of selfless giving to another person can initiate what we will refer to as a benevolent cycle of health, not only in that other person’s life, but also for the giver. The simple act of informing a friend about healthy sugar alternatives like agave nectar, Xylitol or Lo Han Quo; tips on maintaining an alkaline diet or giving a gift of. green tea to the aunt with high cholesterol; or suggesting an acquaintance take Essential Fatty Acids to help with blood sugar, arterial problems, and neurological impairment has the potential to initiate a benevolent cycle of health in the recipients. Selfless giving, combined with a healthy lifestyle, can charge one’s batteries and infuse life with a sense of fulfillment and creativity. Soon we’re on a lifelong quest of self-empowerment, one in which every day we get stronger and learn more ways to be helpful. Small changes in behavior—such as thoroughly chewing our food, choosing almond milk instead of dairy milk, taking a green super food, or taking a daily brisk walk—may seem on the surface to be inconsequential things, but such modest, non-invasive shifts in our diet and lifestyle can wind up triggering profound changes in our health and the integrity of our life experience. Even people who find many health regimens too invasive and demanding may find these humble modifications acceptable. You probably know a lot of people who need guidance, people who, through constant stress, have exhausted themselves and possibly diminished their genetic integrity, who’ve maintained nutrientdeficient eating habits and are on their way to a physiological and/or mental breakdown. Many of these people have learned the hard way that drugs tend to temporarily mask problems, and won’t necessarily help them get to the root and heal, but these people may not be well enough informed about healthy alternatives. I see many people who appear to be living a standard of life below a threshold of health, the dividing line between empowerment 4

and dis-empowerment. They seem to be at a place where they can’t even imagine their true life potential and, if not encouraged to nourish and treat themselves better, could eventually move into a place of sickness, disease and possibly premature death. I believe that much of their suffering is unnecessary. Now, more than ever before, it is our obligation as healers to guide others away from a destructive lifestyle and toward integrity of spirit, mind and body. We who have been given the gift of perceiving around the corner now have an opportunity to help the human race move toward a threshold leading to abundance. We can affirm and envision the earth as a lush garden again, a place where all people step out of their back door and pull fresh fruits from the trees. We possess the ingenuity to remake the world into an abundant paradise where all beings live to their fullest potential. We lightworkers must envision and affirm these possibilities and inspire others to explore theirs. In this way, we help collectively rediscover our place in a colorful, ever-growing tapestry, in health and in harmony with all beings and all life on Earth.

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Chapter 1 Thresholds I first came across the concept of “thresholds” as a measurement of health in the life phases of living organisms during a course I took in 1996 with the University of California Master Gardeners. There we were encouraged to observe thresholds as a way of evaluating the overall state of health in our gardens. The concept involved monitoring the degree of pest, fungal, viral infestation, and disease in and on our plants, and the general integrity of the soil in which they were growing. In a healthy eco-system there are various controls that keep pest infestations, bacteria and disease in check. Though invasive and parasitic organisms are always present in the garden, as long as the total organism of the garden is in good health and balance we don’t have a problem, because potentially harmful elements are kept under control. This overall health of the eco-system and the integrity of nutrient and mineral content in the soil determine a plant’s ability to withstand and fend off damaging organisms and elements. These conditions also determine the nutritional value of edible plants. If, however, the protective, nurturing components become in short supply, the plants can develop vulnerability to the many harmful factors that may be present, such as pest infestation, viral problems, fungal and bacterial damage, root damage, and other forms of weakening. A plant, like a human being, contains within its genes and within its environment, the power to withstand many external assaults on its health and vitality. Over a prolonged period of sustained neglect and abuse, however, this inner power to heal becomes weakened. At this 7

moment, the plant is at a threshold and, without active intervention by the gardener to nourish its vital energy, will weaken and die. The main thing for the healer to bear in mind with this garden analogy is that, with an active strategy, the gardener can still save the plant at a late stage of illness, reversing the malevolent cycle of health and nurturing it into a benevolent one. It has been my experience that, with proper nutrition and care, severely weakened human bodies can come back from the brink too. We can take the same approach when looking at the initial onset and progressive spread of disease in the human body. Ideally, and under appropriate circumstances—such as access to healthy, natural food, a non-toxic environment, and an active lifestyle—the parents will produce a child who will be born into the world with a relatively clean bill of health and strong capacity to adapt. If the mother has consumed wholesome foods during pregnancy, those nutrients derived will strengthen the life force and immunity of herself and the baby. The mother’s placenta is designed as an amazing filter, allowing nutrients to enter but also keeping toxins away from the fetus. Tragically, we are now seeing penetration across the placenta of various toxins like dioxin (estrogenic), lead and carbon monoxide1. If the parents’ combined seed (DNA) was strong and vibrant, the baby emerges with a healthy amount of what the Chinese medical system refers to as Jing, a term used to describe our genetic inheritance (the closest western equivalent term being “essence.”) Jing is our source of deep vitality, a battery we want to keep charged for future use, or a savings account, a storehouse of energy we can draw on later in life and in unique moments of stress or endurance. Jing also describes the integrity of the child’s eventual reproductive capacity, the seed that she/he will pass on to insure health in future generations. Pre-natal Jing is determined by the combined strength and health of the parents’ seed; post-natal Jing is 8

then determined by the degree of emotional, familial and nutritive nourishment the child receives during its formative years. These factors determine the level of health, adaptability, resilience and vitality the person will experience during her/his lifetime. If this seed’s strength and the baby's nurturing care are sufficient, the adult will have a strong constitution and be able to withstand harmful agents and conditions fairly effectively throughout life. Whether this person grows up to accomplish great things or achieves little to nothing is greatly determined by the amount of Jing stored in the body. It is my observation that in the United States, people seem to have increasingly less Jing essence; we are draining our batteries, our “get up and go.” Jing can be drained from the body through many factors, including insufficient or deficient nutrition, childbirth, stress, anxiety, anger, illness, injury, exposure to toxins, drug use, and excess sexual activity. These sources of neglect can weaken a person’s vitality, making him/her appear older than their years. Changes in technology are affecting the environment and bringing us closer to the threshold. The average person in an industrialized culture is enduring increased oxidative stress from free radicals and other toxic factors. It is thought that approximately 10,000 free radicals slam into each cell in our bodies daily. It has been further posited that we lose up to sixty percent of our body’s vital water reserves as we get older, due to our inability to absorb polluted, molecularly distorted water. It has also been theorized that we are receiving harmful frequencies- from cell phones and other electronic devices; such frequencies are suddenly all around us, and research shows that our bodies respond to them as foreign elements; they can act as neuro-endocrine disruptors and cause cellular damage*2. Yet, despite this internal onslaught, the surface immune system, which the Chinese call Wei Chi, masks this accelerated internal aging.

Wei Chi is a branch of the immune system that operates just below the surface of the skin. It is the first line of our bodies’ defense against offensive forces of nature, and air- and water-borne toxins. This protective Wei Chi circulates in the subcutaneous tissues and helps provide suppleness and adaptive energy to the skin, and therefore makes it more difficult for the common person to acknowledge the internal damage they’re experiencing from the toxicity of our era. Why is this happening? Why are we experiencing accelerated internal aging? Because, due to excessive processing and overcooking, we don’t have enough live enzymes and antioxidants in our food to counteract the external factors. Unsound agricultural practices and the addition of hormones and preservatives ruin the integrity of our food, leading to metabolic deficiencies and imbalance in our cholesterol and blood sugar ratios. Inadequate nutrition allows stress to eat away at our adrenals, and fosters other problems like increased autoimmune inflammatory problems and digestive micro flora imbalances. Dr. Bernard Jensen wrote that most disease begins in the colon, so by rational deduction, we must interpret that the precursors of this disease would be found in the quality of food we are ingesting. This condition of the human body could be compared to the poor soil in a neglectful farmer’s garden yielding weak plants. The loss of Jzwg-supporting components in the garden soil will lead to plants that produce inherently weak seeds, from which grow new plants that are therefore subject to pest infestation or, at the extreme level of dis-empowerment, infertile. In other words, a weak plant produces a weak seed, a phenomenon that, if widespread, could lead to species extinction. We can see this dilemma more apparently in animals. Wild animals don’t seem to be nearly as highly afflicted with cancer and arthritis as those domesticated pets that are fed a monoculture diet of beef byproducts and bone meal, with its high ratios of chemicals, 10

hormones and antibiotics. The quality of fats in wild animals is said to be much healthier than in domesticated animals. Studies showed wild animal fat to be mainly composed of polyunsaturated lipids, or “structural” fats as opposed to the saturated, “junk” fats found in hormone-fed, artificially fattened domestic animals3. Health authorities don’t want to take a sober look at the rampant increase of degenerative disease in our society, and the fact that people are developing health problems at younger ages. Cancer is appearing in pre-adolescent children. Neurological disorders are rampant among teenagers. Diabetes type II, which was described as “adult onset Diabetes” is afflicting teenagers, and people in general appear to lack a certain “spark.” I watch kids coming out of the neighborhood middle school—far too heavy, lunking along. Where are the mischievous boys? The dancing gait of adolescent girls? The chasing games? That spark in Chinese medicine is called Chi. Chi \s the food that feeds Jing. In my opinion the primary culprit in the diminishment of Chi is poor nutrition, bad food. The foodless food our children are being fed will deliver them nothing but chronic problems, and a weaker seed. Many people are being initiated into a “malevolent cycle of health” from an early age. Health authorities should be gravely concerned, as many of today’s young people may not grow up to maintain a viable work force in our society. Even Dr. Atkins, whose dietary program I don’t suggest following, stated that ancient peoples consumed foods of far superior quality than those being ingested today, and that the general level of health has suffered dramatically since the introduction and widespread use of refined food. His statements imply that had the ancient peoples been consuming refined carbohydrates and sugars, we might not be here today. What does this say about future generations? 11

Still, a young person who is weak can bounce back and reestablish balanced metabolic integrity relatively soon after being initiated into a “benevolent cycle of health”—a term we will apply to any application of nutritional and psycho/spiritual therapies that results in noticeable improvement of health. A young child, provided they inherited a good amount of Jing essence—that is, a life force upon which to draw—can endure a certain level of neglect without causing too much damage to the whole organism.- Preventive medicine in the form of nutrition and emotional support can help the young person overcome an unhealthful upbringing. In other words, a little deep nutrition can help strengthen the weak child the same way an application of fish emulsion and compost will produce a growth spurt in a previously weak and stunted plant. But we must act soon to re-establish better nutritional guidelines and programs for our children, as well as reduce exposure to toxicity. Recent studies conducted by Dr. Mae Wan-Ho of the Institute of Science in Society in London, are finding that successive generations of dietary deficiencies, handed down from parent to children, combined with exposure to carcinogenic, hormonedisrupting chemicals and the unknown dangers of consuming genetically modified foods may result in mutations and/or other serious damage to the genome in the family line. It would be extremely difficult to re-establish genealogical meta-stasis afterward. Dr. Wan-Ho is a leading researcher in the field of‘genotoxicity’.1 Many of us are still running on the bank of Jing we inherited from our great grandparents who, for the most part, lived closer to the Earth, and with fewer chemicals in their food and atmosphere. We are benefiting from their Jing, but have now arrived at a threshold where we are witnessing the fourth and fifth generations of junk food eaters. Some families have handed down nutrient deficient lifestyles, and these children are inheriting very weak Jing. Their candle isn’t very 12

bright, they will not comprise a strong and dependable labor pool, and they may soon represent a heavy burden on the healthcare establishment and society at large. • Due to the many alluring sources of poor nutrition, we are starting to see the beginnings of a spiral downward in the health of many American people by their mid-twenties. If these people don’t start to use stronger preventive medicine, primarily from antioxidants in live foods, they may start to accelerate their descent into poor health, eventually reaching the threshold, and we will see signs portending onset of degenerative disease. Should they pass below this threshold without attempting to turn their fortunes around, they will cross over the line into self-disempowerment. Out of touch with their body’s cry for help, manifested through • repeated recurrences of acute symptoms, these individuals may be unaware of the degree of their ill health and may be unable to empower themselves to do any thing about it. At this point, the healer has to step in and help them with serious medicine; as the gardener brings kelp tea, fish emulsion, and manure compost, so the healer bears high-antioxidant, immune supporting, cleansing, pro-biotic;alkaline, concentrated sources of nutrition and nurturing. Here is an example of the various stages of health and vitality of an organism, with the threshold occupying the middle, separating states of empowerment and dis-empowerment:

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Empowerment Potential transformation Optimal health Abundance Vitality Equilibrium Complacency Lethargy Negligence Carelessness Volatility ________________________ Threshold____ Dis-empoiverment Vulnerability Subjectivity Chaos Dis-equilibrium Discomfort T urmoil Pain Disease Death Potential species extinction 14

Benevolent Cycles of Health We will discuss throughout this book the many aspects of initiating and maintaining benevolent cycles of health, a term used by the Chinese to describe noticeable improvement in a person’s health, or a pattern which leads the body/mind into wholistic wellness. Our objective is to explore as thoroughly as these pages will allow, how we may promote such trends, and through natural means, safely steer a person into a life cycle which will lead to abundant health. So let us observe in the graph below a full life span of a ficticious individual who by mid life had descended into ill health, and then had the great fortune of coming under the assistance of a healer, doctor, or other healing modality, where a benevolent health cycle was initiated. We will examine a graph depicting approximately 70 years of this person’s lifetime. Potential Transformation of species Good health

Birth

Disease Possible death Potential extinction of species

Here we see our test person was born into this life with a relatively healthy level of Jing. He or she has inherited a decent constitution, as the point at birth is well above the center threshold line. For sake of this discussion, we will hypothesize that this person has neglected his/her health through various means; we could assume common forms of neglect were at play, such as poor dietary habits leading to deficiencies in metabolism and the build up of waste materials and poisons in the body. Maybe this person had lived a stationary lifestyle, not getting sufficient sunshine and physical exercise. Smoking and excessive alcohol consumption could figure into this person’s harmful habits, and of course, the scourge of stress, which is so prevalent in our left-brain/rational-mind dominated society. By his/her SO’s, this person’s initial state of health has run down until he/she has degenerated to a state below the threshold. This is characterized by daily distresses, uncomfortable ailments, inconvenient quirks that inhibit ease of movement and peace of mind. The person may experience increasing frequency of colds, fever, flu, aches and pains, stiffness of joints, cloudy headed thinking, forgetfulness, skin abrasions, poor metabolism of fat and water, digestive disturbances, irregular sleep patterns, etc. The duration of this period greatly depends on the genetic inheritance from the parents and lifestyle habits of the individual and the family. The individual has progressively fallen into a state of dis-empowerment, where he/she is no longer capable of living in intuitive harmony with the body’s biological needs. The template for illness has developed, the body is in a weakened and vulnerable state and the mind is no longer quick and perceptive enough to conjure a way of reversing the downward momentum. Once our sample individual has dropped below the threshold into dis-empowerment and disease, we see that something has brought 16

the individual into contact with a healing message. A healer/lightworker/doctor has come into the person’s life and offered strategies to initiate a benevolent cycle of health. If the healer had not intervened at that time, this person might no longer have had the power to turn things around and most likely would have spiraled into chronic degenerative disease. I also imply in this drawing that the road to rejuvenation can be quickly established and a person’s level of vitality, greatly and noticeably enhanced within a short time after initiating certain comprehensive healing modalities. This hypothetical lightworker, who offered some wise advice and turned the dire situation around, may not necessarily be a professional or possess deep knowledge about health conditions. This point is key to understanding the essence of this book. When we live in a state of perception above the threshold, our mind-body connection—the “abdominal brain,” a term that describes how our lifestyle habits and diet can define our cravings, and the higher mind—can maintain communication about the body’s needs for health. We should all strive to maintain this stage of health. Mv First Threshold My own experience with near-death greatly shaped my life and my beliefs about thresholds. It took place when I was 6 years old. I was playing with toys with a friend at his house. His sister was observing our shenanigans from across the room. My friend disappeared upstairs while I continued rolling around a miniature earth moving truck. I suddenly noticed the sister looming from behind the couch. Her eyes suddenly got big and she said loudly, “I’m gonna catch you!” She came running toward me at a gallop. We had originally entered through a big sliding glass door in the rear of his house, which I thought we’d

left open. I bolted to run out; but somebody had closed the door. The glass shattered. I stepped back and turned toward the sister. She shrieked in horror as the blood spurted into my eyes, turning everything I saw red. I looked down and saw a massive red pool of my blood building on the floor at my feet. I looked at my hand; it was nearly severed at the wrist, only being held on by bone and a small bit of skin on the upper side. A massive gash on my right side had saturated all my clothes and I stood there helpless. Oddly, I felt no pain. The sister was in shock on the floor in front of me. Their mother came bursting onto the stairway from above and screamed. She disappeared again for what seemed like an eternity, then came running franticly down the stairs carrying a bunch of coarse burlap oval throw mats, like foot mats you’d put under a door, which she started trying to hang on me, but they kept falling right back off. She eventually abandoned that project and scooped up her child, who was going into convulsions. They ran upstairs, leaving me standing there again for what seemed another eternity. I stood still in the same place, for what seemed like over a half hour. Eventually, my Godmother, Libby emerged through the glass door with an ambulance crew. They carefully placed me in the stretcher. Years later, Libby told me that when they came in I said, “I think I need a bandaid.” The ambulances in those days in Kentucky were usually station wagon cars; the windows on mine were clear glass, not painted over. The car was red. When we took off, I was lying on my back and could see the bare winter trees on the roadsides going by as we sped along, siren blaring. Still, I felt absolutely no pain, but everything in my vision turned yellow, then gold; it was a surreal vision of the yellow/gold leafless trees going past. Suddenly I felt a sense of peace, very profound calm. I was dying and I knew it. I said aloud, “Goodbye world,” and drifted into a yellow-gold vacuum. 18

In what seemed to be less than a heartbeat, I found myself waking up. I was lying on a table in a room; a white-frocked man was smiling and looking down at me. He said “Hello,” and I nodded. He said, “How do you want your arm positioned? I’m going to put on a cast, so you won’t be able to move it for quite a while.” I placed my hand where I wanted and they put a big cast up to my shoulder. This guy’s name is Dr. Klienard. He is one of the most renowned hand and wrist surgeons in the world, and he just happened to be in that little hospital in Louisville, Kentucky when I came in. My parents later told me Dr. Kleinard had initially told them while I was in the operating room that I had a less than 1% chance of living, and if I did survive, I probably wouldn’t have use of my right hand. Some would call my survival “a miracle,” but I know I was spared for a reason. My life has been for the living ever since. I quickly developed deep interest in art and music, had a driving desire to play many musical instruments, and my subsequent life has been one of greatly fulfilling adventure. I know beyond doubt that the reason I am still here is to be an inspiration to others. One of the most rewarding facets of working for others as a force of the light is to watch that spark emerge as a new-found wellness in a previously gray, sick, lifeless and disconnected person. You have the pleasure of witnessing the reversal of what was a downward spiral into sickness in that first beaming smile of wonder and inspiration, when they come to believe they can heal. Sometimes, unfortunately, it can take a crisis of life threatening magnitude to awaken a person to not only our mortality, but also our degree of “livingness.” I have seen many people emerge from these dire experiences to live much fuller, vibrant lives. When they discover the hope that their lives can be abundant and adventurous, it’s a beautiful sight to observe, and I have been blessed to have witnessed it many times. 19

Chapter 2 Initiation: My wake up call I was thrown abruptly into the world of healing in the fall of 1994 when my father called and asked me to come home immediately. When he offered to pay half my plane fare, I became concerned. It was unlike him; he was one of those big chivalrous guys, full of life and good humor, who played hard and worked himself to the bone but never was enough of an asshole to actually get people to pay him in full for his excruciating labors. What money he did make he tended to spend on flamboyant adventures. I’d hear from him once in a while from a ski resort in Colorado, or from the deck of a boat on the Ohio River with his pals. I was a lot like him, and in our pursuit of colorful experiences we rarely saw each other, a circumstance exacerbated by the fact that we were on opposite sides of the country. I always thought fondly of him, but most of the time we were both too busy living life to remember to check in with each other. So when he called and told me I needed to come home now, I wondered, what could it be? Dad was the toughest guy on earth; he couldn’t be sick. I figured this was just his way of finally getting me to come home and hang out with him. My brother wanted to come too, and we bought our plane tickets to Kentucky. Barry had known dad was sick but hadn't told me. I’d been aware he’d had an operation for prostate cancer a few years back, but had believed the medical authorities when they said they’d gotten all the cancer out and every thing was fine. On the flight Barry warned me that Dad wasn’t doing too well. We landed in Louisville and headed out to dad’s place, where we found the house unlocked, as usual, but empty. Soon the car pulled up 20

and dad’s wife, R., got out. When she helped dad out of the car, Barry and I were dumbfounded. Even though he was trying desperately to greet us with a chipper attitude, our former powerhouse of a father— whom everyone in the family assumed would outlive us all—was reduced to a gray, sunken frame. His life force was all but gone. Barry ran into the house and I heard him calling mom, crying, saying dad was dying. R. and I got Dad upstairs and lay him on the bed. R., who was a nurse and had met Dad at the hospital when he’d had the prostate surgery, had been taking care of him for two years. She informed me that his condition had worsened; they hadn’t gotten all the cancer and it had progressed into his bones. He was in the final stages of bone cancer. They had gone to the hospital before we arrived to get him some blood so that he would have energy to greet us in his usual magnanimous style, but it turned out he’d developed a slight fever and, due to the higher temperature in his body, had been unable to receive any blood. As he had no immune system left—a result of the extensive chemotherapy, radiation and antibiotics they’d been giving him—they believed he would not be able to fend off this fever. They’d told R. he would not live through the night. I sat stunned, watching my emaciated father as he slept. He was too weak to cough out the phlegm rattling in his throat. I didn’t know what to do. I was not familiar with any workable alternative health strategies, but Barry and I decided in desperation to rush down to a local health food market and natural pharmacy, pick some brains there, and find out if we could help him. Barry mentioned that he’d heard juicing was healthy so we scoured the bookshelf in the store and quickly located one called Juicing for Life by Cherie Calbom5. I read the introduction, in which Ms. Calbom stated that she felt her life had been saved by drinking fresh dark green vegetable juices. She described fighting off a presumed fatal illness by taking these juices 21

daily. We bought the book and I bought some shark cartilage, which I had read was helpful with cancer. I don’t think I have ever “power read” a book with as much intense focus as this one. It contained juice recipes for serious degenerative diseases, and dark green vegetables were the most common component. The more I read, the more clear it seemed that dark green leafy vegetables like parsley, cilantro, spinach, beet greens, dandelion greens, and barley greens contained, the sort of “silver bullet” we were looking for. Barry and I rushed to the grocery and bought spinach, parsley, carrot, and some green apples, which the author said would make the juice more palatable for the squeamish tongue. Green apples, the book said, were preferable to red apples, having less concentrated sugars. Luckily, Dad had a juicer so we rushed home. When we started making the juice, we didn’t know how concentrated the nutrients were but the liquid looked pretty potent. I tried some and found it surprisingly good, but even so, to be safe we decided to give him one cup. R. didn’t like the look of this green fluid and thought us California crazies were up to some harmful mischief. She, with her medical background, didn’t want us to give it to him. The whole way up the stairs she claimed he’d never drink it, as she’d had trouble getting him to take any food for a while, but we persisted. Dad was sleeping. We carefully woke him enough to drink the fluid. We tipped his head up and started to carefully pour the mixture into his mouth, half expecting him to not be able to drink it. But drink it he did, with a big gulp and then another. He mumbled, “Man, that’s good. What is that?” R. couldn’t believe it. He drank it all down and asked for another. R. was flustered and seemed to react as if fearing I would usurp his attention. Barry and I ran downstairs in exhilaration and made another cup, this time adding one capsule of shark cartilage. He 22

drank it with gusto, but sensed something funny with the slight fishy smell. R. claimed he would never drink it if we told him there was shark cartilage in there, so we never told him. Looking back on it, she was the squeamish one, for he was in a state where his body wanted real nourishment. He soon went into a more restful sleep than before. R. paced the floor and Barry and I went downstairs to get a breather. Later in the evening we checked on dad and found him in the grip of fever. Barry couldn’t bear it and went downstairs. I heard him calling mom again. R. was still pacing, and all I could think to do was put my arms around him, praying aloud, “Dad, don’t die!” I held him close and prayed for what seemed like an eternity as he shook and wheezed, unable to cough out the clear phlegm in his throat. He was burning up, the sheets soaked. Eventually, the fever peaked, and his gasping struggle subsided into a calm state with normal steady breathing. I could feel his abrupt shift from battle mode to calm, and I looked up to find him cooling off, still alive. R. came closer and examined him. “I can’t believe it, his fever broke! His immune system kicked in!” As a nurse she found this incredible. “It’s a miracle!” she exclaimed. I didn’t know what to think, except that I was exhausted. Barry and I went to Mom’s place; she had stayed surprisingly calm, even though she could not go see him, which must have pained her. We all went to sleep. The next morning we headed to Dad’s place and some of his pals came over. They were a bunch of playboy types, but they had good hearts and had been coming around a lot to try and help out. They told us flamboyant stories about Dad’s escapades, insisting he was king on the ski slopes (not true, but it sounded good) and spinning tales of camping in the backwoods of Lake Cumberland. They also paid tribute to his hard working side, yelling at the concrete guys when they got the slump wrong, changing a flat on the inside dual tire 23

of the step van without a jack. And my favorite tall tale, but probably true: that he’d whooped Mohammed Ali’s butt as a kid. I told them we were going to fix him up and soon he’d be on his feet and ready for some more skiing. I just knew it in my soul and they believed me wholeheartedly. His friends were very positive all the way and were sure he'd kick it. Mom and Barry struggled with indented ideas. They were flat out shocked and despondent that dad was going to die. I kept my spirits up, and exclaimed, “Dad’s going to be fine!” Barry told me that he had believed and supported Dad all along when he said he’d beat this, but at this late stage, my brother felt nothing could be done to save him. Back at Dad’s the next morning, we heard his bell ringing and everybody rushed upstairs to find Dad sitting up in bed. He looked much better than he had the previously day. Dad said, “Man, what did you guys give me? I feel a lot better!” Barry and I were astounded, R. was shocked, and all his pals, who’d come right back that morning to support him, were excited. We ran downstairs and made him another juice, which he drank in a few big gulps. I wasn’t sure about whether we might be overloading him with green food nutrients, or how concentrated the juices were (I later realized we could have given him pints of the stuff daily), so we decided to alternate the green juice with some kind of fruit smoothie. I went to the store and got peaches, strawberries and blueberries. I decided to use Tofu as a thickening agent, as I thought the drink would need to be creamy; and tofu seemed a good alternative to ice cream or milk. It was, to my knowledge, also a protein source, and Dad definitely needed to rebuild some muscle. I took my new recipe home and made a smoothie for dad, again including the shark cartilage. He loved it, but still didn’t like the slightly noticeable fishy smell. Something felt instinctively right about 24

adding the shark cartilage, and I later came across some research that concluded that shark cartilage in laboratory tests had antiangiogenic (preventing cell replication) effect on cancer cells'5. Regardless, he drank it down”. R. started to get mad. I guess she thought I was going to steal away his love and he’d reject all her fatty, sugary food and drugs. She started trying to stuff an antibiotic in his mouth every hour. She went down stairs and prepared for him the most atrocious meal I have ever seen combined on one plate: ham, Velveeta cheese and chocolate pie! All in one meal, administered to a sick man by a nurse! These experiences with her were to be my first observations of the abysmal lack of nutritional training and dietary knowledge of many conventional medical personnel. It seems like anyone should know this is not the kind of stuff to feed a sick person. But as I soon learned, at the core of many people’s illness is the fact that people choose their food by what their tongue craves, not their stomach. In her love for him R. was trying to please Dad’s palette with sweet, fatty, creamy things, but she’d been inadvertently killing him with her love. This I don’t consider her fault. The blame should be placed on the system that didn’t teach her any better way. I have met some doctors and nurses who have a grasp on the importance of nutrition, but current medical education doesn’t place enough emphasis on dietary training. Dad couldn’t eat that stuff anyway, and he started to get better so quickly it was astounding. The shine was coming back into his eyes and the color into his cheeks. His pals said they hadn’t seen him like this for more than six months and to their credit, they were the most encouraging of everyone around him. My older brother Dave arrived about this time, and was also very encouraging. But my family still held a somber essence around the dinner table; they believed I might x Shark cartilage is not a sustainable supplement and should be used only under dramatic circumstances.

be setting myself up for a big crash and that I should be more reasonable. After all, people just don’t recover from these kinds of things, do they? But when I looked in dad’s eyes and saw that spark, I knew he was coming back strong. What I didn’t realize at the time was that by giving him fresh green juice we were providing him with live enzymes, nature’s catalysts of metabolic activity. The juice contained minerals and alkaline forming cell food (cancer cells cannot survive or replicate in an alkaline environment), nourishment which had been severely lacking due to years of nutrient deficiency, and his emaciated body appeared to be having an amazingly positive response to it. On the third day my dad flushed all his drugs down the toilet and exclaimed, “Man, this natural stuff is the way to go.” This is when R. decided to take things into her own hands, and rented a convalescent bed from a local hospice. The woman from the hospice came over to meet with us and talk about dad’s needs. The second she came in the door I could see she was wearing this “I’m so sorry” sort of look and immediately started talking to us in this manner as if she were consoling us at the end of his life. R., the hospice nurse and I went upstairs where dad lay sleeping peacefully, his breathing clear with no rattling phlegm. They gave me a book about letting go of a loved one, which I glanced through briefly and observed the contents to be totally negative. It was all about the sadness of the situation, the inevitability of death and our inability to do anything about it. This book didn’t even attempt to provide solutions; I was about to explode. I finally said to the women, “Have you ever heard of juicing?” She and R. looked at each other with the subtlest expression of a sneer and I knew R. had warned her about the freaky son from California and his witch doctor potions that surely should have killed dad more than helped him. They said, “Honey, you can’t help him.” 26

I pointed to his cheeks, which had developed bright pink patches and said, “How do you explain that?” They both seemed shocked as they surveyed his obviously pink cheeks. His skin tone had been lifeless and grey when I first had seen him two days prior. They had been in such programmed denial that they hadn’t noticed the bright coloration. I went down stairs hoping they’d forgo the bed for a few days to see what happened. R. seemed to respect me a little more after that episode, and I showed her a great lentil stew recipe that didn’t require meat. I said, “These lentils are an excellent protein source without the saturated fat.” She got it. I thought all was well; we were starting to get along and I really had to get back to L.A. On the fourth day dad got out of bed on his own, albeit, frail and skinny. I helped him take a shower and rub himself down with baking soda, which I’d learned from Edgar Cayce was very effective in helping leach radiation poisoning out of the body. His Native American half blood skin tone was coming back and it seemed like his hair was thicker too. He was totally alive again. We took a walk around the block to get some sun and his buddies were ecstatic that he was outside for another adventure. They could hardly wait to get him back out on the ski slope in Colorado. We got back to the house and dad went up to nap, climbing the stairs unassisted. In a few minutes I heard a commotion at the door and came down to find some men in green smocks moving an ugly, massive metal bed into the living room. The thing was a monstrosity that reeked of death, complete with I.V. bag and blood pressure gauging equipment. I couldn’t believe she was going through with it. I wanted to take these people upstairs and show them he didn’t need their death equipment because he wasn’t going away anytime soon, but I just went outside and fumed instead. 27

Later that evening, Barry, Dave and I sat on dad’s bed and the four of us had the best discussion we’d ever had. Well into the night we reminisced. I got to tell dad all the things I’d always wanted to tell him, but had never realized the importance of until that moment. I got to tell him how much I admired and loved him, even though I was a screwball as a kid and caused him a lot of trouble. I hadn’t meant to throw his boat keys into the lake, it just happened! I was sorry I’ wrecked his car. He just smiled and said “Que sera sera.” Later he started telling us he wanted us to take any of his possessions that we wanted. I said, “Dad, you aren’t going anywhere, you’re staying right here with us so don’t talk like that.” Now he looked at me like he was in denial. I knew I had him close to a point where he could re-gain his self-empowerment but he still wasn’t convinced; we were not there yet. I had to get him over the line into a state of health where he could fend for himself. R. began acting a little more congenial and implied she was willing to believe what we were doing was good, and that she’d keep going with our juice therapy. Yet, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving until I knew he would make the juices for himself. It dawned on me during later studies that we had gotten him near a threshold where he had transgressed sickness just barely enough to begin entering into a state of self-empowerment. On the fifth day I had to leave. We fed him some of the lentil stew, of which he ate a roaring portion. I came downstairs to find R. making a pot of her own lentil stew for him, heavily overcooked and complete with a massive ham hock bobbing in the center. Although I was not yet a strict vegetarian, it struck me as dangerous for my weak father to be fed ham. I later found that my intuition was right, reading in The China Study: “Dietary [meat and dairy]] protein proved to be so powerful in its effect that we could turn on and turn off cancer growth simply by changing the level consumed.”71 was worried. I knew he 28

couldn’t handle this, but I had no evidence to prove it at the time. I and, it seemed, most Americans had no education on whether meat protein consumption could be implicated in the development of cancer. R. informed me that the doctors wanted him to come to the hospital for tests. They obviously wanted to try and figure out what had happened. I’d figured the doctors would be scratching their heads. I’d naively assumed they might even determine that whatever I did was worth looking into and that they would convince R. to stay on the juice therapy for further monitoring. I hadn’t yet registered that doctors who adopted a therapy such as mine would find it hard to pay their bills. I wish I could have stayed one more day to see the results of that test. Dad was heading off to the hospital, much of his stamina apparently back; he looked pretty darn good as he walked unattended toward the car. Looking back, we’d almost gotten him over the threshold. I said, “Dad, will you keep taking the juices every day?” He replied, “Oh yeah, I’m convinced about this natural stuff - I’ll do it!.” And R. said “Yea, I believe you now, ou go on home and we’ll keep giving him the juices.” It seemed a pretty strong affirmation. I felt good. Although I had not yet incorporated the concept of thresholds into my philosophy, I felt that he was possibly over the line of danger and able to fend for himself. We may have gotten him initiated into a benevolent cycle of health. I went back to L.A. feeling fairly good, although with some apprehension. Something itched at me that we hadn’t gotten all the way to the safe zone. Looking back, I admit it was a wishful niavity that we could swing him from the brink into a modicum of selfsufficiency in less than a week, but I had to keep my optimistic attitude all the same, to continue hoping he'd make it and that she’d follow through with her promised help. 29

I returned to Los Angeles a changed person. My head was swimming on the plane, the first chance I’d had to mull over what had been happening in those five days. How could it be? Were we really bringing him back from the dead without utilizing the technology and experience of conventional medicine? With something as simple as juices of green vegetables accessible from any corner grocery? I must have been fooling myself, and figured it was the prayers that brought him around, for there was at least a little published documentation on prayer healing. Who was I to think I could come up off the fly with a nutritional therapy that could help alleviate advanced bone cancer? I certainly wasn’t about to make any such claims; after all, that could get me in trouble with the medical big shots, and if they came around wanting technical details I’d sound about as educated and experienced as a pile of mashed potatoes. I really didn’t know, but decided to do a little research on the issue. During the flight I read Cherie Calbom’s book again, more slowly. She seemed positive about the juice’s ability to help, although of course, she couldn’t make any claims either. I figured there must be other books on the subject and decided to inquire as soon as I got back. I also got in a discussion with a really sweet stewardess on the plane who, after hearing my story, told me about barley greens, a product you can get at health food stores, which I came later to find very helpful for the average person as a general health tonic. After arriving home in L.A., I decided to take a close look at myself. Staring into the mirror, I saw a pretty average 39-year-old guy with telltale signs of coffee and sugar induced insomniac nights, ruddy cheeks from a little too much alcohol and the wear and tear of hundreds of 4:00 a.m. donuts. Other than that, I had tried to eat food I thought was healthy (later finding my diet was not all that healthy!) It seemed obvious I needed to do some serious work on myself. I looked into our family genealogy and learned that I had inherited strong pre30

natal Jing. I came from farm raised folk, who had lived within the natural world, as far back as my family’s genealogy went, roughly into the 1850’s in central Kentucky, and through to my parents. They had been corn fed natural folk, and I had inherited that pureness which would help explain why I’d been relatively unscathed by the bad habits of my youth. Still, I’d treated myself pretty badly and-it showed. I could see a difference between my general level of health and vitality and that of Dad and my uncles at the same age; they just seemed more manly and strong than me. In fact, my grandparents appeared in old photos to be super vibrant folks during their younger years. When I thought back, Dad had treated himself abysmally for a number of years too. He had a good dose of what I call the “Invincibility gene,” a trait I believe is genetic with men, and makes them think they can just go and go and go, without any consequences, until they completely break down. He’d always had an attraction for rough dirty work, and while in some ways it kept him in shape, he didn’t think much about internal damage from his occupation until acute symptoms arose. After the divorce from his second wife, Dad had gone into a long fit of depression. He’d tended to eat meals consisting of white bread and grape jam. Barry thought that period was probably when the cancer began to set in, between the constant stress and depression, nutrient-devoid food, and his toxic occupation as a general contractor, it made sense that he’d finally succumbed. For years he practically wallowed in carbolic acid, paint solvents and myriad harmful chemicals. I had too while working with him during my teens on construction sites where we would do Gunnite work, which involved building vertical concrete walls by shooting concrete from a pressurized hose onto a wire meshed wall. Back in L.A., out walking, I started looking around, noting that few people really looked healthy. Everyone seemed to have something 31

a little off about them. Their shapes and way of walking had irregularities, their skin was not radiant, their hair lacked luster, and their proportions were out of whack. I thought, “Could I have possibly looked like that, and not known it?” I decided if I was going to do anything else with my newfound knowledge to help others, I was going to have to do a little personal housecleaning first. I decided to start juicing immediately. All I owned at the time was a blender, which would have to do while I saved for a juicer. My initial research revealed that I should use only organically grown fruits and vegetables, as they had more inherent nutrients and no harmful chemicals. I shopped for my greens at the local health food grocery. Many people say they don’t buy organic because of the extra expense, but I had no problem paying a little extra. After all, it still wasn’t much money for raw produce compared to what people pay for processed packaged meals. And my body deserved a couple of extra dollars invested in it to save on possible hospital bills later on.. The health food store offered lots of goodies in the produce section. I decided to expand my juicing bouquet with dandelion, beets, beet greens, kale, apple, burdock root, carrots and grapes. At home, I washed the bounty and blended a portion with some water on high speed for a few minutes, then strained and squeezed out the fluid through a cloth. The potion was wonderful. I had my “Aladdin’s Lamp.” I started juicing every day and immediately noticed a big difference in my energy, attitude, and appearance. Within days my friends started making comments, “Whadda you been doin’, man? You look all shiny and stuff.” One woman with whom I worked in music, a great cellist who daily drank an herbal potion given to her by a Chinese doctor, commented that I appeared as if I had “deep health.” This was the kind of verification I was looking for to convince me 32

there had been something good going on with Dad’s juicing program. I had seen that radiance in him and it wasn't an illusion. I was ecstatic. Had I discovered a secret? I decided to go to a bookstore and do some further research. Heading down to the Bodhi Tree bookstore, a Los Angeles center for alternative health and metaphysical information, I discovered John Heinemann’s book on juicings. I read a wonderful book by Morris Krok, Fruit, The Food and Medicine for Man', on the benefits of a raw fruit diet, but I wasn’t ready for that. Up until this point, I had encountered only individuals from outside the professional medical establishment who were writing these kinds of books on nutritional health, but my search for more authoritative sources soon proved successful. I came upon the extensive nutritional work of Dr. Bernard Jensen. His book on juicing, Foods that Heal10, quickly revealed that Dr. Jensen was a true pioneer in the nutritional world and was responsible for many advancements in holistic and nutritional healing. There he stated; “The body changes according to what we eat. It will adapt to a salad, it will mold to junk foods- sugary foods, fatty foods - it will mold to white vinegar, wine vinegar, or to apple cider vinegar. The bad news is that your body molds to these things, and it does the best it can with the foods that you give it. The good news is that when you change your diet to a proper, balanced way of eating, your whole body changes with it.”11 He, along with Edgar Cayce, had pioneered the use of Iridology (eye retina examination) as a useful map for diagnosing illness in the body. He was also one of the first western medical pioneers in colonics (a therapy in which the colon is flushed with warm water or other liquids) and wrote a book on the subject. He was also a specialist in 33

digestive flora and the importance of maintaining alkalinity in the body. But it was Dr. Jensen’s juice therapy that appeared to be his passion and his books quickly verified that my bumbling, desperate experiment with Dad was remarkably close to his equally successful therapies with many patients. Of course, he was never allowed by law to make claims of curing anybody with his natural remedies, but I could read between the lines that his therapies were quite effective throughout his roughly fifty years of nutritional work. Many severely ill people had visited his clinic in Escondido and walked out with a new lease on life. I then poured through books by Arnold Ehret, the great western pioneer on fasting1*, who claimed that we could completely eliminate mucous buildup in the body through diet and that once accomplished, albeit, not without great effort, we could experience a radiance of health never remotely imagined. I read the work of Dr. Henry Beiler13, doctor to many celebrities like Greta Garbo, the silent film star who lived a very long life. Dr. Beiler’s favorite therapy was a kind of zucchini broth. His reports on studies restricting sugar and ice cream on rural Southern children during the 1920’s is very insightful. Perhaps the foremost figure in the juicing world was Dr. Norman Walker, a prominent doctor in the early 1900’s who lived healthily for 110 years. His book Raw Vegetable Juices'4 is the most indispensable book on the subject. He is the first that I know of to write so extensively about the importance of live food enzymes and, though he first started doing his work as early as the 1930s, no subject or research included in the book has been refuted since. In fact, all information in Drs. Walker and Jenson’s extensive literature has only been verified over time and by subsequent research. Unfortunately, most of their findings on methods of maintaining sound health have gone unheeded by modern medicine. 34

Dr. Paul Bragg was another great pioneer in the nutritional and holistic health field. There is a story15 that in his 80’s, Dr. Bragg invited the world’s greatest athletes of that time to join him in a walk across Death Valley on a midsummer’s day. Many athletes took up the doctor’s challenge, with not a single one except Dr. Bragg making it all the way across. The story goes that the doctor camped alone on the other side of the valley that night, and then walked back the next day! All of these men who were the great doctors of their day lived long, healthy, vital lives and significantly improved the quality of life of tens of thousands, possibly millions of people. After reading these works and others, I was convinced without a doubt that juicing was a form of healing that was well established and which anyone could employ to help themselves and others. One didn’t need to be a clinical nutritionist to understand the benefits. It’s simple biology 101; these plants contain real nutrients necessary for life. Chlorophyll, live enzymes, carotenoids, bioflavenoids, minerals, vitamins and amino acids, to name a few, are contained in the “blood,” the fluid of the plant locked inside the cellulose.

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Dad s Jutce: (All ingredients organic) Spinach: 2 handfuls or !4 bunch Parsley: 2 handfuls or Vz bunch Carrot: 3 medium size Green Apple: 1 or 2 (small) Shark Cartilage 2 caps, broken open and stirred in It is very beneficial for everyone if you source your ingredients from a local organic grower. Farmer’s markets may be found in many towns and cities, or source a local farmer to buy direct. Wash the ingredients and push through masticating juicer (I used a Champion). It is helpful to push through a small slice of apple with each bunch of parseley and spinach. This will add juice from the apple and help the masticating blade grind the vegetables. Makes approximately 12 ounces juice. More may be taken if one wishes. You may also add beet greens, cucumber, a small amount of dandylion greens, burdock, cilantro, and feel free to get creative. I do not recommend juicing kale, as it contains a phyto-chemical that has been found to adversely affect the Thyroid gland.

The basic spinach, parsley, carrot and apple juice we were giving Dad was loaded with nutrients; his blood deficiency was improved by the high iron content in spinach, which has twice the amount found in most other green leafy vegetables. It is a highly alkaline food, and helped regulate the pH in Dad’s body, countering the over-acidity (a byproduct of the excessive antibiotics he'd used and his historic partaking of the “standard American diet,” which is essentially composed of acid-forming foods which putrefy in the colon.) In addition to the high carotene, vitamins E, K, C, and B and folic acid, spinach has been found by researchers to contain numerous flavenoid antioxidants which function as anti-cancer agents. These antioxidants have been concentrated as extracts and administered to cancer patients with impressive results. It was determined that the spinach extracts had anti-angiogenic (preventing cell replication) effects on cancer cells. A study on women with breast cancer in the 1980’s showed spinach to be very beneficial in helping reduce their symptoms. Two carrots can contain enough retinol carotenes to equal approximately four times the RDI of Vitamin A. Carrots are also high in vitamin K, biotin, B6, potassium and thiamine. Numerous studies have linked carrot consumption with reduced incidence of cancer. In We Can Live ISO Tears, by Mikhail Tombak16, the juice of carrot is said to be very similar to human blood, the only difference being that carrot contains a magnesium atom in its center, and blood, an iron atom. Parsley, a medicine and herb sacred to the Greeks, is high in chlorophyll, a substance almost identical to human hemoglobin, and is extremely safe. Parsley is abundant in trace minerals like zinc and iron, which are essential in building blood and are all too often absent from our processed daily fare. High in flavenoids, vitamin C, and calcium, it also contains volatile oils, which have been shown to have anti-cancer properties. It is a nerve stimulant, yet its alkaline chlorophyll content 37

is more stimulating to the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps reduce adrenaline burnout. It can be used in juice form as an energy drink. No wonder Dad was out of that bed so quick! As was previously mentioned, green apple has less concentrated sugar than red, and lots of pectin, a water-soluble fiber which, when combined with spinach, makes a fantastic bowel cleanser. It is a blood purifier and helps the body absorb iron and calcium. I was far more on track with Dad than I had realized. It was the rawness of the juice, the enzymes of which Dr. Walker wrote so fondly, that Dad’s body was responding to so enthusiastically. By cooking food humans have historically sought to soften the tough cellular structure of plants in order to more easily digest the food. But cooking not only softens the cellular structure. Cooking is most usually done at far too high a temperature and the nutritious juices are dried up and many valuable nutrients destroyed. The enzymes, one of the most important components in nature for our health, are killed at temperatures over 130 degrees, and cooking is most always done at much higher temperatures than this. The body must then borrow enzymes from other places in the body, such as those needed to break down fats and regulate blood sugar, pancreatic enzymes and others, and redirect them to the stomach in order to aid digestion.17 It is in the provision of cellulose that juicing becomes so valuable in the health regimen of a weak person. Most juicing machines are referred to as “masticating juicers” because they efficiently chew the plant, breaking down the cellulose and unlocking the pure raw juice from within. This juice, when unlocked from its cellulose casing without having been subjected to heat, yields the abundant nutrients intact; the enzymes are still alive, insuring good digestion. When one drinks this liquid, there is no work involved by the stomach in breaking down bulky food, saving the body valuable 38

energy to devote to more pressing issues: building immunity, detoxifying, and elimination. It also relieves the colon of handling so much bulk, which can address problems such as diverticulitis i (stretching of the colon) and colitis. The body easily absorbs the juice; one can experience immediate uplifting within minutes of drinking one’s first juice. We can see immediate results at a cellular level of regeneration from the antioxidants and nutritional elements, for our bodies are made of these same things. Organisms are most valuable to us when they are living, or when the process of oxidation (cell death) has not been allowed to occur. Thus, it is important to drink the juice fresh (fruit in particular, begins a rapid process of oxidation when the inner pulp and juice are separated from the protective outer skin), within twenty minutes of it being juiced. At the same time, there is a very important place for the plant fibers. We need them as well to act as peristaltic scrub brushes in the intestines. So a vegetable and fruit juice diet should be combined with consumption of whole foods. In addition, such live organisms along with essential fatty acids offer important nutritive support to the fatty muscle called our brain, thus enhancing our ability to think clearly, which in turn allows us to make better decisions to support our health. Once I had honed my philosophy and had the basic rudiments of a system of therapy, I was sure my strategy could work. I finally broke down and called R., though with some apprehension. It had been a couple of weeks and I’d decided to stay out of the picture for a while, as she had obviously been relieved to have me gone from her house. I rang their number and asked, “Hi, R., how’s dad doing?” I got the dreaded answer I was praying I wouldn’t get. “Honey, you can’t help him.” I felt my head getting hot fast, but kept my cool. “Are you giving him the juice?” 39

“Oh yeah. I gave him a carrot apple about a week ago.” Didn’t she realize these were the two components of the juice that contained most sugars, and were the least alkaline? There was nothing I could do. We had clashed fiercely during my stay, and I didn’t want to go back into that. I held my tongue. I asked to talk with him. She put him on the phone and he sounded much weaker than when I’d left him. The excited tone of his voice was definitely gone and the weak slurring had returned, much weaker than before, a sign that things were not going well. I said, “Are you ok, Dad?” “Yeah, everything’s grand, feel like a million bucks.” I could tell by his slurred speech that she had him back on drugs. He was putting me on with his chipper attitude, but I had no choice but to act like I believed him. I got R. back on the phone and pleaded with her to keep him on the juices. I told her I had thoroughly researched the subject of juicing therapy and had the work of many doctors to back me up. I asked her to go to the library and look at those books, to prove it for herself. She must have seen what it had done for him. For cryin’ out loud, she was in the health profession and should be able to detect early signs of healing in a body as clearly as anybody. Why was she ignoring the obvious? I gathered she was just thoroughly programmed not to consider any alternate view. I had sensed the disdain for natural health and a supercilious attitude from her since the beginning, an attitude I later came to observe in many workers in the medical field. I continued my studies and called them about once a week. Each time he sounded more feeble. I got to where I didn’t even ask about the juicing because it was obvious she wasn’t giving it to him. I couldn’t get back there, and if I had, R. and I would probably have torn each other’s heads off. In retrospect, knowing what I know now, I 40

wish I had found a way to go back, but by then maybe it was finally too late. My last conversation with Dad was abysmal for me. I gave up. All in all, he lived six more weeks, due, I’m sure, to the effects of the juice. He died not of cancer, but of starvation (Dr. John Grant of Duke University estimates that 40% or more of cancer patients actually die of malnutrition 18). His esophagus had closed up. His poor body mustn’t have been able to take the crazy conglomerations of sugary, fatty foodless food she was probably trying to feed him, surely out of love - she loved him dearly, and truly wanted to be of help in the only way she knew. I couldn’t hold anything against her, she wasn’t trained in nutrition - nor was I for that matter - who was really right? We both were in our own way. One day she called me hysterical, and I knew he was gone. I like to play drums when I am upset about something. Drumming loud is a way of drowning out my thoughts, at least temporarily. I was wailing away that night in my studio when I felt his presence in the room. It was a strong sensation and I knew he was there. I stopped playing my drums, and the only thing I could think to say was, “Dad, don’t stick around this gross level of consciousness for our sake. We will miss you, but go to the light. Let yourself go from this low frequency place and move into the light, to a higher state of consciousness. You’ve earned the passage to a better place through your great, loving life and your pain. I love you, Dad, and I'll see you soon, on this level or the next.” His presence slowly dissipated; in a way that I felt relieved him of any more burdens here.

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Harold Edmond Thomas Sept. 28, 1925 - Jan 7, 1995 After a little recovery time, I was even more determined to purify myself with juices. The doctors and hospitals had made a lot of money off Dad’s illness and death, and I was going do everything possible to deprive them of the opportunity to bank off me down the line. And I was going to see if I could relieve some other people of that possible fate. I couldn’t justify the medical establishment’s handling of my father’s illness. The sparsely tested synthetic chemical-based form of 42

recent medicine surely had not worked with my dad. The “War on Cancer” brings in many millions each year for research, but people are getting cancer more than ever. Sixty noted physicians gathered at a press conference in 1991 and stated, “The cancer establishment confuses the public with repeated claims that we’re winning the war on cancer. Our ability to treat and cure most cancers has not improved.”19 I remembered Dr. Jensen saying in one of his books; “No therapy or drug known to modern medical science can rebuild tissue that has been damaged by disease or trauma. Food alone can accomplish this feat. It is for this reason that nutrition is an indisputable weapon against disease.”-0 These things were going through my mind as I started to formulate a strategy of healing. I would remain open and pour into the research. I would look for facts to back up what already seemed obvious, that something in our convenience food was lacking, and health problems were increasing. It hit me—the processing of our food was killing it, and us. I quickly observed what was suddenly blatantly apparent all around me, that the human race, and possibly, the planet and all its living eco-systems are facing a threshold.

Chapter 3 Going Out I wanted Dad to know something good was going to come from our loss of him. Though I couldn’t get him back, in this round at least, I could try and make the best of the rest of my life. I well knew I had to continue cleansing myself if I was going to be of any real use in helping others. I couldn’t continue my old lifestyle and sham my way through. I had to be ‘The Light' of healing energy in others lives. So I continued juicing, finding it quite a creative endeavor. I’d come home with my farmer’s market bags bursting with organic Beets and beet greens, Dandylion, Cilantro, Burdock, assorted berries and grapes, yogurt, etc. and make pints of juice in my blender and squeezing it through a cloth. I’d also get weeds out of my yard to juice: Lambs Quarter, Nastercium, Mallow, fresh Dandylion, Fennel, and an occasional Aloe Vera stem. These additions I felt really took the juice into another stratosphere. I sure felt like they were earring me there! And their living abundance seemed to help instill a sense of strength and peace of mind that helped me get through those times. A typical juice I’d make in those days looked something like this;

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My Juice: Beet Greens: 1 bunch Beet: 1 (Do not add frequently, once every two weeks is best) Cilantro: 1 bunch Spinach: 1 bunch Grapes: black, with seeds: 1 handful (optioinal) Blackberries: 1 handful Parseley: xk bunch Dandylion greens: lA bunch Carrot: 4-5 Celery: 4-5 Green Apple: 2 Avocado: (optional, but very beneficial) 1 Yogurt (raw goat’s best) (occasionally) 1 cup Run green vegetables through juicer along with apple slices to add juice and assist the masticator. Blend the Avocado and yoghurt afterwards in blender with the vegetable juice. Keep extra juice refrigerated and don’t try to drink all at once. Take your time salivating the juice (swish in mouth) before swallowing.

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Once I had committed to the idea of becoming a healer, I decided to wait to be approached by a person who needed help instead of seeking out someone. I reasoned that God’s providence would guide me. I decided I would only work on those who were so far gone they’d been written off by the mainstream medical establishment. If a person had exhausted his or her options with the doctors, this person might be open to a different approach, and a simple one at that, just good ol’ Mother Nature in a jar. I believed that they would respond the way Dad had to a natural remedy, for that’s what most of us have been missing. When I would meet them, I would ask, “Do you really want to live?” If they said “yes” with a certain amount of conviction, I w'ould try to help them. It wasn’t long before my first client arrived. A neighbor informed me that a woman downstairs in my apartment building, with whom I was acquainted, had AIDS, and was bedridden. I had seen her many times and known her as a robust woman in her mid-to-late thirties. She w'as African-American: I’ll call her Alvira. I went down to visit her right away. I w as greeted at the door by some friends of hers, probably closely related, who had been taking care of her. Upon walking in, I felt that deathly energy that one’s close friends and family can instill in a room as they attempt to assist and console a relative whom they believe is going to die. I wanted to clear the room of this negative energy, but didn’t know how to go about it. No matter, when we started our healing cycle, I felt assured the room would quickly clear itself. I greeted Alvira. “Hi, there, it's Dean from upstairs. Remember me?” She was not the person I had last seen some four or five months prior. All skin tone was gone from her pale emaciated body, which was practically a skeleton. She looked more deathly than my father when I’d first seen him. Alvira was considered not long for this world. She 46

lay in bed, unable to move or do anything without assistance. The relatives helping her must have been there around the clock to facilitate her needs. “Oh yeah,” she mumbled. I told her I was going to try and fix her up. She was very open to whatever I wanted to try out on her, and remained so throughout the therapy. I asked her if she wanted to live, and I got the “yes” I expected, but I- also felt the intent in her response, and was then entirely convinced that she would come around. I asked if I could make her a juice, and she replied enthusiastically. Her friends were all for it, so I ran up to my place. Something in me decided she was open enough to try a pretty potent combination, so I made her a juice containing spinach, kale, burdock, dandelion, apple, carrot and beet. I took a taste. It was strong, the way I liked them. I decided I could always dilute it with more green apple if she couldn’t get it down. I brought down the juice and handed it to her in a way that would become a ritual. Giving it to her with intent. You see, when I handed her that drink I knew it would get in there and start blasting those harmful elements out of her body. She looked at me with a gleam in her eye as if she knew it was good too. She drank the whole juice down in one minute and said it was delightful. This, I later came to view as a big indicator that we would win. I bid her goodbye and said I’d be back with another juice around noon tomorrow. The next day I entered into her apartment to a different scenario. The friends were really happy about the way her condition had improved during the night and welcomed me wholeheartedly. I gave Alvira her drink with the usual ceremonial spirit, and she drank it down with relish. Did I notice more brightness in her eyes? It seemed like it. But I wasn’t going to jump to conclusions. After all AIDS was a different monster than cancer, and might require different angles of treatment, but my intuition told me we were on the right track. She 47

definitely did seem more “up” though. She and her friends sincerely thanked me as I left. The next day I brought the juice at noon. Alvira greeted me at the door herself and when I came in, I noticed the friends were not there. She definitely looked better. She had some spring in her step and life in her eyes. I ritually gave her the juice. She gave me heartfelt thanks, and I didn’t even stay to watch her drink it. I knew she would. This went on for approximately two months. By the end of that time, she was by all appearances back to normal, back to the person I had known before the illness. All skin tone had returned; a full head of hair, which she’d lost from chemotherapy treatments, had grown back; her body weight was normal. After two months I decided the therapy was done. She was far above the threshold, over the danger line and quite capable of fending for herself. And as I was not charging her for my treatment, stopping then seemed appropriate. About a week later, I ran into Alvira in the building lobby. She was on her way out to buy groceries. She looked quite fit but her face was covered with a red inflammation. I asked what was going on and she told me she had severe psoriasis, and had dealt with it all her life. Nothing she’d tried had helped. I suggested she get an organic cucumber and rub the juice from slices on her face, letting it dry, and repeating four or five times a day. The next day there was an anxious knock on my door and I opened it to find her there looking excited. “You got rid of my psoriasis!” she exclaimed. I looked at her closely and sure enough, her skin appeared clear of inflammation. I thanked her for letting me know, and after she left I thought about how great that was except, how come she hadn’t shown the same enthusiasm over what I’d done to help her with AIDS? The last time I saw her was a few months later. She was hauling a cart full of food from the grocery a few blocks away. She was, by all appearances, the picture of health. She moved out of the building soon 48

after and never came to thank me for my work. Upon reflection, I felt that she, like many people faced with diseases that the conventional medical establishment is unable to successfully treat (and therefore defines as terminal!), must have been living in denial that she could bounce back from such a debilitating illness. Perhaps she’d been programmed too, like R., to think there’s no way out of such a condition. That, coupled with the possibility that she had thrived on the attention she received from her loved ones while sick and may have resented being well and on her own again. I’ll never know for certain if my therapy with her was successful or not, as I never saw her again. Let me state again that I don’t want to claim that the therapy will eradicate AIDS. Everyone is different. She responded wonderfully to this therapy, but I wound up having more complex and difficult responses to my juice therapies with subsequent cases. Another client came to me by way of a roommate who informed me that a friend of hers, a woman I’ll call Joanie, had multiple sclerosis and was getting worse. She was going into final stages. Both legs were immobile and one hand was starting to freeze up. She was worried and needed help. I went over to see her. She lived in a small cramped efficiency apartment with her boyfriend and her two rescued mutt dogs. She seemed to care about the health of those two more than her own, as she would go to great lengths to acquire and feed them high quality organic dog food, then eat nothing but rice crackers herself. In fact, observing her over time and doing further research, I observed that the culprit in most degenerative disease is primarily severe dietary neglect or abuse. But even then, Joanie was an extremely charming person with a magnanimous personality and sardonic sense of humor. I thought working with her would be fun. I asked some preliminary questions about her history and general lifestyle. She informed me that she had once been girlfriend to

an extremely famous rock musician. They’d lived in a hotel room in Vienna for two years, where they adopted a pretty wild lifestyle. I was shocked when asking about their dietary habits during this time; she told me that a common breakfast would be corn flakes with whiskey poured on them! This initial neglect, I assumed, was at least partly responsible for her current condition. It’s strange to think that people could live in such luxurious conditions with the capability of having anything they want at their fingertips, yet maintain such a depraved diet. She knew some things about her condition; multiple sclerosis involves the deterioration of the myelin sheath that protects nerve endings in the spine, allowing them to get fried when the fatty myelin coating does not protect them. She said she’d been told that MS was essentially an autoimmune problem (immune system attacking her body) and that she couldn’t take any kind of immune stimulant, as that would increase the already excessive immune action on her body. Something about this struck me as wrong. I felt that if she suppressed her immune system, she might die of fever or pneumonia. I had an intuition, and still feel strongly, that she needed to strengthen and attempt to regulate her immune system through nutrition. I knew that she might at first experience the sensation that the harmful immune reactions were increasing, but that things would eventually balance themselves out. Later I found that I was right in this general supposition, although I didn’t have a clue on how one would actually succeed in balancing or fine-tuning the immune system (I later found the herb Reishi; Chinese research reveals that this herb can have a supporting and regulating effect on the immune system. We will discuss this herb ahead). I discovered through research that the immune system can sometimes over-respond to the invasion of alien substances in the air, 50

r

water and our food, resulting in inflammation, which if not relieved will lead to obstruction of the vital movement of our body’s energies, or Chi. It became apparent to me that these harmful substances were accumulating in our environment, thereby increasing their constant assault on our beleaguered immune systems. Hence, more auto­ immune symptoms and diseases are occurring, and medicine does not seem to be finding cures. I also discovered through working with her, and later verified, that nutritive strategies often do produce, in the initial stages of therapy, what is termed as a “healing crisis.” • The Healing Crisis • The healing crisis, as referred to in holistic therapies, is also ' recognized in western medicine, where it is called the “Hertzheimer • syndrome.” It is a sometimes inevitable initial reaction by the body to • a lifestyle shift, particularly to a healthier one where cleansing • elements are introduced. This can begin churning up old toxic residues in the body, affecting the liver in particular, which the Chinese say becomes “irritated” by the extra toxicity. A way to visualize a healing crisis is to imagine a lot of ramps leading onto one highway. It’s 5 p.m. rush hour and lots of cars are flooding into the ramps. There’s naturally going to be a backup on the highway for a while as all those cars merge at once, trying to get home. But the backup is temporary and would only worsen if the blockages were increased. Instead, we must bear through it; the traffic congestion is going to eventually dissipate, and the result will be more people off the road. When we start cleansing the body, dislodging stuff that has accumulated in arteries, purging toxic phlegm, clearing blood stagnation and toxemia from the liver, we’re more-than-likely 51

going to experience some initial irritability or the possibility of temporarily increased discomfort, even manifesting cold or flu-like symptoms while we endure this stage of healing. Many people, when first trying a natural method of cleansing, tend to react to a healing crisis as if it is a bad thing, claiming that the natural therapy is making them feel worse. They may get disillusioned and discontinue the therapy, feeling better when they go back to their normal diet, which the body is more used to even if it is bad for them. The body has a very simplistic intelligence; it will crave what it’s used to being given, not knowing any difference. Even if the food is harmful and nutrient deficient, the body will do the best it can to utilize whatever inherent nutrition the food contains. If a person who has had a habitual junk food diet abruptly changes to a more healthy diet, their body may experience the change as a shock to the system, and the initial purging might resemble those highway ramps at rush hour. Such a person needs to proceed moderately into healthy dietary changes, so as to allow the body to adapt and to stagger the elimination of toxins over a period of time. Otherwise this shock could be too severe on the system. Still, it’s better in the long run to bear through and adapt to a period of cleansing, because the initial irritable symptoms can soon dissipate and the cleansing may fend off more serious and/or chronic problems. Joanie had some serious detoxing to do. I told her I didn’t know the extent to which the juice might aggravate her immune system, but I believed she needed a good cleanse after all those years of abuse. She was okay with trying the drink, and I sensed by her reply that she really wanted to live. We started. She quickly became a troublesome client, for she found the taste revolting and would gag and sneer and force the liquid down. But drink it she did. Each day she was feeling more energetic, but we weren’t getting the legs to loosen up. She was 52

still open to this experiment, and she agreed that avoiding nutrient rich foods could lead to her further demise. I wasn’t charging her for my work. She didn’t have any money, and I felt better about this arrangement, because in reality I didn’t really know what I was doing, going by intuition alone. Soon I found out that my juice wasn’t a panacea. Joanie was getting almost too much energy from it, and would roll her wheel chair robustly down the street almost a mile to the Whole Foods to get the organic dog food for her mutt dogs, but still come home with nothing in the way of nutritious food for herself. I was getting the picture—she was in the state she was in from severe neglect; she was below the threshold and in a state of disempowerment, and a lot of the factors that had led to her current state were her own doing. She’d had a choice, yet nothing in her world—not the media, not the MS society, for which she had been a poster girl, not her friends or family—had conveyed the information she needed to learn about preserving her own health through nutrition and prevention. That’s why the juice seemed so alien to her; her conditioning was at the opposite end of the spectrum. She gagged it down, and I knew this was partially psycho­ somatic—to most people, these juices tasted great. As our work progressed she still complained that her muscles were not loosening up. She felt increased energy but worried that we weren’t getting to the core problem, and it was painful for her to be so energized yet wheelchair bound, locked there. It was adding to her frustration. I realized that there was a lot for me to learn if I was going to really get to the root of a lot of people’s problems. I now realize Joanie needed oils, Omega 3-6-9 fatty acids to replenish the myelin sheath on her spinal nerve endings. She needed to be eating Flax seed, coconut, avocado, walnut and other sources of healthy unsaturated fats. She needed immune modulating herbs like Reishi. These health tools I found out about much later, and I wish I had 53

known about them then. I knew I needed some real training in order to go forward with my healing work. Joanie went into a healing crisis like the one I described earlier. Her heightened energy made her feel irritable. I intuited that this was an unavoidable early stage of healing, but she didn’t comprehend this line of thinking. She did say she knew the changes she was experiencing were for the best, and I told her to hang in there. Still she was impressed with my therapy and wanted to help get my message out there. One day we went to a health food store and she found a newspaper on a rack outside and started reading. It was a small holistic newspaper that looked like it was just trying to get up and running, and she took a copy back with us. The next day she said to me, “Dean, let’s put an ad in here for you as a healer.” I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it but she was adamant and said she would pay for it. I didn’t feel good about getting that serious and had major reservations, not only due to my general lack of knowledge and experience, but because of my decision that I would work with those who came to me. Still, since she was so excited and encouraging, I thought perhaps it was the will of the higher power. She assured me I was ready to go out and do healing work for more people, so . I reluctantly agreed. The next day we contacted the editor of the paper, a sweet woman whose heart and soul was in her little publication. Joanie must have already talked me up prior to our conversation, because the editor was very interested in helping me get going. She informed me that her ex-husband had cancer, so I gave her a juice recipe to send to him, which he started right away. She wanted a good energy drink for herself, and I suggested a juice containing spinach, parsley, carrot, apple and kale. They started their juices. Within a few weeks she told me her ex had gotten a checkup and his cancer appeared to have gone into remission. They were both very happy about this abrupt 54

improvement of his condition, but she informed me that she was not experiencing benefits from her juice. Conversely, she had developed fatigue and was suddenly, after drinking my juice recipe, dragging herself around, having a very difficult time keeping up with her demanding work schedule. I found this perplexing; I had never had any reaction other than an energizing one from people who took the juices. So I did some research and discovered that raw kale contains a phytochemical (the agent that makes the plant blue tinted and also creates the bitter taste) that is known to inhibit the Thyroid gland'21. She was really sluggish and pretty upset, although she couldn't be too mad due to the apparent success her ex husband was having with his juice. A certain level of concern came into her voice about my true level of knowledge. I felt she didn’t want to promote a guy who didn’t really know what he was doing. I was perplexed too. So my basic juice wasn’t a panacea for all conditions as I had started to hope and believe it could be. She knew enough about health to realize my juice had somehow adversely affected her thyroid, and her way of helping me understand the problem was to invite me to do an article about the thyroid gland in the next edition; that way I could help her, too. I researched for a week and quickly realized the complex functions endocrine glands perform in the body. I learned it’s generally not a good idea to give women, in particular, foods that could slow down the thyroid, the gland involved in regulating cellular metabolism. Many Western women develop hypo-thyroid conditions as a result of blood deficiency and Asian Women do better, with iodine-rich foods like seaweeds, miso and fish in the general diet, which support thyroid function. I submitted the article with a few juice recipes for hyper- and hypo-thyroid conditions. The editor still didn’t feel she had enough energy and was struggling to publish the paper. I felt bad and worried

that my severe lack of knowledge about the workings of the human body would come crashing down on me. I had worded my newspaper ad very liberally, “I will come to you, no condition too severe, low rates.” Meaning well is one thing but I feared I might get inundated with calls from as far away as Arizona. And there were a lot of sick people out there. A lot! I imagined coming home each day to find hundreds of messages, and if someone asked me about endometriosis, for example, I’d sound like a blithering idiot not having a clue about what to say. Suddenly I could see why the medical industry held its condescending attitude toward us so-called healers. Publication was within days and I freaked out. Here I was blasting the medical profession and it turned out I really didn’t have a clue! I didn’t have the wherewithal! to get myself into school, and I didn’t really want to study traditional western medicine. I now know that there are schools that teach curricula like the one I was developing252.1 felt I had to dig deeper. I decided I. should attempt to get to the root of the issue, to go all the way back to antiquity, find out who founded medicine, and determine exactly when, and if so, how western medicine appeared, in my eyes at least, to “go wrong.” What was, and is, their thinking, and are they capable of re-orienting medicine to incorporate nutrition and other so-called “alternative” therapies? One of the first things I determined was that modern western medicine should be the one called “alternative,” for it is a relatively young experiment, and holds its rationale in scientific ideals that are rigid yet, ironically, appear to be anything but final.

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Chapter 4

Origins of Western Medicine While I wasn’t interested in studying allopathic medicine, I wanted to get a view on the thinking and policies that shaped the current medical industry. When had the split occurred between those who applied natural wholistic curative techniques and those who sought to carpet-bomb sickness? And had many of these modalities now digressed into a profit-for-sickness- based industry? I made every attempt to find the answer by going back to the very beginnings of our civilization’s recorded use of substances for health. The history of the healing practices of Western indigenous peoples has rarely been documented. Thus, very little to no record exists to give us insight into early Human use of plant medicine in the Western hemisphere. Isolated shamanic traditions came out of specific areas, but there was no known unified system until Egyptian civilization. Yet, through some gleamings it would appear that therapeutic plants were being used far into antiquity. Between 1957 and 1961, a team from the Columbia University Dept, of Anthropology, led by Professor Ralph Solecki, discovered in the Shanidar cave in Northern Iraq the remains of a man who was determined through carbon dating to have lived 60,000 years ago. His remains appear to have been mummified by a collapse of part of the cave ceiling, and numerous pollens were also discovered buried around his body, of which eight were medicinal herbs. They included Yarrow, Cornflower, Batchelor’s Button, St. Barnaby’s Thistle, Ragwort, Grape Hyacinth, Woody Horsetail and Hollyhock. Sceptics attempt to reason that the pollens arrived over the subsequent centuries by bird and wind, but these theories cannot hold up, as the concentrations of 57

pollens were buried around him. What’s most interesting though, is that his skeletal structure indicates he was Neanderthal, pre-Homo Sapiens, and the concentrated pollens around his body highly suggest he was either a medicine man, or was being attended to by one.23 Cave paintings at Lascaux from approx. 15,000 to 25,000 B.C depict herbs being administered to the sick. • Civilizations in the Indus Valley used herbal medicines from around 3300 B.C. Ayurveda24 the primary medical system in India today, officially dates to 2000 B.C., but is likely much older. From Egypt, we find the Edwin Smith Papyrus, dating as far back as 3000 B.C. It is a precise examination of the diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of many diseases and contains little magical observation. Early Egyptian doctors included Hesyre in the 1st millennium B.C., and a woman, Peseshet, who specialized in women’s gynecological and fertility issues. Babylonian medicine officially dates from 2000 B.C. In early Greece, we see the advent of the first known modern doctors, with Hippocrates being considered the “father of medicine.” His work was possibly influenced by followers of the Egyptian philosopher Pythagoras, who espoused vegetarianism and reportedly required his prospective students to fast for 40 days before being accepted into his school. Hippocrates was associated with students from the Pythagorean school, and also placed utmost importance on diet as a means of supporting health. Many of us are familiar with the “Hippocratic oath.” It is a set of medical rules and ethics that Hippocrates believed medical practitioners should follow. These rules stressed the importance of diet in health and expressly discouraged the use of the knife or poisons. Excerpts of the Hippocratic oath, from the 4th century B.C. state, “I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick; I will keep them from harm and injustice; I will never give a deadly drug to 58

anybody who asks for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect; I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in such work.” This oath is still taken by graduating medical students today, many of whom consider its rules to be antiquated; for some it represents a mere formality with no merit in the modern world. There is continuing debate among new doctors as to whether the oath should be re-worded to accept today’s medical practices, even though they are in direct contrast to the rules established in the original oath. New revisions have been proposed which completely omit the guidelines listed above. Jesus was an Essene; a pacifist vegetarian who spoke of colonics, fasts, and advocated the use of herbs for food and medicine'25. Writings in ancient Aramaic and Hebrew were discovered in caves near Qumran in the 1950’s. Called The Dead Sea Scrolls, they date to 200 B.C. thru 68 A.D. and are attributed to the Essenes. These documents suggest that Jesus worked primarily as a healer and used natural methods of purging “Satan” from the bowels by utilizing the “baptism” of colonics. Only after which did he claim one could see God. His teachings on healing, as well as topics of astrology and reincarnation were referenced by the compilers of the eventual Christian bible, which included writings by Roman philosophers Plotinus, Origin and Plato. In 221 A.D., Emperor Constantine placed himself in “Imperial control” of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and began establishing “creeds” and “canons.” Anyone not conforming to these rules could be “excommunicated.” Among those practices outlawed were the very methods of health maintenance described in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Shamanism came under scrutiny, and the use of plant medicines had been a primary domain of Shamanism.

In 553 A.D. Emperor Justinian decreed that the biblical references to any form of shamanism, herbal medicine, astrology or reincarnation, were "anathema” and ordered them purged from the scriptures under threat of death, and the writings of the abovementioned philosophers were among those removed. During this time, techniques such as bleeding, burning, and use of poisonous metals became approved medical practices. A dichotomy began between those who sought to prolong health through prevention and those who advocated aggressive practices to purge illness and demons. The latter is the basic mind frame that eventually led to our modern medical system. Enter Allopathic Medicine No doubt natural medicine continued to be used throughout Europe during the next thousand years of turmoil, but history does not adequately record the extent of it. Eventually with Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) and Copernicus (1473-1543). the mechanisms of modern scientific thought were born. Medicine as a science got its first footing with Paracelsus (1493-1541). While also a champion of mystical alchemy, he used astrology in his practice and spoke of the human aura as a “fiery globe,” he also introduced a new and radical idea he called “Iatrochemistry,” that diseases could be treated through the introduction of certain chemicals into the body, which could include chemical derivatives of natural substances creating target-specific actions. The primary differences between pharmacology in the West and the ancient herbal pharmacology of the East were two: Western medicine sought to address diseases that had already manifested themselves using chemical compounds and metals; Eastern herbal healing used 60

substances gathered from nature to prevent the start of disease and preserve and enhance a state of health. Iatrogenic medicine eventually adopted Benjamin Rush’s (17451813) optimistic and propagandists label “Heroic medicine,” a name obviously molded to gain interest from the masses. This heroic medicine continued the medieval practices of blood letting and freezing, burning and the use of very poisonous metals like mercury, lead and arsenic. “Microbes” were detected and classified by Anton Van Leeuwenhoek in 1675, and twin sciences called Microbiology and Allopathy were established. In the term “Allopathic,” “alios” means contrary to the “pathos” of sickness; its methodology is to use substances opposed to the natural cycles of pathogens. These ideas corresponded with the first invention of microscopes, where researchers could see microbes. The idea of selectively isolating and knocking out individual strains of disease-causing microbes provided an enticing challenge. This rapidly evolving new marriage of science and medicine made its way from Europe to America. By the mid-nineteenth century, these' “regular” or “orthodox” procedures by doctors of giving poisons or opium and engaging in bleeding, purging, etc, had alienated a large portion of American society. Many sought out less invasive, more natural alternative health practitioners, resulting in the fame of nineteenth century herbalist Samuel Thompson among others. Thompson founded the “Thompsonian system” of medicine after he cured his wife and two of his children with steam baths and herbs. In the 1830s, he was using the herb lobelia (inflata), cayenne, laxatives and steam baths to “restore heat” in the bodies of his patients. He had written a book entitled New Guide to Health or Botanic Family Physician and sold patents to families instructing them on self-administering local herbs. 61

In Thompsons words, “Blind! Leaders of the blind! Lift up your eyes and seek the light that leads us from ruin’s brink! Your calomel, and all your deadly drugs reject! The world is awakening around you! Botanic doctors (sounding the majesty of truth) gain ground; the mercurial craft declines! Thick darkness flies before Thompsonian light, bursting in glory a long benighted world!” 26 Thompson was attacked by conventional doctors, who increasingly worried the outspoken and dramatic herbalist was stealing their clientele, and in 1809 was accused by a physician named French of killing a patient with the herb lobelia. After he was arrested and imprisoned in extremely harsh conditions for six months, his followers stormed the courthouse and demanded a trial. He was found not guilty and acquitted of all counts, yet, lobelia’s purported harmful properties somehow stuck on the books; even though no truly negative side affects have ever been recorded, it is still outlawed by the FDA for medicinal use. This event also set a precedent of unreasonable propaganda attacks on herbs by the ruling elite of medicine. Still, Thompson gained positive notoriety with over a million sympathetic Americans, and this became the impetus for the rise of draconian tactics by the conventional medical establishment of the time. Even more worrying for them was the establishment of a Thompsonian-inspired school, the “Eclectics,” founded by a physician named Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1784-1841), who was living among the Native Americans and had wholeheartedly embraced their use of medicinal plants. The term eclectic is derived from the Greek Eklego, which means “to choose from,” and the new system followed Thompsonian principles of utilizing local indigenous herbal substances to administer to health. The Eclectics practiced an “alignment with nature.” 62

By the 1850’s, many conventional doctors began accepting the principles of Eclectic medicine and incorporated herbs into their treatments. Schools that offered alternative and natural health curricula sprang up and proliferated, engaging the attention of many doctors who were enthused about moving away from medical practices of the “dark ages.” The Eclectic movement was very optimistic and espoused the idea of “vitalism,” that life contained a vital force, echoing Paracelsus’ description of the “fiery globe,” or luminescence surrounding living entities. This is also in line with the thinking of Eastern medicine and mystics, with their concepts of Prana, or Chi. Enter the AMA The ideals of Vitalism stood in direct opposition to conventional science, which was becoming more materialist. The American Medical Association (AMA) was founded in 1847 to represent the interests of orthodox physicians and to stem the tide against a public exodus from their practices. The AMA sought to reduce the number of medical schools in America and Canada, and focused on creating rigid standards for medical curricula that required adherence to materialist, orthodox principles; they also insisted upon increasing the number of years of study required in order to receive a diploma, effectively making it more expensive to gain a license to practice. In 1910 the AMA expanded its attacks on “irregular” physicians through a “propaganda department,” which in 1925 became the Bureau of Investigation. “Quack watch” was born (“Quack” is their term for any physician who engages in alternative medicine.) By 1912, the AMA had gained enough strength, with help of financial interests such as the Rockefeller family and the Carnegie Foundation, to become a politically powerful entity. They created a

rating system for medical schools, as defined in the 1912 Flexner Report, headed by Abraham Flexner, a severe critic of alternative medicine. Accepted by the State Federation of Medical Boards that same year, it established the AMA as a monopoly that could control and regulate all aspects of the medical industry, from education and treatment to accreditation, and could have a major impact on funding. Flexner’s subsequent actions may be praised or derided depending on one’s view. For instance, the allopathic medical industry forsaw the many reviving and burgeoning unregulated quasi-medical practices as running amok, and Flexner’s efforts are still viewed by many as having been essential in order to define clear boundaries within the medical profession. The Flexner' Report's recommendations succeeded in requiring that all medical schools become affiliated with universities; this had the effect of wiping out many small independent schools and dramatically increasing tuition, effectively insuring that medicine would become the domain of the well-to-do. The 160 American medical schools in 1904 were reduced to 66 by 1935. Dramatically higher wages for doctors were encouraged. Flexner condemned “the small proprietary schools,” which were based in generations-old folk traditions rather than relatively recent western science; these were the schools who admitted AfricanAmericans, women, and students of limited financial means who simply could not afford 6-8 years of university education, and who were often denied admission to medical schools affiliated with universities. The Flexner Report tended to de-legitimize women and doctors of color, and with fewer able to practice, medical care was reduced for people of color, residents of rural areas, and for those of limited means.27 Medical schools that offered training in various disciplines including Eclectic medicine, naturopathy and Homeopathy were told 64

to either drop these courses from their curricula or lose their accreditation and underwriting support. Eventually, all complied or shut their doors. Of all the alternative medical branches, only osteopathic medicine managed to adhere to the strict rules dictated by the Flexner Report and still maintain some modicum of its original system. These draconian rules represented a near-fatal blow to the very popular Vitalist medicine movement. The Vitalism school of medicine is now all but lost; only in the realm of theoretical physics are its principles still discussed in western science. For the hundred years of Eclectic medical development (mid 19th-mid 20th century), we had quite possibly been at a major threshold in our understanding and application of plant-based medicines and preventive health in organized health institutions. The last Eclectic school closed in Cincinnati in 1939. Today in that same city, the Lloyd Library and Museum houses a treasure trove of Eclectic medical writing on indigenous and Native American herbology, hydrotherapy and energetic therapies. In 1967, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, said of the Eclectic ideals, “And so to those of you who might be Vitalists, I would make this prophesy; what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow.” “Empirical” medicine, as defined by thousands of years of observation of the effects on health of plants and other natural substances, was replaced by “rationalist” ideals based on science, which was of course, the far younger and less tried-and-true method, the Frankensteinian son. The AMA adhered to this latter ideology. In a nutshell, the Vitalist ideology that life was governed by an energetic driving force, a spirit, was overridden by a medical ideology that regarded cellular life purely from a materialist perspective, with no consideration of spiritual aspects.

Yet, some of the founders of allopathic medicine did great things and made beneficial discoveries that helped humanity, and some held discourses that would support ideologies by people on the “empirical” side of the issue. But their ideas also led us into the present morass of chemical medicine. These early medical scientists included R.L.K. Virchow (1821-1902), the “father of pathology;” Claude Bernard (1813-1878), the “father of physiology;” Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), the “father of microbiology (even though Leeuwenhoek had created the field 200 years earlier);” Behring, (1854-1917) an immunologist who developed early vaccines; Metchnikoff (1845-1916), an immunologist who pioneered research on phagocytosis; and Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915), the inventor of chemotherapy and the first antibiotic. Jonas Salk’s (1914-1995) discovery of the polio vaccine was of course a great accomplishment, but this and other medical innovations (temporarily) suppressing harmful microbes gave allopathic medicine more ammunition to exalt itself as the new God of materialist medical science. But let’s look a little further into some of these men’s contributions to medicine. Bernard’s writings imply, ironically, that there can really be no “absolutism” in science, and that researchers should maintain a “philosophic spirit” and “thirst for the unknown.” He accomplished great work in microbiology and discussed health issues surrounding body pH (potential hydrogen), along with his contemporary, Antoine Bechamp (1816-1908), who is credited with stating, “It’s not the germ but the terrain,” negating Pasteur’s theories that the ‘microbe’ was an intruder into the landscape of the body. Bernard discussed the “milieu,” or environment, primarily in the intestines, which consistently harbors microbes that affect body pH, and either suppresses or encourages bacterial growth, some being beneficial and some harmful. 66

Pasteur concurrently formulated his “germ theory,” in direct contrast with the views of Bernard and Bechamp. The three were studying fermentation processes and discovered that bacteria had specific responses to external changes. They focused particular emphasis on gastro-intestinal bacterial responses to conditions in the environment of the colon, and the actions of certain foods and food combinations on fermentation in the colon. Bechamp in particular had made great breakthroughs in understanding the origins of disease with these studies and argued that this understanding made possible an individual’s ability to self-heal by adjusting body pH through dietary and lifestyle means. Pasteur, meanwhile, became fixated on attempting to inhibit the actions of and to kill bacteria, primarily with heat (pasteurization); he ignored Beauchamp and Bernard’s research proving the milieu or environment in the digestive tract was the driving force of health and many (possibly most) illnesses. It is said that Napoleon recognized an opportunity to institutionalize medicine through Pasteur’s model, and subsequently the great discoveries of Bechamp were ignored; he is now a marginalized figure in medical history. We could have been on the verge of great breakthroughs in understanding health had Bechamp’s work been seriously adopted within the medical establishment. It is said Pasteur was an opportunist who claimed authorship of many of the other men’s ideas.** It is rumored that on his deathbed he recanted his life’s work and echoed Bechamp’s words, “It’s not the germ but the environment.” It’s difficult to understand just why Pasteur’s work is still held in such high esteem today. Even Florence Nightingale, the famous nurse of the late nineteenth century, knew thirty years before Pasteur’s declarations on germs that, “The specific disease doctrine is the grand refuge of weak, uncultured, unstable minds, such as now rule the medical profession. There are no specific diseases; there are specific disease conditions.” 67

But then came a major figure in allopathic medicine, Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915). He coined the term “chemotherapy,” and popularized the idea of a “silver bullet.” He developed the first antibiotic drug. If the medical establishment erects statues to honor Pasteur, then the pharmaceutical industry should be dedicating equally grand statues in honor of Ehrlich. After researching this chapter, I deduced a historical pattern, begun before Christ and continuing to this day, wherein the elite, using high institutions like the Christian church and more recently, governments, may institute and maintain measures by which the common population is intentionally kept in a state of disempowerment. Perhaps this is done so that we don’t threaten their institutions of commerce with competitive ideas and innovations, or so that we remain a docile workforce, content to blindly consume the modicum of conveniences they dole out to us. Perhaps it is so that we won’t gain enough strength and perception to overthrow the elite and institute forms of government that will rein in their exploitation of our world’s resources and manpower. Perhaps it is so that we remain sick for the profit of medicine. Still it is hard to avoid the conclusion that those in power, historically in many European countries and now most apparently in America, have acted in such ways as to deliberate keep the rest of us below the Threshold. Our medical system ranks well below that of many other western nations including Cuba, Canada, England and Sweden in quality, safety and efficacy. Obstacles we still face Allopathic medicine today conveniently uses the term “biomedicine” to refer to the theory of medicine. This does not mean that allopathic medicines are biologically active. The term is applied because this 68

theory contends that all conditions of sickness originate in the body, or “bios.” Though the medicines this system creates may be purely chemical (many are derived from natural sources, including herbs, but processing may cause the body to respond to them as alien), they are used to attack living organisms dwelling within the body. When alternative medicine, the true “bio-medicine,” attempts to conduct research using academic methods, orthodox medicine often accuses their alternative colleagues of “appropriating” the discourse of science in order to gain prestige, credibility or acceptance. Rigid medical science, against Bernard’s writings, has become a closed room of “insiders,” and practitioners of alternative health modalities are therefore considered “outsiders”; therefore, our work may seem to be hierarchically insignificant, imitative and a nuisance. Is it possible that such dismissal is designed to ensure that alternative health maintenance practices do not threaten the hegemony of the medical establishment? This might help explain why the FDA and other imperial institutions of western medicine commonly hold that traditional herbal medicinals have not been sufficiently studied and that no official proof of their efficacy has been established. After completing my research, I decided I wanted to find and study a type of health therapy that employed the principles of Vitalism. I wanted to find out about herbs, how they differed and how they complemented whole food sources in an overall health ideology. I decided that, no matter how profitable or unprofitable my ventures, this would be secondary to my efforts to be a healing force in the world. I told Joanie I needed to take a break and do some serious studying. Though it was too late to withdraw the ad for my healing services, I decided maybe I’d put up a message on my phone that I was not doing health consultations at this time. 69

What I needed was a guru in a Vitalist discipline. The day before the ad was published, I made a prayer, the most solemn prayer of my life. I said, “God, Krishna, my higher power, in the name of the light, bring me a teacher. I need a teacher now!”

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Chapter 5 Cometh My Teacher

The same evening .of the day I’d prayed for a teacher, I had been invited to play music at the Besant Lodge, a holistic center founded in the 1880’s by Annie Besant, a comrade of Madam Blavatski, both of whom were renowned mystics and healers of the late 19th century. The lodge, located in Beachwood Canyon, was a beautiful chapel-like building, well preserved in its original state, with stained glass windows. At the time some friends of mine were running it, and they’d asked me to come and play a few songs on my guitar. When I got to the center, there was a nice crowd of about twenty or so. I played some bluegrass tunes, but the thing that interested me most was the strange and delicious trail mix some lovely young women were serving. I’d never before seen the exotic berries in the mix, bright orange-red and gold, and someone told me the women were with the man who was going to speak that night. After my performance, the host announced that Chinese herbal master Ron Teeguarden was going to speak. I was remotely familiar with Mr. Teeguarden and remembered that my ex-wife used to have a book he’d written about Chinese Tonic herbs. She used to make tinctures for me to take every morning, recipes she got from his book. She also had me chew raw herbs a lot. She’d make an alcohol extract she’d read about, soaking various herbs in brandy; she’d have me drink a shot of it each morning before I went to work, and chew a little sliver of raw ginseng root. This was the extent of my health therapy in those days. I remembered getting a cholesterol test done at the time and having the medical people exclaim that I had the lowest LDL (Low Density Lipoprotein, bad cholesterol) count they’d ever seen.

This, even though Sharon (my ex wife) and I frequented a real greasy spoon for eggs, bacon, pancakes and bad black coffee almost every morning during that time, and my overall diet was pretty abysmal. I had attributed the test's healthy cholesterol levels to the herbs Sharon gave me each morning, so I believed I owed at least part of my good health to Mr. Teeguarden. I also recalled that four or five years prior, I’d been visiting a friend who cooked for a small restaurant. I had gone back to the kitchen to pop my head in and say hi, and while chatting with him I noticed a small pamphlet lying on top of the ovens and felt a strong desire to pick it up. The book had a thin film of grease on its surface, as if it had been lying there for some time. Still, I had to have this book. It was Called Chinese Tonic Herbs, by Ron Teeguarden. My friend lent it to me, and I grasped it to my bosom and thanked him as if he had done me a great favor. I’d taken the book home and guarded it as a treasure, for some reason I wasn’t aware of. I’d never even opened the book in. all the time I’d had it, but I tended to actually think about it a lot, visualizing the grease-covered painting of some kind of Chinese beauty goddess on its cover. I knew deep inside that someday I’d meet Ron Teeguarden. One of the lovely women introduced Mr. Teeguarden to the audience and he came walking through the room. I was awestruck. He moved through the room as if on a cloud, even though he was a big, tough looking man, a powerhouse. Although he showed some signs of aging—primarily thinning gray hair—his body appeared as fit as any pro athlete’s. I listened with fascination to his concise speech about the power of Chinese “Tonic” herbs, a classification of herbs that the Chinese considered to be the most superior in their medicine, and about which he was purported to be the foremost western authority. He talked about the efficacy and history of the herbs, their spirit enhancing qualities, and their overall empowering potential. 72

This was what I’d been looking for, as I’d become disillusioned with the juice’s ability to do it all. Although I had definitely started to heal and cleanse my body with the juices, I really hadn’t gotten down to my soul level, clearing the mental spider webs and dark clouds, something he was telling the crowd the herbs could do quite well. In fact, he seemed to insinuate that many Chinese Tonic herbs deeply enhanced spiritual perception. By the time he finished his brief presentation, I was hooked. What he’d said left me hungry for more. One of the women who worked with him mentioned that they needed apprentices. She encouraged me to come over to their shop in Master Teeguarden’s house in Brentwood. I showed up the next day at 9:00 am. A big friendly guy I’d met the night before greeted me at the door. He introduced himself as Chris and welcomed me in. We entered a fantastic parlor with massive sculptures of Buddha and Li Chi Shen, a famous ancient herbalist. The place was as crammed as a museum with exotic and magnificent Oriental art; there was also an elixir bar. I waited until Ron came into the room. He was glad to see me and said he’d liked my guitar playing. We talked a while and I told him I had been doing some green juicing therapy. His response was neutral; a master never takes an apprentice’s depth of experience and knowledge too seriously, and for good reason in my case. Chris informed me that I had come around at a propitious time, for he had recently been put in charge of a demanding task, that of making “custom teas,” decoctions from Chinese herbs. He needed to train someone else in the making of these teas, as they were very labor intensive and required a great deal of attention. He had other things he needed to attend to, including making a video about the company and other promotional work. Within minutes of arriving, I had the herbs in my hands. They weren’t the kind of things I had associated with herbs; these weren’t 73

just finely cut leaves, but literally rocks and objects shaped like sticky black silver dollar pancakes^ gnarled woody roots, big stout mushrooms, deer antler slices, Sea Dragons, sea shells, seaweeds and so on. These roots, seeds, leaves, fungi and other exotic substances intrigued me. They felt safe but powerful in my hands. I could feel there was something special, ancient and even sacred about them. Making tea was a serious and demanding operation, I would soon learn. I was given recipes for “custom teas,” which the herbalists would design after conducting an inquiry with the customer— checking his or her tongue and pulse, asking about energy level, stress, immunity and other more personalized issues such as menstrual issues, pain, etc. The tea recipes were then meticulously tailored to the individual’s needs and sometimes contained up to 40 herbs. lt was all a mystery to me at the time, but fascinating, for I understood I was working with a well-established and ancient system. Once the herbalists gave me the recipes, I would measure out the ingredients in exact increments, packing the herbs into a large filter bag and then placing the bag in a large pressure cooker. These machines were big heavy-duty industrial cookers from China. Under intense pressure, we would cook the tough roots and herbs for three hours at a low boil, while slow cooking the more delicate herbs under low heat in pots on the kitchen stove. We would strain and combine these herbal extracts at the end of the cook cycle and add minerals and herbal sweeteners to taste, finally sealing it in single serving retort pouches. All while the temperature of the tea was near boiling. It was challenging work, sometimes doing five or six of these teas a day, but I loved it. At the end of the first day I saw Ron and he said, “Let me look at your hands.” I held them up and he said, “Ahh, on the first day here you’ve already got herbs under your fingernails. That’s a good sign!” I was tired but felt great. 74

Soon I was on my own and was dubbed “tea master,” a title, Chris informed me, which was a great honor to hold. Ron took one look at me that first day and handed me a bottle of capsules labeled Bupleurum & Dragon Bone. He said, “Take this; you have liver heat and wind.” I didn’t know what he was talking about, but somehow, it seemed to make sense. “Yeah,” I said to myself, “Come to think of it, I am a hothead, and maybe he's saying this will help.” Sure enough, it was a formula traditionally used in China for irritability, volatility and liver “stagnation”. The liver, from what he said, could get ‘hot’ if dealing with excess toxicity in the body, and was at the root of these kind of topsy-turvy emotions. “Man, he figured me out quick,” I thought. How did he know that under my rehearsed composure, I was a train wreck? Although I was juicing daily, I was still not living up to good nutritional standards. I hadn’t purged a lot of built-up toxicity accumulated during my youth. While I thought I was cleaner, he saw the truth in a second; my liver was a wreck. Later I realized it was my red face and somewhat frantic nature that he was seeing. Maybe he could also see somehow that I tended to have negative thought patterns. These tendencies are referred to as “Windy nature” in Chinese medicine. The liver is seat of the emotions, and when the blood is toxic, the liver will become “irritated”, and a person’s life will be like a roller coaster—emotionally volatile, irratic; frequent moves, a different phone number every six months, constant problems with the car, frequent accidents, revolving relationship problems, flying off the handle. This is the life of a person with a classic “windy nature,” and this was me to a tee. Bupleurum & Dragon Bone, I learned, is a sophisticated and ancient formula developed over thousands of years in Chinese medicine and commonly used in China. I later realized most 75

Americans, especially American men (because they generally observe abysmal dietary habits, whereas women often attempt to eat a more well-rounded diet3), could greatly benefit by taking this formula periodically. Bupleurum is the number one blood- and liver-cleansing herb in Chinese herbalism. But as I came to learn, Bupleurum is never used alone. Its actions are said to loosen the toxins from their place of attachment, and that other herbs it is combined with act to remove the toxic elements, or “Chi blockages,” from the body, primarily through the elimination channels: laxative, diuretic (urination), or diaphoretic (sweating). This was my first glimmering of the exquisite art of herb combining which forms the root of the Chinese Materica Medica. The Dragon Bone is the other primary, or “Emperor herb,” in the formula. Its job, being a mineral-based herb that actually consists of fossilized bone fragments from ancient large mastodons, is to keep the person grounded, to “calm the wind” while the body rids itself of the harmful substances that the Bupleurum has dislodged. Breaking up Chi stagnation at first can produce a healing crisis. The Dragon Bone is there to “cool the liver heat” and help one persevere through difficulties. Shortly after my apprenticeship began, my ad for juice healing finally appeared. I dreaded going home to find the message machine clogged with requests for help from sick and dying people. But I received only a smattering of inquiries, and the multitude of calls I expected never really came. This was a relief; I was going to get some real schooling now. Joanie, my friend with MS, also decided to pursue an offer from the MS society to sponsor a new medical innovation using a pump inserted into her body to move cerebral spinal fluid up her spine. 3 Many teenage girls and women on starvation diets also deprive themselves of proper

nutrition.

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perhaps the combination of this pump and my juice could explain why she's still very much alive today. I immersed myself in the work with Master Teeguarden, and soon I was being initiated into a 5000-year-old, highly refined and sophisticated system of healing called “Taoist Tonic Herbalism.” Once I had passed the first test, becoming an efficient Tea master, and had started to clear some of my “windy” nature with the Bupleurum & Dragon Bone formula, Master Teeguarden began to tell me the history of our tradition. He would teach me in the way that his master, Sun Jin Park of Korea, had taught him, in an oral tradition that went back 2700 years, when our school, the “Gate of Life” school was founded. (The Gate of Life, according to the Taoists, is located in the solar plexus, between the kidneys, and is the place where the life force in humans is thought to originate.) This healing system had been passed down from Master Park, who’d learned from his master in a remote cave in the Changbai Mountains of Korea, to Master Teeguarden, and now to me. I quickly learned that this master/pupil, one-on-one lineage of schooling in Chinese medicine had continued unbroken from as far back as 7000 years ago and possibly much further into antiquity, and that modern Chinese medical schools are a recent phenomenon, although they still utilize a great deal of that accumulated wisdom. This handing down the history from master to pupil was still being done, albeit rarely and by fewer individuals. My unpaid apprenticeship with Master Teeguarden lasted only three days before I was hired as his employee. I was lucky in this regard, for it is common that apprentices are given menial and difficult tasks at the beginning of the apprenticeship in order to test their determination to learn. I apparently, due to the need for my services and the circumstances in which I'd come to him, was spared this traditional part of the initiation. 77

Still I received intensive training as Master Teeguarden’s personal apprentice. We engaged in extensive study of this ancient health system and I got to observe his work with clients. Master Teeguarden had been similarly lucky when he’d approached his master in the 1970’s, and had received extensive personal trainig. He told me of his apprenticeship with Master Park. Ron Teeguarden’s Apprenticeship with Master Park During the early 1970’s, Ron had been going to college. He’d found it hard keeping up with his studies because he was becoming disillusioned with many of the conventional institutions, as were so many young people during the Vietnam War. He fell into the self destructive behavior shared by many students during that time of societal upheaval and rebellion. He grew sickly, then just plain sick. He was diagnosed with some kind of wasting illness that the doctors couldn’t determine. They prescribed a series of drugs, to no avail. He felt he was nearing his life’s end, when a friend of suggested he go over to L.A.’s Chinatown, and get some of this stuff called “Sho Wu Chi,” which was thought to have rejuvenating qualities. He took his friend’s advice, traveled to Chinatown and found some bottles of the formula in a store there. He started to drink it on the sidewalk out front of the shop. It felt right, and he took bags full home to Ann Arbor. Soon after daily taking of the Sho Wu Chi, he started to feel more energy and became convinced the formula was bringing back his severely depleted life force. *Note: Sho Wu Chi comes in two liquid forms, one containing about 10% alcohol, and the other purely a water extraction. For those who have healthy liver, a little alcohol can help decoct and deliver the herbal properties into the 78

body. But for those with liver problems, or who need to avoid alcohol, the water extract of Sho Wu Chi is more appropriate. In the sixties Chinese herbal medicine was still a mystery to anyone who wasn’t Chinese. Ron looked around, but nobody to whom he could speak knew anything about this crazy Sho Wu Chi. As he continued to improve and get more strength, he tried to inquire about herbs with Chinese doctors and others, but encountered a language barrier. He sensed that the Chinese herbalists were telling him good things, and vowed to find a way to translate the health promoting wisdom they were obviously trying to impart to him. Ron returned frequently to Chinatown, looking for answers. One day he went into a Chinese bookstore and started inquiring. A clerk there handed him a book, and Ron felt a strong instinct that whoever had written this book was the person who would teach him. The book was entitled Altong - A Mystic Healthway. Its author one Sung Hak Park. The author described a series of exercises called “Altong”, a mystical and empowering breathing technique given by Tokkebis, the Korean God who created the universe. Ron felt there was great power in this discipline, and set out to learn it. A year later, Ron was thumbing through an obscure newspaper and spotted an advertisement for a class that read; “Oriental Inner Alchemy.” Ron knew it was Master Park. He took the newspaper and went to the specified address on the day of the class. He approached a nondescript house and rang the bell; no one answered. Soon another guy came up, and mentioned that he was also there to take the class. They waited in silence for a while; then the door opened and a small boned but muscular Asian man motioned them in. Once in the parlor the man, who was Master Park, motioned both of them to stand on their heads, against a wall. The other man acted flustered and put off by the order, but Ron calmly and quickly took position, followed by 79

the other man. They assumed their positions and Master Park left the room. Standing on their heads, the two remained in silence for about ten minutes. The other man eventually started talking out of boredom. He was telling Ron about his job, family, and the like, but Ron did not engage in his conversation. The guy finally got fed up and dropped down onto the floor, said, “To heck with this nonsense,” and left in a huff. Ron remained, standing on his head in the silent room. Then the door opened and Master Park walked in, introduced himself as Sun Jin Park, and announced that Ron would be his apprentice. In Ron’s words; My head was spinning and 1 had a headache. But, in broken English, he said to me “1 look for one sincere student. Now, if you (are) willing to be' my apprentice, you are the one.” 1 new instantly that this was going to be a changing point in my life.

•Then Ron produced the book he’d bought at the Chinese bookstore from his back pocket. “I’m looking for the person who wrote this book,” he said. Master Park announced, “I’m the person who wrote that book,” And it was true—Ron had found the author! On that first day, Master Park told Ron that, were he to accept the role of apprentice, his responsibility would be to teach what he learned to ten other people, and that each of these ten would pass the knowledge on to ten others...and so on. Ron accepted (they both knew it was a holy vow) and began receiving his lessons. Master Park then took a quick analysis of Ron’s health condition, and revealed that he didn’t so much need to be “healed”, as he needed “re-charging and rebalancing.” This idea was new to Ron, as he’d been led to believe that he was somehow sick. Master Park said Ron was 80

r

deficient in “Chung”, which is the Korean word for Jing, a basic factor of life. We discuss Jing in detail presently. Weeks and months went by and Ron began to learn the principles of Taoist health practice, or what Master Park called “The art of radiant health.” Ron wanted to learn about Altong, but Master Park focused on herbal training for Ron’s health. Master Park taught Ron the secrets of the most sophisticated • system of preventive medicine on earth, one that had been handed down meticulously and with great reverence from Master to apprentice, in its current form, since around 3000 B.C. The Lineage Master Park unveiled to Ron is called “The Gate of Life” lineage, derived over many centuries of observation—a wisdom that had largely remained isolated within the Manchurian province of China and in Korea. This health discipline is oriented to view the body and the ethereal body in its totality, and to seek to bring the basic forces behind that totality into harmony in order to preserve radiant health. Master Ron Teeguarden is credited with being the first to introduce the secrets of the Gate of Life school of Tonic Herbalism to the western world. The principle of administering herbs as a preventive measure, and promoting herbs which can help foster enlightenment and empowerment—as opposed to profiting from the treatment of symptoms—was for me, a most appealing component of Taoist herbalism. Still today, spiritual health is the ultimate goal of this extremely evolved system of healing. The added benefit that I soon learned was that Tonic Herbalism is also an art form, and, once one has thoroughly learned the precepts, a great deal of creativity and intuition can be applied to this discipline. Now it would be my turn to begin attaining this wisdom.

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Chapter 6 An Ancient Healing Art The origins of Chinese herbal medicine lie in the geologically diverse region of the Changbai mountain range, which borders northeast China and Korea. Powerfully therapeutic plant forms have evolved in this area, due to the mineral rich soil expelled from deep below the earth’s surface by volcanic Mt. Changbai. The region’s soil is high in diamagnetic, or earth-based magnetic energy and this super-charged soil promotes rigorous plant growth. Thus, plants grown in this region are exceptionally potent. This potency derives from the unique biology and history of the region, which is mainly comprised of highly eroded old mountains— much like the Appalachian mountains of America—that support deciduous forests evolved over millions of years. Approximately 50,000 years ago, the massive volcanic mountain called Changbai Shan erupted, thrusting dia-magnetic ores from deep inside the Earth across the region, adding highly charged minerals to the already heavily composted and diverse soils. These combined elements are what make the region so important in the healing plant sciences. Many of the plants we will discuss, the elite class of “Tonic” herbs, the most revered in all Chinese herbology, have their biological origins in this area. The region has been considered sacred and kept in pristine condition throughout the history of Chinese civilization. The dark area to the north of the mountain, as seen below, is an example of how forests must have looked before the human era. This region has been officially sealed and protected as a “forbidden zone” since approximately 900 A.D.. 82

Areas like Changbai, located in what is now called the Manchurian state of northern China, were thought by many Chinese nobility to be the places of origin of the Manchu peoples, the first Asian race. Some researchers believe these groups may have been involved in the migrations of humans to the Americas, which are thought to have occurred over the Bering Strait from 10,000 to 30,000 years ago.29 Studies linking Chinese and Native American philosophy and herbal use suggest that the extensive knowledge of plant medicines held by Elder Shamans of the Americas originally came from China.30 It is not precisely recorded when humans first came to understand that plants could provide life supporting qualities, but it is thought by the Chinese that from the beginning of human history, people inhabiting the Changbai Mountain area consumed medicinal plants and sought to understand their healing properties. These individuals became a special class of medicine men and women, seers and sages who lived as hermits in the area’s mountains and caves. Early legends tell of a time that Chinese historians refer to as “wild history,” when wise “immortals” dwelled there; these individuals are said to have been capable of living thousands of years. It is also believed that they discovered plant power through psychic illumination, intuitive communication with healing plants, and through magic. They were said to be capable of disappearing, shapeshifting, flying and manifesting as dragons. These immortals, or Hsien, lived in communion with nature and sought neither fame nor fortune, not from their great longevity, their alchemical secrets nor their wisdom. The idea of shamanism followed only after some of the individuals discovered that their knowledge could bring them power and prestige. Thus, the concept of shamanism was considered less pristine compared to the magical wisdom of the earlier Hsien. Despite motives perhaps less pure, it was the shamans who were responsible for the 84

first organized use ot pi
85

This statue depicts Shen Nong with a faithful apprentice by his side. Such statues and images remain proliferant in Chinese art goods shops. The personal mentoring of pupil by master is still today the primary method of handing down the lineage of Taoist herbal philosophy.

The early medicine men and women of the Changbai region further observed that, upon regular consumption, herbs could provide benefits of endurance, sexual potency, strength and recuperation. They also realized that some of the herbs could enhance spiritual awareness and instill a sense of peace. These herbs could even provide insight into the subtle workings behind our earthly experience, and 86

this insight evcm»«.v 0 philosophy of interconnectedness and a spiritual outlook that sought to understand balance among all elements of existence. Maybe the early Shamans were driven to find and disseminate information about these special mind-enhancing plants in order to help people become better, more intuitive hunters with a deeper understanding of animal instincts, traits which would have inevitably brought them into more synchronicity with nature and its cycles. The combination of primal intuitive understanding and scholarly inquiry eventually produced the concept of Tin/Tang, the ceaseless and interdependent flow of activity and receptivity, a philosophy that explains the cyclical nature of living organisms and the dualistic law of all phenomena as we perceive them. Ancient legend holds that local shamans observed deer that had undergone bone fractures eating the bark from a certain species of tree. The shamans took samples of the bark, and administered it in tea form to humans who’d suffered bone fractures, and noted that their healing was quicker. This herb is now called Eucommia bark, and is the very first herb listed in Shen Nong’s herbal pharmacopeia. Another legend tells of how herders notified their medicine men and women that they’d seen goats foraging the leaves of a certain plant before mating. The leaves were gathered and tried on persons with weak reproductive potential; favorable results were documented. This herb is now called Epimedium; its slang name is “Horny goat weed.” It is used as effectively today as when first discovered. The shamans further observed that animals such as deer could re-grow broken antlers and lizards could re-grow appendages after they’d been broken off. It was thought that if these creatures could regrow appendages, there must be something powerful in their constitution. Decoctions of deer antler in hot water and/or alcohol were tried; the result was an increase in human strength and 87

endurance. The skeleton of Gecko has more recently been found to contain high amounts of condroiton, an important substance for maintaining bone, tendon and joint strength and flexibility. In western societies, plant medicines were also cultivated but, as described in Chapter 4, in the West, healers have contended with political, religious and economic opposition, which has severely fractured and encumbered ongoing development of this body of knowledge. The treasures of Changbai Mountain cannot be underestimated in China’s—or the world’s—cultural advancement. Emperor Kanxi, in the early Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), designated Mt. Changbai a “Forbidden Zone,” and declared it the legendary birthplace of the Asian races. In doing this, he might be regarded as history’s first environmentalist. This nature preserve has been in a state of environmental protection ever since. The “Middle Flowery Kingdom” Tsze-loo: “What constitutes higher man?” Confucius: “The cultivation of himself with reverential care.” China has been referred to as a paradise of historians and scholars, long admired by unbiased western thinkers. Meticulous documentation of developments in the healing arts, sciences, art, poetry, law, commerce and literature have been kept since approximately 3000 B.C. This medical documentation contradicts western claims that the health effects of Oriental medicine have not been sufficiently researched or officially documented. 88

Beijing ^ seats of China’s great classical period of cultural, scientific and literary advancement, referred to as the Golden Age of Chinese history. This period extended from the socalled Age of the Great Rulers (2852-2205 BC), reaching its apex with the arrival of Lao Tzu and Confucius (approximately 500 BC), continuing strongly throughout the T’ang Dynasty, until around 900 AD. From this high point, despite some recorded periods of strife, China’s majestic Golden Age continued in contented isolation until the 19th century. Only when western colonial interests began to invade its privacy and erode its serenity did some of China’s fragility become apparent. During this Golden Age, the land was ruled by great and benevolent rulers. The ruling elite, commoners and farmers alike all shared in prosperity, simplicity and love of nature. According to Will and Ariel Durant in their great work, Our Oriental Heritage, [[China had]] “...the most effective morality to be found among the peoples of any time; a social organization that has held together more human beings, and has endured through more centuries, than any other known to history; a form of government which, until the revolution destroyed it, was almost the ideal of philosophers; a society that was civilized when Greece was inhabited by barbarians, that saw the rise and fall of Babylonia and Assyria, Persia and Judea, Athens and Rome, Venice and Spain, and may yet survive when those Balkans called Europe have reverted to darkness and savagery.” 32 On the continuity of Chinese civilization the Durants state, “Some of the stone tools found in [[China’s]] Neolithic deposits [[contemporary to Egypt and Sumeria]] resemble exactly, in shape and perforations, the iron knives now used in northern China (Changbai region) to reap the sorghum crop. And this circumstance, small though it is, reveals the probability that Chinese culture has an impressive continuity of seven thousand years.”33

From the time the Chinese discovered the use of silk and wrote their first mystical book, the I-Ching, or “book of changes,” around 1500 BC, and made advanced observations in Chinese astrology, until the later invention of paper, the compass, block printing, the first known printed book, the printing press, ink, paper money, the dictionary, anthologies, movable type, and the first encyclopedia, among many inventions (including, ironically, the fork in Oijia culture 2400-1900 B.C.), we can clearly perceive the advent of an advanced race interested in learning and scholarship. From the exalted depictions of herbs seen in many ancient scroll paintings, it might be posited that the leaders’ consumption of the Tonic herbs had a profound effect on the development of this benevolent culture. Many of the most revered herbs illustrated in these paintings, such as Reishi mushroom, are known to help instill Shen, or spiritual values, in those who consume them, and their use in the palaces and courts by Imperial doctors is documented. It is thought that the images of clouds carved into the ceiling beams in the Imperial palaces were originally images of Reishi mushrooms; legend has it that a Rieshi mushroom grew out of a newly erected beam during the construction of an ancient palace, and was thought to be a positive omen that Chinese leaders would rule benevolently. By 1500 B.C., the energetic properties of herbal medicines and formulas were documented in the oldest known medical textbook, the Hung-di Nei-Jing, or Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, which today still serves as the cornerstone of modern Chinese medicine. The Hnng-di Nei-Jing documents the use of herbs, acupuncture, moxibustion (topical heat application), meridian theories, pathology, prevention and treatment of disease, and the use of pulse and tongue diagnosis. In the Chou dynasty, 1122-255 B.C., the state held medical examinations for aspiring doctors and their salary was fixed according

to their tesi dissections and anatomical studies were conducted, and in the second century A.D., Chung Ming wrote detailed medical essays on fever and dietetics. In 25 B.C., minister Gu Yong gave a speech describing Taoists' use of a hard white crystalline substance composed of dried concentrated urine, thus inventing the medical branch of Endocrinology; a century earlier, the term “Autumn Mineral,” coined by the Prince of Huai-Nan, referred to this crystalline powder. Only recently, in 1927, western medical research determined urine to contain substantial amounts of estrogens, androgens and the pituitary master sex hormone Gonadotropin. Use of these hormones extracted from urine are now common in contemporary western medicine.3* Utilizing diet to address diseases of deficiency was discussed in 200 A.D. by doctor Chang Chi in Systematic Treasury of Medicine and, in approximately 1330, Imperial Dietitian Hu Ssu-Hui wrote of the role of vitamins in The Principles of Correct Diet. On the cover of this book reads the caption: “Many diseases can be cured by diet alone.”35 In the third century, Hua To wrote a book on surgery and anesthesia. Wang Sho wrote a treatise on pulse examination. Dietary causes of diabetes and the use of thyroid hormone were discussed in Chinese medical texts in the seventh century A.D.36 The use of vaccines in Immunology was first recorded in the tenth century A.D., when Taoist hermit alchemists from a remote mountain refuge in Szechuan, called O-Mei Shan, were summoned by Minister Wang Tan to protect his family from smallpox. A “Numinous old Woman” from that mountain refuge came and administered Chung Tao, meaning “to implant the germs,” thus inoculating the family from the disease.37 The observations of these health-minded sages over 2000 years eventually evolved into a sublimely sophisticated health philosophy, and gave rise to a concept maintaining physical and spiritual 91

equilibrium through simple and ethical living, which eventually became known as “Taoism.” This philosophy was recorded in 500 B.C. when an elderly court official named Lao Tzu jotted down, at the request of a gate keeper, 51 poems before riding off into the desert on a yak. These poems came to comprise China’s most important book, the Tao Te Clung, a summary of all the accumulated wisdom of China’s early classical Golden Age. The Tao Te Ching describes a sensible approach to maintaining balance between the forces of Tin and Tang, a “middle way,” a philosophy in which practitioners seek to maintain balance between the polarized forces of matter and energy. Taoism is today, along with Buddhism, the most popular spiritual practice in China. The Tao is referred to in China as “The intermingling of heaven and earth.” When reading these profoundly simple and sensible poems, one is actually reading a summary of accumulated wisdom attained over 2000 years, beginning with the mountain hermits living on Changbai Mountain as they watched how nature balanced itself around them. Beijing and Xian are in close proximity to the Changbai range, and the revered Tonic Herbs soon came to be utilized by the early ruling elite, which fueled enthusiasm for and patronage of the burgeoning medical system. Emperors and Empresses during this long period were said to consume the Tonic herbs daily. This period is also notable for its lack of imperial warlike tendencies prevalent in most other dominant civilizations. (I believe some of the herbs discussed ahead were involved in helping instill this benevolent countenance among the elite). Although we must mention that during the tenures of certain Emperors, some traditions within the Imperial walls were quite cruel, such as the binding of women’s feet and castration of male servants. But these practices were not inflicted upon the common people. 92

During, ^ -206 B.C.), Oin Shihuang ordered the burning of all books except those on alchemy and medicine. The following Dynasty, the Han, (206 B.C.-221 A.D.), flourished. Wealth accrued and scholarly pursuits were engaged in by common people, who now congregated in cities. Poetry became sublime and a national pastime. The Imperial Library contained 10,582 books on philosophy, poetry, mathematics and classics, 868 of them on medicine. Only 790 volumes discussed war. By the time of the T’ang Dynasty (618-905 A.D.), the number of literary volumes in the Imperial library had swelled to 54,000. In 700 and 800 AD, herbal pharmacopeias and books on gynecology were written, along with medical encyclopedias. During the Sung Dynasty, 960-1127 A.D., a medical college was established. The famed doctor Li Shizhen finished his pharmacoepeia, The Bencao Gangmu, a compilation of 30 years’ work, in 1580. Cultivating Preservation During these centuries of advancement, China’s elite class cultivated their famed longevity and health-promoting herbs, and ensured that the growing regions of northeastern China were kept in pristine condition in order to guarantee their continued access to high quality herbal medicines and tonics. This herbal medicine was protected and preserved by the ruling class. Even after the arrival of Chang Kai Check in 1911, the Chinese herbs were meticulously protected by generations of farmers who’ve traditionally gained sustenance by their cultivation and common people who still prefer the “old” medicine over drugs and extracts. The current Chinese government, particularly in the Manchurian province of Jilin, has recently actively engaged in creating chemical free zones in the mountainous areas where traditional herb cultivation persists. 93

Masters of Biology The origins of the Chinese races have been proposed to date to 20,000-30,000 B.P. (Before Present).3* These peoples are credited with the cultivation of millet (dating from 8500 B.C., evidence of which still can be found in the DNA of current Asian peoples), as well as rice and soy. The first known books by Chinese writers on agriculture and sericulture date to 200 B.C.; these authors, their predecessors and progeny are undoubtedly among the world’s masters of biology. Farmers, who depended on the land for their survival, developed a near-religious appreciation for the living elements that create and renew healthy soil. Durant states, “Without rotation of crops or artificial manures, and often without draft animals of any kind, the Chinese have wrung two or three crops annually from at least half of their soil, and have won more nourishment from the earth than any other people in history.”39 Early Chinese agricultural pioneers developed worm composting and created extensive irrigation systems as far back as the Han dynasty. Their advanced agricultural practices were recorded in the late 1880’s by F.H. King, U.S Assistant Secretary of Agriculture.40 During Dr. King’s extensive tour of the agricultural regions of China and Japan, he documented the many superior and advanced practices of farmers in matters of land preservation and soil vitality. He noted that farmers had profound knowledge of the soil’s nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus needs, with the inhabitants of entire villages devoted to making compost from the raw nitrogenous materials in the area. Dr. King documented highly efficient and organized distribution systems for the compost, and impressive irrigation and canal systems. 94

Having lundreds of ancestors—soil that is still vital—these farmers’ progeny, who are farming the same ground today, know better than anyone that the beneficial micro-organisms, so important for soil health and oxygenation, can be wiped out by chemicals, and that without these micro-organisms, the soil would soon contain no bio-available minerals. The land would essentially die, and these-centuries-old farmers would hand down a useless, parched and eroded patch of dirt to their children. Many remote mountainous herb farms are still being tended today as they were during Dr. King’s day and before. Many of these farmers tend the miniscule “shoestring farms” of northern China and live in villages within close proximity to the land. Fields this small, tended by consistent human cultivators, have meant that oil-driven, mechanized farming and chemical use have not been adopted, not that the farmers could afford such “modern” practices. Will Durant did comment in the 1950’s that the same ancient Stone Age implements are still found in use on Chinese farms. It is possible that the 200 million Chinese farmers who stretch across the vast agricultural plane of northern China may be the most ‘disenfranchised’ large population on Earth. These peasent farmers are ‘off the grid’, and live among the most rudimentary existences in Humanity. The intensive Human populations farming this same land over many centuries has had its impact, and land management has become more difficult. Over the last 70 years, in many heavily populated areas of China, interventions have been introduced in order to modernize farming and increase output, resulting in soil degradation. Mao Tse Tung is credited with ushering in chemical and mechanized forms of farming. In many regions of China, the countryside has seen an initial increase in the output of food, followed by massive deterioration of the vitality of its agricultural lands. Outside the Changbai area and other pristine mountainous regions, near more populated centers, we find 95

overused, depleted soil producing crops of lesser quality. In the lowlands, around urban centers, one finds soils lacking in vital minerals without which, foods are devoid of nutrients and less assimilable in the body. Younger people are moving away to cities, leaving the farming families vulnerable to adopt chemicals as a way of reducing labor, and with eventual modernization of these remote areas via roads and electricity, chemical and mechanical farming may increase. Recent pesticide and herbicide production in China has increased, due to the presence of factories owned by Bayer, Syngenta, Basf, Monsanto, Dow, Dupont and others, capitalizing off cheap Chinese labor, but actual pesticide use by Chinese peasant farmers is very low compared to the U.S., due to inhibitive cost. Total herbicide and pesticide use in China for 2007 was 517,762 tonnes H, a fraction compared to the estimated amount used in America. Biotech crops as well, with the U.S. currently (2009) growing GM (genetically modified) food crops on 64 million hectares, compared to 3.7 million hectares in China, mainly non-food crops of cotton and Poplar; a species of tree that has been genetically modified to resist drought, and now being planted en masse in China to slow desertification. In fact, in the last decade, a massive tree planting strategy in China has reforested areas equivilating 2x the size of Vermont.

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Current farming in Northern China. Note each strip within every block is tended by a different family, thus, there are thousands of individual farms in this picture. The light spots are villages where the farming families live. Agriculture this human-labor-intensive is found almost nowhere else on earth today.

The current Chinese government appears to be aware of the destructive potential of heavy farming, and is now taking measures to institute education and standards for sustainable farming:. In 1998, cT> 7 they established “farmer field schools” to help farmers to return to sustainable forms of plant cultivation. Recognizing the growing demand for organic foods and the potential profits, many Chinese farmers are returning to their old ways. Currently, about the same percentage of land in China is under certified organic cultivation as exists in the United States. The Chinese have created a “green foods” organic standardization program, but farmers in rural China are too poor to afford to participate in expensive internationally recognized organic certification programs, so the Chinese government is in a quandary as to how to export organically certified food products.4,2 This roadblock should be solved 97

soon, and China is likely to once again show the world how to live and sustain life for centuries from the same soil. Most traditional herb production is done in the mountainous regions of northern and central eastern China, with great emphasis on old-school standards, and the traditional herbs of the Chinese Materica Medica have their origins in these wild cold regions, yet, herbs of lower quality may be grown in heavily populated lowlands with depleted soils. These may be tainted with chemical residues and can make their way into American markets; thus it is important to know the origin of the herbs one is buying. I learned right away from Master Teeguarden that only the most expensive Chinese herbs on the market should be purchased and consumed, and that one can safely be assured that these herbs are relatively chemical free, and grown traditionally by generational farmers. Some of the more expensive high quality herbs found in Chinese herb stores in major American cities come from the Changbai Mountain region, and are of immense value to the educated health seeker. One must combine inquiry with some luck in attaining a relationship with the high quality herb marketers. I was lucky to achieve such contacts through Master Teeguarden. Along with the modernization of agriculture, Chairman Mao also oversaw a reformation of Chinese medicine. Mao is said to have thought classical Chinese herbal medicine was bunk. His restructured system placed more attention on the secondary, or regulating class of herbs, a class considered by Chinese herbalists, even today, to be inferior because this class of herbs is prescribed for shorter amounts of time to address more acute symptoms, and they are known to be potentially harmful if used for longer durations. Mao’s approach was that Chinese medicine should keep pace with western medicine, which had by then abandoned the preventive approach. 98

The ... J se people had no interest in abandoning the traditional medicine, of which they are rightly proud. Traditional practices continued on in the provinces where “barefoot doctors” (at one time doctors went barefoot through snow to visit their patients, to show that they had strong immunity to illness) still administer herbal concoctions. Maintaining these traditions is also practical and necessary, for the peasants of rural China cannot afford pharmaceutical drugs, nor would the rural barefoot doctors have access to them if their patients could afford them. To address this dilemma, Mao ordered a “Barefoot Doctor’s Manual” to be printed and distributed to rural doctors; it describes the utilization of crude plant, insect, mineral and animal extracts as medicine. This manual is still periodically amended, printed and distributed by the Communist government. Numerous editions have also been translated to English, and can be found in many bookstores. Today traditional Chinese herbal medicine is going strong, with constant advancements and innovations in herbal substances and formulas, as well as new methods of refining the traditional medicines into extracts for a rapidly moving world. The search for new Tonic and medicinal herbs is ongoing, and a worldwide herbal pharmacopeia is emerging, still primarily based in the ancient Chinese protocols of health analysis and medicinal classification—an incredible affirmation of the wisdom of Shen Nong and his shaman friends in the hills of Changbai 5000 years ago. But the Chinese have also shown wisdom in adopting modern Western medical techniques that have been proven beneficial, particularly innovations in surgery, in which the West has made profound advancements. The Chang Bai Shan (mountain) area of northern China is today a pristine biosphere protected by the United Nations. It is now referred to as “the World Biology gene bank.” About 870 medicinal herbs are cultivated there under unspoiled conditions; these include 99

Ginseng, Astragalus, Gastrodia and Ganoderma Lucidum (Reishi). Manchurian tigers, black bear, leopards, sables, linx and otters are also found living in isolation and protection in these mountains. In the overhead photo of Mt. Changbai (page 83), vve can clearly see the borders of this biosphere, and the dense, almost black, primal forests within its borders. Only government sanctioned herb cultivators are allowed within the biosphere’s perimeter, a law that’s been in effect since emperor XienXi restricted the region from human encroachment in 900 A.D. Use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are outlawed within this region, which comprises hundreds of thousands of acres. No factory is allowed within 100 miles of the region’s borders. In fact, the Jilin province, which comprises Mt. Changbai and the surrounding region, now hosts 45 “ecological preservation areas,” totaling over 50% of the region’s land mass, and 501 “non-pollution areas” totaling 25 million hectares. In November 1999, the Chinese State Environmental Protection Administration approved Jilin Province as an experimental ecological province, and in 2001, the initiative to convert the whole province to chemical-free, pollution-free status was begun, with the goal of achieving this by 2010. This is the area where the great tonic herbs we will soon discuss evolved, and are being protected for future generations today. It is important for us to discuss these issues because many of the world’s most studied and documented herbs come from this region. Sometimes these herbs may be found as the higher priced examples found in Chinese herb shops, and may be called “Di Tao” herbs, meaning, “from the place of biological origin.” Di Tao herbs are very precious and their accessibility may grow as this and previously mentioned ecological standards programs expand. The farmers in China’s mountainous regions are among a lineage of great pioneers of organic farming, and have painstakingly maintained soil vitality for over forty centuries! This feat deserves great respect, as we in United

States 1 3ur farmland through unsound chemically dependent farming pi trices in a mere sixty years. I visited the city of Jilin, near Mt. Changbai in 1985, almost a decade before I consciously began my journey as a healer. A chance tourist stop in China placed me in the city for three days, and the observations I made of the people there fostered the first stage of my curiosity about human health. Jilin itself is a fairly large city with a considerable amount of heavy industry; most of the automobiles in China are manufactured here, which complicates the government’s goal of establishing the entire Jilin province as a “pollution free zone.” While I don’t want to depict Jilin as a fairyland, people there displayed a more robust general level of health than I have witnessed anywhere. During my first evening stroll around town with my then-wife of Chinese ancestry, Sharon, we observed what I can best describe as a “beauty pageant” taking place among the residents. I first observed that these people, on the whole, appeared to be the happiest I’d ever seen. Everybody was laughing and telling stories that made their acquaintances laugh.- Then I started noticing people’s basic posture and countenance. These were hearty folks. I then began to notice the true degree of their health: They appeared to enjoy excellent interaction and stimulation between the sexes. The women, by and large, were voluptuously beautiful, with long silky hair, red hennaed lips, and a light flowing gait as they walked with their heads seemingly in the clouds. Many wore red dresses of fine silk. The men were vigorous, with physical movements indicative of great strength and endurance. They had full-bodied, guttural laughs, square jaws with five-o-clock shadows, well-built shoulders and pectorals, and thick heads of jet-black hair, often times formed in “Elvis” cuts. I wondered what these people were doing that produced such vibrant health and vibrancy in the “dance” between the sexes. This dance 101

didn’t appear to incorporate anything sordid, but somehow revealed itself to me as an important mechanism of a healthy society. My first interest in endocrinology had begun. The Jing of these townsfolk was apparent, and it looked to have something to do with healthy hormones. . Later that evening we discovered what might be the foundation of this vitality dance. We meandered into an alley, our curiosity aroused by the butane lanterns lighting the scene. We had walked into a night bazaar of herb collectors who must have been collecting their fresh wares during the day. It was a fascinating scene: Peasants sat on the back of rough-hewn wooden carts, which appeared to have been carved and constructed with very primitive tools. Their mules, still tethered, munched hay in tin buckets strapped to their chins. The herb collectors seemed a kind of Munchkins, with windand rain-whipped faces. They wore rough burlap clothing wrapped around their bodies and tied with crude ropes; their footwear and headgear were just as primitive. They sat silently on the carts, like monks in prayer, next to piles of freshly picked Ginseng roots, so fresh they still had clods of earth and mud on their rootlets. There were big fungals like fairy caps and all kinds of fascinating herbal substances. Strangely beautiful images, lit by these butane flame lamps. I wish I could have gotten photos of this scene, but many older and peasant people in China don’t like to have their pictures taken. Sharon and I discussed how this scene must have been going on for centuries, and by our observation, it had changed very little. Then we noticed herbs everywhere, even displayed at the front counter of our hotel. We noticed how much reverence the locals seemed to have for their precious and ancient herbal medicinals and the brilliant system of their use, which has evolved unbroken for millennia. Maybe the health of these townspeople was partly due to the accessability of the herbs. 102

Chapter 7 Overview of Herbs Now that I was about to receive an in-depth education about herbs and a particular system of herbal alchemy, I decided it might benefit me to do some basic investigation on herbs; their potential efficacy, their unique nature, and their distinctness from food, why they are placed in a different category in our overall nutritional spectrum. I wanted to gain a broad understanding of these issues before I went into my extensive training on the Tonic herbs. Sometimes people ask me if herbs really work, or if the whole things just a hype. I wanted to be able to explain to people how herbs work, to what degree, within what time frame, and how their benefits are classified. I began by reading The Way of Herbs by Michael Tierra43. I learned that herbs tend to “harmonize” the system slowly and one may not as quickly observe a specific response as one might with pharmaceutical drugs. It is also true that the herbs that are available on the general market are generally mild. More potent herbs that might produce side effects or “contra-indications,” or those that are “drug-like,” such as Ephedra, have often come under scrutiny by the medical establishment. For instance, some herbs that contain natural steroids may exert a stimulus on the endocrine system, and are now being outlawed for possibly being harmful to the body. Pharmaceuticals are designed to produce a quick and intensive affect, to ameliorate symptoms and to appease an impatient population. These drugs are often are derived from a natural substrate (synthesized from plants and herbal substances) which are then refined into specific concentrations of isolates. Given the prevalence of unpredictable and undesirable side affects induced from modern drugs,

it may be evident that nature never foresaw nor intended that our medicines be derived from concentrated isolates. So many of the herbs we currently use evolved with an overall chemical composition that can “buffer” any excessive actions of individual constituents. The plants have symbiosis within their own chemistry and the surrounding plant kingdom, and thus they may help impart a “harmonizing” affect on the health of those who consume them. Only herbs that have little to no history of contra-indications are available in the mainstream marketplace, and they generally have long-term benefits that are gradual and not easily detected in a short time. Also of course, quality and efficacy may vary with herbs and herbal supplements, depending upon the method by which and the region and season in which they were grown. This is why it is very difficult to standardize an herb. To do so would represent an injustice to the herb and its consumer. The same is true with our food; tomatoes grown in one place by one method have different amount of nutrients than those grown elsewhere by another method. Similarly, the quality of your favorite wine may diminish with the next batch, if atmospheric conditions prevailed that were not as desirable as those in the previous season. When taking herbs, one may not see immediate progress; diligence and repetition are required. This is because many herbs don’t just treat symptoms, but work to counter the underlying causes of an illness. This is different than the way most western medicine is formulated to work. Slower impact can also be related to dosage; an herb such as chamomile is marketed as relaxing, yet the sedating effect many people want from a cup of chamomile tea is not likely to occur from a mere 1 or 2 grams of whole chamomile flower in the usual tea bag. If one were to steep 7 bags of the flower in a cup of water and 104

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drink that—depen. now stressed the nervous system is—one might get the desired sedating results. Thousands of years of study have given the Chinese incredibly precise calculations of specific weights and measures herbal formulas in order to achieve the desired results. By using high percentages of herbal extracts, we might also see a quicker and more dramatic remedial action on the health issue that prompted our search for therapy. I remember an old saying of Grandma’s, “Drink your bitter tea.” This adage must have come from the days when people made folk medicines from their immediate surroundings. Appalachian people made herbal medical concoctions; that’s all they had access to, and those grandmother shamans in our families probably learned that the more herbs they decocted and the stronger the taste, the more efficacious the remedy. The Chinese figured this out long ago, so if you go to a Chinese doctor and get an herbal formula for your ills, be prepared for it to taste incredibly bitter, at least to the western tongue. Differences between foods and herbs Most of our basic cultivars, our basic food staples, come from plants that are classified as “annual” plants. That is, their seed must be planted at the start of their growing season, and the plant develops over the next six months or so, culminating in a ripe fruit (i.e. tomato), leaf (chard), mature root (carrot), tuber (potato), or stalk (celery). From the time the seed is planted, germination and maturity will occur within roughly two seasons, and if not harvested, will develop new seeds or die back; the roots will go from carbohydrate sugars to starch, or the plant will drop its fruit in order to disperse its seed. In 105

the case of most-annual cultivars, a new seed must be planted in order to begin the process all over again. The same goes for fruit trees. They develop, from flower to ripened fruit, over approximately six months, and if not picked, will drop to the ground and, after a period of dormancy and recuperation, the tree will begin a new cycle of flowering, pollinating and fruit bearing. Therefore, most of our common foods must be harvested within about six months after their inception from seed or flower pollen. During those six months, miraculous things happen. A tuber or fruit is produced seemingly out of thin air. A great deal of cellular structure is developed, and in many plants, this structure surrounds a complex seed bearing all the genetic material necessary to produce an identical plant. The drivers of this immense creation of matter are enzymes, which are classified as the basic catalysts of metabolic activity in all living organisms. After the initial growth, plants develop sterols, by which they might maintain reproductive potential. The enzymes catalyze the development of cellular structures of the plants we eat, and those plants have approximately six months to draw up their inherent nutrients from the soil. In other words, the vegetable or fruit we will eat for dinner is the cumulative result of six months of compacted nutrients. It is a living entity that will remain fresh for a very short time after being plucked from its substrate. Now let’s examine herbs. Let me begin by stating that carrot and Ginseng are from the same family. They are derived from the same genus, but while our cultivated carrot has around six months to concentrate its nutrients before it must be consumed—or die back—a ginseng plant may live up to 150 years. Can you imagine the nutrient density in a carrot if it accumulated its nutrients for 150 years instead of just six months? 106

Mos plants classified as “perennials.” These are plants that live over a period of many years, and their seeding and dormant periods correspond with seasons, but don’t result in the die-back of the plant. Perennial plants therefore must develop special types of resistance to various conditions and stresses. The plant must concentrate its power within tough cellulose in order to withstand rain, drought, and wind. This tough woody cellulose must protect the nutrient pathways of the plant from invaders—predatory insects and bacteria—and its root structures must develop resistance to nematodes, viruses, and fungal invasion. The herbal plant develops internal resistance through natural antibiotic and other protective properties within its vital fluids. The plant accomplishes this by concentrating its nutrient intake over long periods of many seasons, and these highly compacted nutrients are locked inside the plant’s tough woody cellular structures, which have developed over time. This locked-in vitality also serves to increase the plant’s ability to adapt to and weather extremes that may occur through the seasons. In order for a plant to survive heat and drought, harsh rain, snow and cold, it must build up internal resilience; it must be stronger. Unique nutrients in herbs Most herbs, being derived from perennial plants, must have their nutrients “unlocked” from their cellular encasements. This class of herbs is made up of strangely named phyto-chemicals: Polyphenols, Polysaccharides, Beta-Glucans, and Triterpenes. A polysaccharide unique to Ginseng would be classified as a “Ginsenoside;” another similar polysaccharide found in Gynostemma would be referred to as a “Gypenoside.” A powerful beta-glucan from Reishi is referred to as “Ganodemic acid,” after the mushroom’s pharmaceutical name,

Ganoderma Liicidum. Even though Reishi is a mushroom, it is tough, like a piece of wood, and must be decocted in alcohol or cooked (see Appendix) before it will release its therapeutic dosage of this special immune boosting nutrient. These important health agents are not always optimally “bio-available” to humans if the herbs are consumed in their raw state. In other words, humans do not contain peptic acids and pancreatic enzymes strong enough to break down vvoody “lignin” cellular structures in order to derive the nutrients within. Many herbs, especially in Chinese herbalism, are like pieces of wood, roots, stems, and rocks; though they contain intensely compacted nutrients, we cannot masticate and digest them properly. The Chinese discovered, around 7000 years ago, that if they decocted various herbs in boiling water, the process could free the nutrients from their imbedded cellulose. And the dense nature of these concentrated agents came to represent a class of nutrients that were found to have particularly intensive effects on health. Yes, enzymes are gone after cooking the herbs, but enzymes are found in the food we eat for sustenance; we do not need to seek these agents in our herbal decoctions, for if we did we would not derive other nutrients. Understanding this fact is self-empowering. While we need to eat our whole vegetable and fruit foods raw or very lightly cooked—in order to preserve their enzymes—we sometimes need to engage in forceful processes to unlock herbal nutrients. The forceful approach is not necessary with every herb; for instance, Goji Berry is wonderful eaten raw, as are Longan, Jujube, and Asparagus Root. The ancient Chinese classified the herbs differently than they did food, although many of the tonics are considered to be in a “superfood” category. However, as shamans developed processes of cooking decoctions from herbal formulas, so also did women practice family folk medicine by including herbs in soups, stews and culinary dishes. One will commonly view Lycium Berries, Jujube, Lotus Seed, 108

Longan, Cod* ....galus and other herbs as ingredients and broths in Chinese soups and dishes. The most embedded life force factors in the core of roots and locked in woody lignin cellulose are thought to contain more Tin properties, and the outer nutrients, closer to the surface, in the growing tissues are said to impart Tang properties; by deduction we can see that Tang energetics will impart more immediate effects, while Tin herbs will require some time to penetrate deeply and support long-term recharge. The application of these agents can have profound impact on the health of the consumer, and it is up to the herbalist to understand what form of stimulation or rejuvenation is needed by the client. The various polyphenols, polysacharrides, and immune regulators appear not only to remain unharmed by the excessive heat in cooking but are inade available biologically by this process. In other words, eating raw Reishi is not going to do one much good. Other examples include Ho Sho Wu; eating this tuber raw can help enhance health in some ways, but in centuries of experiments, humans developed the process of simmering the tuber in black bean sauce, which brings out the herb’s famed Tonic Kidney Jing enhancing and anti-aging properties. Rehmannia in its raw state is cooling, anti-spasmodic, and can help reduce inflammation in the lymph glands. It can cool rising liver heat and help reduce blemishes on the face. It’s a very helpful and important herb, but it is still considered to be a medicinal or “regulating class” herb when raw and is thought to have a more narrow spectrum of therapeutic uses due to its “uni-directional” (cooling) energetic properties. But once the Rehmannia is steamed with certain other herbs and wine in an ancient process (known only to a few villagers in China who have handed down the secret from generation to generation), it is rendered into one of the most revered 109

Tonic herbs, high up in the superior herb class. Cooked, or “prepared,” Rehmannia becomes a dual-directional, life-enhancing herb with a broad based spectrum of benefits, specifically as a longevity and rejuvenation herb that is also a great blood builder and Tonic to the digestive metabolism. Prepared Rehmannia is referred to as “The kidney’s own food.” The process of preparation activates its Tonic qualities and renders them bio-available to us. We are beginning with this discussion to glimpse the profundity of the Chinese herbal system, with its vast understandings of plant bio-chemistry and bio­ availability. Much of this ancient knowledge has been lost in the West. Efficacy The only way these developments could have occurred is through a great deal of time and experimentation by a large number of people who maintained, and still maintain, meticulous documentation of their research. Every day I grow more in awe of the ancient herbal masters and their mastery of the art form of herbal combining. Long ago, they understood that an herb may have a certain set of therapeutic values, but when combined with another herb, those qualities may change, or be enhanced. Certain herbs that were determined to contain potentially harmful properties were found to have modified energetic properties when combined with another herb, and the combination can eliminate the potential for side effects. Thus, formulations came to be developed. A great deal of investigative study went on over 3000 years and formulas have now come down to us in an extremely efficacious state, with the most famous formulas in the Chinese Materia Medica rendered almost completely free of side effects, with surprisingly few cases of contra-indication. 110

lrau.v;al diagnosis is also delightfully noninvasive. Who wants to navv. anger poked up their rectum or vagina when the problem can be readily determined by the examination of tongue and pulse. It’s quite impressive to go to a Chinese doctor for ten dollars and get such an accurate diagnosis of one’s problems so quickly and effortlessly. The main obstacle for westerners has been a •language barrier, but this is improving as more western doctors adopt the Chinese medical protocol. It is a great vindication to the shamans and early medicine men/women of the ancient world to see the lexicon and methodology of a system they developed so many ages ago now being adopted by learned men and women of the current technological age, and after extensive experiments using pharmaceutical protocols. A 1977 edition of the folk medicine manual of China, entitled The Barefoot Doctor’s Manual, states this in the introduction: Chinese traditional medicine - is not precisely in the category of folk medicine. It is a well-organized system of medical knowledge based on observations, experiments, and clinical trials, all duly recorded;and a body of theory developed from the findings. It is not based on' empirical experience alone but is a system developed in the distant past by individual scholars and government institutions. - many of the principles first advanced centuries ago have now been confirmed by modern science.*5 The merging of eastern and western medicine continues to be the pursued by Chinese medical authorities. Yet, many Chinese doctors continue to prescribe formulas of whole herbs as historically used. And many Chinese people still want their medicine in the traditional way. Indeed, Mao Tze Tung’s efforts to bring new western medicines to the rural provinces via construction of modern health clinics, and training of the country doctors, appeared to fail to win over the 111

common populations after a brief trial period.w If you go to a Chinese doctor now, he/she are likely to provide a prescription of whole herbs to be cooked as tea at home. These formulations consist of numerous strange looking plant, mineral and insect or animal substances. Alternatively, the Chinese doctor will prescribe pills made from whole herbs cooked as tea, then spray dried and compressed with honey or some similar binder into pill form, or as packets of the powdered extract to be diluted in hot water. I expect this latter will become most popular, as it is easiest for everybody involved. More western doctors, after all their studies in chemical medicine, are adopting the philosophies contained within Chinese medicine, such as the concept of Yin/Yang, the five organ systems and their interaction and interdependence, and the diagnostic methods of this ancient system. As for whether a system could arise based on North American plants, Michael Tierra states: “[[When in China]] I spoke with my teachers there about classifying our native North American herbs into the energetic system of Chinese herbalism. They said what I proposed could not be done, that it had taken the efforts of countless herbalists over the centuries to evolve such a complete system and pharmacopeia.”17 Too, the western medical philosophy, driven to treat sickness rather than to preserve and enhance health, driven to earn profits at the expense of the unwell, is fundamentally different than that of the ancient Chinese. A doctor recently told me that the western medical research establishment has opened clinics and laboratories at prestigious universities to study the benefits and medicinal properties of the Chinese herbs, looking for the active constituents, examining and documenting them. The western doctor told me this is going on in a lab at UCLA. He assured me that there was no political or economic drive behind the research, but I had misgivings. More recently, a doctor of western, Chinese and homeopathic medicines

stated max.. control is exactly what is driving this research, and that there i* .. :rong likelihood that once these active ingredients and phyto-chemicals are isolated, derived from their parent plants and re-named, these substances will be patented, with the risk that the parent plant or herb could be restricted from public availability in order to protect the patent. The battle over the legal sale of red yeast rice is an example. In a possibly relative case, ephedra (ma huang) has been banned from sale in America. Ephedra is an essential herb in Chinese medicine for drying damp conditions in the lungs. But companies in the West were combining it with caffeine and marketing their products for weight loss, obviously not recognizing the combination of these two substances is pretty foolhardy chemistry, and can cause hypertension and dehydration. Concurrently the pharmaceutical companies developed a patented derivative of the active ingredient ephedrine, which they patented as pseudo-ephedrine, and a host of over the counter drugs for cold and flu were developed. Coincidently, an adverse reaction event was reported by someone using the weight loss product, and the sale of ephedra in America was banned (but not caffeine).* Could this be coincidence, or opportunism? Whole herbs vs. extracts Herbalist Jethro Kloss, in his Back to Eden, states in his introduction, “There is a wonderful science in nature, in trees, herbs, roots, and flowers, which man has never yet fathomed.”18 Our modern science has attempted to probe this complexity by isolating components of plants in order to determine how they work as therapeutic agents on human health. In the end, though, it is the whole wisdom of the complete plant or herb that we must respect for its synergy. Mr. Kloss ‘Licensed Chinese medical practitioners may still legally use Ephedra. 113

goes on to say, “The most learned scientists who ever lived on this earth cannot separate natural foods and then combine them in a better manner than nature herself has prepared them.”*9 The distinguished Dr. T. Colin Campbell’s recent book, The China Study, may be considered one of the most important modern studies on nutrition ever conducted. Regarding plant extracts vs. vitamins, Campbell has this to say: “Everything in food works together to create health or disease. The more we think that a single chemical characterizes a whole food, the more we stray into idiocy. This way of thinking has created a lot of poor science.”50 Again he states, “Far too often, we scientists focus on details while ignoring the larger context. For example, we pin our efforts and our hopes on one isolated nutrient at a time, whether it is vitamin A to prevent cancer or vitamin E to prevent heart attacks. We oversimplify and disregard the infinite complexity of nature.”51 Dr. Campbell, who co-authored the book with his son, Thomas, states that phytochemical isolates, confuse researchers about whole plant therapies. Conventional methods of evaluating these isolates’ health properties often produces contradictory results. Doctor Campbell and son are commenting upon 5000 years of Chinese medical history; while modern Chinese medicine—Orwellianly referred to as “Traditional Chinese Medicine”—is a more symptomatic approach to health maintenance, it has still managed to retain its basic focus on the use of whole plant herbal substances. The modern Chinese understand that whole plant substances contain natural synergistic properties, and are well aware that various alkaloids and volatile oils may be adversely affected both by our methods of extraction and through isolation from counter-balancing properties within the whole herb. James Green, prominent herbal farmer and pharmacist states in The Herbal Medicine Makers Handbook, “Western science is often 114

unable to ex^. plant remedies work. Scientific method routinely inhibits a true ui.u, standing of the action of whole herbs or their individual constituents because the unique organization of the entire plant is rarely, if ever, tested. So when a plant constituent is said, for example, to be insoluble in water, this might not be and very likely isn’t entirely true when that constituent is functioning in the dynamic context of the whole plant. Science is profoundly humbled by what actually goes on within the brilliant flesh of the whole herb; the whole plant is the true reference, the one which one’s whole body is most biologically familiar with.” w He states later, “Herbal products that have been standardized (refined) to an arbitrary percent of any specific constituent in an attempt to exaggerate this component and elicit a faster (drug-like) action frequently demonstrate more (drug-like) side affects. This refinement process alters the natural synergistic energy of the herb and modifies the herb’s natural ability to do many things and work on deeper fundamental levels.”53 Michael Tierra states in the introduction to his book, Planetary Herbalism: “Drugs are poor substitutes for plants. They may be helpful for short-term or acute symptoms, but their long-term action often depletes the primary life force because of their inorganic nature. I believe that the reliance on chemical medicine contributes to a culture that is destroying our innate love of nature. Herbal medicine, therefore, relates to larger spiritual and political issues. If we do not re-establish our connection with the universe and natural healing, we may not be likely to survive as a species.”5* In Plant Spirit Shamanism, authors Heaven and Charling make this statement: “There are nearly 270,000 species of flowering plants on Earth, and less than one percent of them have been studied for their healing properties. Moreover, most of the research that is taking place is 115

conducted in Western laboratories, where scientific rather than spiritual methods are, of course, employed. The intention is to isolate one or.two active ingredients and patent more drugs instead of finding more' cures. And as part of this process, researchers sacrifice the plant itself. It is just as if we were killing a human being in order to take only the teeth and hair. Any other secrets the plants might teach us die with it on the altar of Western rationalism.” 55 My research demonstrated that herbs certainly did contain powerful health-enhancing properties, and that, specifically, the Chinese herbal system appeared to have been developed over time into the most fully documented and superior natural health system. In my understanding, the Ayurvedic medicine system of India may be equally ancient and efficacious, but unfortunately its development was not as well documented throughout history, and its deep teachings have mainly been passed on in an oral lineage, so that outsiders to Indian culture have not had complete access to its deepest accumulated wisdom. It seemed I had stumbled onto a magic carpet by meeting Master Teeguarden and having been invited to become his apprentice. I knew this was an incredible opportunity, and one that appeared mutually fortuitous, as I had also come to him at a time when he needed my help. I decided I would pour myself into learning about the herbs; sticks, roots, rocks, bugs, bark, flowers, animal parts and other strangely fascinating substances in those five gallon jugs stacked in Master Teeguarden’s hallway. I would get them under my fingernails; I wouldn’t bathe at night, just let their dusts and spores nurture my bones and sink into my pores. There was an ancient connection for me here; I could feel it right away. 116

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Chapter 8 The Tonic Herbs In my initial lessons, Master Teeguarden recommended that I hold the herbs, examine them, smell and even eat bits of them in order to get in touch with their powerful healing properties. They were strange and fascinating to me, but right away I could feel their potency. We were working primarily with herbs called “Tonic Herbs,” which comprise the superior class of Chinese medicine. Out of the thirty thousand herbs used in Chinese medicine, only about 70 to 80 have been deemed Tonics. Specific criteria are required for an herb to be included in this category. It must have been determined through years of study to be completely safe for long-term consumption, having no history of side effects. Chinese medicine, contrary to what we may have been told, places intense scrutiny on the safety of the herbs. In fact, the primary rule of Chinese medicine is “Do no harm.” Additionally, the Tonic herbs must have broad based healing properties and “dual directional” energy; that is, they must exert a non-specific regulating action on the whole organism, helping maintain a relative balance of yin/yang energies. In other words, the herb should not produce too much one-directional heating or cooling effect in the body, and should help one maintain physical and emotional adaptability. Uni-directional, heating or cooling, quick acting, invigorating or calming effects can, when needed, be attained by a second class of herbs, considered inferior to the Tonics, referred to as the “Regulating Class,” which consists of some two thousand herbs. This is the class of 117

herbs most widely used in the modernized but ironically termed “Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).” Herbs like Echinacea and Goldenseal, Valerian and Kava would be classified among this secondary group. Bear in mind that the Chinese still use Tonic herbs in many formulas, but they are no longer considered the first line in treatment; they may be added in order to amplify, buffer or solidify the actions of the regulating class herbs and are used rather more at the recuperative or convalescent stage. (In no way do I intend to cast current Chinese medicine as inferior, for it is continuing to grow and refine itself into a miraculously effective, sophisticated and safe form of medicine). In the 1940s, Mao Tse Tung had the Chinese medical system reformulated to place more emphasis on the use of this secondary class of herbs, essentially re-orienting Chinese medicine to focus on symptoms rather than prevention, and actually had some of the most precious and transformative Tonic herbs taken out of the Chinese pharmacopeia. This was likely due to the Tonic herbs’ propensity not just to heal illness, but to actually empower people. It is largely through Master Teeguarden’s work with Tonic herbs that the current Chinese medical authorities are working to re-institute Tonic Herbs like Reishi Mushroom (Ganoderma Lucidum) and Polyrachis Ant into their pharmacopeia. Bupleurum (Chai Hu) & Dragonbone (Long Gu) is actually a formula belonging to this secondary, or regulating, class of herbs. It was the first formula to which Master Teeguarden introduced me. Referred to as a “harmonizing” formula, it serves as a great initiation into the Chinese herbs, as it can provide a preliminary grounding therapy, helping to clear certain Chi channels so that the Tonic herbs can follow and work more holistically on an unblocked individual. While Master Teeguarden specialized in the Tonic herbs, we also utilized some of the prime regulating or harmonizing formulas for 118

quickti *nergy, or Chi blockages. Chi in this case is referred to as «.**, ment or flow of the body’s electrical charge and the integrity of metabolism, which, if blocked, can lead to physical and emotional problems or illness. I started noticing the clearing effect of the Bupleurum & Dragonbone formula on my considerable blood toxemia right away, and felt like chunks of pent up frustration were being dislodged from their longtime hideout, like when the last troublemaker at the party finally peters out and sulks away. Bupleurum (Chai Hu) is the primary herb in any Chinese herbal formulas designated to cleanse and detoxify the lymph and blood, and clear liver heat. It is renowned as being effective yet mild on the system. Bupleurum is never used alone and will be found along with herbs in formulas that further break up Chi blockage, heat and toxemia, and help remove unwanted elements from the body via the normal pathways, such as the feces and urine. When we detoxify, we don’t want to break out in rashes and pimples, or have our breath and underarms smelling like a coal miner’s socks. ^Contraindicated with dehydration, dry mouth and deep yellow urine. Dragon Bone (Long Gu) is one of those substances that helps the body direct the removal of the “windy evil,” while helping stabilize the individual both physically and emotionally. Many people ask what Dragon Bone is. In previous epochs, giant wooly mammoths—the presumed predecessors of the modern elephant—lived in China, among other places. It was their habit to return to their ancestral burial grounds, as elephants still do today. On these grounds, bones and tusks of mammoths piled up, until their bones formed a literal mountain, which eventually petrified, leaving a mountain of bone shaped stone. This material is now mined in China, and is called Dragon Bone. ^Contraindicated for persons with a cold constitution. 119

Bupleurum (Chaillu)

Dragon Bone (Long Gu)

As was previously discussed, the original concept of Tin/Tang was developed by ancient Chinese medicine men and women. These pre-shamans observed nature and recorded that all energy manifested itself in cyclical patterns. Death was followed by rebirth, and so on. According to these medicine men and women, the original concept of yin/yang was described thus: Tin means the accumulation and storage of energy and Tang refers to the use of or outward pouring of energy. Simply explained, Tin charges the battery, Tang draws from it. This sophisticated medicinal system derives its wisdom from the observation of natural cycles—summer and winter, the growth and fruiting period followed by a state of dormancy, which, as we will see, is necessary for an entity to rebuild energy for the next fruiting period. Americans are always on the go, and we may try to deny the need for rest or re-charging in our modern world, but we cannot ignore these natural cycles and still maintain true health. The early pre-Taoists, having gained insight into the in­ breathing and out-breathing of nature, then developed their basic 120

underlying nder to nurture and sustain life in perfection, one must recognize ...id nurture three basic levels of life— the reproductive, the metabolic, and the spiritual. These three primary life sources came to form the cornerstone of the Chinese Taoist health system; they named them the “Three Treasures.” Master Teeguarden introduced me to the basic foundational philosophy of Taoist herbalism. Reading his book™ really helped me grasp this simple yet immense philosophy. The Three Treasures are the three aspects of radiant health or “health beyond danger.” They are Jing, Chi, and Shen. According to the Taoists, the Three Treasures comprise the primary energies of life, and as such, they must be nourished and protected. They form the cornerstone of the Gate of Life school. Master Teeguarden used a candle analogy to explain and differentiate the Three Treasures, the wax of the candle, the basic material body, being like Jing. Chi is likened to the fire and heat of the flame, and Shen is analogous to the light given off. Jing is our material body, cellular density, our energy stores, our reproductive potential, our DNA and our seed. Chi is the force, or the electric currents, that drive our metabolism of food into energy, and the use of that energy. Shen is our spirit. The remarkable thing about Taoist herbalism is that 33% of the emphasis on health maintenance is placed on our spiritual health. What follows is a discussion on Classic Chinese Tonic Herbalism. This represents the foundational philosophy of my lineage. My concept of thresholds grew partly out of contemplation on the “Three Treasures.”

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Chapter 9 The Three Treasures: Jing The Essence Jing comprises our reproductive force, our seed, and the genetic composition and integrity we pass on to future generations. It’s our basic deep life force, which can be likened to a battery that we need to keep charged. Jing is said to be housed in the kidneys, adrenals, testes and ovaries, and is thought to emanate from an area between these organs and glands called the Solar Plexus, the place which the Chinese believe the life-force originates. This is referred to as the “Gate of Life,” hence the name of our lineage. In Indian philosophy, Jing corresponds to the first and second chakras or energy centers, and is often referred to in Chinese physiology as the “lower Dantianor “lower Jiao. ” Women give birth from this region of the body;- men’s semen is pure Jing. Hence, Jing incorporates our DNA, along with the endocrine system and reproductive hormones. Jing also governs the strength of our structural frame, hair, nails, and our “deep health”—our youthfulness and ability to handle stress, adversity, overwork, illness and other challenges in life. So Jing must be viewed as a kind of battery that we don’t want to drain. Some Jing we inherit through our genetic lineage and some we acquire as children. So Jing is regarded from two perspectives: pre­ natal Jing, the constitution inherited from our parents and ancestors, and post-natal Jing, the results of the nurturing we receive while growing. For example, pre-natal: a mother’s placenta is pure Jing, post-natal: a mother’s milk is pure Jing. 122

Jing is likened to a bank savings account of long-term energy. It is the vitality we utilize to bring forth new life and to insure good health in our older years. Once expended, it can be very difficult to reaccumulate. When we experience the loss of this treasure we feel de­ vitalized and can show signs of aging before our time. A person with an abundance of Jing will be robust, resilient, have a positive “I can do that!” attitude; such an individual is able to handle tough labor and stressful situations without being drained. He/she will also usually be found to have strong parents and ancestors. They may have less gray hair and more sexual attractiveness as they age past 40. People who may have inherited weaker Jing from their families can re-gain excellent health, but it will require effort. Signs of Jing deficiency include lower back pain, darkness under the eyes, brittle lifeless graying hair or hair loss, pale or colorless skin, skeletal and teeth degeneration, joint problems, ridged and cracking nails, mental fogginess, premature aging and lethargy or exhaustion. Leakage of Jing may be caused by illness, stress, accidents, childbirth, overwork, lack of fulfillment, excessive sexual semen release in men (women do not lose Jing at orgasm, this topic will be discussed further in Chapter 17), exposure to toxins, poor diet and exhaustion. There is a saying in Chinese medicine: “Okay to become tired but never to become exhausted.” The Chinese have known this for thousands of years; one must cultivate and protect long-term health for true vitality in order to sustain what is referred to as “health beyond danger.” Once trained to observe signs and behavior, we may readily determine levels of vitality of Jing in all people, from those who are inherently strong to inherently weak. As stated in earlier chapters, many people that I observe today, particularly young people, appear to be inheriting depleted Jing, due 123

to the overwhelming temptation to consume tasty but nutritionally insufficient or polluted foods, the convenience of these harmful products, and the ever more remote knowledge of the sources and preparation of whole nutritious foods. Jing is further weakened by a sedentary lifestyle in front of television, lack of sunlight and fresh air, exposure to toxic compounds, etc., but as stated earlier, the lifestyles and habits of earlier generations may also have left their mark. This is the threshold at which we stand; never before has the human race consumed en masse such high percentages of refined, nutrient-devoid, toxic substances passed off as food; never have we been exposed to so many carcinogens and spent so much sedentary time in closed unnatural quarters. Consequently, never before has the human race been generally afflicted, excepting relatively brief periods of plague and famine, with such poor health and overwhelming sickness. Diseases of deficiency, which have and continue to afflict many cultures, have been replaced in technologically advanced nations by a multitude of even more insidious diseases of “excess.” Theories that ancient peoples lived shorter life spans may be based more on dangers from external conditions and birthing difficulties than on internal disease. Since Jing is said by the Chinese to be stored deep in the kidneys, and to govern the integrity of our genetic lineage, depending on the strength of the stock we come from, we may withstand the onslaught of poor food and chemicals for varying lengths of time, and still maintain some degree of good health, even over generations. It is this generational aspect of observing health that has been interesting me most; what our ancestors were is what we are at our core, albeit, with some modifications of our chromosomes. Their seed is our Jing, and the ancient Chinese were brilliant in figuring out what modern western science is just beginning to explore in any real depth. 124

In att icept of Jing,, I looked to find a western equivalent. In Biology, the study of genetics appeared to be the closest parallel. In the 1800s, Darwin and Lamarke initiated the concept of genetics by discussing the progressive refinement of genetic adaptability over generations; particularly, Darwin's “process of natural selection,” an idea that explained why organisms favored the strongest or most adaptable genes to pass down through generations. Darwin's argument centered on progressive refinement within living organisms and symbiotic harmony with the systems they inhabit. Species that could adapt through effective gene selection flourished. Only recently are scientists discussing possible mechanisms of degradation of DNA from environmental and dietary influences and the hereditary implications of this. That discussion is currently scattered among researchers from different fields. There is still little consensus among biologists on the issue, yet the Chinese have, since the beginnings of their culture, observed both hereditary and environmental impacts on genetic health within the concept of prenatal and postnatal Jing. One of the first important studies on hereditary deficiencies was conducted in the 1940s by Dr. Francis Pottenger. This fourgeneration study documented extensive dietary experiments with cats and to a lesser extent, humans. He correlated his feline studies with humans, stating that the cats' metabolic system is similar to humans’, although the health effects of diet in cats can be seen more rapidly. Dr. Pottenger’s experiments concluded that cats given foods poor in nutrition—including cooked meat and pasteurized milk—evidenced deficiencies in the next generation; by the fourth generation, these cats had no capacity to produce living offspring. Dr. Pottenger’s studies further indicate that it can take four generations of healthy optimum nutrition to undo the damage from one generation of dietary deficiency.67 125

With effort, his team was able to resuscitate the health of cats who’d displayed damage from poor nutrition, presenting the likelihood that despite poor, deficient lifestyle choices a human might make, depleted Jing can be replenished in the individual.58 An individual Can re-gain vibrant health and pass this bonus on to his/her offspring. Dr. Pottenger stressed that these interventions must be applied within a crucial time frame to be successful, particularly during the early phase oflife. After that point, should neglect of health continue, it could be increasingly more difficult if not impossible to regain perfect health. With the rise of harmful chemicals in our environment and the degradation of nutrients in food, there is now a new and rapidly growing field of biology called epigenetics, which studies generational and environmental effects on the genomes of living structures. The Institute of Science in Society, based in London, among others, is conducting studies on long-term hereditary affects, or “carcinogenicity” from destructive agents in the food supply and environment, thus a branch called “toxicogenomics” is emerging within the epigenetics field.59 Reamon-Buettner, Mutchler and Borlak (2008) conducted a study titled The Next Innovation Cycle in Toxicogenomics: Environmental Epigenetics, compiling health and reproductive data over four generations of mice fed genetically modified foods, which resulted in noticeable damage at the DNA level. We are currently observing the worldwide actions of “Genotoxicants” due to depleted food and eco-systems. Genes (note the phonetic similarity to Jing), fortunately, are an original and potentially indestructible source of information, locked within our DNA and formed in bundles shaped like sticks called chromosomes. It is these groupings of genes that may experience “point mutations” by the actions of adverse elements, thereby having a corrosive effect on long-term health. Resilience of offspring can be detrimentally affected 126

by these a] ations be caused by toxicity? It appears so, and epigeneticists are in the process of painstakingly collecting data on gene variance or “Bioinformatics” before definitive conclusions can be drawn.60 Thus, it may be a while before we in the West can prove what the Chinese have known for thousands of years. Back when I started with Master Teeguarden, and I began to get acquainted with Jing, I took a good look at myself. At 41, I was pretty healthy, except for a toxic liver and a brain whacked out by negative impulses. I’d been brought up on poor food—refined white bread bologna sandwiches, cereal and peanut butter and jelly. Fortunately I hadn’t taken many pharmaceutical drugs in my life and had only one cavity—with a mercury filling (since removed). As a young guy I’d been a wet noodle with pale skin, a bit spindly and slumped over, with thinning hair. When in my teens, I’d been depressed a lot and sometimes felt out of my mind. I’d also been exposed to toxic petrochemical substances when I worked with my dad. I know he must have looked at me back then and-wondered what had happened to all the tough Thomas family blood. I wanted to be strong like him and to gain his respect but more often succeeded in making his life miserable. My hormones were out of whack and I had some feminized characteristics. I noticed a lot of my friends were that way too, surely to the chagrin of their parents as well. I knew something was askew between dad’s physical profile and mine. I looked into my genealogy and found that my greatgrandparents on both sides had been tough farm stock from south central Kentucky; they lived in a day well before pesticides and mechanized farming. They lived and died on their land, worked in the fields and prayed thanks for the food they’d created on their supper plates. Then my grandparents moved to Louisville, took up wartime jobs in sooty, dirty places and began to eat the ever-tantalizing refined 127

foods. Next, Dad and Mom, in their respective families, got pulled into the whipped-cream dream, drawn to visually appealing processed foods designed merely for the taste buds; they partied hard and drove fast cars. Still, their pictures depict robustly strong and satisfied youth. Dad said when he was young he didn’t think there was a man in the world could whoop him. I was the third generation of Thomas’s to live a city life. Dad and Mom had fresher, more local food on their plates. My generation would be the first to spend our formative years eating devitalized, chemically-laden foods. It began to make sense that I was experiencing physical breakdown so early in life. I looked at movies and TV and noticed lots of the teenagers from the fifties onward looked and acted like delinquents, something my parents’ generation didn’t appear to do nearly as much. I noticed these Hollywood depictions of delinquency often seemed to center around fast food, hamburger drive-ins. Was the food creating the delinquency? This was my first glimpse that our lifestyle was inflicting damage on our society, literally down to our genetic health. Angel of Jing My bounce-back accidentally began with high school lunch, when I used to get this strange smelling green stuff on my plate that looked like lawn cuttings. It was kale, and we saw a pile of it with our lunch every two or three days. I was always so hungry that one day I decided to overcome my aversion and chomp away; it turned out I not only came to like the stuff, but to crave it. The ladies in the kitchen really made it right, firm and dark with lots of vinegar. It quickly got to where my veggie-fangs would pop out dripping with saliva as I 128

headed foi y. I loved it, and found that most of the other kids left it on their plates uneaten. So I started asking if I could have theirs. I started trading my white flower buns for kale, my milk, my hamburger, till I had nothing but heaping piles of kale on my plate. Eventually I took to pocketing my 50 cents and just grabbing an empty plate in line, going to all the kids so they could unload their pile, and chowing down until I couldn’t eat any more. I actually attribute a great deal of my current good health to the few years when I ate all that kale. I had been below the threshold and this development appeared to have sprung me safely back into some control of my life, and I started thinking for myself again. While the other kids in that poor suburb of Louisville were already teetering on the threshold of disempowerment, I was springing out of there into my own life of self-made adventure. I got some zing in my Jing, hit the road and began my “odysseys.” The kale served as my Threshold protector. In the late 1970’s, by fluke, I fell into a rock and roll teen idol band and was brought out to live at the Tropicana Hotel in L.A. Our manager wanted to starve us and so we’d be skinny and only poor, nutrient-devoid foods went into the fridge; we ate potato chip sandwiches on white bread. We’d boil frozen peas and Dibbs would say “Drink the water we boiled ‘em in; that’s got the ‘goodness’ in it.” We were penniless, at the mercy of our girlfriends for food handouts. I started smoking again and fooled with drugs and alcohol. I was also having a very active and promiscuous sex life. All these factors are a perfect w ay to burn out one’s Jing real fast, but I kept going and going. Eventually I’d had enough, bailed on the whole thing and holed up in Philly for a few years just doing art, but never really felt much burnout. I recuperated my Jing quite quickly. I had become “fatigued but not exhausted,” and my recuperation was relatively easy. 129

I kept on getting better about diet and lifestyle. It took many years, first with the juicing, and then with the herbs Master Teegarden recommended. Today I feel I experience something close to the health my rough-hewn great-grandparents enjoyed. Contrast my story with that of many kids today, with possibly numerous generations of ancestors who’ve had their Jing blasted by the onslaught of chemicals in the food, water and air. Their greatgrandparents may have been lured away from the countryside and settled into city life. Here in Los Angeles I’d see young kids trying to live out the little rock-and-roll fantasy that I had—with fame and grandeur, with girls and escapist substances—and it hammers them. They would come to Master Teeguarden’s elixir bar at Erewhon Natural Foods with spindly, wobbly walks, structural anomalies, dull eyes, and brittle lifeless hair. Because they don’t have the foundational Jing to withstand the "leaks” caused by their lifestyle, it will take them much longer and require more effort than it took me to bounce back from the same experiences. There are two generations between them and me, and it appears that the collective Jingof many of our progeny is dissipating. My childhood idols were men like Gregory Peck and Kirk Douglas— where are guys like that today? Somehow women appear to me to be holding up better; thankfully, I see many women whom I view as equally beautiful to Marilyn Monroe. I think that’s because women may inherently contain a larger Jing storehouse—in order to create new life. Based on further observations, and on Dr. Pottenger’s findings, I have developed a theory that living organisms have a built-in genome protection capacity, which can help it survive lifestyle deficiencies up to four generations. So if a person should look back at the health of their great-grandparents, there may be found the true potential of one’s overall health and constitution. In other words, if a 130

person's pa uffered ill health during their lifetimes, this may nut uc nidincu ao a genetic imprint on the offspring, and should one choose to live a vibrant healthy lifestyle, then one may very well develop less propensity to succumb to the ill health of the immediate forefathers and mothers, and with diligence, one may re­ gain excellent health. But the further the deficient lifestyles may recede back into preceeding generations, the more diligence will be required in order to re-gain health. Should one’s great-grandparents have lived with lifestyle deficiencies, then the individual’s health may be far more difficult to regain to any truly vital degree. This is the Threshold we stand at, and is the driving motive behind why I felt it was so imperative to write this at this time. With many 4th generation junk food eaters now coming down the pike, we are looking at a possible health catastrophe among our race. In the following diagram we will observe the health of a hypothetical person, living presently, who descends from greatgrandparents who were healthy, robust farm-raised folks living off the land. We will hypothesize that this individual is of reproductive age and has succumbed to the typical standard American deficient diet and lifestyle.

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In this diagram we see a person who has inherited a very weak bill of health three generations after his/her family left pristine surroundings and occupations. The individual’s grandparents and parents lived in closer proximity to toxins and ate devitalized foods. We are hypothesizing here that the current-day person continues this destructive and negligent lifestyle, and so the poor health that has befallen them will be passed down to offspring, whose life force will be like a very dim candle. But should this current-day person adopt a healthy diet and lifestyle, he or she could regain health above the th reshold and the accumulated Jing reinforcement gained from these interventions will benefit the next generation. The timelines in this graph are applicable to many people alive today, as our great-grandparents were often closer to the land, while our grandparents were lured into the cities. Of course, there are always many variables at play in each individual, such as if the mother came from strong adaptable stock, while the father descended from a 132

family with weak constitutions and a propensity for illness. And each of us had eight great grandparents, which can complicate any simplistic evaluation of the health of our family tree. Yet an evaluation of these factors could help in determining the true Jing of the descended individual. Fortunately we now have evidence, through thousands of years of observation, that certain herbs have been found to be powerful replenishers of Jing. Their use, along with a pure diet of living foods, can increase the potential for rejuvenation and empowerment. We also know that the gene is an indestructible thing; only through mutations from harmful agents can they be disturbed and this can lead to weakened genetic traits passed down to our progeny. Still, we know tliat even a person who’s the result of many generations of poor health can bounce back. Getting them to that threshold can require great diligence, but it can be done. Jing herbs—powerful, deep building and replenishing Long ago, the Chinese Taoist herbalists recognized Jing as a “treasure” that must be preserved; they actively searched for substances that could aid in this preservation. The most powerfully rejuvenating herbal plant and animal based substances have been categorized within the Chinese Pharmacopeia as Jing herbs. The ancient Emperors and Empresses revered the Jing herbs for their qualities of promoting longevity, virility and fertility, beauty and contentedness, and deep vitality. These herbs give us energy, and store additional vitality for use in later years; they charge our batteries. We might refer to them as “insurance” herbs. Jing herbs help ensure that we cultivate and maintain a “savings account” of energy, what I like to refer to as our internal “gold vault.” Working 133

with Master Teeguarden, I learned that while nutrient rich foods are extremely important in preserving Jing, the powerful Jing herbs, discovered and classified through extensive use over thousands of years in Chinese history, are major treasures. We will discuss the two primary branches of Jing herbs, which correspond with the forces of yin and yang.

Those herbs that replenish spent energy are referred to as Yin Jing herbs, that is, nutritional herbs that help accumulate and store Jing in the kidneys. These herbs help to build up vitality, like investing in our own long-term savings account. Yin Jing herbs are especially helpful for those who have had a serious illness or accident, women who’ve borne children, the elderly, and those who have inherited a weak constitution from their parents. The other category of Jing herbs, which are more energizing and provide immediate deep energy and serve to supplement or protect Yin Jing; are called Yang Jing herbs. These herbs can help give us powerful strength without drawing on too many of our deep 134

vital reserves. . ...6 nems are used to ensure future vitality, while Tang Jing herbs give immediate resilience, such as that required by an athlete for an extremely strenuous sporting competition. Both Tin Jing and Tang Jing herbs tend to penetrate deeply into our life force and support the root of our vitality and longevity, something most ordinary foods cannot do (although black foods like black beans, black sesame seed and black rice are said to be replenishing, Tin Jing foods). By consuming Jing herbs on a regular basis, we can nurture our deep life forces, insure our healthy transition into older age, “lock in” vitality, and greatly enhance the integrity of the seed we will pass on to our children, helping ensure that they will inherit the capacity to live healthy fruitful lives. Jing is our future, and Jing represents a state of vitality safely above the threshold. When we have good Jing; we are protecting our collective tomorrow as a species. Any healthy plant or animal must maintain Jing in order to insure future adaptability and survival. What follows is an introduction to some of the most often used Jing herbs. Specific herbs will be discussed within this topic, but they by no means represent all the great herbs that are available to us. Native American, Amazonian and Ayurvedic herbal systems, among others, hold vast information about therapeutic plant and energy medicine, and one could spend a lifetime learning the healing uses of medicinal herbs available worldwide. Great herbal discoveries are being (re)discovered almost daily in the Amazon basin and brought into the marketplace. The herbs discussed in this chapter are historically significant examples through which we might gain a basic understanding about uses of healthy plant substances. It is my hope that you will be inspired by this discussion to independently explore more on plant science and therapy. For methods of herb preparation and use, see Appendix. 135

Yin Jing Herbs; to help restore essence in the kidney, revitalize youth, enhance fertility, strengthen the lower back and nails, return hair to its natural color, counteract stress, prevent ‘sinking Chi> fortify mind clarity and acuity, brighten the eyes, support healthy hormone balance at all ages, and strengthen the overall constitution over the long-term. Ho Sho Wu (Polygonum Multijlorum) is arguably the most revered and effective Tin Jing herb. The name literally means “Old Black-Haired Ho” in Chinese. The legend says that an old, wrinkled and bent-over man named Ho was lonely and had propagated no children to further his family line. He searched all over for substances that could restore his vitality and youthfulness in order to attract a woman by which he might accomplish his intent to continue his blood line. Old man Ho fell asleep by a roadside one day, and awoke to find a nearby plant shimmering brightly. He took the plant to an herbal shaman, who experimented with preparation, and discovered that by simmering it in black bean sauce, the herb was transformed into a powerful tonic for rejuvenation. As old man Ho began to consume his prepared tubers, his hair grew back and turned black again. The legend claims that Mr. Ho wound up propagating seventy children and lived a hundred thirty years. Thusly, the herb was named Ho Sho Wu, after its discoverer. Sometimes it is referred to as Fo-Ti, but this is a recent name given by a merchant, and is indecipherable by Chinese herbalists. Ho Sho Wu is a Tin Jing herb that replenishes and stores vitality like no other. Prolonged use of this herb is traditionally said to turn one’s hair from gray back to its original color. This is achieved because the herb tonifies and strengthens the kidney essence, which houses one’s reproductive force. A head of hair that is one’s natural color is said to be indicative of strong procreative potential, hair being part of the “fertility dance” of life. Pigmented hair acts as a sort of barometer to the opposite sex of the state of integrity of our seed. 136

Baldness in men is an inherited trait and could be affected by excessive estrogens in the food and environment of modern society, and the possible result of multiple generational deficiencies, but doesn’t necessarily mean the bald man has a less vital seed. However, we do see a lesser propensity for baldness in indigenous societies, as those cultures’ reproductive forces have generally been better supported through a more varied diet of wild crafted foods and other ancient .practices, and by living in less polluted environments. Ho Sho Wu is one of the great Tonic herbs for youthfulness and is said, when taken regularly, to help increase sperm count, benefit the lower back and knees, and stimulate the thymus gland, the endocrine gland responsible for producing SOD (superoxide dismutase), an enzyme that protects cells and diminishes cellular oxidation from freeradical damage, essentially slowing down aging. Darker brown pieces are better. Slightly dry and crunchy is normal. *In rare cases Ho Sho Wu is contraindicated for persons prone to digestive weakness and loose stool. May be combined with warming chi herbs to offset this potential There is a famous drink called Sho Wu Chih, which consists of Ho Sho Wu and other harmonious herbs—Dang Gui, Rehmannia, and others. Sho Wu Chih is traditionally decocted in water and about 10 to 20 percent alcohol, and is highly therapeutic as a battery charger for the kidneys. However, only an ounce or two a day should be taken, as too much alcohol can damage the liver. Those with liver damage from excessive alcohol consumption should avoid Sho Wu Chih. Sho Wu Chih is the substance Master Teeguarden drank in Toronto to regain his health, and which fueled his interest in pursuing the study of the Tonic herbs. All people, young and old, vital and frail, would benefit by regular or occasional consumption. Young people who are sexually active could particularly benefit, as well as the 137

elderly and convalescent. Look for it at Chinese herb shops in a glossy orange box. For those who should not consume alcohol, a water-based version of Sho Wu Chih is usually also available at herb shops, and can often be determined by its non-glossy, more light brown colored box. Those concerned should verify alcohol content with store personnel before purchasing. Prepared Rehmannia (Shu Di Huang). This herb is referred to as “the kidney’s own food.” It is a great Tin Jing herb that helps build blood and is used in women’s formulas. I love this herb’s sticky jet-black color and sweet taste. It looks to the uninitiated like a piece of black roofing tile. Prepared Rehmannia restores Yin Jing; a great battery charging herb and top Kidney Tonic. This is obviously one of my very favorite herbs, as I named myself after it. Prepared Rehmannia is a complex herb and not only Tonifies Kidney essence, but is a great blood builder, making it an important herb in Women’s health, (For further discussion on Rehmannia in Women’s health, see Chapter 15). It is excellent in formulas for restoring youth, for lower back pain, cracked nails and “sinking Chi’, and can return natural pigment to the hair. A famous youth and restoration formula from the ancient Chinese Materica Medica is called “Rehmannia Eight,” and is very popular in Asia among the elderly as a youth tonic and as an excellent formula for recovery from illness or injury. It comes in greasy and tacky slabs or chunks, and is usually pitch black. *This herb is considered ‘greasy’ and is contraindicated for those prone to loose stool. Combine with spleen Chi herbs to offset this potential problem. Lycium (Lycii Chinensis, Goti Gi Zi), most often referred to as “Goji,” is a small, tasty, red berry that is considered by raw food proponent David Wolfe to be the most nutrient-dense food on the planet. It is also a Tin Jing herb. Sometimes called Wolfberry or Lichi berry, it is 138

the 1’ ■s of any foods known. Carotenes, of which rougni^ ^ dentified in Lycium, are transformed into vitamin A in the liver, lycium is also high in polysaccharides— long chain, slow burning, nutrient bearing sugars that support a myriad of cellular and metabolic functions, including a healthy relationship of insulin and glucose. Polysaccharides provide immune support and are a powerful cellular anti-oxidant, effectively slowing down aging. Lycium tonifies the kidney Tin, charges the reproductive forces, and cleanses the liver as carotenoids are transformed into vitamin A, which is beneficial for both skin health and eyesight. This berry has a higher protein count than bee pollen, which is known to contain 5-7 times more protein per weight than animal foods.61 As an immune stimulant, Lycium can increase lymphocytes and other white blood cells considerably, up to 75%. Lycium is famed as an anti-aging herb, producing in studies a 48% increase of SOD (superoxide dismutase), our body’s most important anti-aging enzyme. The oldest living man on record, the famed Li Ching Yuen, who lived to the ripe young age of 252 years, attributed Ho Sho Wu to his first hundred years of longevity and Lycium to his last hundred years! *Contraindications; None listed

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IIo Sho Wu (I,at. Polygonum Multiflorum)

Lycuim (Gou Gi 7a) 140

P. Rehmannia (Shu Di Iluang)

Schizandra (lfru IVei Tze) Placenta. Yes, we are talking about human placenta, a very important Tin Jing substance. It may seem incorrect to refer to the placenta as an herb, but it has been considered one of the most Tin Jing: o replenishing herbs in Chinese medicine for hundreds of years. Chinese medical practitioners often advise women to consume their placenta after childbirth, as it is an abundant source of iron, one of the minerals 141

most depleted after giving birth. Iron is the central core molecule in hemoglobin—red blood—cells, and the developing fetus uses much of the mother’s reserves while in ntero; the human fetus requires high amounts of iron for brain development. Consuming the placenta after childbirth can help the mother replenish up to fifty percent of the lost iron.62 Placenta can also re-supply the body with healthy levels of progesterone, as a great deal of progesterone is produced via the placenta during the latter stages of pregnancy. Most other mammalian females consume the placenta after birthing. These animals instinctively do this to get back vital nutrients and minerals, and help restore their energy. The placenta of a female mammal is a wondrous thing. In a human female, the placenta develops very rapidly and provides a completely sterile encasement, keeping out harmful elements and protecting the developing fetus from toxins. Regardless of the degree of toxicity inside a woman’s body—from processed, chemical laden foods and carcinogens in the air—the placenta that develops in the impregnated woman is completely sterile. This is quite miraculous, that an organism harboring toxins, harmful bacteria, parasites and viruses can create and maintain a completely sterile organ filter from its own metabolic processes! The placenta is also a center of progesterone production during the latter half of the pregnancy. Some of this progesterone is retrieved by consuming the placenta post-birthing. Hormone balance is supported by this action. In herbal formulas, placenta may be sterilized, dried, granulated, and put into capsules or cooked in water with other Jing replenishing herbs like Dang Gui, Rehmannia, and Astragalus. The placenta and herbs are strained off and discarded after cooking, and the tea is drunk as a remedy. Besides being beneficial to new mothers, anyone who is run down and depleted, whose life force needs renewing, may take 142

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placenta a: gram. In these cases, powder in capsules is best. After birtning m Hospitals, Chinese women are given the opportunity to consume the placenta or sell it to the hospital, where it is cleaned and sterilized before processing. I have known numerous women who consumed their placenta after birthing, and these women all look so youthful one would never suspect they’d had children. Master Teeguarden’s wife, Yan Lin, is one. They have two children, 8 and 10 at time of this writing, and Yan Lin still looks like a young girl with the figure of a teenager. Deer placenta is also commonly used in herbal formulas, and is an excellent natural substance for invigoration and rejuvenation. ♦Placenta is best purchased in a dried and heat-sterilized form. If a Woman is taking her own placenta, it should be frozen until preparation, or dehydrated and ground into powder, and can be encapsulated before consumption. Many midwives are beginning to provide this service. Schizandra {Wu Wei Ze): This herb is highly revered in China, and considered one of the greatest Tonics. It is referred to as the “five tastes herb,” due to its complex taste. Schizandra is a wild berry and one of the best Tin Jing herbs. The herb is very sour and unpleasant when eaten raw; it is generally decocted briefly in boiling water. Little or no cultivation of this berry has been attempted, as the Chinese wisely determined at some point in the distant past that cultivation of the herb would have compromised its efficacy as a tonic health agent. Many of our current foods and herbs in the United States are heavily cultivated and hybridized, and may no longer contain medicinal properties that may have originally been present. Schizandra is the only herb in the world that is thought to be tonic to all five of the body’s organ systems. It may therefore be used to enhance the health of any bodily function. It is also praised as a 143

beauty herb. The Chinese say that consumption of Schizandra for one hundred days will create a perpetual smile on one’s face. Schizandra is a great herb to include in the health regimen of anyone. The larger violet-purple berries are best. ^Contraindications; none known, unless you don’t want to be happy. Ligustrum (Nu Zhen Zi) is a Tin Jing herb, a kidney tonic and is traditionally used as a longevity herb. It also has blood vitalizing and immune enhancing properties. It strengthens the lower back, which, if consistently achy, can be a sign of kidney Jing depletion. It is used much like Ho Sho Wu, but is a little cooler, making it a good restoration herb for overactive men. It is said to improve the quality and growth of hair and improve hearing, both also symptoms of kidney burnout. *Contraindicated with diarrhea due to cold and Yang deficiency. Cuscuta seed (To Ci Zi) is a special Jing herb in that it supports both Tin and Tang energies, but is also tonifying for Chi. Thus, it acts as a “harmonizing herb” in formulas for restoration and immediate power, on both a long-term and short-term basis. Cuscuta is listed as an aphrodisiac in all Chinese medical literature, and is widely used by men and women who wish to enhance their fertility/virility. ^Contraindicated when strong heat is present in the body. Yang Jing Herbs: These herbs quickly build deep strength, but help prevent the ‘leakage’ of kidney essence. They enhance endurance, bone density, and one’s ability complete feats of great exertion. Deer Antler (Lou Rong) is a renowned Tang Jing herb. Rich in growth hormones, the antler is cut from the deer at the height of its growth stage. On this subject, I’d like to make clear that this 144

extraction of the antler from the male deer is harmless and even benevolent; otherwise, male deer with mature antlers tend to fight, sometimes to the death. The young antlers are cut in spring and an antiseptic salve applied; this practice helps keep the male deer more docile. Deer are treated like sacred animals in China. Master Teeguarden told a story of visiting a deer farm in northern China where the deer were allowed to forage all day in the woods with no boundaries, but voluntarily would emerge from the forest near sundown and gather in the herder’s large corral. At dusk the herder would shut the gate, protecting the deer from predators in the dark. Many deer would actually come into the herder’s simple home and sleep on the dirt floor around him through the night! Next morning the herder would open the gate and the deer would return to the forest to forage all day. An extremely vitalizing and strength giving herb, Deer Antler is a great tonic for the procreative energies. Deer are extremely active sexually. Early human inhabitants of the mountainous regions of the Changbai mountains, where excellent deer antler is still derived, witnessed these animals’ strong libido and assumed that by consuming all or parts of the deer they might strengthen their own procreative forces. The ancient Chinese Taoist herbalists observed the intensive reproduction among deer, and theorized that some portion of their reproductive systems must help enable them to maintain this level of sexual activity without burning out their Jing. They observed that the antlers, in particular, grew each year with such rapidity, and when mature appeared to give the male deer great power to fight for superiority over the females in the mating game; this suggested the antlers must contain high concentrations of Tang Jing. The herbalists discovered that a great deal of the animals’ hormones became concentrated in their antlers after about one year of

growth, when the antler has developed bulbous nodes on the ends of the first three prongs. These swollen looking nodes contain the highest percentage of hormones, and their consumption has been found to help strengthen bones, build muscle, and increase personal power and sexual prowess. Unfortunately, deer antler tips are rare and command a very high price. The rest of the antler is referred to as the “middles,” and contains only a fraction of the hormones. The tips and the thin band of outer layering of the antler appear dark and have a pungent, gamey smell. This is by far the most potent material in the antler. The middles are composed of a foamy, brittle, lighter substance, which is far less nutrient-rich. Once at Ron’s house, some mice got into a bin of deer antler middles. They ate only the thin l/32nd inch dark, hormone-rich outer band, but left the foamy porous inner tissues. I assumed they didn’t find the middle material very appealing in the way of nutrition. Ron and I joked that at least we had some healthy mice running around, but also we were inadvertently supporting their reproductive potential! Many Deer Antler products on the market may be composed of the middles. The more costly tips are smaller in diameter and are usually a dark, almost black color. One should inquire about the quality of deer antler products before spending a lot of money. If the purveyor is not capable of answering your question authoritatively, then it might be a good idea to save the expense until you can find out for sure what you’re getting. Deer Antler supplements made from the middles should be far less expensive, and cost could be an indicator of the quality. Again, the tips have much more therapeutic power than the middles. For those who can afford it and have a reputable source of quality product, Deer Antler is a great natural alternative to HGH (human growth hormone), which is currently illegal for sale to the general market. Deer Antler has similar effects and benefits and is more nutritionally balanced. It has been used safely for thousands of 146

years and is one of' the most highly prized herbs for general stamina and endurance for both men and women in Taoist herbalism. Developing strong and vital sexual power is important to general health, as the movement of testosterone, estrogen and progesterone through the body helps to strengthen the whole endocrine system. ^Contraindicated during fever.

Deer antler middles (Lou llong)

Tips

Chinese red ant (Polyrachis) (Ma Ti): Yes, these are ants, but not just any ants (please do not drink tea of ants from your back yard!) Polyrachis is a unique red ant from the Changbai mountain area. These ants have been found to maintain a symbiotic relationship with Ginseng, and are thus raised in Ginseng farms. It is thought to be this relationship with the Ginseng rhizomes that gives Polyrachis their superior strength. There is a saying in China; “Ginseng is the king of herbs, but Ant is the herb of Kings.’ Polyrachis are the most powerful members of the ant family, able to lift up to 200 times their own weight. 'Their extra power is also thought to be derived from the 147

magnetically charged deep earth, diamagnetic soils, of the Changbai Mountain range. Polyrachis are the highest known source of zinc, which makes them renowned among those ancient emperors who wished to maintain a promiscuous sex life. They are also loaded with a cellular energy source called adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, a metabolic element that is the result of the process of the transformation of food substances into energy (the Kreb’s cycle), which I correlate with Chi. Polyrachis are rich in minerals and considered by the Chinese to be one of the ultimate power foods. Athletes in Asia utilize this herb. It is recommended for anyone with an active sex life, physical fitness activists, or to enhance stamina and endurance in weak people. Polyrachis ant extract is very hard to find. The best extract that I know of can be attained from Dragonherbs, Master Teeguarden’s company (see Appendix: Sources). ^Contraindications; Ant is considered in Asia to be very safe. Do not eat your backyard ants! Drink plenty of water after consuming extracts of ant. Eucommia bark (Du Zhong). I mentioned this herb when discussing ancient observances of deer who’d undergone fractures being spotted chewing the bark off of certain trees. Eucommia bark is what they ingested to heal. Eucommia has the distinction of being the first herb listed in the first known pharmacopeia in the world, purportedly written in 2975 B.C. by Shen Nong, the Divine Farmer. He classified it as an overall tonic for well-being and endurance, as well as helping to maintain bone density, ligament and tendon strength and flexibility. Eucommia later became renowned specifically for its bone and structural strengthening benefits, but is still a great Tang Jing herb for general enhancement. It is beneficial for athletes, menopausal women and those recovering from bone injury. I suggest regular consumption of this herb for women who are experiencing loss of bone 148

density—osteoporosis, a common problem affecting western women that tends to originate with pre-menopause. Look for the bark where the ligament-like material inside is strong yet supple and flexible. *Contraindications; no case of overdosing exists in Chinese history. Cistanche (Ron Cong Rong) is another one of my very favorite herbs. Black, sticky and rough looking, like greasy, charred chunks of wood, it makes a beautiful, copper colored, wonderful tasting tea. Cistanche is a Yang Jing herb and therefore popular with athletes in Asia. It supports sexual potency in men and fertility in women. The majority of ancient medical classics from China record this herb as a component in sexual formulas. Quoting Master Teeguarden, “When the kidney Yin and Yang are strong, a person can flourish. They will be full of energy, high in spirit, creative and strong- minded. They will appear radiantly healthy to others and will be attractive to the opposite sex.” Cistanche is also helpful for healthy bowel movement, due to its Chi fortifying properties. ^Contraindications; not for those with excessive sex drive, deficiency of Yin or loose stool. Epimedium (Yin YangHuo) is another famed Yang Jing herb. This is the herb now referred to as “Horny Goat weed,” when seen as capsule supplements in small food and snack stores. Epimedium attained its seemingly sarcastic name through more practical observations; according to ancient legend, early goat herders in the Changbai region notified their local shaman that they’d noticed their goat herbs drawn to munching the leaves of a certain tree just before the mating season, hence the name horny goat weed. This herb may act mildly as an aphrodisiac, and is famed in human history as a strengthener of the masculine Yang energies, structural framework and associated with endurance. ^Contraindications; best avoided by men with excessive 149

sex drive. Not to be used over a long period of time by those who are Yin deficient and suffer from dryness. Those with excessive sexual drive may wish to supplement Yin Jing herbs like IIo Sho Wu and Cuscuta along with Yang Jing herbs like Cistanche, Eucommia and Epimedium, in order to prevent overdrive and possible burnout. This is where the art of combining herbs in balanced formulations becomes so sophisticated, as one would not benefit by piling up Yang herbs exclusively in hope of becoming more sexually virile. A well thought out combination of herbs supporting Yin and Yang energies in a formula will produce safe and satisfying results. These are a few examples of the rejuvenating Jing herbs. About twenty such herbs exist in Chinese herbalism that are classified as pure Jing herbs, but all of the seventy to one hundred Tonic herbs in Taoist herbalism contain properties that support Jing to various degrees. For reference to the others, please see Master Teeguarden’s book, the Ancient Wisdom of the Chinese I onic llerb?3.

Eucommia Bark (Du Zhong IIuo) 150

Yin and Yang Jing herbal decoction formulas: The Chinese believe the most superior method of herbal extraction is by hot water decoction', which involves cooking the herbs for specific amounts of time in boiling water. There are also other methods by which these herbal formulas may be extracted. The full directions for tea decoction and other extraction methods may be found in the appendix, page 372.

Yin Jing Tonic: to restore spent energy, rejuvenate the kidney/adrenal essence. A great tonic for new mothers, those who’ve been ill or had accidents involving recuperation. An excellent tonic to counteract stress. Good for fertility and sexual potency, and to avoid burnout from excessive sexual activity. Ho Sho Wu (Lat. Polygonum Multiflorum) 1-2 ounces or one handful Prepared Rehmannia (Shu Di Huang): 1-2 ounces or one handful Lycium (Go Ji Ze): 1-2 ounces or one handful Jujube date* (Da Zao): 1-2 ounces or one handful Schizandra*f* (Wu Wei Z,e): l/4 ounce or about 30 dried berries *Tear or cut Jujube dates in half before decocting. •f Add Schizandra berries during last 3 minutes of cook cycle. Full directions for decoction will be found in Appendix.

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Yang Jing Tonic: To invigorate listless energy, strengthen bones, jump-start energy and ‘upright Chi. To increase endurance and athletic power. A fertility tonic and mild sexual potion for both sexes (see Tonic formula for sexual potency, Chap 17). Ho Sho Wu (Lat. Polygonum Multiflorum): 1-2 ounces or 1 handful Morinda (Ha Ji Tian): 1-2 ounces or 1 handful Eucommia bark (Du Zhong): 1 ounce or 1 handful Astragalus (Huang Qi): 1 ounce or 1 handful Licorice root* (Gan Cao): Z
Chapter 10 The Three Treasures: Chi The Flame The second treasure is called Chi. I referred to one aspect of Cfu previously, as it related to the movement of vital energy through the body, which the Ayurvedic texts call Prana, the life force. If Jing is the animator of life, then Chi is the animation. In Taoism, my lineage, we have a more simplistic orientation to Chi and its application to health maintenance: Chi is the source of our daily energy needs. While-represents the directive, the basic clay of physical life, our cells and bodies, Chi represents the direction of the animation of this mass. We may have Jing, but without Chi as a driving force, we would be inanimate blobs of slime waiting for a current of air to blow us around: We use Chi to conduct daily functions such as talking, eating, breathing, and walking. Chi is the processes which sustain life. It may not be the governing force behind the structuring of our DNA (its origins are unknowable) which the Chinese would recognize as an aspect of pre-natal Jing. Yet, Chi represents the actions dictated by that governing force. If Jing is our savings account, Chi could be likened to a checking account, on which we must rely for incremental deposits and withdrawals. Thus, we must take in Chi in momentary and daily installments, as Gathering Chi from oxygen and our environment, and as Nutritive Chi, the life-force invested in food and water, and then we must transform those life-forces into bodily and vibrational energy. Most importantly, Chi protects Jing. When people have inherited strong Jing from their parents and maintain a healthy diet and lifestyle, thus fortifying Chi, they will live long healthy lives. 154

More so, they may have more potential to exhibit the vitality necessary for contributing to human development and culture. When our Chi is insufficiently supplemented through our diet, breath and lifestyle, our checking account may become drained; we drag ourselves around on half-speed, and could, if not corrected, begin to draw down our Jing reserves to get through the day. This is a mechanism of premature health degeneration. Technical observations on Chi The primal energy of Gathering Chi is infused into the body first through the lungs, which send oxygen—the driver or mobilizer—into the blood. The oxygen attained helps the body break down carbohydrates into glucose (blood sugar) to be used as food for cellular metabolism. Then the blood is further fortified as it makes its transit through the digestive organs, which the Chinese have traditionally believed were ‘governed’ by the spleen (we will discuss the associated glands/organs in detail ahead), absorbing an infusion of nutrients and minerals—the attainment of nutritive Chi. A chain reaction from these origins includes the complex and precise production of adenosine tri­ phosphate (ATP), peptide chains, enzymes and other proteins and hormones. The sustenance of Chi is a two way street; the organs which govern its maintenance must be nourished with foods both of high nutritive value and well assimilated in order to infuse the blood with Chi, and in return this vitalized blood is essential for keeping the body warm and animated. Thus, the Chinese have a saying; “Blood is the mother of Chi, and Chi follows blood.”

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l he pathways of Chi 156

In this drawing we see that oxygen is brought into the body, referred to as the gathering of Chi. During an inhalation (l), the diaphragm pushes down onto the liver and kidneys, helping press old deoxygenated blood (2) into the inferior vena cava vein, which acts as the main transport vessel of deoxygenated blood upward from the lower part of the body, while the superior vena cava returns blood to the heart from the head and arms. The blood is then pumped (3) through the pulmonary valve of the heart and diffused into capillaries surrounding the lung alveoli (4), where it is saturated with oxygen; this starts the process of blood mobilization as oxygen binds to the iron ion in the blood cell and invigorates it. The oxygenated blood can now engage in the metabolism of glucose for cellular energy, beginning a complex cascade of metabolic actions which lead to the production of our primary cellular energy source: ATP. The blood is then pumped back through the aortic valves of the heart, where it begins its sojourn through the arteries and vascular system (5). Then according to Chinese medical ideology, it is said that the next major stop on the Chi highway is throughout the spleen and associated organs/glands, which include the stomach, small intestine, pancreas and duodenum (6), where ingested foods are “cooked down,” rendering carbohydrates, including fats for use as energy or stored, proteins to be utilized for body structure and minerals are assimilated; the iron made available to be taken into red blood cells. Chi is very important in the rendering of substrate (ferric) iron into its bioavailable (ferrous, or heme) form, as we will discuss further in Chapter 17. Minerals zinc, copper and magnesium apparently help strengthen blood and assist iron’s proper function. 4 Tlie Chinese recognize that much of the body's new blood is manufactured in the red

bone marrow, where newly assimilated iron is transferred via the carrier protein apoferritin, and some iron may be stored for future use as biliverdin in the gallbladder, but that the precursor factors of iron and blood fortification are found in the spleen system.

After the blood has received oxygenation—its tnobilizer, and new ferrous iron—its fortifier, the Chinese believe it is then fully infused with Chi. This achieved, we will have ‘upright Chi, and the blood will move (7) in vitality to the extremities and back. The food we’ve eaten will be fully ‘cooked down’ by the digestive process and ready for more nutrient extraction through the walls of the intestines and colon (8), and our stool (9) will be regular and firm: The spleen network is considered by the Chinese to be in the center of the body, and is associated with the element Earth. While the other four organ systems, lung, kidney, heart and liver, are thought to be dominant during particular seasons in the year, the spleen organs are in constant need of tonification year round, and should be kept dry and warm, as we will discuss ahead 5. Chi is also enhanced by the conscious eating of food. Slowing down and thoroughly masticating food is essential. Salivation of wellchewed food also provides enzymes that aid the process of Chi extraction in the stomach. Gulping down insufficiently chewed food makes it hard for the body to adequately extract Chi. Overcooking food kills the enzymes nature has provided to aid our digestion. Whole, raw, plant-based foods contain enzymes that assist digestive breakdow n and nutrient extraction.

The spleen does not command such an exalted position in Western physiology, and is viewed by some as a lymph gland, due to the large quantity of lymphocytes (white blood cells) it holds. According to Western manuals, the spleen’s main function is in stripping down spent red blood cells (phagocytized) by white blood cells (macrophages), and that its primary function is in blood cleansing and salvaging rather than blood building. 5

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Spleen Chi Deficiency If our bodies are not fed wholesome foods, the spleen Chi becomes deficient and a sluggish metabolism results. The quality of the fuel we consume is vitally important in today’s world, in which farming practices often rely on “forcing” food to grow through the use of high nitrogen inorganic fertilizers and chemicals. This mass production of chemical laced food results in depleted soils, as these chemicals kill beneficial micro-organisms in the soil and eventually rob essential elements like fulvic acid from the substrate; it is precisely these microorganisms that are make the soil’s minerals available to the plants. While plants wind up on our grocery shelves looking nice and green, they may be deficient in nutrients and minerals. Further diminution occurs when food is harvested when unripe—a necessity in our current long-distance food distribution system. In addition, the over-processing of our foods—done primarily to increase shelf life and provide so-called “convenience” for the consumer—renders much of our foodi nutritionally deficient. There isn’t any Chi in the food; this causes our engines to slow down. Weak spleen Chi is prevalent in our society due to the devitalized foods on our tables. If the fuel we’re taking in is insufficient in enzymes and other metabolic catalysts, the spleen system will not be able to function at the necessary pace in its required manufacture of food to energy (ATP). Without the proper Chi infusion, water and dampness may not be “steamed off’ due to a cooling of the digestive temperature, and may instead accumulate, causing the spleen organs to become “damp.” This results in an inability to metabolize fats, liquids and estrogen (and is also associated with fluid retention at the cellular level) and inhibits extraction of nutrients from our food. Water edema around the hips is a sign of damp spleen. It is very common in America, and its development causes a chain reaction 159

where we are putting on extra pounds but remain always hungry; our bodies are suffering from malnutrition, even though we are gaining weight! This malady occurs quite often with women and is a crucial component in overall female health issues, including maintenance of proper blood levels, estrogen, water and fat metabolism, hormonal balance and healthy thyroid. Many women, particularly in their thirties, endure the distressing malady of widening hips even while engaging in excessive exercise, all the while thinking it is fat they are inexplicably accumulating. In many cases fluid retention, edema, may be the actual culprit (for further discussion on this topic, see Chapter 17). Men, as well, accumulate dampness from weak spleen Chi. This damp condition in men will usually manifest as a sort of warm, damp, phlegmatic buildup around the digestive region, with the stomach bloating outward, which presents bacterial, fungal, parasitic and other metabolism problems for men. As stated, the inability of the body to extract Chi, or metabolic fuel elements, during digestion can cause a person, for lack of energy, to start dipping into their Jing to get through the day. Metaphorically, the person has drained the checking account, and then must begin dipping into the savings account—not a desirable development in terms of our future security. Jing is a finite source of energy, so we must vitalize ourselves with C/ff-building whole foods and herbs in order to avoid having to use the vital Jing essence for our daily energy needs. As mentioned, when one maintains a diet insufficient in life force and taps into the'Jing reserves to get by, that’s when we can see rapid aging. Failing to eat wholesome, live nutritious food can burn down one’s candle very quickly! In China, certain herbs have been consumed for centuries that have been shown to cultivate and protect Chi, which basically means these herbs generally support a strong constitution. Herbs classified 160

as Chi herbs help turn up the cooker, increasing metabolism by enhancing the food-to-energy process. Chi herbs can also aid the body in transforming unwanted accumulations of water edema from the Middle Jiao. Most or all Chi herbs tonify the spleen. The Chi herbs generally help ensure we will attain adequate metabolism and protect our Jing reserves. Note: Chi herbs work to warm and activate the body’s breakdown and assimilation of nutrients without excessively stimulating the nervous system. This is very important to understand. They “warm the middle Jiao”, without giving one the jitters, thereby helping avoid adrenal excertion, although taking some lower quality herbs may cause nervousness. The descriptions of the herbs ahead will include insights on how to determine the quality of the Chi herbs before buying. Among the most renowned are: Ginseng {see below for various varieties) is a premier Chi herb. Good ginseng is considered an “adaptogen.” It can strengthen our basic capacity to adjust, both mentally and physically, to changes in circumstance or environment. Complex polysaccharides called ginsenosides are highly empowering, immune modulating antioxidants. Ginseng that is at least seven years old contains multi­ dimensional nutrients that increase our physical and emotional endurance and adaptability. Adaptability is the true measure of our lives, which is what makes Ginseng so precious. The historical documentation of Ginseng in Asia is immense and illustrious. Ginseng has always been held in the highest esteem by the Chinese for its power-enhancing qualities. In America, this precious herb is not fully understood, even though it was consumed by the first Americans and European newcomers since colonial days. Ginseng must be allowed to mature before it is harvested or its phyto­ chemistry will not be balanced. Prematurely harvested Ginseng that is phytochemically immature will produce a “uni-directional” stimulating

effect similar to the alkaloids in roasted coffee. It appears far too many western herbal products may contain these immature Ginsengs, as evidenced by a widespread incidence of the reported side effect of feeling jittery by western Ginseng consumers, and the subsequent misunderstanding of Ginseng’s true therapeutic potential. Making products with immature Ginseng is a good example of western industry’s impatience with allowing plants to properly mature before harvesting. There are many varieties of Ginseng, and its effects on metabolism range from Korean Ginseng (Korean: I long Sam), which is very stimulating and warming, or Tang, to American Ginseng (P. Qiiinquefoliiis)y which is more depth re-charging, or Tin. Chinese Ginseng (Panax Ginseng) is generally processed to be slightly warming. This is evident if the ginseng root is a darker red color. The unprocessed Chinese Ginsengs will be a pale brown color. Still for simplicity’s sake, Ginseng in general is classified as supporting Chi. Depending on the Ginseng plant's origin and on how the roots are processed, this herb’s potential therapeutic properties can cover an expansive range, from calming and restoring to highly invigorating. For instance, traditional practices for processing Ginseng in Korea involve steaming the herb with very Tang herbs such as Aconite in order to help the Ginseng produce a warming affect on the consumer. This process has been practiced there for thousands of years in order to help people adapt to the harshly cold winters in this northern longitude (Korea is near Siberia). This is where a misunderstanding can occur; a western layperson may take Ginseng, not knowing it is Korean Ginseng, and get over-stimulated from the Tang properties in this variety of the herb. This person may then form an ill-conceived opinion about the overall effects of taking Ginseng. Such energy and Tdwg-enhancing processes were never applied to American Ginseng, and by the time Colonial settlers recognized its value, the Chinese 162

were the first large scale customers for our domestic Ginseng. They appreciate it particularly for its calming Tin properties. Native American peoples were well aware of Ginseng’s healthenhancing properties, and it plays a role in early American history. The Boston Tea Party, which helped shape oiir country’s independence, occurred when a British ship docked in Boston carrying a load of black tea from China, which was intended to be traded for Ginseng. If the raid by American Colonialists, who infamously dumped the tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of the taxes levied by the British, had taken place a few hours later, the “Boston Ginseng Party” would have been recorded in our history books. Daniel Boone, of early pioneering fame, was actually a Ginseng poacher. He made his living by searching for the plants in Kentucky, filling barges and shipping them to the north for export to China. He was known in those days as a failed businessman, as he reportedly consistently overfilled his barges with Ginseng, causing them to sink on route to the northern ports. Here’s what one Colonel Byrd had to say about it some time in the late 1800s; “Though practice will soon make a man of tolerable Vigour an able footman, yet, as a help to bear fatigue I us’d to chew the root of Ginseng as I walk’t along. This Kept up my spirits and made me trip away as nimbly in my half jack-boots as younger men cou’d in their shoes. This plant is in high esteem in China, where it sells for its weight in silver... Its virtues are, that it gives an uncommon warmth and vigour to the blood, and frisks the spirits, beyond any other cordial. It cheers the heart, even of a man that has a bad wife, and makes him look down with great composure on the crosses of the world. It promotes insensible perspiration, dissolves all phlegmatick and viscous humours that are apt to

obstruct the narrow channels of the nerves. It helps the memory and would quicken even Helvetian dullness. ‘Tis friendly to the lungs, much more than scolding itself. It comforts the stomach, and strengthens the bowels, preventing all colicks and fluxes. In one word, it will make a man live a great while, and very well while he does live. And what is more, it will even make old age amiable, by rendering it lively, cheerful, and good humour’d.(i* Wild Ginsengs are considered far superior in quality to cultivated or semi-cultivated plants. The cultivated Ginsengs are usually farm grown and often harvested at an early stage. Semi­ cultivated Ginsengs are basically plants that were discovered in the wild but were deemed too young for harvesting," whereby the discoverer provided irrigation, soil fortification and protection from predator animals who might consume it, until it was ready for harvest. Semi-wild, semi-cultivated Ginsengs are easy to spot at an herb bazaar. The top half will generally have a rougher topography, with deep dark lines, or striations; this will be the part of the herb that developed in the wild. The bottom area will be lighter and generally clear of striations. This section represents the growth of the ginseng root after someone made its life easier with water and TLC. The cultivated part will be found to contain lesser therapeutic value than the deeply striated “wild” part due to less compaction of inherent nutrients in the marrow and less need to develop defenses against the ravages of nature. A Ginseng root must be around eight years old before it begins to develop the adaptogenic properties that make it valuable for our consumption. Before this time, the plant is dominated by Tang growth hormones. Ginseng consumed during this stage in its growth will merely produce an effect similar to that of coffee. The young roots’ unbalanced Tang nature produces the jittery, caffeine-like effect. 164

Americans, not realizing the importance of the plant’s age, will purchase immature ginseng products. Many buyers on the herb market will pay low prices for these herbs, promoting a policy where growers find it profitable to harvest Ginseng before it matures. Nature’s wisdom keeps the Ginseng from developing its therapeutic potential during these first eight years in order to allow a process of natural selection to take place, for in its early stages, Ginseng is just a plant like any other. Foraging animals, crowding, and bad weather conditions can weed out all but the strongest plants. If Ginseng had its powerful properties from the beginning, it would have crowded out most other plant forms by now. Once the Ginseng plants that survive this initial vulnerable period reach their eighth year, they seem to undergo a genealogic upgrading, developing the capacity to withstand severe drought or wet conditions, extremes of cold and hot, and other natural challenges. They begin to produce natural antibiotic properties that help to fend off viral damage of infections inflicted by foraging critters. The plant is now mature enough that the osmosis of sun on its leaves can send power back down into the marrow of the root, helping it to develop Tin properties deep in the root core. Over time, the root will develop its adaptogenic or “dual directional” properties. As the root further ages, it accumulates additional Tin properties in the marrow and Tang energy at the surface and thus fosters balance and adaptability. As a Ginseng root ages beyond 10 or 15 years, it can seem to take on the appearance of an aged and wizened human; this is why the Chinese call Ginseng, “Man Root.” Legend has it that mature Ginseng actually starts to develop the capacity to invoke wisdom in the consumer. This can explain why old wild Ginseng roots can fetch such high prices at markets in China, as the cultivation of wisdom is highly revered there. A fifty-year-old wild Ginseng root can sell for $20,000.

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Wild Ginseng roots are almost impossible to find in China nowadays; because they are so prized, fewer of these old roots are found on the planet each year, which is why they command such a lofty price. Many Ginseng hunters lose their lives every year trying to scale high cliff's while searching for Ginseng in the crags. This kind of wild Ginseng is especially sought after, as the plants found growing in the most inhospitable regions are thought to contain the highest concentrations of power by enduring such difficult living conditions. Ginseng plants are thought to contain a subtle, barely detectable luminescence, which some hunters cultivate the ability to see on dark moonless nights. Because Ginseng plants are said to “hide” in inaccessible places, they may not be noticeable during the daytime. Ginseng hunters will go out on dark nights with bow and arrow. They will see the luminescence of a Ginseng plant that is hiding in an inaccessible area, and shoot a flagged arrow in the direction of the Ginseng, then return to the vicinity in the morning, find the arrow and discover the Ginseng nearby. When purchasing Ginseng, one should make the effort to learn the origins of a Ginseng species and its general “atmospheric energy” (Tin/Tang and heating/cooling properties) before consuming. Good resource books about Ginseng include Ron Teeguarden’s The Ancient Wisdom of the Chinese Tonic Herbs and Michael Tierra’s The Way of Chinese Herbs'“. Going to Chinese herb shops and looking at Ginseng can prove insightful. But beware, some high priced, purportedly old and aged Ginsengs may be fake. They are called “art Ginseng,” and may be merely young immature roots that have had striations cut into them with sharp blades and dirt rubbed into the recesses, and extra roots craftily glued onto their sides, and extra nodes attached to the stems, giving them the appearance of older ginseng roots. A trained eye can, with a good magnifying glass, detect these fake Ginsengs.

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*No contraindications are noted for high quality ginseng. The immature cheap stuff may cause nervousness. Korean Ginseng is contraindicated for those with hypertension, high blood pressure, and a Tang constitution. Chinese and American varieties are extremely safe.

Ginseng Men

Wild Chinese Ginseng

Codonopsis (Dang Shen) is an herb that is similar to Ginseng but milder in its energies. It is a great Chi tonic and is used when individuals have weak spleen Chi (insufficient digestion, water edema in the abdominal area, loose stool, prolapse of organs in the middlelower Jiao) but prefer or require something milder than Ginseng, which can at times be too potent for some individuals. Codonopsis is substituted in many formulas that once contained Ginseng because in some cases it was found to work better. The primary example of this is a formula called Ginseng & Astragalus, the most commonly used spleen Chi formula, which actually contains Codonopsis instead of Ginseng. The story goes that during a period of the great Chinese

Dynasties, Ginseng & Astragalus formula was used extensively for many conditions including immune fortifying. The plant became scarce due to heavy consumption by the populace. Then a period of drought made Ginseng even more scarce. The available Ginseng was reserved for the Emperors' families and restricted from general use. The Codonopsis rhizome was known by herbalists at that time to have properties and effects similar to Ginseng, though not as powerful. For the general populace, Codonopsis was substituted for Ginseng, and it was soon determined that the common folks were having better results with the revised formula than the ruling class was with the original! There is another lesson here: Certain combinations of herbs will bring out more dominant or efficacious qualities in herbs that did not manifest these same qualities when taken alone or in other combinations. This is the true sophistication of the Chinese system; 4000 odd years of experimentation has yielded extremely refined formulas. Codonopsis was permanently substituted and became the general “emperor” herb, or dominant factor of this formula, instead of Ginseng, even though it is milder in its overall effects as an isolated herb. Oddly, the name Ginseng & Astragalus remained the same, because by that time the formula had become as-if a trademarked commodity in China. It is similar to how a company might modify the ingredients in a popular cereal brand, but still call it by the same name. Codonopsis should be flexible and chewy. It should be a tan color, and not pock-marked with black spots. ^Contraindications; none listed, very safe. White Atractylodes (Bat Zhu) is my favorite spleen Chi herb. Rather an unsung hero of the Tonic herb hierarchy, it is the most effective herb for helping dry moisture from the ‘midle Jiao’ and activate the spleen. This herb helps one turn up the fire under the stomach, and 168

helps activate the wresting of Chi from the food we’ve-eaten. White Atractylodes is commonly found in formulas designed for counteracting accumulated dampness in the stomach/spleen area, and is highly regarded in Chinese medicine. The herb is especially Important for those—particularly many women, who choose to eat high proportions of living, uncooked food in their diet. The Chinese medical authorities do not recommend eating excessive raw food. Yet, I have determined in my work that herbal teas containing White Atractylodes may act as tonics for spleen Chi when taken along with raw foods, possibly helping prevent unwanted moisture accumulation. I am hoping to initiate a paradigm shift in the Chinese thinking about raw food and spleen Chi, by recommending Spleen Chi teas as a dietary component taken along with foods known to be cooling in nature. Color should be off white to yellow with gold and orange spreckles. Most all White Atractylodes on the market is of similar quality. ^Contraindications; do not use excessively when dehydrated. Poria (Fu Ling): This herb is usually combined with White Atractylodes in formulas for Spleen, blood, and removal of moisture. Poria is famed by Chinese women as an excellent aid in the maintenance of a good figure. Poria is said to help ‘transform’ damp into Chi. It helps remove extra dampness while the White Atractylodes warms the digestion (We will discuss more on Poria in Chapter 17). ^Contraindications; none listed, very safe. Aged Citrus Peel (Chen Pi) warms the Middle Jiao, regulates Chi, improves the function of the spleen and relieves stagnant Chi of the stomach, such as abdominal distention and bloating and loose stool. It is said to help relieve nausea and vomiting. Citrus peel dries dampness and transforms phlegm. It’s also helpful for damp phlegm in the lung.

While Citrus peel is not considered a Tonic herb, it works well as an adjunct in formulas to assist in the breaking up of Chi stagnation. ♦Contraindications; this is not a Tonic herb and is only used as a warming adjunct in Spleen Chi formulas. Jujube Date (Hong Zao) This red date is perhaps more commonly known in the West than many other Chinese herbs. Red Jujube is a famed spleen Chi herb, invigorating and vitalizing the general metabolism. Jujube has a general warming effect on the “Middle Jiao,” the digestive tract. It helps increase appetite and relieve loose stool. Jujube nourishes the blood and calms the spirit, and quoting Bensky, it is supportive “for wan appearance, irritability and emotional lability due to restless organ disorder”.66 A wonderful tasting “smoked” jujube date is also sometimes used, and it is thought to be more Yang than the red Jujube. The black smoked jujube is not used as much because it does not remain fresh in a sealed airtight bag; it can become moldy, and therefore is not relied upon for longtime storage in Chinese herb • shops. The smaller Jujube dates are better, the best ones being about ' the size of the end section of a woman’s thumb. They come with or without the seed, and should be torn or cut in half before decocting. ♦Contraindications; avoid Jujube when there is exces phlegm in the body with abdominal bloating, food retention and/or parasites. While Jujube date is very versatile and effective in spleen-Chi formulas, it is most renowned in Chinese herbology as a “harmonizer” in formulas. Jujube and Licorice root (Gan Cao) (Glycyrrhisae Uralemis) are the two most commonly used herbs in the Chinese Materia Medica.

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Harmonizing Chi Jujube date and Licorice root are the two harmonizing herbs used in Chinese herbalism. It is said by the Chinese that the inclusion of one or both of these herbs brings all the myriad of herbs in the formula into harmony, so that the various therapeutic actions of the herbal blend are melded into unity of purpose, and then are harmonized within the body. Jujube date and Licorice root are essential herbs in any true Chinese herbal formula, and their absence may indicate that the formula was designed by an inexperienced entity. These two herbs particularly harmonize Spleen Chi, and so are included in this section, yet, they are also used to harmonize formulas designed to tonify other organ meridians or Treasures. Licorice Root (Gan Cao) (Glycyrrhisae Uralensis), is a very important herb indeed. It moderates the characteristics of other herbs it is combined with, harmonizing hot and cold herbs, and mitigates potential side affects of some herbs. This versatile root has been showing a myriad of benefits in recent western studies. I use it mainly in Spleen Chi formulas for men, and in detox formulas, as it is an excellent and mild broad-spectrum blood cleanser. It is an excellent lung tonic for coughs and wheezing. It is considered a neutral herb, and thus may be used for either hot-dry or cold-damp conditions in the lungs. Licorice clears heat in the body and controls spasms, alleviating pain6”7. ‘' Caution: Excess consumption of Licorice root has been linked to a rise in blood pressure in some individuals. Persons who are on blood pressure medication may wish to substitute Jujube date in this formula. A deglycerized form of licorice root extract may be attained from pharmacies. Ron Teeguarden taught me that high quality licorice root must be grown for over 2 years before harvesting, and that this high 171

quality Licorice root may have less propensity to adversely affect blood pressure. Ask the herbalists at your local Chinese herb shop for ‘2 year licorice’.6 Virtually every herbal formula developed over the last two thousand years has included one of these herbs to bring the other herbs in the formula into harmony, or synergy, and unite the basic energies of the formula. This may be hard to understand, but is one of the many components of Chinese herbal formulas that render them far more sophisticated than other natural health systems.

Jujube Date (IlongZao)

Codonopsis (DangShen)

6 For a further discourse on Licorice, refer to www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/licorice-

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Wh ite Atractylodes (litii '/_'hitJ

Poria (Fu Ling)

Foods that support Chi are whole, unprocessed, enzyme rich (raw or very lightly cooked under low heat) plant-based foods grown without chemicals or hormones, including whole grains such as barley, millet, amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat, and oats. All berries are high in anti-oxidants (which prevent oxidation of cells by the corrosive and acid producing agents called free radicals, one cause of rapid aging.) Other Chi sustaining substances includes pro-biotic foods like kefir, apple cider vinegar, kombucha, and yogurt (goat); whole EFA fats, Omega 3-6-9- fatty acids found in fish; raw nuts, especially walnuts, avocados, the oil; and the meat and milk of coconut and other unsaturated oils. And don't forget the dark green vegetables and their juices—-just remember to chew well! Well-masticated food aids in the body’s digestion in the stomach and extraction of Chi from food while in the intestines. For God’s sake man, slow down and “Chew your Chi!"

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Tea formulations containing herbs that warm the middle jiao, and activate spleen chi, can be very effective when taken along with diets high in raw foods. Depending on one’s metabolic type, or when followed during colder damper seasons, the raw food diet may be rather cooling to the metabolism, as this diet often contains dark green leafy vegetables including brassica, and fruits, which, despite having a good amount of Chi in their enzymes, may dampen and wetten the interior of the body in those prone to weak spleen Chi, and particularly in the winter months. Thus, the Spleen Chi tea outlined below is my recommendation to help warm the middle Jiao, enhance digestion and transform moistness, edema and water retention, which can be a particularly problematic issue for many women, as will be discussed in Chapter 17.

A Chi Tea decoction formula: Chinese Ginseng (Panax) or Codonopsis (Dang Shen) 1-2 ounces or 1 handful White Atractylodes (Bai Zhu) 1-2 ounces or one handful Poria (Fu Ling) 1-2 ounces or one handful (6-8 pieces if tubular) Astragalus (Huang Qi) 1 ounce or 1 handful Jujube Date* (Da Zao) 1-2 ounces or 1 handful Schizandra-j-^Fw Wei Zi) 'A ounce or approx. 30 dried berries *Tear or cut Jujube date in half before decocting -j-Add Shizandra last 3 minutes cook cycle. For full cooking/decocting instructions, see Appendix. 174

Chapter 11

The Three Treasures: Shen The Spirit The third treasure is the one that the Taoist monks consider most important, the treasure that Jing and Chi must support: Shen. Shen means “spirit.” A unique feature of Taoist herbalism is that spirit constitutes a full third of what is considered true vitality in a person’s spiritual health. The early shamanic pre-Taoists walked in the woods of the Changbai Mountains and meditated on how they could flow with nature’s forces. Their accumulated knowledge of plant spirit and plant medicine shows that they developed a powerful intuition and symbiosis with nature. These pre-Taoists sought those herbs that could open SheTt, the spiritual awareness. It came to be in Taoist medicine that cultivating Jing and Chi to their fullest extent is required in order to cleanse, fortify, balance and prepare the body and mind to perceive Shen. While the Taoists consider all three treasures necessary to live a truly full life and cultivate radiant health, Shen is the ultimate goal, for without cultivating this treasure, life has far less meaning and sublimity. If you believe, as I do, that we are born onto this earth to learn and grow as spiritual beings, then challenge and adversity are two of our most powerful teachers. When we can meet these teachers without falling into anger and fear, we can advance as spiritual beings. As lightworkers, our task is to assist others in making this advancement. Shen herbs are truly the transformative herbs that help to enlarge and deepen our perspective. These herbs help us see the 175

bigger picture, alleviate our i-nner turmoil, and reduce our subjective responses to the push and pull of life, which are an inevitable part of the polarity of Yin and Yang energies. In the pre-Taoist lineage of the Gate of Life school, it is taught that we should seek to liberate the spirit from heavy energies, negative thoughts and fears, and cultivate spiritual liberation through positive thoughts, affirmations and yearnings in integrity. At the same time, we are to remain solidly grounded and in harmony with material life, understanding how to flow with the natural cycles and circadian rhythms that govern our health. Herbs found to enhance our communication with plant-spirit and intelligence, to support clarity and truth through mental fitness and also aid physical health and adaptability, formed the basis of the class of Shen herbs. Shen herbs ground yet uplift us. This is a particularly powerful aspect of their teaching; we fnust transcend lower forms of base consciousness and raise our vibration. That doesn’t mean we should seek to leave tlii§ earth plane in order to achieve liberation of spirit, at least, not- while we are occupying this earth suit. Taoism encourages us to walk on the earth and dance with the spirits. Lao Tzu, (500 B.C.) the author of the TaoTe Ching,68 the bible of Taoism, China’s most popular religion, was said to be taking Shen herbs during the writing of these deeply insightful and wisdompacked poems which, in my mind, are documentation of the greatest natural common sense of any book ever written. Here is the opening poem in this work: Existence is beyond the power of words To define: Terms may be used But none of them are absolute. 176

In the beginning of heaven and earth there were no Words, Words came out of the womb of matter: And whether a person dispassionately Sees the core of life Or passionately Sees the surface, The core and the surface Are essentially the same, Words making them seem different Only to express appearance. If name be needed, wonder names them both: From wonder to wonder, existence opens. —(Translation, Witter Bynner)69

My Journey with Shen Herbs The Tao Te Ching, a book of eighty-one poems, has practically lived in my pocket since my ex-wife gave it to me thirty years ago. It was my introduction to a wisdom that helped me turn my life around when I was nearly suicidal. Up to that point my life had been a wild ride and had left me with a hardened heart. I was impulsive and prone to negative thoughts; I was angry at the world. I had been relentlessly caught up in the western dream of success and power. I had experienced life as a rock and roll teen idol, and slept on benches penniless as a street person. I had a very skeptical attitude toward the establishment and the political hierarchy, which gave me a defiant and pessimistic demeanor. I loved the silence of the old growth woods of 177

Kentucky and believed it was being destroyed by reckless, unconscious people. I had known the sublime silence of that symbiosis, and I had crawled over shards of broken glass through the valley of the shadow. I had angels guiding me; they reminded me of their protective essence with every scrape I almost got myself in. And I also had demons tormenting me; they let me know of their presence in each of my haphazard actions and lapses of sane judgment. .When I was 22, Sharon, my then-wife and my first great teacher, handed me a copy of the Tao Te Ching, and I began my transformation from the lower frequencies I’d fallen into because of drugs, alcohol and sex. With the Tao as a guide, I began my long and arduous ascent. The Tao initiated this benevolent cycle of my evolution but, as in the healing crisis discussed earlier, these early stages of my cleansing broke open some festering wounds—anger and fear. My first step was just to stop going in the direction I had been going, toward a kind of fame and notoriety that bulldozes those in one’s way. I’d seen a taste of that potential and decided I could have nothing to do with fame and fortune if it provoked that kind of self-destructive behavior. The wisdom in the Tao Te Ching was the first I had encountered that helped me understand the art of doing nothing, just “being,” of setting aside the idea of power and learning to flow. Of course, it’s taken many years, and I’m still getting to my place of peace. I was then inspired to further explore the knowledge bestowed on us by great saints and philosophers, and I became an avid reader. I realized the information exists that can help move us out of our ruts. Carl Jung’s Man and His Sy?nbols was also instrumental in helping me kick-start a long, painful journey of purification. Particularly helpful was Jung’s description of the Anima and Animus principle. According to Jung, all people possess—at a mental level—both male and female qualities. The two polarities provide psychological balance within the individual. Jung claimed it was beneficial for men to

get in touch with their more intuitive Yin nature as a way of attaining balance for their generally aggressive, outpouring qualities, and for women to associate themselves with inherent innate male/ guardian/ protector qualities within their psyches. Biologically this is possible because women’s bodies do produce and maintain some testosterone, though in lower levels than the other dominant hormones estrogen and progesterone, and men also produce some of these feminine hormones. I’d had some disturbing lucid dreams as a youngster where I would hear someone approaching our home from outside. I would hear the person walking up to our front door. I would hear the door open, and I would become extremely afraid as the person was nearing my room. I prayed they wouldn’t come in, only to hear the door open. I would cover myself with the blankets and shrivel up in a ball, my back turned away from the door. The entity would walk into the room and over to my bed, standing above me. I’d awaken in a frightened state and eventually work up the nerve to look out from under the covers, only to find no one there. This happened three or four times during my youth. When I read Jung’s work, the theory of anima really moved me, and I suddenly opened myself up to allowing the exploration of the more intuitive, nurturing and feminine aspects of my psyche. I had the dream again. I was then in my late twenties and living with Sharon in a fourth-floor apartment in San Francisco. In the dream, I heard the person walking down the street and again focused on the footsteps coming up four flights of stairs as the fear set in. The entity opened our door, entered, and walked slowly through the hallway, proceeding to come and stand directly over my bed. This time I decided I was going to confront it and I threw off the covers defiantly. What I saw standing there was a kind of pretty, plain, sweet looking young woman with shoulder length brown hair. She was wearing a blue 179

dress. She was standing in some kind of kitchen. When I looked at her, she shyly smiled and turned away. She had a nurturing and calm energy about her. I found her naturally attractive. I actually awoke from my dream to the still night, and felt humbled and exhilarated at the same time. I realized I had met my anima, and she was the embodiment of safety. I had seen a side of my potential that I’d suppressed because of the external conditioning of machismo. I then realized that those qualities I had thought made me tough were a ludicrous fallacy. Since that night I have enjoyed a better relationship with my nurturing and intuitive self, and with women in general. Also, I never had another disturbing dream of that type again. My psyche succeeded in waking me up. While this event represented one of my first big breakthroughs, my soul still needed some serious vacuum cleaning. I had anger, pent up frustrations, and believed the world was going wrong. I delved headfirst into Buddhism, Hinduism, the Kabala, the Bible, and Shakti Gawan’s Creative Visualization.70 None of it really worked; the anger was still there, as well as the tendency to think negative, impulsive thoughts. I fell into a spiritual black hole at around age thirty. I felt possessed and began a lengthy walk through the valley of the shadow. My initial work with green juicing helped me to begin the purification process, and it occurred to me that the perceived demons can arise from toxicity in the body. Liver emanated anger, and I sure had a lot of that. Food, environmental toxins, and stress can all impact the liver. The juices were helping, but they still weren’t getting to the core and helping me shift into positive thinking. I could see that my fortunes and quality of life were being affected by my negativity. I think Reishi must have come to me because of my prayers. I’d been pleading to overcome the negativity I had built up over so many 180

years, and Master Teeguarden introduced me to Reishi.- He taught me that Reishi (Ganoderma Lucidum, LingZhi) is by far the most precious Slien herb on the planet. I regard this herb’s effect upon my life as the single most important thing that has ever happened to me, and I literally evaluate my life as pre- and post-Reishi. The most revered herb in all Taoist Chinese medicine, it has a long history of use by Taoist monks and wise men/women throughout the ages for its superior Shen opening capabilities. I felt this substance was calling to me and I began taking large amounts of the herb, which is essentially a mushroom. Reishi has a long and illustrious history as an agent to access deeper perception. The herb is thought to open and clear the crown chakra (the energy center located at the very top of the skull), and to clear karmic obstacles and old psychic baggage. I began to ingest fifteen capsules of pure Reishi powder daily, nearly three times the recommended daily amount as suggested on the bottle. I found out later that Reishi is so safe and free of side effects that I could have taken even more. On the third morning after beginning to take Reishi, I awoke to find the light in the room infused with color and saturated with intensity. I got up, and immediately knew the dark clouds over my head had dissipated. It was as if I had taken off a shirt—it was that easy! It still took another few years to completely rid myself of the “spiritual suppression” but Reishi laid the groundwork. And once gone, the suppression has never come back; I still take Reishi regularly. Within days after my breakthrough I seemed to feel the essence of Lao Tzu’s brilliant insights more distinctly, and knew that the folklore about him taking Reishi must be true. I believe Reishi was instrumental in his crystal clear perception and connectedness to all nature’s cycles, the laws of cause and effect, the expansiveness of the

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Tin and Tang. The herb started to quickly open my life to this vast and sensible consciousness. Premium grade Reishi is harvested in the Changbai Mountain region of China, and is also indigenous to the southern Appalachian Mountains in the U.S. The mushroom grows wild on trees and wood stumps. Reishi will often be found growing in the carbon dioxide-rrich interior of hollowed out trunks of fallen deciduous hardwood trees and in conifer forests. It is considered an “Advanced Fungal,” a Polypore (mushrooms that grow on wood) with a phytochemistry that is quite complex and takes a relatively long time to mature into its fruiting body, the cap of the mushroom with which we are most familiar. At maturity it attains a tough woody structure not associated with most other mushrooms. Reishi is a bitter mushroom, not fit for culinary consumption. Boiling the herb is required in order to release its constituents from the tough, woody cellulose. Due to living in wild diversity of old . forests, Reishi must develop internal resistance and immunity to genetic pollution from other life forms and fungals in its vicinity. Reishi contains a high proportion of immunoglobulins, polyglycans, polysaccharides, triterpenes (cholesterol regulating), Beta-Glucans (Macrophage promoting), ganoderic acids (unique antioxidants) and other immune building components. Experience in China has indicated the herb is not just a powerful immune stimulant; it is an immune system “regulator”, and is actually known to fine tune the immune system, helping bring excessive immune factors into balance. According to Chinese medical documentation, allergies, arthritis, and many inflammatory responses in the body can be improved by the regular use of Reishi. Research in Asia also showed it helps prevent leukopenia, or white blood cell death, which is associated with cancer and the use of chemotherapeutic drugs. Reishi is also used successfully in Japan and China as a treatment for cancer 182

and other immune related degenerative diseases. One notable researcher is Fujimi Morishige of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine.71 In Asia pregnant women also seek the herb as an immune builder for themselves and the fetus. Master Teeguarden spoke of “Reishi babies,” as he called them, babies whose mothers took Reishi throughout the pregnancy. I saw some of these children, older and newborn, and they appeared uniformly calm and focused. The infants had little or no inflammations on their face or hands, cried little, and appeared to take in their surroundings with incredible acuity. Recent Western health literature is replete with information on Reishi’s broad array of health benefits.7*21 would suggest conducting an internet search on this herb and you’ll find more positive information than you can read. Still, it is Reishi’s spirit opening powers that are the herb’s main benefit. Here’s how I believe it works: When we consume the herb it begins quickly to strengthen and fortify our general immunity. When one’s immunity to pathogenic/environmental factors is enhanced, one begins to feel safer. The more we take herbs like Reishi the more we feel we have built a “wall of safety” around ourselves. Reishi has been shown to activate cytokines, agents that aid the body in increasing large white blood cells governed by our immune systems, which represent our first line of defense against microbial and carcinogenic invaders. Those big macrophages (giant white blood cells) are in there chewing up the bad guys, and our subconscious neurotransmitters are aware of this. We feel we can take on more in life and gain confidence that we are less susceptible to being knocked down by limiting and harmful factors. By taking herbs like Reishi, we empower ourselves. When this empowerment starts to unfold, we let down some of the guards we’ve built up, easing fear-related stress. This winds up taking 183

a big load of pressure off our adrenals, which sit right on top of the kidneys. Luckily for us, the adrenals—once relieved of stress- and fearrelated burdens—can actually replenish rather quickly. When the adrenals recuperate, the healthy energy resonates right down to the kidneys; our life force begins to get stronger, replenishing Jing. Our light gets brighter. Also, in ways that have not been determined, Reishi seems to have a direct effect on the crown chakra, helping clear psychic obstructions. While many mushrooms have psychotropic effects on the brain, Reishi does not alter perception. Its effects on neurotransmitters like dopamine, melatonin and DHEA may be enhanced—as any action or substance that ‘ promotes calm contentment is going to benefit healthy dopamine and serotonin levels in the brain. The herb certainly somehow benefits the higher frequencies of mental perception. When our light gets brighter, we may tend to attract more light to us, in the form of people and circumstances. Reishi can be the initiator of benevolent energy that can, and often does, completely change a person’s life for the better. I have shared Reishi with numerous young people who were disaffected from society, lost and imbalanced, and have seen profound changes in them very quickly. I’ve witnessed almost all of them regain their curiosity and sense of wonder about living. One day, a young guy came into my elixir bar at Erewhon Grocery in Los Angeles. He sat down with a condescending grin and began shifting in his seat in an unsettled manner. I quickly determined by looking at his complexion, skittering eyes and body restlessness that he was extremely “Windy.” His liver was a mess and his neurotransmitters askew, probably from drug use. His face was broken out in acne, even though he was into his early twenties when juvenile 184

acne should begin to recede. His posture was out of whack and he looked around in a vacant way. Then he asked, “What is this, man?” While kind of chuckling, I said, “You’ve just come into a place where you will not be the same when you leave.” He laughed condescendingly and exclaimed, “Man, does this kinda stuff really work?” I replied, “Let’s find out.” I made him a drink containing high proportions of Reishi with other Shen herbs. I took steps to make sure the potion tasted good, as many people at his stage of health are heavily influenced by their taste buds, which are often polluted by excess sugar consumption. He began to drink the tea, and didn’t show any hesitancy; he liked the taste. It was then that I knew he would be transformed into a much more enlightened person. He quieted down, looked at his tea and at me, and said, “Dude, what’s in this stuff?” I explained Reishi’s spirit power. The next day he came up to the bar right after I opened. He was different. His focus was dramatically improved, and he asked for a double shot. We began on that second day to discuss our life potential, and he told me of his dreams. By the third day his dreams had evolved into a driving desire to do good in the world, to go to Africa and help poor people. He brought in his friends, who were basically a bunch of rockers with some pretty wiped-out Jing. They gathered to hear what I had to say as if hungry to hear something with real meaning (for as I mentioned in the introduction, real wisdom is often inexplicably veiled, and we have to actively search for it). I served them Reishi, and the discussion that ensued was a wonderful thing to behold: young men excitedly discussing how they could individually and collectively manifest a better world. 185

When I last saw the young man, he was a picture of health, the acne cleared dramatically, his posture straightened out, the windiness receded, his eyes and mind focused. I hope now he’s in Africa following his dream. When searching for Reishi, which may be hard to find in your local health food store, make sure that the Reishi contained in the bottle is the “fruiting body,” the sexual apparatus of the mushroom, the part we actually associate with mushrooms visually. This part contains over twenty times the concentration of immune potentiators, beta 1-3, 1-6 and 1-9 glucans, than the “mycelium,” which is the unseen part of the mushroom, the white fuzzy fungal part that has grown inside the log or underground and is feeding on the deteriorating wood and oxidizing decaying plant matter in the soil. This mycelium actually comprises the largest bulk of the fungal but has only a fraction of the immune and spirit power of the fruiting body. Many Reishi products contain the mycelium. Check the bottle or ask the nutriceutical specialist at your health food store about mycelium and fruiting body ratios in any Reishi product you find. I have seen Reishi supplements on store shelves which consisted of nothing but ground up mycelium. Bear in mind that even the mycelium alone has been shown in clinical studies in Japan and China to have positive results in fighting cancer and AIDS, and American mycologist Paul Stammets expresses high regard for the healing and therapeutic benefits of fungal mycelium, but according to Master Teeguarden’s teachings, the fruiting body is more concentrated and thus more efficacious. To test the quality of a Reishi supplement, try opening a capsule and stirring it into an ounce or two of hot water. With good quality Reishi, the color should be thick dark brown, and should taste like strong, bitter black coffee. If the color reminds you of orange pekoe tea, and chunks of sediment are lying on the bottom, then the product 186

is mainly mycelium, and is not as potent. Don’t be afraid of taking a lot of Reishi; it is very safe and contains more spiritually uplifting potential in larger doses. Twelve to fifteen capsules a day can help clear the fog quick. But one may want to start out by following the recommended daily amount as printed on the bottle, and working up as it feels appropriate. I put the powdered extract into teas and smoothies. The spores of the mushroom are sixty times more potent still, but the cell walls of the spores must be “cracked” before they are bioavailable to us. Once cracked though, the spore will deteriorate, and the common practice is to combine them into oil for preservation. Dragon Ilerbs has an awesome cracked reishi spore oil. Cracked Reishi spores will be almost impossible to find, so one should jump at the chance to take some if available, especially if one is dealing with an immune deficiency issue.

Photo; Sarah Gribaa

The author with Reishi (Ling Zhi)(Ganoderma Lucidum) 187

Master Teeguarden showed me ancient scroll paintings from China that depicted Reishi perched on a rock in the middle of the artwork, with heaven depicted above and the nether world of lower frequencies below. He explained that this painting revealed Reishi as a “bridge between Earth and Heaven.” It was very popular among the elite classes during China’s classical dynasties (approx. 1000 B.C. to 1915 A.D.) This was a period of great scientific and cultural advancement and rulers were said to govern the land with compassion; perhaps Reishi had something to do with that. There appears to be a symbiosis between this mushroom and our higher mind. Reishi may “unlock” the door to our connection with the consciousness of the crown chakra, our connection to spirit, to our future DNA (it is thought that certain aspects of human DNA have not yet been activated), the genetic code that may contain our true potential as a species. The class of living things on Earth called Fungi is thought to be extraterrestrial; they do not appear to have an earthly origin, and it is thought by mycologist Paul Stammets, that the “advanced polypores,” complex fungals such as Reishi, Agaricus, and Corriolus originated somewhere else in the galaxy, and the dusts of their spores can survive the harsh oxygen and light deprived conditions in space, possibly for millions of years, and eventually some of these dusts land on Earth. Stammets states that we humans are actually more closely related to fungi than to plants (we both breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, the opposite of plants), and that images of fungal mycelia resemble the human neurological system.73 I believe that fungi such as these advanced polypores could be involved in helping design the activating systems for the transmittal of information along neural pathways—consciousness, and our destiny. This could answer the heretofore-unexplained question of how 4-50 million years ago, single-celled organisms developed the process of 188

differentiation into multi-cellular organisms. Various fungi may have had a role in drawing these early aquatic algaes onto land through their mycelial masses, and somehow imparted to the simple algae more complex neurological and vascular systems capable of transmitting and transporting information—and eventually aiding in the DNA design of humans. Mushrooms such as Reishi may have very important messages to convey to us—once we’re ready. ♦Contraindications; none recorded in all Chinese medical literature. Other SJien herbs are: Spirit Poria (Fu Shen) is another fungal mycelia that accumulates around the roots of pine trees. This herb looks like a slice of hardened unbaked dough with a piece of wood in the center. It is said to calm anxiety and promote benevolence. Spirit Poria is especially revered as a Shen herb for its grounding yet uplifting properties, for Taoist philosophy endeavors to help the mendicant stay firmly grounded and in touch with the forces of nature, yet simultaneously perceive the higher, more ethereal energies that exist within the spiritual world. ♦Contraindications; this is a very safe herb. Wild Asparagus Root (Tian Men Dong) Prolonged consumption of this herb is said to enable one to fly. There are legends that some monks in the Changbai Shan who take this herb regularly do fly around in the mountains; Ron’s teacher Master Park insisted they do. When taking Wild Asparagus Root, one can have increased dreams of flying, which is a sign of spirit ascension. Flying in dreams means we are letting go of material baggage and freeing our spirit. Asparagus root appears to facilitate this liberation. This is a different species of Asparagus than the culinary plant. It can be eaten raw and makes a fun pilgrim food. Munch it while hiking in nature. Asparagus root is 189

best when orange to red in color. The pale translucent flattened root sections found in many herb shops may be sulfured. Wild Asparagus root is classified in the Chinese Pharmacopeia as a yin Tonic, moistening and cooling heat, particularly in the lung meridian. ^Contraindications; none. To be avoided if you don’t like dreaming of flying. Pearl (Lat. Margarita) is famed in the Orient for its beauty-enhancing properties. Spiritual serenity is also important in maintaining beauty, for when we feel insecure or unfulfilled, we will tax our adrenals and cause muscular constriction. This can be particularly observed in the wrinkled brow (forehead) of a stressed person. Pearl fortifies the thymus gland and facilitates increased production of our body’s most important anti-aging antioxidant, SOD. This antioxidant helps neurotransmitters stay calm and balanced, helping procure a peaceful demeanor and calm mind. This condition calms the spirit so we can more easily find time and peace of mind in order to break from our material pursuits and meditate. Pearl is also grounding, with high amounts of minerals, including calcium, zinc, phosphorus, potassium, and copper. As mentioned in the Reishi discussion, the Taoists believe one should strive to maintain a healthy spiritual outlook but also stay firmly grounded on earth, and to orient one’s spirituality in concert with nature and its cycles. Caution: Pearl is an unregulated product and may vary dramatically in quality. Good pearl tasts pungent and salty, like the sea. If it tastes like talcum powder, don’t buy it! ^Contraindications; none known. Very safe when taken in reasonable quantities. Albizzia (He Huan Hna, He Haan Pi): This flower from the Albizzia tree comes in two forms, the premature flower which is hard, and the 190

soft mature flower. The bark is also used, and all three are considered Shen Tonics. I use the premature flower in long-cook formulas, as it is the most pleasant tasting, and the mature or soft version may be used as a steep tea, although the taste is bitter and unpleasant. Both are beneficial in calming formulas for insomnia. Albizzia flower is said to “help one overcome anxiety, heartbreak and stress.” ^Contraindications; none listed. Polygala (Yuan Zhi) is an important part of Shen herbalism. It is referred to as a “harmonizing” herb. It is not as renowned as Reishi because it doesn’t so much expand Shen as “stabilize” it. Polygala is traditionally called “The Will Strengthener” and was used originally by young monks who were entering into the monasteries and were required to take vows of sexual abstinence. It would take a great amount of will power to refrain from sexual activity at the peak of a young man’s hormonal sex drive. But Polygala has been instrumental in helping these young monks maintain the willpower to honor their vows. More recently, the herb has been found to help stabilize addictive/compulsive behavior, and can help a person maintain calm and strengthen their resolve to persevere through difficulties and life transformations. Polygala is effective in helping one overcome harmful addictions of any type. Polygala makes a good addition to a cleansing program, as it can help stabilize the mendicant during a cleanse, especially during the initial stages, when the body is stirring up toxins and carcinogens from the liver, lymph and blood. These not-yetpurged toxins can result in temporary irritability and discomfort. Polygala can be very helpful in adding strength to the determination to get through the cleanse. Good quality Polygala is cured in a secret wine infusion and is usually slightly expensive. The pieces should be light-medium brown and look like little twigs. *Use small amounts. May cause dreaming. 191

Shen is the higher threshold of our existence; we may live our whole lives without it, but the treasure of Shen in one’s life is a great blessing that further infuses our experience with bliss and meaning, and fosters great karmic advancement. As far as I’m concerned, I may keep a healthy body and quick mind, but without Shen, what is my life really worth?

A powerful Shen tea decoction: To relieve the spirit of‘psychic baggage,’ to initiate or enhance a ‘benevolent cycle of health,’ to help one clear the path to their enlightenment and true destiny, to help one overcome heartbreak, anxiety, anger and stress, to increase compassion and intuition, to connect the heart and the Crown Chakra. Reishi (Ling Zhi) 1-2 ounces or one heaping handful sliced or ground mushroom cap and stem (Red Reishi is best) Spirit Poria (Fu Shen) 2-3 ounces or one handful, crushed into 54 inch pieces. Asparagus Root (Turn Men Dong) 2-3 ounces or 1 handful. Wild red is better than yellow. Jujube Date* (Da Zao) 1-2 ounces or 1 handful Schizandra'f'^Fw JVei Ze) 14 ounce or approx. 20 dried berries *Tear or cut Jujube date in half before cooking •j-Add Schizandra last 3 minutes cook cycle For full cooking instructions, see Appendix.

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Chapter 12 The Three Treasures as Thresholds Thus far we have primarily discussed the idea of the threshold as a basic indicator of vitality, a line of demarcation between empowerment and dis-empowerment. In this chapter, we consider thresholds as indicators of transformation, of life increasing in complexity and potential. Let us begin with the recognition that all matter is consciousness. Consciousness is the result of varied densities of light waves74. The heaviest, most dense light waves constitute our sensation of physical matter, with an element like uranium (heavy) having the greatest density of molecular weight. This physical realm, from the heaviest metals to RNA proteins—the basic building blocks of biological living organisms—corresponds with the energies of Jing. Jing is our foundational physical matter, which rises in energetic frequency as raw materials are consumed and transformed into other more complex substances. Among living organisms, single-celled algae are the ultimate Jing, as they form a bedrock foundation from which all multicellular life emerges, and contain all their DNA and necessary life-support systems within a single cell. But how does multi-cellular life emerge from single-celled life? What consciousness directed the original process? How did organisms that exactly replicated their complete DNA within a single cell as they reproduced suddenly decide to divide into parts acting in concert toward a common directive? When did a cell divide its DNA and one offspring say, “Hey, I’ll be in an eyelash,” while another determined it wanted to be part of a toenail? Microbiologists cannot yet explain this 194

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mystery, but the ancient Chinese, having pondered that same subject thousands of years ago proposed the second treasure to explain it, Chi. The threshold between physical matter, and the force that drives its transformation and evolutionary change is Chi. Chi is the metabolism of the raw materials of Jing, and the process of deriving energy from those materials. Photons from sunlight and cascading electrons are thought to be the mechanisms that drive ATP and photosynthesis,75 giving animation to living organisms; they are Chi. The diamagnetic energy of the Earth is Chi. Enzymes are Chi.7* Chi represents a higher threshold of energy manifestation. Chi is pow'er; it is combustion and heat and the process of transformation. Author Oliver Morton says of Chi, “Life is a flame with a memory,”77 referring to how the flame of Chi transforms one substrate into another. Chi drives our metabolic needs, but Chi also represents our daily energy needs. When we need to replenish, support and nourish Jing, we require Chi to do the work and, being in a higher energetic threshold, Chi must fortify and protect Jing for prolonged health to flourish. Jing is our-code of replication and restoration, like a stone tablet of information.- Chi is the process of applying that information. Jing is the reproductive potential; Chi is the force that activates the production of new life from the old. With the flame of Chi, Jing is preserved. Again we see why Chi must be derived from good fuel. We warm the house with oak logs in the fireplace, not wads of newspaper. People wind up using stimulants like coffee and sugar to turn up their Chi-fiIre, to get a temporary boost. When Chi is deficient, Jing may be drawn up from the reserves of energy we inherited from our ancestors. By these mechanisms we may maintain what the Chinese call “false fire” for a finite amount of time, but at what cost? The battery of Jing will eventually be drained without a constant influx of Chi to preserve it. Chi must protect and cultivate Jing, then we have health maintenance. 195

The movement from Jing and Chi into Shen happens only if the first two treasures are fully nurtured and activated in harmonious interaction. Shen is the product of harmony between the body and the driving force of its evolution. The rough materials of nature are transformed into energy and movement, and these pathways must be free of obstruction before we can truly perceive our full potential as a species. These obstructing residues, so commonly accumulated through consumption of the standard American diet, block us from perceiving Shen. We must pick fuel that is pure. We must retain strong reserves of Jing so that our minds remain sharp and clear as we accumulate the lessons that eventually transmute into wisdom. Chi pathways must be clean and accumulations must be removed for Shen to manifest. This can be accomplished by fasting; I believe liquid fasts of green juices, such as those mentioned in chapters 2 and 3, and adding ginger, lemon and cayenne, can purge obstructed material in order to open Chi pathways. Colonics are of inestimable benefit in removing compacted materials in the colon that block the body’s absorption of Chi. Exercises as found in Yoga are Chi block-busters. Acupuncture unlocks Chi blockage, but blockages can return if the pathways of Chi are not kept clear through consumption of whole foods and herbs and the practice of juice fasting. Shen stabilizing herbs in tea including Reishi and Polygala can prepare the mendicant for his/her arrival of a higher clarity. Only when these blockages are removed by conscious determination, can we reach the threshold of Shen. Only then can our minds remain truly at peace, that we might affirm our bliss and the incredible opportunities for abundance availing themselves to us. In an earlier chapter I talked about about the screwed-up state of my health when I met Master Teeguarden; this condition was the result of poor diet, lifestyle abuses and exposure to toxicity. The effects had accumulated over a long period of time, and couldn’t be 196

removed overnight. I had to undergo a cleansing process, removing years of residues from my body. I had to take Jing herbs like Ho Sho Wu and Rehmannia to regain stamina. I had to lay off the 3 A.M. donuts and instead eat clean-burning alkaline foods, live foods and chemical free foods. Progressing through the thresholds of Jing and Chi to reach Shen is a process. Only after I had entered into the first achy phase of purification did I begin to perceive a way out of my spiraling descent into confusion and dis-empowerment. It's hard to see clearly when we’re below the threshold and we are like the wind, aimlessly blowing dust from one place to another. I was able to perceive my way out because I still had some Jing to fall back on; I hadn’t totally burnt it out, as I’d been blessed to have been born with a good amount of it. But when one pops out of a delusion concentrated over years, one must realize things will need time to straighten themselves out.My Jing was a dense mass of blubber with a cracked foundation, but a foundation nonetheless, so I found my way. I came to see the density of my old haunts and began leaving them behind. I did get a little lighter physically, but I could more distinctly feel pounds of energeticbaggage begin to slough off. What a great feeling; I was above the threshold! Little by little, my food cravings became more pure, and I eventually got to where I wouldn’t gorge on anything at the banquet table just because it was available, but this took some time too. I had to graduate out of a school of hard fatty deposits and learn my lessons, but over time my frequency lightened. I saw the light in those early days, peeking through as the lipids cracked, just enough to see my potential self over there squeaking hoarsely that it had had enough of my illusions. As my cravings improved, and the Taoist herbs of the Three Treasures made themselves available, my sex drive eased up and my 197

longing for material power got a reality check; the Tao I’d wanted to follow for decades opened up for me. My body was purifying and my flame was brighter, and I saw Shen. I became the light. All energy is attracted to the light and once one has revoked the whipped cream dream and cleansed, the light will bring great opportunities for fulfillment, maybe even beyond your wildest dreams. The foods and herbs that are most vital and have the least chemical contamination will provide the best Chi fuel; they will nurture Jing and insure the adaptability and reproductive potential of the physical organism. These high frequency foods also nourish the brain, protect the nervous system and balance hormones, both neurotransmitter and reproductive, and fortify the immune system. With this pure template for vitality, we can truly perceive Shen. Shen is a threshold of true empowerment, and it cannot be realized in an individual until Jing is fortified and Chi is consistently activated in balance between the forces of Yin/Yang. When we clear our body with pure Chi, and fortify our Jing, old karmic obstructions may be more quickly resolved and Shen can present its benevolent energy in our lives. When one has cultivated Jing, one has something to give. When one has robust Chi, one can find ways to give benevolence, and when one has Shen, one receives the blessings of the gifts that have been given. The bio-photons of light, purity and evolution rise in frequency as we progress through the thresholds of the Three Treasures. The current threshold at which we stand is one of power, the power of burning and heat, in which nature is Jing and power is Chi-, we’ve learned to have power over nature. This is a destructive power. Will we cross over into a more evolved empowerment, wherein we give back what we have taken? We have been the voracious caterpillar, devouring and fattening ourselves; now it is time to metamorphose into the butterfly, the threshold of Shen. 198

Chapter 13 Adaptability and Protection In working to preserve a healthy state for individuals, Taoist medicine offers two additional components that work in concert with the Three Treasures. They are Adaptability and Protection. Adaptability Adaptability is a sought after state of being, a major component of what the Chinese call “health beyond danger” (and what I am referring to in this book as a state of being that is above the Threshold). The great Canadian endocrinologist Hans Seyle M.D., one of the world’s prominent researchers on stress, stated that adaptability is the human race’s most important attribute. He says, “Adaptability is probably the most distinctive characteristic of life. In maintaining the independence and individuality of natural units, none of the great forces of inanimate matter are as successful as that alertness and adaptability to change which we designate as life, and the loss of which is death. Indeed, there is perhaps a parallelism between the degree of aliveness and the extent of adaptability in every animal, in every man.”78 After all, one can find humans living in all regions of the planet, and no matter how hostile the conditions, those inhabitants have adapted to them. Supporting our adaptability is also one of the great assets of the Tonic herbs. There are a handful of herbs found throughout the world that contain properties referred to as adaptogenic. The recent term “adaptogen” was applied by Soviet scientist N.V. Lazarev in 1947 to 199

describe the metabolic balancing properties of the Siberian herbs Rhodiola Rosea (Arctic Root) and Siberian Ginseng (Eleutherococcus Senticosis). After determining the unique and complex properties of these plants, he and his student, 1.1. Brechman, used this term to define a new class of herbs that had a normalizing affect on bodily functions. In Lazarov’s words, an adaptogen “must be innocuous and cause minimal side affects in the physiological functions of an organism, it must have a non-specific action of immune enhancement, and have a normalizing action on various bodily functions, irrespective of the direction of the pathological state.” 79 The Soviet government was looking for substances that could help keep soldiers from freezing while on the battlefield. They conducted tests on Rhodiola Roseds adaptogenic properties, but in order to utilize this herb in warfare, their research was kept quiet until the fall of the Soviet Union. Rhodiola Rosea, as Lazarov named it, was found to have a beneficial effect on the nervous system and adrenals. The plant has a regulating effect on the body’s thermostat. The herb was found to help cool overheated elements in the body and warm or stimulate cold, sluggish metabolic or anabolic functions. Thus, the scientists created a name for the herb’s regulatory actions, terming it an “adaptogen.” In the Himalayas, a related species, Rhodiola Sacra was found and studied by the Chinese. According to their results, Rhodiola Sacra proved more potent as an adaptogen than the Russian Rhodiola Rosea. Rhodiola Sacra, and a close cousin from the high mountains of southwestern China, Rhodiola Crenulata, are now used extensively in Chinese medicine. Sacra is very difficult to obtain, and 1 feel it is better left to the highlanders of Tibet, as it aids in the absorption of oxygen in those high altitudes. ^Contraindications; Rhodiola is very safe. 200

Adaptogens can have a regulating action on the central nervous system, which oversees both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous functions, helping to ensure their healthy interaction. Rhodiola in particular is said to nourish the pituitary gland, the master gland in the endocrine system, which governs the central nervous system. Adaptogenic herbs would fortify Jing and Chi and may also help one cultivate Shen. What distinguishes an adaptogen is having two sets of RNA in its cells, which tend to infuse the plant with its own Tin/Tang balance. When we consume these plants, they also help our bodies maintain a better balance of hot and cold and of Tang and Tin. They are thus able to stimulate the body when it requires stimulation, but can also calm the body when excited. They can regulate body temperature, cooling it when overexerted, and stimulating it when lethargic. In this way, adaptogenic herbs are viewed as having a dual-directional affect on body energies. Dual-directional nervous system In all animals, the ‘autonomic’ (unconscious) branch of the central nervous system controls our instinctual responses to stimuli. This response mechanism has two divisions, referred to as the sympathetic (S) and parasympathetic (PS) nervous system. These branches stimulate opposite functions in the body, although they are not antagonistic to each other. The ‘flight or flight’ response comes from the S, and the relaxation potential from the PS. These two branches must work in unity for health to be maintained. Tang-S, action and exertion, must be followed by Tin-PS, rest and recuperation. The muscle constricting effects of norepinephrine (noradrenaline) must be reduced afterward by acetylcholine-derived neurotransmitting hormones, which increase 201

serotonin and dopamine, activating bronchial dilation and muscle relaxation. However, during waking hours, the nervous system maintains a subtle S mode in order to support muscle tone and upright Chi (but this does not necessarily enhance our capacity to endure constant 'excess stress). S responses send blood into the muscles, whereas PS responses send blood to the organs, particularly to the stomach and digestive tract, hence, the fact that we want to eat food to help calm our fears. The S constricts the walls of the digestive tract, slowing peristaltic action, while the PS dilates the smooth muscles, speeding removal of wastes. The pupils of the eyes constrict under S stimulus, helping individuals engage in pinpoint focus, for running and such, and afterward, the PS stimulus aids them in regaining a perspective on the ‘big picture.’ I’ll give a good example of healthy sympathetic/parasympathetic interaction: A hunter-gatherer is walking through the forest collecting herbs and berries for the clan back in the cave. He accidentally stumbles into a lions’ den. The lions growl; the hunter's S nervous system initiates a burst of adrenalin into his body—in the flash of a second, inciting an accelerated heartbeat. His retinas constrict, clarifying distance and proximity to the theat. Steroids flood into his muscles and they inflame into a more pronounced rigidity. He begins to breathe in rapid, shallow bursts; the oxygen into and out of his lungs brings heightened clarity. He takes firm hold of his spear and braces himself for a fight. With singular mental clarity, the huntergatherer quickly assesses the situation and decides the best course of action is—to run fast! The hunter-gatherer bolts back to the cave, running with great agility and pinpoint focus. He grabs the wife and kids, gets the family inside in a flash, puts a rock over the entrance, and looks around. Did they leave one of the kids outside? 202

Panting rapidly, he scans the cave for danger signs, soon determining the clan is safe and everything's under control, he takes a deep breath. He begins loosening his tight shoulders and lets them drop. His breaths become longer and deeper, calming his heart. His PS nervous system is now kicking in. The deep breaths help break up the tension in his muscles, and he can now calm down and calculate with a level head. Everything's OK. He can relax. The man begins to limber his neck and shake the rigity out of his muscles, which are by now tingling from the rush. The PS response has released hormones to neutralize the adrenaline and steroids. These hormones can exert an opiate-like effect when released into the bloodstream, and soon the hunter-gatherer is prancing in the middle of the cave, boldly and exuberantly dramatizing to his astonished family the daring battle he waged with a pack of lions. This story represents a healthy stimulation of the body's nervous responses. While it may be traumatic for a person or animal to undergo occasional acute bursts of adrenaline-driven fear, should one hopefully find a safe haven afterward, the organism has benefited by the exertion. Such events can help exercise the endocrine system and keep the defenses agile, the response mechanisms quick. The previous story represents a healthy workout for the two branches of the central nervous system and their hormonal agents, but let us now look at another analogy, one that afflicts the majority of humans living in the world today. This analogy depicts the potential hazards of living under constant stress, so that S never really has much chance to be relieved by PS. The firemen have had a big day, and now begin winding down for some much needed rest. But as soon as they are bunked down and all is calm, the alarm rings; they must relinquish their sleep. The men hurriedly dress, load up gear, and scramble down to the fire truck. 203

Reaching the location of the fire, they see that somebody has pulled a prank on them, and all is calm. And so they progress back to the firehouse, again removing their regalia and returning to their bunks; and just as the silence settles in, DING DING DING! “Oh gosh! I gotta get up again! But I can’t lay here, I have a responsibility. Lets Go!” The guys don their firefighting equipment and again race to the scene—only to find a calm sleeping neighborhood... Returning to the firehouse, the exhausted firefighters find their way again to their bunks. Ahhh, its warm there... DING DING DING! “No! I don’t believe it! It’s gotta be a prank. I ain’t goin! ... If I catch that little bugger, I’m gonna...” Just like these firemen, many of us in modern society, must endure certain mechanisms that keep us locked into an overdrive S mode—shallow rapid breathing and accelerated heart rate, keeping the adrenals working overtime, flooding cortisol and epinephrine throughout the body, trying to deal with the impact of stress. Constant fear of losing our jobs, homes or family members, fear of failure and uncertainty about the future wears dow n our adrenals. And as I said, while we are designed to be in a subtle S mode during w'aking hours so that our muscles won’t melt into a blob of goo, we cannot adapt to the constant excess stress that is so prevalent in our society. Our bodies just weren't made that way, and our Jing is “leaked.” Fortunately, for us living with the stresses of modern life, certain plants have been identified that help us adapt to this kind of daily pressure. Adaptogenic herbs can have a regulatory effect on the body’s circadian rhythms and corresponding metabolic needs. These mainly autonomic functions include waking, sleeping, circulation, anabolic (absorbing) and catabolic (releasing) metabolism, and breathing (which can also be consciously regulated). The major organs 204

also have dominant periods of activity throughout the day, based on circadian rhythms. Adaptogenic herbs can help support each organ independently during its time of optimal functioning. When under excessive stress, adaptogenic herbs can help support PS, thereby benefiting the adrenals and subsequently, the kidneys. Subsequent research has determined that the majority of known adaptogenic plants and herbs exist within the Chinese medical system and they all are considered Tonics due to their multi-directional energetic qualities. Currently, there is a worldwide search by plant biologists working on behalf of nutriceutical companies to discover more adaptogenic plants. Researchers and “wildcatters” are scouring the Amazon, Africa, and Southeast Asia in hopes of discovering, like gold, another adaptogen. Jiaogulan (Gynostemma pentaphyllum). A newcomer to the Chinese Tonic pantheon, has rapidly gained fame as one of the most prized adaptogens. It was scientifically discovered in 1972 when Japanese researchers conducted a lifestyle study of the people of Pakistan’s Himalayas, known as “Hunzakuts,” who are statistically (along with the Okinawans) the world’s longest living and healthiest people. The Hunza people currently enjoy the lowest incidence of heart disease in the world (although a new road through the region to China is bringing them into contact with corrupting foods). They refer to Jiaogulan as “The Magic Grass,” and their superior heart health is partially attributed to regular consumption of tea made from its leaves. The plant grows wild into southern China, and is referred to as “Southern Ginseng,” because it is thought to contain similarly powerful healing properties to Ginseng. In reality, it is a completely different kind of plant, though research has uncovered a series of polysaccharides in Jiaogulan called gypenosides, (after the pharmaceutical name gynostemma), which do contain very similar

phytochemical properties to Ginseng. In fact, four gypenosides are exactly identical to ginsenosides found in Ginseng, with seventeen others very closely associated. Yet Ginseng only contains twentyeight saponins; Jiaogulan is the highest known source of saponins (eighty-two have been identified), which are basically plant soaps. More specifically, they are high molecular weight glycosides, complex sugars that are both fat- and water-soluble. Gypenoside saponins have been shown to help break up and rid the body of LDL (bad) cholesterol, while supporting the good HDL cholesterol. Gypenosides have been studied extensively in China, and have shown excellent benefits in cases of diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and immunodeficiency. Jiaogulan’s regular consumption helps regulate blood sugar, aiding the pancreatic enzymes and the relationship between insulin and glucose. Jiaogulan makes an excellent tea, since the Japanese did some cultivation work on its sweet properties, and can be drunk in the morning for a lift, but also at night for calming. Premium Jiaogulan is hard to come by, and should be dark green in color; if it is brown and contains lots of small stem parts, it is inferior.*0 ^Contraindications; none listed. Very safe for long term consumption. Astragalus (Huang Qi) This herb has long been considered in Asia, and now increasingly in the west, to be a “do-all.” A great “dualdirectional” herb, it is a supreme adaptogen for the immune system, supporting the actions of the “JVei Chi” the branch of the immune system that functions just below the surface of the skin and is responsible for fending off the damaging properties of air- and water­ borne external toxins. Astragalus is wonderful for athletes, helping the aspirant maintain powerful strength and endurance. It supports the “upright Chi,” which includes peripheral circulation, and helps prevent prolapse (sinking) of organs. 206

Astragalus root is a mildly sweet and pleasant herb to chew on and makes a great trek food for your backpack. One should spit out the pulp, as its ligneous fibers are not easily masticated. Add a little Lycium (Goji) to your Astragalus tea and you’ve got a powerful tonic. Ginseng & Astragalus is a famous herbal formula from the Chinese Materia Medico, used widely in Asia by women as a bloodbuilder and Chi stimulator, and as a general immune tonic. ♦Contraindications; being of the legume family, it may cause flatulence in some individuals. Avoid during acute phase of flu. Schizandra (Wu Wei 7hi) is one of the most highly prized Tonic herbs in the world, not only for its adaptogenic properties, but also because it tonifies all Three Treasures (Jing, Chi, Shen) and supports all five of the major organ systems as observed in Chinese medicine. Those organ systems are: Heart—controls the circulatory system; Liver— cleans the blood, removes toxins, affects emotions; Kidney—governs the body’s reproductive forces, the seed, the DNA, and regulates the mineral ratios in the body’s humors; Spleen—governs digestive metabolism; and Lung—oxygenates the blood; lungs are the seat of wisdom and the only organ that works autonomically (subconsciously) yet can also be regulated by our intent. An entire book could be written on the five organ meridians, but the Chinese herbalists believe all functions and problems in the body can be traced back to one or more of these organs. For a more detailed discussion of the bodily functions governed by each organ system, see Ron Teeguarden’s The Ancient Wisdom of the Chinese Tonic Herbs, or Ted Kaptchuk’s The Web That Has No Weaver.*1 Schizandra is a “Harmonizer” of the body’s meridians, supports Tin and Tang, nurtures Jing, tonifies Chi and promotes a cheerful attitude (Shen). It is said to be a beauty herb and is sought after by Chinese women for maintenance of their renowned skin. Schizandra is 207

becoming popular in the west, and is showing up in many diverse herbal formulas. It is a harmonizing herb to use in almost any formula, be it Tin or Tang,, and can have wonderfully therapeutic benefits on the whole body even if taken alone. ^Contraindications; none known. Frankly, most of the Tonic herbs contain adaptogenic properties, as one major pre-requisite defining a Tonic herb is that it must be dual-directional, or regulate the metabolic functions of the body, and must benefit more than one organ system; however, only a few have the complex phyto-chemistry that places them in the category of full adaptogens. Other major adaptogens are Siberian Ginseng (Eleutherococus); Ginseng; Ashwaganda (Withania Somnifera), the “Indian Ginseng” used in Ayurvedic medicine; Suma (P. Paniculata), called ‘Para tudo” (for everything)- by the Brazillians; India’s Gotu Kola (C. Asiatica), a food preferred by elephants, who are renowned for their excellent memories; and Polyrachis Ant.

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An adaptogenic tea decoction formula. Astragalus (Huang Qi): 1 ounce or 1 handful Rhodiola root (Chinese; Crenulata) (Arctic Root): 1 ounce or Vi handful Siberian Ginseng (Eat; Eleutherococcus Seiiticosis): 1-2 ounce or one handful Lycium (GoJi Zi): 1-2 ounces or 1 handful Licorice root* (Can Cao): Vi ounce or Vi handful Schizandra-f' (Wu Wei Ze): 1/4 ounce or around 30 dried berries Gynostemma-f' (Jiao Gu Lan): 'A ounce or about 1 tablespoon full dried leaves. *Note: Licorice should be avoided by those currently on medication for high blood pressure. See Licorice in Harmonizing Chi Chap 10. •f'Schizandra and Gynostemma should be added last 3 minutes of cook cycle Directions: Follow directions listed in the Appendix.

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Protection Master Teeguarden invented, in the western world at least, the concept of the “elixir bar,” which is essentially a bar where people come to drink healthy Tonic teas and elixirs (more concentrated and complex teas.) We opened a shop and he decided to place me at the elixir bar. Suddenly, I was serving teas and listening to people’s stories. I found myself dealing with a lot of people’s problems—both psychological and physical. I always had to remind them that we were not authorized to give people medical advice. Still, I wanted to help, and would take their emotional problems and concerns to heart. Every time I got emotionally caught up in someone’s issues, I started to feel a drain, and within days I was dragging myself home more exhausted than I could ever remember being; even the extreme physical labor with my dad on construction crews had not wiped me out like this. I soon learned from Ron that my experience was common, and he agreed to teach me ways to avoid getting so burnt out. He taught me that if a healer is not careful in giving, he/she can be drained by a client, who can overtly, through neediness, or inadvertently siphon the healer’s energy. People are drawn to the light, and weakened people will want to feed off a healer’s abundance. You could find yourself getting emotionally drawn into their turmoil. This kind of emotional involvement can really drain your energy fast. Some healers, like Edgar Cayce, actually died as a result of ceaselessly giving his psychic advice when, during the Korean War, he was beset with worrying mothers hoping to locate their sons far away in battle. Many of the soldiers he psychically observed had been injured or were dead. Cayce felt an obligation to give everything he could in trying to heal the wounded with remote healing energy, or console the mother after realizing her son was dead. He gave his life 210

force by not resting and recouping. He expended his Jing without replenishing. He stated that he knew he was running his life's battery down, but couldn’t reject his clients’ desperate needs.82 To protect yourself as a healer, the safest strategy is to remain emotionally detached. Don’t let the ego get involved. If you want too badly for a sick person to get better, it may be for egotistical reasons, so you can say you healed somebody. You must ask: Am I concerned about healing them for self-aggrandizement? Am I trying to work off some old karma through a benevolent act? Let your higher Krishna power decide. Maybe it’s not the patient’s karma to get better; is that possible failure going to cause you stress? If you feel a stiffening in your solar plexus while you’re trying to help a difficult client get to the threshold, then you’re trying too hard and expending too much Jing, there’s too much emotional attachment. Pull back, take a breath and remind yourself that it’s not you who is helping them, but their own higher spirit guides who've called you to channel the healing energies. Most of all remember: Be an empty vessel and your vessel will always be full. Healing draws essence directly out of our Tin Jing battery, a finite source of energy. We must protect and restore that energy at all times, never letting it dip below the threshold, lest we lose our ability to help others. Some signs of Jing depletion are lower back pain, weak knees, the appearance of more gray hair and hair loss, low energy (not enough steam), and mental fogginess. There are prayers and' incantations a lightworker can observe. Every healer owes it to her/himself to find prayers, rituals and other Tin Jing protecting measures in order to recharge the Jing we have spent on healing. We want to give, but we must be realistic; we only have so much we can give. A strong and well-maintained Jing bank represents a lot of healing power to draw from! 211

Acupressure and massage practitioners in China use a tea called “Healers’ Tea.” Traditionally, a cup is drunk after each session to insure that the practitioner doesn’t get burnt out. In acupressure shops in China and Korea, this practice is mandatory. Healers’ Tea consists of equal weights of Dendrobium (Shui Hu-Jin Chai), an excellent moisturizing Tin replenishing herb with rejuvenating qualities, combined with Schizandra, Lycium and Licorice Root as a harmonizer. Healers’ Tea is an excellent and immediate Tin Jing: restorative. This tea is also referred to as “1 Ioneymooners’ Tea” and is drunk by newlyweds and those engaging in excessive sexual activity, where Jing is being expended. Having Yin properties, it is said to replenish the ‘precious fluids’, being the sexual fluids and the saliva. (See The Flowery Battlefield, Chapter 17). O

Dendrobium String [Shui Ilu-Jin Chai) 212

The classic Healer's Tea formula: Dendrobium (Shut Hu-Jin Chai): 2-3 balls or 1 handful pods Lycium ( GoJiZe): 1-2 once or 1 handful Licorice root* (Gan Cao): 10 grams or 'A handful Schizandra-f* (Wu JVei 7,e): 5 grams or about 20 dried berries *Note: Licorice should be avoided by those currently on medication for high blood pressure. See Harmonizing Chi Chap 10.

-j-Add Schizandra last 3 minutes cook cycle Directions: Place Dendrobium, Goji and Licorice in pot with 6 cups water. Bring to boil, reduce heat to simmer and cover. Let cook 1 hour. Add Schizandra last three minutes of cooking. Turn .off heat and allow to cool at least 'A hour. Strain and drink tea, two cups daily, or after one has engaged in healihg another, or sexual union.

Our reproductive forces are closely related to our healing forces. The procreative is generally considered the lower expression and the creative, the higher expression of energy that comes from the same source: the kidneys. This two-sided energy is said to be interchangeable, which has been kept as a great secret in China (See Chapter 17 for an extended discourse on cultivation of the sexual energies). Power must be guarded and replenished if we are to maintain long-term vitality. I cannot overstate the importance for healers to maintain a full Jing well.

Protection and Immunity A healer also needs to maintain a strong immune system, which will help keep the healing energies vitalized and less vulnerable to “Leakage” while we are around imbalanced and sick people. The empowerment we receive from maintaining a strong immune system also acts to keep us above the emotional sway of our interaction with sick people, thus protecting our emotions and energy fields. As mentioned in the Reishi section, immune enhancing herbs, particularly the mushrooms, have been found in experiments and studies to contain special properties that directly strengthen the immune system’s ability to attack microbial invaders. These special nutrients are called beta 1-3 glucans, anti-viral polysaccharides that are direct food to the part of the body responsible for maintaining the production of macrophages, or “natural killer cells,” giant white blood cells that eat cancerous and other irregular cells. Stress bangs away at our immune systems; adrenaline, cortisol and other hormones and sterols, if overworked, stress the body’s upright Chi When we have muscular tension, the healing and protective juices can’t flow as easily. When the kidneys and endocrine functions are overworked, it harms our body’s capacity to produce SOD and other life-supporting antioxidants. This can impair our adaptability, rendering us more vulnerable to harmful agents that can corrode our immune potential. Strong immunity is true empowerment. When we are less vulnerable to catastrophic energy and elements, we feel free to live to our fullest potential, without fear of defeat or rejection. There is a robustness that comes along with a strong immune system; if we want to go rock climbing, let's go! This can have a spiritual impact when one is living one’s dreams and fulfilling one’s potential. That satisfaction reverberates into the adrenals and kidneys, and one’s life 214

force gets stronger, further supporting the body’s internal immune forces. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle of empowerment. Immune potentiating herbs are: Agaricus (Agaricus blazei Murrill). This mushroom from South America is actually the highest source yet found of beta 1-3 and 1-6 glucans. Agaricus is administered to cancer and AIDS patients in China and Japan with very impressive results. Agaricus has been shown to break down the proteins that can bind to anaerobic cells, thereby preventing the development of malignant tumors such as melanoma. Impressive results were derived from an extensive 1980 joint study by Japan’s Mie University Medical School and Kobe University’s Faculty of Agriculture, sponsored by the Iwade Fungology Institute. Various extracts of Agaricus were administered to mice with melanoma, with an average of complete disappearance after 60 days at 87.5% and an inhibition rate at 03.6%. 83 ^Contraindications; Agaricus is a gentile and edible mushroom that has no known side effects. Those with Candida Albicans should boil Agaricus in tea to avoid exciting the yeast. Astragalus (Huang Chi) supports the Wei Chi—the body’s immune system at the capillary level just below the skin surface. This branch of the immune system is responsible for protecting us against the harmful actions of water, airborne pathogens and carcinogens, bacteria and viruses that can enter the body through the skin and can get into the bloodstream; it also increases interferon activity. Astragalus inhibits tumor growth, regulates blood pressure and counters the side affects of chemotherapy and radiation. It improves libido and fertility, helps regulate blood sugar and strengthens the spleen. Astragalus also supports what is called the Upright Chi, which helps prevent the 215

prolapse of organs, a condition commonly seen in older and heavier persons, where organs tend to sag in the body. It is said to insure healthy peripheral circulation to the extremities. Astragalus is a great herb for strength and endurance, and has been found to be totally safe, but Western health authorities warn against its use during acute stages of flu. Maitake (Hui Shu Hua) is high in an immunoglobulin called Dfraction, probably a trademark name for a beta-glucan, with which cancer cells seem not to get along. D-fraction has also been shown to help chemotherapeutic drugs work better as the Maitake helps prevent oxidation of healthy non-cancerous cells by chemotherapeutic drugs, which function by increasing oxidation of the body’s weakest cells. »+ The basic idea is that cancerous cells contain fewer antioxidants than normal cells. Chemotherapeutic drugs increase oxidation (death) of cells, and those with the fewest antioxidants (the cancerous cells) will be terminated first. The caveat with these drugs is that many people to whom they are being administered have generally weakened cells throughout the bloodstream, lacking antioxidants in their body due to insufficient nutrition, and those normal but nutritionally deficient cells are therefore also subject to oxidation by the drugs. The result is accelerated aging, and the pale and debilitated look we see in people after chemotherapeutic drugs have been used. Chemotherapeutic drugs contain no antioxidants, and cannot help support healthy cells. Maitake’s D-fraction helps strengthen normal cells, helping to reduce this unpleasant side effect of chemotherapy. Cancer patients should also adopt an antioxidantrich diet of whole foods, particularly fruits and vegetables, before being subjected to such drugs. ^Contraindications; none listed, but the mushroom should be boiled and drunk as tea by those with excessive Candida Albicans and other internal yeast issues. 216

Cordyceps (Dong Chong Xia Cao) This mushroom is produced by one of the strangest organism mutations in all nature. The mushroom, which grows at an extremely high altitude, has a symbiotic relationship with a certain caterpillar in the high Himalayan Mountains. A few times a year the mushrooms dispense their spores into the air. One of these spores is required to land and affix itself right in the center of a caterpillar’s forehead. This done, the mushroom starts to take over the caterpillar, eventually consuming its body. But the mushroom retains the exact shape of the caterpillar. Its body now being a completely vegetarian mycelium of the mushroom yet retaining the caterpillar’s likeness! The fruiting body, then growing off of the deceased caterpillar’s head, will release its spores into the air and start a new cycle. Cordyceps mushrooms look like little caterpillars and are rare and expensive. A more economical type of Cordyceps has been developed through a fermentation process using a tank. This cultivated Cordyceps is much less expensive, but studies show the antioxidant properties are basically identical in both the wild and cultivated varieties. This is because it is relatively easy to propagate mushroom cultures in a controlled setting, compared to many other therapeutic herbs where the wild varieties exceed the cultivated in beneficial properties. Cordyceps is a particularly beneficial herb for lung immunity. Its price on the international market rose exponentially when the herb was found to be an excellent anecdote to and preventive of SARS. Again, this herb enhances the body’s production of macrophages and can help in the reduction of tumors. Recent reports from Tibet show the supply of Cordyceps to be undergoing severe depletion due to the herb’s recent stardom. One should be judicious about the use of this herb, and I would now recommend it to be taken only for specific concerns, and not for leisure. If one wants to utilize Cordyceps as a 217

general health enhancer, I would suggest buying the fermented type. This Cordyceps is found only in capsule form and is much less expensive, but. still makes an excellent addition into a basic health regimen. If you find a bottle of Cordyceps capsules, the price should range from $20 to $30. This will be of the fermented type. ^Contraindications; none listed, but those with excessive internal yeasts like Candida Albicans should boil and drink tea of Cordyceps and avoid eating the raw mushroom. Scutellaria (Baicalensis) (Huang Qun) has profound natural antibiotic properties. “Scute” is referred to as “Skullcap” in the west, and has been an important Native American herb, although it appears the first Americans used the leaf, whereas the Chinese use the root. Scute is the highest known source of a phyto-antibiotic called baicalin. This substance has been very helpful in China in dealing with weak Lung Chi. Its immune enhancing properties particularly benefit the lungs. ^Precautions; use only under the guidance of a health practitioner familiar with Chinese herbs. This herb is not a tonic herb and should not be consumed on a continual basis. Should not be used by those with blood deficiency, edema due to Spleen deficiency, loose stool due to Kidney deficiency, or unstable pregnancy caused by excess cold. Scute is often times combined with Coptis (Huang Lian), a very close relative of Goldenseal, for blood cleansing. It cools pathogenic fire in the body, and is a nervine. It is extremely safe when used properly, and in China it is even administered to pregnant women to calm “Restless fetus.” The Chinese health authorities used it to effectively counter the spread of the SARS epidemic of 2001. I feel that this herb will prove vitally important in the future to help support our protection against super viruses. ^Contraindications; Coptis is a ‘cold’ herb, and is not intended for long-term use. It is best used under the supervision of a qualified Chinese doctor. 218

Cordyceps (Dong Chong Xia Cao)

Astragalus (HuangQi)

An immune tea formula for protection: Helps enhance immunity by increasing white blood cells and assisting the breaking up of tumors (Agaricus), supporting Lung Chi, and mildly fortifying Yang (Cordyceps), enforcing the Wei Chi (immunity at skin level) and ‘upright Chi (Astragalus), cleansing blood and remove ‘pathogenic heat’ (Scutellaria and Licorice root). Agaricus mushroom (Blazei Murrill) 1 ounce or 1 handful Cordyceps (Dong Chong Xia Cao): 1 rounded tablespoon powder Scutellaria (Lat. Baicalensis; Huang Qjin): 1-2 ounces or 1 handful Astragalus (Huang Qi): 1 ounce or 1 handful Licorice Root* (Gan Cao): 14 ounce or 54 handful Schizandra-f‘(Wu JVei Ze): 54 ounce or about 30 dried berries *Note: Licorice should be avoided by those currently on medication for high blood pressure. See Harmonizing Chi Chap 10. •f-Add Schizandra last 3 minutes cook cycle For cooking/preparation instructions, see Appendix

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Chapter 14 The Chakras as Thresholds The Chakras represent seven human energy centers described in ancient Ayurvedic texts. These seven centers are situated along the spine from the male testes to the crown of the head. According to ancient texts, as we move up the spine, each chakra represents a higher frequency of energy, from the most base to the most ethereal and light. The chakras signify the spectrum of consciousness a human might perfect, from our primal life force to our spiritual enlightenment. Jing could be considered to correlate with the first and second chakras. In the realm of living organisms, the first chakra corresponds with the basic physical life force, at the gonadal (male testes) level. The first Chakra would correspond with Tang Jing, the mud, brick and framework of our dwelling. Tang Jing is also partially the force behind the building of the original body we inhabit, from its seed (semen) and its pre-natal origins. It is a kind of storehouse derived from the original Chi. Herbs tonifying the first Chakra would include Cistanche, Morinda (Ba Ji Tian) (for more details on this herb, see chapter 16), Epimedium, and Deer antler. The kidneys, adrenals and ovaries are all found occupying the region corresponding to the second Chakra, in the lower abdominal area of the body. Thus the second Chakra represents the preservation of the reproductive potential and the propagation and nurturing of new life. This is why the Chinese consider the kidneys the “gold vault” of our inherited health, the repositories of our DNA, and the reproductive integrity of our seed; the health of one's kidneys affects the pace of aging. These are the central organs housing Tin Jing. Herbs that support the health of the second chakra include Ho Sho 221

Wu, prepared Rehmannia, Cuscuta seed, Ligustrum, Lycium and Schizandra. Chi corresponds to the third Chakra. This is the Chakra of the stomach, spleen, pancreas, Duodenum, gall bladder and liver, the digestive organs where food is transformed into energy and waste is broken down and thrown out on garbage day, where the raw materials are energized and put to use. The third Chakra is the center of metabolism of nutrients into energy; herbs that tonify this Chakra include White Atractylodes, Astragalus, Ginseng (Chinese), Dang Gui, Poria, Jujube, Citrus peel, Ginger and Cinnamon twig. The first three Chakras govern the physical plane of existence. As we move up the spine, the fourth through seventh Chakras represent our ethereal or spiritual planes. The fourth Chakra governs the heart and is located at the center point of the seven-Chakra progression. Here, compassion enters into our life—compassion for everything, not just family and those things nearest us. I believe the human race, as a whole, is just beginning to progress into a fourth Chakra consciousness, and am writing my next book on this idea. The fourth Chakra at the heart meridian occupies the midpoint of the matter-to-spirit spectrum, and from here Shen begins its manifestation into our higher purpose. Herbs that help tonify the heart chakra include Albizzia flower and bark, Longan, Ligusticum (Chuan Xiong) (see chapter 15), Gynostemma, Reishi, Schizandra and Polygala. Above the heart Chakra we have the fifth Chakra, governing the lungs and throat. Here we enter into the Prana of ancient Ayurvedic philosophy, where special breathing techniques can calm the spirit and enhance clarity. Thus, the lungs are thought to be the potentiators of wisdom, but as they can be managed consciously or autonomically, Shen must be directed by the higher charkas. Also this fifth Chakra correlates to our main communication center, the throat through which passes our words. How satisfactorily one may express oneself is 222

activated here. Suppression of one’s personal vocal expression is a Shen disturbance. Throat Chakra herbs include Magnolia (Hou Po Hua), Cordyceps, Asparagus root, Ophiopogon (Mai Men Dong), Licorice, Platycodon (Jie Jeng), Fritillaria (Chuan Bai Mu), Reishi, Scute, Schizandra and Mint (Bo He). At the sixth Chakra, energy is further refined into the mental sphere, corresponding to the pituitary and pineal glands. The karmic ramifications of the “action/reaction” energies of the lower Chakras are examined and reasoned, and with spiritual insight or guidance, are transmuted upward into the seventh, or Crown Chakra. Herbs that tonify the sixth Chakra of the frontal consciousness include Rhodiola, Polygonatum Sibericum, Astragalus, Gingko, Siberian Ginseng, Lion’s Mane mushroom and Gynostemma. Finally, after many learning curves, we reacli the last frontier of the Crown Chakra, the seventh and last chakra at the top-most point of the head. Here, the violet light from the ultraviolet spectrum shines and all confusion is overcome and transformed. A pure Crown Chakra consciousness would be likened to Nirvana, a state that would be for most of us, near impossible to attain for any extended period of time on this dualistic plane of consciousness. But from the occasional glimpses we get into the Crown Chakra purity, mainly in times of great inspiration, we find our directive to follow the light. Crown Chakra herbs include Reishi, Albizzia, Asparagus root, Spirit Poria, Longan and Schizandra.

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Imagine a big truck (Jing) standing stationary. The driver (Chi) just kicked back some pancakes and coffee; he gets in and ignites the engine. There’s no combustion at first, and warmth must build before the truck even begins to move. The driver shifts into first gear and lets out the clutch. The truck starts to inch forward as if in agony, with the crankcase pressing hard to get momentum. This pressure, heat and grinding momentum could be likened to the original forming 224

of our planet, when gasses congealed into molten metal elements, which transmuted into crystal and rock substrates and carbon; the alchemical skeleton necessary for the support of life. This is also like the energy of the first, or Base Chakra. After great exertion, the driver shifts into second gear; the truck still has to rev at high speed, but momentum is occurring; now it’s as if we are entering into the realm of the second, or Root Chakra. This could also be correlated with the early days of life on earth, wherein organisms began reproducing themselves, and multi-cellular organisms began to evolve; this represents the foundations of reproductive processes in living organisms and larger collectively organized living systems, the nurturing and progressive refinement of living systems, adaptations of the genome, symbiosis, a neural network of Gaia, which corresponds to Jing. I hope you understand now, when I talk about Jing, it is a very big thing. We have momentum. Next comes third gear and now we start to experience power. The last rev of the engine has third gear in high RPMs to move us into traffic. This is similar to the rise of human civilization; our raw material has been put to use to invent rules, cultural advancements, abstract thinking, societal prerogatives, and of course, internal combustion engines, power saws, and things that mash and burn, etc. Jing has set the template for our propagation and empowerment, and now our Chi prepares us to want to govern the world through the dual processes of action and reaction. As a species, human development appears to be stuck at this level of the third, or Sacral Chakra. Our ideas of dominion and control over other humans and over nature have led us to great material comfort and prosperity for some but at great expense and labor for others. Changes in the climate show us this mode of being is unsustainable; our future as a species is at risk. Humans have arrived at a threshold. 225

If we can evolve into upper Chakra ways of living on the earth and relating to one another, if we can relinquish the dominance of the third Chakra and move into a more compassionate, cooperative and heart-centered way of being, this represents our best chance of survival. Once on the highway, we shift into fourth gear and we are sailing. Now the foot can ease off the throttle and enter into the fourth Chakra, the heart center. We have entered the realm of Shen and we are part of the flow. Collectively, once we are able activate Shen on a global level, I believe we will move very quickly through the upper Chakras to the seventh Crown Chakra, because once we have opened the door to the light, we can clearly see the remaining path that brings spiritual enlightenment. This will bring about a massive evolutionary leap. Looking back, we will not judge ourselves too harshly. We will understand that evolution is a road which requires steps of progression. The human race could not have avoided grappling with the ideas of power and powerlessness as we evolved through third Chakra consciousness; what animal or living entity would not seek to use power if it was at its disposal? What dog would not gorge itself until sick if unlimited food were in front of it? Systems of governance and commerce needed to be developed along our path to true interdependence. Our present threshold is unimaginably powerful. Where we stand at our point in evolution is fascinating to contemplate, and those of us who are ready to migrate into the fourth Chakra consciousness of Shen will represent the light of compassion for others. We will see all the events that led us here from molten rock to Human society’s power structures, now launch like a rocket toward realization of the Crown Chakra of pure Shen. 226

Chapter 15 Thresholds in Women’s Health When I meet a woman and shake hands, more often than not I feel cold fingers, and right away I know that she is anemic. It’s pretty simple: cold hands and/or feet = anemia. Here’s a simple test: Stretch back the right palm with the left hand and observe the creases in the palm; if they are as pale as the rest of your palm, you are anemic. They should be pinker than the pigment of your skin. Or, pull back your lower eyelid just a little; if the skin inside is pale, you are anemic. Do vou know how many anemic women I meet? Possibly 80% of the women I encounter. Sometimes those women inform me that their doctor said their blood levels were normal, but by my estimates, not so. So why are so many women in the U.S. anemic? Are women in other cultures also anemic? Were ancient women suffering from low red blood in such high percentages? Doctor Weston Price’s informative pictures85 of bodies excavated at the burial sites of indigenous cultures universally reveal thicker, stronger bones than we see in most humans today, this density being one indicator that these ancient peoples maintained normal healthy blood levels. Why, during their fertile period, do contemporary American women lose so much more blood monthly than any other living creature on Earth? Why are young girls going into menarch so early (sometimes by 9 or 10)? Why are menstrual disorders so common in our modern culture? Why do so many women exercise and exercise, yet still carry extra weight around the hips? Why are masses accumulating in their abdomen and breasts? Why is childbirth so difficult and life threatening? Why are women enduring such harsh physical and 227