Volume 1, Issue 2 December 2011
Running away from our ‘cold’ Winter?
What follows is very useful for those traversing several time zones in search of more favourable weather during the Winter months. If you know yourself to be rather susceptible to jet lag, if you travel frequently across many time zones, or just would prefer to not find out just how sensitive you may be because your stay in Indonesia is brief, then try the following suggestions.
For one, there are simple homeopathic remedies that can be helpful; a formula designed specifically for jetlag; or, for travel sickness, use Cocculus indicus 30C; and for sea sickness, use Tabacum 30C. Marigold Naturals carries a full selection of homeopathics, and you’ll find all the above there, and more.But possibly the most effective way to deal with jet lag comes from the knowledge of energy flow offered by Chinese medicine. It is a little more involved than just taking homeopathic pills but I know it, from direct experience, to be highly effective. On a trip to Japan, after a 10 hour flight across the Pacific, and the usual few hours of continental travel to get to the airport itself, I was more refreshed and energetic than my friend who was picking me up, and this was not from having slept on the plane, which I achieve very poorly, even with earplugs in place. And I did this twice successfully.
The idea is simple – you only need to apply pressure to special acupuncture points known as ‘horary points’, based on the time zone to which you are traveling to, as described and shown below. These points are meant to be pressed for approximately 1 minute each, both sides, on the hour shown. Do not be concerned about making up for the points that are missed during your sleep time. It might be a good idea to locate these points at least once before your actual trip so that you are comfortable with their location when setting up to press them on the plane.
These points are known as horary points because they facilitate the access to the Qi of each meridian at a particular time and, in this case, help to recalibrate the flow of Qi within the whole meridian system thereby resetting your biorhythm to a new time zone.
What follows is very useful for those traversing several time zones in search of more favourable weather during the Winter months. If you know yourself to be rather susceptible to jet lag, if you travel frequently across many time zones, or just would prefer to not find out just how sensitive you may be because your stay in Indonesia is brief, then try the following suggestions.
For one, there are simple homeopathic remedies that can be helpful; a formula designed specifically for jetlag; or, for travel sickness, use Cocculus indicus 30C; and for sea sickness, use Tabacum 30C. Marigold Naturals carries a full selection of homeopathics, and you’ll find all the above there, and more.But possibly the most effective way to deal with jet lag comes from the knowledge of energy flow offered by Chinese medicine. It is a little more involved than just taking homeopathic pills but I know it, from direct experience, to be highly effective. On a trip to Japan, after a 10 hour flight across the Pacific, and the usual few hours of continental travel to get to the airport itself, I was more refreshed and energetic than my friend who was picking me up, and this was not from having slept on the plane, which I achieve very poorly, even with earplugs in place. And I did this twice successfully.
The idea is simple – you only need to apply pressure to special acupuncture points known as ‘horary points’, based on the time zone to which you are traveling to, as described and shown below. These points are meant to be pressed for approximately 1 minute each, both sides, on the hour shown. Do not be concerned about making up for the points that are missed during your sleep time. It might be a good idea to locate these points at least once before your actual trip so that you are comfortable with their location when setting up to press them on the plane.
These points are known as horary points because they facilitate the access to the Qi of each meridian at a particular time and, in this case, help to recalibrate the flow of Qi within the whole meridian system thereby resetting your biorhythm to a new time zone.
Over the counter Chinese herbal medicine
I began my career as a Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioner more than 15 years ago now. Quite idealistic at first, I came to realize that there are limits to what it can do, although maybe more so to whom it may be beneficial. One of the success stories of TCM is the availability of simple and effective herbal formulas in pill format, or what is know in our trade as herbal patent remedies, or ‘over the counter’ (OTC) remedies.
There are remedies for insomnia, hot flashes, low energy, painful menstruations, and more which are safe and pleasant to ingest, that is, compared to the traditional format of decoctions which have the nasty habit of stinking up the house while being cooked up, not to mention how strong the resulting taste can be. All the formulas described below are available from Marigold Naturals, my favourite source for natural medicines of all kind. Although the following are safe OTC formulas, please consider that it is always advisable to consult with your complementary healthcare practitioner as well.
Liu Wei Di Huang Wan
This formula is one of the classics of Chinese medicine. Used to treat signs and symptoms of ‘Yin Deficiency’ such as insomnia, night sweats and aching lower back and knees, I suggest its use most frequently for women having mild hot flashes.
Suggested dosage: 8 pills three times daily, before meals. (Note, these ‘pills’ are actually quite small and are made up of ground up herbs.) Safe for prolonged use.
There are remedies for insomnia, hot flashes, low energy, painful menstruations, and more which are safe and pleasant to ingest, that is, compared to the traditional format of decoctions which have the nasty habit of stinking up the house while being cooked up, not to mention how strong the resulting taste can be. All the formulas described below are available from Marigold Naturals, my favourite source for natural medicines of all kind. Although the following are safe OTC formulas, please consider that it is always advisable to consult with your complementary healthcare practitioner as well.
Liu Wei Di Huang Wan
This formula is one of the classics of Chinese medicine. Used to treat signs and symptoms of ‘Yin Deficiency’ such as insomnia, night sweats and aching lower back and knees, I suggest its use most frequently for women having mild hot flashes.
Suggested dosage: 8 pills three times daily, before meals. (Note, these ‘pills’ are actually quite small and are made up of ground up herbs.) Safe for prolonged use.
Zhi Bai Di Huang Wan
For more severe or multiple, unending episodes of hot flashes, especially when I hear such words as “horrible” or “extreme” to describe one’s hot flashes. This formula is based on the above Liu Wie Di Huang Wan plus a couple more herbs to address the extra heat.
Suggested dosage: 8 pills three times daily, before meals. Safe for prolonged use.
Suggested dosage: 8 pills three times daily, before meals. Safe for prolonged use.
Yin Chiao (Qiao) San
Another of the classic formulas, this one should be in your natural remedies pantry at all times. Part of the first line of defense when you feel a cold coming on. Best taken right at the onset of symptoms, just as you suspect that you’ve pushed your machine a little too far and you’re feeling it. For general signs of any kind of cold.
Suggested dosage: 4-6 pills, every 4 hours. Use only in acute cases, not for prevention. (A preventative, homeopathic remedy was reviewed in the previous newsletter. Please request that information by email if necessary.) It is also advisable to stop any tonic herbs while using Yin Qiao.
Suggested dosage: 4-6 pills, every 4 hours. Use only in acute cases, not for prevention. (A preventative, homeopathic remedy was reviewed in the previous newsletter. Please request that information by email if necessary.) It is also advisable to stop any tonic herbs while using Yin Qiao.
Po Chai, also known as Pill Curing
Most excellent first aid remedy for acute gastritis, especially if suspecting food poisoning. I have seen this ‘miracle’ remedy in action many times, often effecting change within 10-30 minutes, i.e. going from acute, cramping, debilitating pain with nausea and/or vomiting to almost nothing!
Suggested dosage: as directed on the package. This remedy comes as a box of several plastic vials (as shown) filled to the brim with tiny reddish-brown pill. If unclear as to the dosage, take ½ - 1 whole vial immediately you feel symptoms of gastritis and/or suspect food poisoning.
Suggested dosage: as directed on the package. This remedy comes as a box of several plastic vials (as shown) filled to the brim with tiny reddish-brown pill. If unclear as to the dosage, take ½ - 1 whole vial immediately you feel symptoms of gastritis and/or suspect food poisoning.
Xiao Yao Wan
aka “Relaxed Wanderer” of “Free and Easy Wanderer” – again, another classic. This formula unbinds stuck liver Qi. Its most famous use is for the difficult onset of a woman’s period characterized by cramping, irritability, and/or moodiness that are often relieved or reduced from doing physical activity.
Suggested dosage: 8 – 12 pills, 3 – 4 times daily while symptoms last. For short term use.
Note: Chinese medicine, especially acupuncture and Chinese herbs, work wonders at re-establishing a normal menstrual flow so that PMS disappears and the flow is regular and uneventfull. Despite what your doctor might tell you, a painless andPMS-free menstrual cycle is considered normal in Chinese medicine, not the other way around. Also, and even though the birth control pill has the effect of ‘regulating’ one’s mentrual flow and ease the pain, it has no beneficial effect in the long run. In fact, quite often, once a woman stops the ‘pill’, symptoms are back as before and, sometimes, worse than what they originally were.
Suggested dosage: 8 – 12 pills, 3 – 4 times daily while symptoms last. For short term use.
Note: Chinese medicine, especially acupuncture and Chinese herbs, work wonders at re-establishing a normal menstrual flow so that PMS disappears and the flow is regular and uneventfull. Despite what your doctor might tell you, a painless andPMS-free menstrual cycle is considered normal in Chinese medicine, not the other way around. Also, and even though the birth control pill has the effect of ‘regulating’ one’s mentrual flow and ease the pain, it has no beneficial effect in the long run. In fact, quite often, once a woman stops the ‘pill’, symptoms are back as before and, sometimes, worse than what they originally were.
A View of Oneness
Much has been said in esoteric circles and spiritual teachings, maybe all in footsteps of the Buddha, that we are all one, that there is no place, from the point of view of Spirit, where one individual ends and another begins. In the third book of Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch even goes on to explain how this understanding of ourselves and the Universe makes it possible to consider that time does not exist. Indeed, if there is no separation between anything, if we are truly all one, there is no distance possible and, therefore, there ends the need for time as a measure of the distance between objects.
Conceptually, intuitively, I get all this, but it did not cross from an intellectual reality to a felt sense of truth until one day when I did a simple visualization of our Universe which has since allowed me to accept that to look at things as separate entities can only lead to a mistaken perception of reality, and therefore to all the chaos, drama, and suffering we take for granted in this capitalist, dog eat dog society we seem to be stuck with.
We have also been told that there is a limit to how fast things can go. This one appears to be true for all physical things, although science has seen dramatic changes of thinking more than once in human history. There is indeed something that can go faster than the speed of light— our Mind. I can always, easily picture or imagine myself anywhere in the world, or the Universe for that matter, just by thinking it. So, here’s my simple visualization. Please join me if curious.When I am asked to show where the Universe is, I most often am tempted to point outward into the night sky, at the vastness of the unknown that extends beyond our earthly physical plane. So, let’s take a little trip outward bound, shall we?
Picture yourself, if you would, on the confines of our infinite Universe, looking back this way, and imagine yourself pointing outward once again, pointing at the Universe from somewhere in its infinity. Anywhere you put yourself in this Universe of ours will do, and imagine that your finger is in fact pointing toward an area of darkness, that is, no stars are shining in that general direction. Entirely possible, really. Now, not that long ago, it was shown that if one points a telescope anywhere where it’s black, aside toward a black hole, that, eventually, photon upon superimposing photon, something luminous will appear. The suggestion now is that there is nowhere in the Universe where there is nothing. Quite astonishing, isn’t it? So, let’s begin traveling toward one of those dim sources of light.
Because we can travel at the speed of Mind, we soon realize that this source of light is rather brilliant after all. And large! Let’s just assume that we have in fact stumble on our own Milky Way Galaxy. Not the biggest but still 100,000 lightyears in diameter, and composed of 100 billion stars. (Note that our nearest galactic neighbour is at least 1 million lightyears away!) Continuing our journey of unending curiosity, let’s pick one of the stars of this galaxy, the one star that has 8 distinct objects circling it at various distances, plus a ‘belt’ of stellar dust on the outside (now known as the Kuiper belt and in which, it turns out, Pluto, a non-planet after all, resides). Getting closer still, we begin to notice, as we tone down the traveling speed of our Mind, that these objects have different colours and that some have their own objects circling around.
Let’s pick the pretty blue planet. Way before we reach its satellite, we realize that there is also white and other colours on this blue planet. Getting closer still, we discover shapes of continents, and could those be veins, the ones with their own shades of blue here and there? Eventually, we notice things moving about, some with extensions to propel themselves rather organically, and others which seem to only travel linearly. Getting closer still, at ground level, we realize that the ones standing on only two of their extensions are very similar except for the colour of their skin, or the choice and amount of garment they hide their body behind, and that the ones moving about on their fours vary enormously in their shape yet all seem to be in agreement on how much fur, and what colour and pattern, to wear.
So, here’s the question that allowed me to flip my understanding: when can it be said along this journey back from the confines of the Universe that I am, we are, separate from the whole? From way out there, I cannot even fathom that any of these distinctions exists. Looking outward from our earthly viewpoint, it seems undeniable that the Universe is essentially ‘out there’. Going to that ‘out there’, it seems undeniable that we cannot be but part of this Universe. In fact, from the point of view of the Universe itself, we are, as humans, no different than a sub-atomic particle in my body - it is impossible to even imagine this particle as separate from the rest of me, or not linked somehow to the other neighbouring particles. We also know from science that every cell of our body, although distinct from its neighbour through the boundary of its outer shell, carries the information of the whole within its DNA encoding.
Looking outward from our planet, just like looking outward from the perspective of the sub-atomic particle, isn’t it folly to even suggest that I am, we are separate, from the whole of the Universe and, by extension, to the rest of everything?
Something to reflect, and meditate upon some more...
Conceptually, intuitively, I get all this, but it did not cross from an intellectual reality to a felt sense of truth until one day when I did a simple visualization of our Universe which has since allowed me to accept that to look at things as separate entities can only lead to a mistaken perception of reality, and therefore to all the chaos, drama, and suffering we take for granted in this capitalist, dog eat dog society we seem to be stuck with.
We have also been told that there is a limit to how fast things can go. This one appears to be true for all physical things, although science has seen dramatic changes of thinking more than once in human history. There is indeed something that can go faster than the speed of light— our Mind. I can always, easily picture or imagine myself anywhere in the world, or the Universe for that matter, just by thinking it. So, here’s my simple visualization. Please join me if curious.When I am asked to show where the Universe is, I most often am tempted to point outward into the night sky, at the vastness of the unknown that extends beyond our earthly physical plane. So, let’s take a little trip outward bound, shall we?
Picture yourself, if you would, on the confines of our infinite Universe, looking back this way, and imagine yourself pointing outward once again, pointing at the Universe from somewhere in its infinity. Anywhere you put yourself in this Universe of ours will do, and imagine that your finger is in fact pointing toward an area of darkness, that is, no stars are shining in that general direction. Entirely possible, really. Now, not that long ago, it was shown that if one points a telescope anywhere where it’s black, aside toward a black hole, that, eventually, photon upon superimposing photon, something luminous will appear. The suggestion now is that there is nowhere in the Universe where there is nothing. Quite astonishing, isn’t it? So, let’s begin traveling toward one of those dim sources of light.
Because we can travel at the speed of Mind, we soon realize that this source of light is rather brilliant after all. And large! Let’s just assume that we have in fact stumble on our own Milky Way Galaxy. Not the biggest but still 100,000 lightyears in diameter, and composed of 100 billion stars. (Note that our nearest galactic neighbour is at least 1 million lightyears away!) Continuing our journey of unending curiosity, let’s pick one of the stars of this galaxy, the one star that has 8 distinct objects circling it at various distances, plus a ‘belt’ of stellar dust on the outside (now known as the Kuiper belt and in which, it turns out, Pluto, a non-planet after all, resides). Getting closer still, we begin to notice, as we tone down the traveling speed of our Mind, that these objects have different colours and that some have their own objects circling around.
Let’s pick the pretty blue planet. Way before we reach its satellite, we realize that there is also white and other colours on this blue planet. Getting closer still, we discover shapes of continents, and could those be veins, the ones with their own shades of blue here and there? Eventually, we notice things moving about, some with extensions to propel themselves rather organically, and others which seem to only travel linearly. Getting closer still, at ground level, we realize that the ones standing on only two of their extensions are very similar except for the colour of their skin, or the choice and amount of garment they hide their body behind, and that the ones moving about on their fours vary enormously in their shape yet all seem to be in agreement on how much fur, and what colour and pattern, to wear.
So, here’s the question that allowed me to flip my understanding: when can it be said along this journey back from the confines of the Universe that I am, we are, separate from the whole? From way out there, I cannot even fathom that any of these distinctions exists. Looking outward from our earthly viewpoint, it seems undeniable that the Universe is essentially ‘out there’. Going to that ‘out there’, it seems undeniable that we cannot be but part of this Universe. In fact, from the point of view of the Universe itself, we are, as humans, no different than a sub-atomic particle in my body - it is impossible to even imagine this particle as separate from the rest of me, or not linked somehow to the other neighbouring particles. We also know from science that every cell of our body, although distinct from its neighbour through the boundary of its outer shell, carries the information of the whole within its DNA encoding.
Looking outward from our planet, just like looking outward from the perspective of the sub-atomic particle, isn’t it folly to even suggest that I am, we are separate, from the whole of the Universe and, by extension, to the rest of everything?
Something to reflect, and meditate upon some more...