Practitioners' News

Do you ever feel stuck in the way you see yourself, bound by old stories or ideas about who you are? Do you wish for moments when you could just see or hear things differently? Spring is the time of new beginnings, fresh growth and a perfect time to renovate how we see and do things. In the Spring, which in Chinese medicine we think of as Liver and Gall Bladder or Wood element time, we are looking at rebirth, renewal as things emerge from the Winter slumber time and begin to grow again. So much is possible!

Quite often when treating sinus allergies, the immediate focus is on symptom relief - a branch treatment. In Chinese medicine, we don’t treat the allergen; we treat a weakness or an imbalance in the system. Since in Chinese medicine there are no isolated systems, we look for the different patterns involved in this particular disharmony.

All foods share their energetic influences when eaten. Understanding single foods and their combinations, implemented with clear diagnoses and well-founded theory forms the basis of Chinese medicine dietary therapy. Hydration is key to good health, and wet breakfasts are an often-forgotten key to good hydration. Wet breakfasts—porridges and congee—absorb a great deal of water as they cook. This fluid is gradually given up during digestion, like a time-release capsule of healthy hydration.

Dampness is one of the six climatic factors taught in Chinese medicine, along with cold, heat (fire), wind, summer-heat, and dryness. For many today, modern heating and air-conditioning have eased the climatic influences—unrelenting cold or oppressively humid summer heat can be escaped by going indoors. And while climatic dampness can be an important issue for those living in basement apartments or with hidden mold, more and more what we see in our culture is dampness somehow arising from the inside. Dampness - often shadowing the obesity epidemic - is on the rise.

Approximately 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide. 39 million are blind and 246 million have low vision. Many of these conditions are considered untreatable by conventional medicine, often leaving patients in a hopeless situation.

February 5, 2019 is the start of the Chinese Year of the Brown Pig. This is a Yin Earth Year with the Yin Water of the Pig below. This combination is a tricky one as the Elements are in opposition. Luckily, they are in the Yin form of the elements so any skirmishes or conflicts should be minor. The combination of Earth and Water together make mud, which is why this year’s Pig is brown! This can be taken literally, meaning that there will be more mud created in the natural world, or it indicates that there may be a lack of clarity in people’s thinking. Taken even further, it may be that there will be some mud-slinging politically – a messy proposition!

As many practitioners of Acupuncture and TCM know, Yang Sheng is the practice of nourishing life. The branch of TCM knowledge called Qi Gong provides practitioners with a large number of internal and external practices that were developed over the centuries to promote physical, emotional and spiritual health.

Abdominal acupuncture (Fu Zhen) is a powerful new system of acupuncture which was introduced in China by its developer Prof Bo Zhi-yun in 1991. Abdominal acupuncture (AA) uses the area between Ren12 (Zhongwan) and Ren3 (Zhongji) on the vertical line and Sp15 (Daheng) as the outer most points on the horizontal lines.

Unique in the pantheon of plant medicinal preparations, essential oils capture both the substance, yuan qi and the spirit, wei qi, of a plant. Inherent in plants in the same way that blood is inherent to the human body, oils carry the nutrients and the genetics to every corner of the plant. When we extract oils from plants and plant parts, we change both the concentration and nature of a plant’s natural oil content, yielding a compact, powerful, and previously unborn substance.

For years now, you have been asking us to add essential oils to the products we carry. We have taken your requests to heart and have taken the time to learn what we can about the industry and the products available so we can provide you with bioactive oils of therapeutic quality at a reasonable price. It has been no easy task, and it has taken us a long time to bring on a line of essential oils that meets the quality standards of Eastern Currents products for many good reasons. We are excited to share with you our new line of essential oils, Vital Qi.

As the holidays roll around, it’s easy for you and your practice to get lost in the shuffle of your clients' and patients’ busy lives. Of course, there are a lot of people competing for their attention so it’s important to stand out and make them realize that you aren’t preoccupied with *getting* something from them, you’re there to give and help them. A great way to accomplish this is with EarSeeds!

The body that is spoken about in the Chinese classical medical texts is always a living body, not a body devoid of life, a corpse, an anatomical body as an inert cadaver which is cut with the scalpel, the blade of the dissector. The body is perceived as a form in unceasing transformations, ever in motion, with all kinds of flow running inside. Nothing is still, immobile in the body at the likeness of all that exists in the cosmos.

There are many Chinese medicinal herbs that double as foods, and some famous herbs are used in the specialty tradition of herbal broth cooking. But to be fully integrated with a living Chinese medicine, there is nothing more powerful than organizing your daily foods as the herbs of your life. Rather than adding medicinals to dishes or using formulas after meals, the idea is that the formulas you rely upon can be used to create recipes and meals that fully enact their strategies. Foods are your agents, based on herbal principles and a thorough knowledge of the energetics of common foods.

At KPC Products, we recognize our success has been attributed to a unique combination of stringent practices, industry expertise, and respect for family values. Our story traces back five generations to when our ancestor, Tsai Liang Hai, sailed across the strait from Fujian province to a small village in Taiwan. Prior to his arrival in 1892, he had spent over twenty years selecting herbs and mastering the art of herbal remedy.

As wildfires blanket the Western Canada and the United States, decreased air quality can be felt all across North America. The health effects of wildfire smoke exposure range from eye and respiratory tract irritation to impaired pulmonary function. As air quality worsens, patients are experiencing the effects of the smoke. Chinese herbs can be beneficial to address these issues.

Qiu 秋 the fall, the autumn, shows an ear of grain (on the left) filled with fire 火 (on the right). Summer’s firing is over, the fall is here; inner time, metal time to cut the ties that bind. Autumn is two edged: on the one hand the harvest season with its mellow abundance, and on the other, the rapidly shortening days with the nip of death in the keen air. A time of evening, of rebalancing, the scales tipping in favour of the dark, the cold, the yin, the in. Central to it is the full moon mid-autumn festival zhong qiu jie 中 秋 節, held on the 15th day of the 8th month (September 8th in 2014), to celebrate the growth and power of yin, of harvest, of woman and the moon. Sunbathing is out, moon gazing is in, and moon cakes are all around!

You might be able to provide a complete cure for your asthma patient – a lasting cure, not just symptom relief. In my practice, I have seen people completely recover from chronic asthma, both pediatric and adult. There is no one “magic” point to fix the problem, of course. But you can learn to track the flow of channel Qi and find out where the blockage is occurring: why the First Divergence isn’t kicking in when it should.

Low back, hip and IT band issues are frequent problems practitioners deal with day-today. Many times, our patients present with tissues that have become extremely compressed and adhered. As an additional support, many practitioners have encouraged patients to do selfcare treatments with foam rollers and other compressive-type tools with some success. With the development of silicone cups, practitioners now have an entirely new set of tools for relieving pain and promoting fascial health.

When you have patients that are pushing long hours, or are exhausted new parents, or out of joint shift workers, or entrepreneurs that are hell bent on working 18 hr days, then remember Natures’ gift of Adaptogen herbs. I personally got tired of recommending 12 separate herbs to patients and combined all the most important plants into two products, Awake and Asleep. These new combinations are convenient and my patients were thankful not having to take so many capsules. I would recommend you try these in your practice as they are essential for healthy aging and managing those stressful times.

Coconut products have been heralded as a wonder "super food" for humans for years, but did you know that the same benefits that humans enjoy, our animal friends can also experience? Eastern Currents offers Olie Naturals Coconut Oil and Coconut Crumble, as fibre-rich and supportive coconut products that are nourishing, supportive, and safe for consumption by our favourite animal companions!