Wednesday, January 27, 2010

three immortals' platform



open the heart to blessings...

arriving each moment
storing up the light
bursting glory's
gates wide

into realms known as healing biotope villages
great of need to perceive earth anew from decay,
creating a cosmos mineral bath true unto harmony,
one fermenting and breathing cultured life performances.

grace in
acting out
biodiversity
herbs and fungi--

adaptations of The All...

j.a. knolls

Sunday, January 24, 2010

hoe your eyes


spontaneous laughter spills forth
a new year of thanks and breaks here
allowing delight's eyes to show as you go
sights perhaps the saddest story ever told
being that often we seem judged by tragedy
as if it's rather less divine than our invented indulgences,
when reality suggests all may flow from the one almighty...
locating a walk through the sun in the beginning of ourselves
constructing ego domain eggshells
soaking the summer labyrinth to hail
where beneath such survives our kindness
to war disappearing within as a result of grace
towards the meaning of life and living its expanse...
knowing darkness enables the reappearance of light's love.

-j.a. knolls

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

hermes trismegistus


"Thrice-great Hermes" is the representation of the syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. I favor the Hermetic concept of The All, and that the God and Goddess are merely the masculine and feminine aspects of The All.


"I think that by 2012 you will have people that are enlightened (open, honest, caring, loving, united to the divine) and those that still seek humanity's lower natures (suffering, misery, hate, separation from the divine) but at least the scale may be tipping more toward enlightened." Hermes Trismegistus


From his writings in The Emerald Tablet

"True, without falsehood, certain and most true, that which is above is the same as that which is below, and that which is below is the same as that which is above, for the performance of miracles of the One Thing. And as all things are from the One, by the meditation of One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation. The Sun is its Father, the Moon its Mother, the Wind carries it in its belly, its nurse is the Earth. This is the Father of all perfection, or consummation of the whole world. Its power is integrating, if it be turned into earth.

You shall separate the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross, suavely, and with great ingenuity and skill. Your skillful work ascends from earth to heaven and descends to earth again, and receives the power of the superiors and of the inferiors. So thou hast the glory of the whole world--therefore let all obscurity flee from thee. This is the strong force of all forces, overcoming every subtle and penetrating every solid thing. So the world was created. Hence all were wonderful adaptations, of which this is the manner. Therefore I am called Hermes Trismegistus having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. What I have to tell is completed concerning the Operation of the Sun."


Monday, January 11, 2010

jade mountain (formosa island)



It's Li Chen's birthday. She was born today at 7 am, upon a blue hare's moon. Her birth name means, "inner, pure strength" and this is exactly what she shows me on a daily basis.

There is no material gift that depicts our shared visits of happiness...this is the best present of all, and I think she agrees it to be true:

"I will not play tug o' war. I'd rather play hug o' war. Where everyone hugs instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles and rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, and everyone grins, and everyone cuddles, and everyone wins."
Shel Silverstein

Alice has won my heart by allowing joy's presence to radiate and this has 'swept-me-away'. I have chosen this photograph of sunrise at Jade Mountain in Yushan National Park because the Earth is transformation, and this is what occurs every moment of first light experienced with my wife, Alice Li Chen-Knowles.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

number 9 : tao te ching



Lao Zi:

The Tao te Ching (literally, "the classic of the way of virtue") is attributed to Lao Zi, though scholars disagree about his actual existence. In its very poetic form it teaches that there is a dynamic, cosmic structure underlying everything that happens in the world. We humans need to discover that Way (Tao), which is immanent in all aspects of the world, not a rule imposed from without; and we need to fit into it, letting things take their course, not exerting ourselves in opposition to it by trying to bend things to our will.

Our naming (describing) of things always falls short of the way things are, since things are not limited as our language presupposes. Even the Tao which we are trying to talk about here eludes our words. The original polarity is that of being and non-being, and it will be found to interplay throughout the world, with non-being (emptiness, what is not) having as much significance as does being (the fullness of things, what is). Thus the notion of the Tao recaptures the earlier Chinese concept of Yin and Yang, the polarities running through all things.

9

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

nguyen van nghi, md.

Born January 2nd, 1909 in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nguyen Van Nghi was educated in Vietnam, China and France. Completing his medical degree from the University of Marseilles, he began a combined Eastern and Western medical practice in 1940.

In 1954 he devoted his practice entirely to acupuncture based on the classical texts: Huang Di Nei Jing (Suwen, Lingshu) and the Nan Jing. He died December 17th, 1999, in the town of his residence, Marseilles, France.

Some of his many titles and affiliations included: Technical Director of the National Institute of Acupuncture, France; Honorary President of the International Society of Biological Medicine; Director of Chinese Medicine, Lausanne and President of the World Association of Acupuncture.

His publications include: Traite de Médecine Chinoise; Pathogenie et Pathologie énergétique en Médecine Chinoise; Human Energetics (L'énergétique humaine); Théorie et practique de l'analgésie par acupuncteur; Complete translations of texts of Tang Dynasty origin: Huangdi Neijing (Suwen three volumes at 1500 pages, and Lingshu, three volumes at 1500 pages); Nan Jing, three volumes; Zhenjiu Da Jing, three volumes; the Shanghan Lun; the Mai Jing; Sémiologie et thérapeutique en médecine énergétique oriental and Pharmacologie en médecine oriental.


Some background from the perspective of Sean Christiaan Marshall, D. Ac

Nguyen Van Nghi was first invited to this country in 1972, during the acupuncture craze that followed Nixon's discovery of China. It would be 16 years before he returned...

It seems now in, 2002, that I knew Van Nghi long before we actually met. In early 1976, I had founded Jung Tao School, teaching primarily taijiquan and practicing and teaching what acupuncture I had learned through taiji studies. In order to gain more formal training, I enrolled at Occidental Institute of Chinese Studies of Toronto, Canada. In 1976, there were two schools in North America: NESA and OICS. At that time, OICS was a mixture of residential, seminar and correspondence training. Although no one may have known at the time, the president and director of OICS, Walter D. Sturm, is to be applauded. He is to be applauded for sparing me, and many others, from much erroneous and superfluous information about acupuncture. But he is to be applauded even more so because the French speaking Canadian members of the staff created an access to the works of Nguyen Van Nghi, that had been available (en française) since 1966, thus making it the core of the OICS curriculum. As a result, our exposure to Chinese medical theory, from the outset, was based on Van Nghi's synthesis of the classical texts. No one knew that then, but what a blessing. It was clear to me this material had impeccable authenticity. I consumed whatever I could find that traced its origins to Van Nghi.

By 1979, and having graduated from OICS, Dr. Sturm and I had become friends. Because of my previous experience, I was offered a position as vice president in charge of clinical development at the OICS resident training facilities and Alumi offices in Miami. It was a womderful opportunity and I also saw it as a means to get closer to Van Nghi's teachings, and it was. Importantly, was work on English language transcripts of lectures on the energetics of gynecology by Jean-claud Darras, a long time student of Van Nghi. I also learned more of Van Nghi, the man, his history; his struggles, his life-long devotion to the field of Chinese medicine and his immense skill as a physician and scientist.

But in any case, for the time being, I assumed that this mysterious; French speaking; Vietnamese doctor, Nguyen Van Nghi, was sort of like a Lao Zi figure: part myth, part legend (maybe all myth and legend) but clearly no one, the likes of me especially, would ever raise a glass with. It was clear though, by virture of his teachings, that he was someone to whom all should pay heed. So I paid heed. I paid heed, but I had no idea of the depth to which this man understood what he was saying, writing and teaching. The more of his stuff I found, the more I realized how vast this field was and how little I knew. I plodded onward.

In 1987 when I heard that he was going to be in this country, presenting a seminar, that I could actually attend....

As I sit here now in my office, writing this and working on the final draft of the English language translation of the Ling Shu, one of Van Nghi's final instructions to me, I look back at those years. What a legacy. I know, that what this man has done, will not be understood for some time to come. But it will be. It will be understood that he has saved true classical Chinese medicine from extinction. But this will not happen automatically. In San Francisco this spring, Tran cautioned me: he said this work will not be completed by our generation, it is too vast, too deep. We must count on the new young people coming into the field now, to carry this forward. And so we must.

Van Nghi was a genius, who had an understanding of the world and the cosmos far greater than the scope of Chinese medicine. He understood the world at the level Einstein understood it. He understood it at the level Lao Zi understood it. I hope that those who knew him will remember, and that those who didn't will find: Van Nghi was always a source of good will and good cheer, of freely sharing his knowledge, of insisting on cooperation and community, of unification of East and West and the creation of One Medicine that belongs to all.

And so it comes to this. It is our task now, and the task of the coming generations, to continue this work, to honor his travail, and to honor this man: Nguyen Van Nghi, MD.

Van Nghi, age 64, at the International Symposium on Acupuncture, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, 1973


chief two trees, a cherokee healer


Nephew of late healer 'Chief Two Trees' seeks stories about uncle to use in book

By Melissa Stout
CITIZEN-TIMES CORRESPONDENT
published: April 26, 2005 6:00 am

Old Fort - Robert SunHawk believes in his heritage and documenting the tradition of American Indian healing arts that were once performed by his uncle, the well-known late "Chief Two Trees" of Old Fort.

With hopes of reviving and honoring his uncle's practices, SunHawk is inviting the people who sought Two Trees' guidance from far and wide to come to the Mountain Gateway Museum's Medicine Moon Celebration Sept. 23-25 to share and compile their encounters and stories of Two Trees for a book.

Through the book, "I hope to share with people that there are more aspects to healing than just the physical," SunHawk said of the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual components to healing. "I want to keep 'Chief's' memory alive, compile a family history and share with others the stories he's inspired through his healing techniques."

The book will focus on the wisdom SunHawk learned from his ancestors about how to stay well and live according to native values.

"When (Two Trees) was here, he saw a tremendous number of people who had given up hope on medicine and medical treatment," said Lin Redmond, SunHawk's business partner with the Center for Natural Healing.

The Medicine Moon Celebration is a celebration of the life, practice and teachings of Two Trees and other Western North Carolina healers. It is held at The Mountain Gateway Museum in Old Fort, a museum that documents the region's pioneer days.

Two Trees was not a "card-carrying" member of the Cherokee or an actual chief. He claimed the status of a Cherokee Indian through verbal lineage, received the name Two Trees through ceremony and the name chief from his visitors, SunHawk said.

"The people, his visitors, honored him by the only way they knew how - by calling him Chief," SunHawk said. "His visitors called him Chief out of respect and honor."

According to SunHawk, before North Carolina began regulating activities pertaining to natural healing, people came to visit Two Trees from around the nation and the world for anything and everything regarding natural healing. Some of his visitors were Hollywood actors and actresses, senators' aides and politicians from Washington, D.C., and many local people.

Two Trees relied entirely on donations.

"His property still exists in (Old Fort)," SunHawk said. "Two to three people a week still come to see if he's there, not knowing that he has passed."

Two Trees was born in 1927 and died in April 1995. The September memorial will mark the 10th anniversary of his transition through death. Throughout the weekend there will be dancing, drumming and flute circles, storytelling, energy work linked with American Indian traditions, crafts, traditional American Indian food booths and many other activities. There will also be a discussion of healing methods and reminiscences of the healers of the past to help preserve their teachings.

"Everybody honors the great people around them in one way or another," SunHawk said. "This is our way of honoring Two Trees."

SunHawk hopes the upcoming event will bring people from far and wide to share their stories of Two Trees, both good and bad, for the book.

"We want it to be personal. We need their experiences in their own words with what they experienced with him," SunHawk said. "I want to keep it real. If people have negative things to say, that's fine."

Individuals who contribute their experiences do not have to put their name on the story, but SunHawk asks that they do include the town and state they are from.

The upcoming event "is very important for people who received help from 'Chief' Two Trees because some of them had very significant life-changing experiences with him," Redmond said. "People were very bonding with him, very appreciative of him."

For more information regarding the upcoming celebration or to share your story of 'Chief' Two Trees, contact SunHawk at 248-1319 or Robert SunHawk

Thanks to Bea Woodward for passing this on!

Friday, January 8, 2010

13.0.0.0.0










The date December 21st, 2012 A.D.
(13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count), represents an extremely close conjunction of the Winter Solstice Sun with the crossing point of the Galactic Equator (Equator of the Milky Way) and the Ecliptic
(path of the Sun), what that ancient Maya recognized as the Sacred Tree.
This is an event that has been coming to
resonance very slowly over thousands and thousands of years. Resolution is exactly 11:11 am GMT.


"our connection to the cosmos is an inductive one...











The cosmos is a life force. The energies of the cosmos are induced into our bodies, not by physical contact, but by energetic induction. Not from one coil to an other, but from one life force to another.

In taijiquan, in Chinese medicine, if we really fully absorb the fundamental ideas and concepts, and they exist in our mind as valid, complete concepts, they will inductively connect to each other in our mind. They will relate in a way that is simultaneous, inductive synthesis."

in·duc·tive adj
1. involving, operating by, or caused by electric or magnetic induction
2. relating to the process of inducing a feeling, idea, or state
3. generalizing to produce a universal claim or principle from observed instances
4. producing an effect on another embryonic part by induction

"Then we won't have to linearly hunt through one idea at a time. The inductive synthetic connection with one another in our minds will produce new information, not knowable otherwise. This is a very mysterious process, but it works.

If you brought five magnets together in proximity to one another, those magnetic fields would all participate with each other in a very unique way. If you took one away it would be a completely different magnetic field. These ideas, as electrical energy, as concepts within our heads, will link up in exactly the same way. And it will produce a field, a summation field that is more than anyone ever bargains for. It will produce a new knowledge, new sensory awareness, new perceptions. And this is the part you have to take on faith, because it won't happen until they are all there, and all feeding into the energy of your thought processes and your whole body-being. You have to get out of the way of it so that it will happen.

Taiji, I think, is our only hope, because it will teach us how to experience our bodies globally, as one piece, simultaneously."

Dr. Sean Christiaan Marshall, D.Ac; founder of Jung Tao School of Classical Chinese Medicine

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

a kuan yin poem suggest...




















6 : "Be Yourself" (SAYS THE POET) Go and live in a copper mine underground with the birds! Be in harmony with yourself and all the other paths — Everyone goes their own way and tries as best they can, And no one can cover the whole of Heaven and Earth’s expanse.


Sunday, January 3, 2010

an 1847 depiction of the norse yggdrasil as described in the icelandic prose edda by oluf olufsen bagge.


the art of medicine's view of our diabetes epidemic


The Fourfold Path to Healing: Working with the Laws of Nutrition, Therapeutics, Movement, and Meditation in the Art of Medicine. Authored by Thomas S. Cowan, MD with Sally Fallon and Jaimen Mcmillan.

“So Sweet was ne’er so fatal.” Shakespeare’s Othello

Diabetes is so common in America and other western countries that its presence in any human group has become a marker for civilization. Ironically, in no other field of western medicine has the promise of scientific breakthrough failed so poignantly as in that of diabetes.
Diabetes is characterized by abnormally high levels of sugar or glucose in the blood, which spills into the urine, causing it to be sweet. The disease was first described by the Greeks who called it diabetes mellitus or “honey passing through.” Today there are at least 20 million diabetics in America, six million of whom must take shots of insulin daily. Scientists hailed the discovery of insulin in the 1920s as one of medicine’s greatest achievements—as, in fact, it was. Insulin is a pancreatic hormone needed for the transfer of glucose from the blood to the cells. When this system fails—when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin or the insulin cannot get the glucose into the cells—then the sugar level in the blood remains abnormally high. This is the disease we call diabetes.
Originally, doctors thought that diabetes was simply a disease of insulin deficiency, a disease in which pancreas was unable to produce enough insulin to meet the body’s demands, and that it could be successfully managed once the right knowledge and technology were in place. Over time, researchers have produced better delivery systems for insulin, and ways to produce more purified and effective types of insulin—from porcine insulin to human insulin produced through genetic engineering. The medical profession has learned that giving insulin orally was unsuccessful, that subcutaneous injections were better, and that delivering it through a pump was best. Yet with all the improvements that have been made since 1920, diabetes remains one of the leading causes of death and disability in the western world. Complications of diabetes include heart disease and circulation problems, kidney disease, degeneration of the retina leading to blindness, neuropathy resulting in numbness, tingling, pain and burning in the extremities, foot ulcers to gangrene and high risk of infection.
Today, doctors realize that diabetes is a much more complicated condition than one of the simple insulin deficiency. They have also discovered that there are two types of diabetes. Type I diabetes, which is called insulin-dependent or childhood diabetes, usually develops before age of 30, and involves a malfunction of the pancreas. Type I diabetes is thought of as an autoimmune disease in which some trigger causes the body’s immune system to attack its own insulin-producing cells (called the islets of Langerhans) in the pancreas. In time, the pancreas loses its ability to produce insulin, blood sugar rises, and serious adverse consequences, including death, can occur if the person is not supplied with insulin. As yet, there is no consensus as to what the autoimmune trigger for Type I diabetes might be. Some evidence points to the early feeding of pasteurized cow’s milk, soy products and grains, or the use of vaccines, as likely triggers. Type I diabetes is often very difficult to control and, if not successfully controlled, can lead to the early onset of many of the complications listed above.
Type II diabetes, which is much more common than Type I diabetes, has a different etiology. It is the form of diabetes that is literally crying out for the new perspective from the one currently offered by the medical profession.
In order to understand the diabetes epidemic in the western world, and why the conventional treatment for this scourge has made almost no dent in its long-term impact on those who suffer from it, we must understand some basic biochemistry. The control of the blood sugar is one of the most fundamental requirements for a healthy life. Blood sugar levels can become abnormal in one of two ways: they can become too low, which we define as a blood sugar less than 80 and call hypoglycemia; or they can become too high, defined as a blood sugar over 110, which is called hyperglycemia. While neither hypoglycemia, nor hyperglycemia is good for your health, they appear to call forth very different reactions in the human being. For example, if your blood sugar drops below 40, you will become disoriented, confused, and if the situation persists, slip into a coma and die. This situation is a true medical emergency. When blood sugar is between 40-60, you feel shaky, jittery, anxious, sweaty, confused and irritable. When blood sugar is between 60-80 these same symptoms occur, but they are less severe.
The body reacts to the emergency situation of low blood sugar in the many ways. When blood sugar even begins to drop below 80, the body produces a number of hormones, principally adrenaline and glucagon. The main effect of adrenaline is to make more sugar available to the cells. It is the production of adrenaline that accounts for the familiar shaky, jittery feeling that many have experienced during these hypoglycemic episodes. Glucagon helps raise blood sugar levels by increasing fat breakdown and stimulates the conversion of fat into sugar.
There may be as many as 10 or more hormonal or biochemical reactions that occur during the early stages of hypoglycemia. One is the release of growth hormone, which has also been found to increase blood sugar in times of stress. As you can see, the body is well prepared to ward off this potential emergency. It has multiple overlapping mechanisms to prevent a precipitous fall in blood sugar, and many of these reactions produce clear symptoms that provoke us into action. Severe hypoglycemia is clearly a situation our adaptive physiology has learned to avoid.
The situation is much different in respect to hyperglycemia. Many times during my practice I have asked a new diabetic patient how they felt and heard them reply, “a little tired, but not bad.” Yet routine screening blood tests tell me that some of the unsuspecting patients have blood sugar levels as high as 400, almost 4 times the normal level. These people are at strong risk for all the major complications of diabetes including coronary artery disease and neurological disease, yet they feel nothing, their bodies give them little warning. Why is this?
Some have conjectured that the body has a hard time dealing with hyperglycemia because the conditions that cause it—namely overeating—are a relatively new phenomenon in human history. On the other hand, hypoglycemia induced by lack of food has been a frequent occurrence to which the body has adapted with a variety of mechanisms. Compared to dozens of hormones that are activated when our blood sugar drops too low, the body has only two mechanisms to deal blood sugar that goes too high. One is exercise—any muscular activity drives the sugar from the blood into the muscle cells where it is used as fuel. The second is the production of insulin. Insulin production is the body’s way of saying that the sugar level is too high, that the body is overfed with sugar. Insulin helps remove sugar from the blood into the cells stored as fat. (It is interesting to note that the type of fat that is made by the body under the guidance of insulin is saturated fat.)
Understanding this basic physiology leads to some interesting conclusions. One is that controlling the level of insulin produced is the key to controlling obesity. For without insulin there can be no weigh gain. People who lose the ability to make insulin (Type I diabetics) will never gain weight no matter how much food they eat unless they are supplemented with insulin. In fact, without insulin they literally starve to death.
The second conclusion we can draw is that the cause of Type II diabetes is actually quite simple. Type II diabetes occurs when for many years the consumption of foods that raise blood sugar chronically exceeds the amount of sugar needed by the muscles for exercise. This forces the body to gradually make more and more insulin in order to bring this sugar level down. Eventually, the body cannot make enough insulin to lower the sugar level, the sugar level remains chronically high and the patient is diagnosed with diabetes.
Along the way a curious thing happens called insulin resistance. This means that as the blood sugars are chronically elevated, and the insulin levels are rising, the cells build a shield or wall around themselves to slow down this influx of excess sugar. Insulin resistance is a protective or adaptive response, it is the best the body can do to protect the cells from too much glucose. But as time goes on the sugar in the blood increases, more insulin is made by the pancreas to with this elevated shutting the gates. This leads to the curious situation in which blood sugar levels are high but cellular sugar levels are low. The body perceives this as low blood sugar. The patient has low energy and feels hungry so he eats more, and the viscous cycle is under way.
Having a chronically elevated insulin level is detrimental for many other reasons. Not only do high insulin levels cause obesity (insulin tells our body to store fat), but they also signal that fluid should be retained, leading to edema and hypertension. Chronic high insulin provokes plaque development inside the arteries and also suppresses growth hormone needed for the regeneration of the tissues and many other physiological responses.
During the 1980s, researchers began to ask whether obesity, coronary artery disease, hypertension and other common medical problems that occur together are really separate diseases, or manifestations of one common physiological defect. The evidence now points to one defect and that is hyperinsulinemia, or excessive insulin levels in the blood. Hyperinsulinemia is the physiological event that links virtually all of our degenerative diseases. It is the biochemical corollary or marker of the events described in the previous chapter on heart disease.
The question we need to answer, the, is what causes hyperinsulinemia? In basic biochemistry we learn about the three basic food groups: fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. Under normal circumstances it is the carbohydrates that are transformed into the sugar that goes into the blood. Fats are broken down into fatty acids and become the building blocks for hormones, prostaglandins and cell membranes. Proteins are broken down into amino acids which then are rebuilt into the various proteins in our bodies. Carbohydrates are used for one thing only and that is energy generation. This allows us to define a “balanced” diet, which is one where the energy used in movement and exercise equals the energy provided by the carbohydrates we consume.
For a person of a given size, protein and fat requirements are relatively fixed and can be controlled with appetite. (It is actually difficult to overeat fats and protein, as our bodies make us nauseous when we do.) However, carbohydrate intake should be intimately related to our level of activity. If we run a marathon every day, a balanced diet would probably include about 300 grams of carbohydrates per day. If we sit on the couch all day, obviously our requirement for energy food will be less. In this case a balanced diet would include about 65-70 grams of carbohydrates per day. Any more, and our bodies are forced to make more insulin and the whole vicious cycle begins.
The problem with diabetes can be summarized by saying that the western diet has us eating like marathon runners, when in fact most of us simply sit on the couch. When we regulate the carbohydrate intake to match our exercise level, Type II diabetes cannot develop...’

professor cheng man ching