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[post_content] => It’s been about a decade since I wrote a series of articles about the “Chinese clock,” and I’ve been asked about it recently by several students and patients, so I decided it was time to revisit the topic. The “Chinese clock” is a concept of diurnal Qi movement in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) – meaning, the way energy ebbs and flows through the body over the course of the day. There are twelve main organs and each has a two-hour period of the day when its energy peaks. Paying attention to this cycle can help us achieve better health and can also offer clues about where problems may originate.
Before we explore the significance of each two-hour block, it’s important to note that I’ll be discussing the organs from a TCM perspective, which is a bit deeper than our Western understanding. Through this expanded view, each organ has both physical and mental functions, and it encompasses not just the internal organ but an energetic circuit called a channel or meridian.
5:00 to 7:00 AM – Large Intestine Time
According to Edison Research, among people who wake up before 10 AM, 30% are awake by 6:00. Another 23% awaken between 6:00 and 6:30, and 13% more wake up between 6:30 and 7:00. So, 66% of morning-wakers arise during Large Intestine Time. And to put it bluntly, this is the ideal time to poop. If you’re constipated, sometimes you can reset your bowels by simply sitting on the toilet during this period and waiting. (You can improve your chances by drinking a glass of hot water.)
The expanded version of the large intestine is that it represents our capacity to “take out the trash” – that is, to recognize and let go of the garbage we’re carrying around: thoughts, beliefs, habits, and attachments that burden, disempower, or degrade us rather than serving us. Anytime is a good time to let go, but during these two hours, before most of us get busy, before we check our email, get on Facebook, read the news, and start filling our minds with data, we have a special capacity to release.
When you have a bowel movement (regardless of whether or not it’s between 5:00 and 7:00 AM), you can intend that you’re letting go of anything you’re done with, even visualizing that you’re directing it into your intestines. The large intestine also has a close relationship with the lungs, which can facilitate letting go through the breath. Every exhale is a letting go and deepening the breath while relaxing the belly can help promote the wringing (peristaltic) movement of the intestines.
7:00 to 9:00 AM – Stomach Time
The stomach is the organ that first receives the food we swallow, and begins the process of breaking it down so we can absorb its nutrients. In the broader TCM concept of the stomach, it represents our ability to receive and accept nurturing and support, to recognize the fruits of our labors, and to allow ourselves to be mothered.
The peak period of the stomach is from 7:00 to 9:00 AM, which is the ideal time to have a fortifying meal. Your body is most likely to process this meal efficiently, which lends some credibility to the saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. In order to make the most of this special digestive mojo, it’s actually a great time to have some vegetables and protein, rather than, say, the empty calories of a bagel and coffee.
Meanwhile, set aside at least a moment in the breakfast process to consciously choose to be nourished and to receive the abundant gifts in your life. Close your eyes, savor the tastes and textures of what you’re chewing and be grateful. Of course, you can exercise your metaphoric stomach at any time by bringing your consciousness to the “harvest” that’s available to you.
9:00 to 11:00 AM – Pi Time
Following the stomach, our food passes into the small intestine where enzymes from the pancreas and bile from the gallbladder further prepare it to be absorbed and distributed. Most of these digestive functions fall under the role of the organ called the pi (pronounced “pee”) in Chinese Medicine. (It’s often mistranslated as “spleen,” an organ that has nothing to do with digestion.) The pi has two main jobs – the transformation of food into something the body can assimilate, and the transportation of these nutrients throughout the body.
To extend this idea beyond nutrition, the pi represents your capacity to nurture and hold the many parts of yourself, your life, and your world – people, projects, career, etc. The pi is associated with the earth element and works for us much in the same way that Mother Earth holds, supports, and feeds everything that lives upon her.
During this time of day, imagine that the energy from your breakfast is making its way into all your cells, fortifying your body, and strengthening and stabilizing your mind. You can facilitate this process by avoiding stress and intense exercise at this time. Consider the whole world, even the parts you dislike or disagree with, as an extension of your own body, and exclude nourishment from none of it.
I’ll discuss the remaining time periods over the next couple weeks, but for now, I wanted to avoid giving you too much new information to digest. Think about just these three time periods in the morning, and see how you’re affected by bringing consciousness to these phases of your day.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Tick Tock: How to Follow the Clock of Life
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[post_content] => One of the most gratifying parts of my work is getting to watch people support each other using the concepts we teach in our books and courses (and, of course, their own gifts and experience). There are about 11,000 people in the online groups we established, and witnessing the ways they help each other achieve goals and work through challenges makes my heart swell. Often, someone will post about a dilemma, and the responses that other participants offer are at least as clear and healing as anything I could have come up with.
There are some common stumbling blocks, and one that comes up frequently is the topic of forgiveness. We often view forgiveness as equivalent to giving a gift to someone who wronged us – why would we ever want to do that? And when there’s no obvious offense in one’s history, it can be difficult to grasp what or why we might want to forgive.
As we see it, the need for forgiveness lies in our own freedom. All the hostages we hold in our minds – the unforgiven perpetrators of real or imagined crimes; ourselves, for our past and current mistakes, our imperfect body, our imperfect dietary habits, etc.; the world, for being ugly at times, or corrupt, or unfair, or threatening . . . all of this internal disapproval amounts to a major infringement on our own experience of life. We forgive in order to set ourselves free. And in setting ourselves free, we support others to do the same.
If you’d like some support with forgiveness, Briana is leading a (free) guided forgiveness meditation on the Dragontree Facebook page tomorrow (Wednesday, November 1st) at 4:30 Pacific Time, and I highly encourage you to check it out.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Do Yourself a Favor ... Forgive
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[post_content] => Getting good at nearly anything requires a certain amount of discipline. At the very least, you need the discipline to practice it on a regular basis. You’d expect this for learning violin or karate, but you might not think you’d need it in order to have a peaceful and positive mind.
And perhaps you don’t. But if it’s a struggle for you to maintain a clear, lighthearted, optimistic outlook – if you find yourself often in bondage to a negative mind that has taken the driver’s seat – I would bet that your mind could use some discipline.
Around age 18, I discovered Carlos Castaneda’s books. In case you’re unfamiliar, Castaneda was a doctoral student at UCLA in the 1960s and 70s who studied the use of magical practices and psychedelic herbs by the Yaqui Indians of northern Mexico. After some detective work, and a few meetings with charlatans, he managed to track down the real deal: a secretive shaman named don Juan Matus. Castaneda was bumbling and boastful, and he tried to impress the shaman with his minimal knowledge of these practices.
Don Juan wasn’t fooled, but he kept Castaneda around because he saw in him the makings of a shaman or nagual. In a relationship similar to that of Daniel and Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid (but much stranger), don Juan put Carlos through rigorous trainings of body and mind, and fed him a variety of powerful hallucinogenic plants.
All of this was fascinating and mind-opening for me at the time, but there was one element of the training that, while less bizarre, was actually more poignant. Don Juan was intent on teaching Carlos to discipline his mind, and whenever Carlos became anxious or depressed, the shaman would admonish him to stop indulging in his mind’s melodrama. As my teenage self read the word indulge, it really cut through me. My late teens had been full of plenty of melodrama, and I couldn’t help wondering if don Juan would have considered it indulgence. It certainly hadn’t felt like I had any choice in the matter, but what if I did?
Thus began a lifetime’s journey to understand the difference between ME and my mind. To discover my power . . . and lose sight of it . . . and rediscover it . . . and lose sight of it . . . and rediscover it. And because I decided to go into medicine, I’ve had the opportunity to witness and assist many others through the same exploration. Central to the process is the recognition of choice. As it pertains to discipline, this means being disciplined to remember you have a choice and being disciplined to repeatedly exercise this power.
When you suggest to someone in the throes of anxiety or depression that there is an element of choice in their psychological experience, it’s not uncommon for them to feel guilty, offended, and defensive. Because the implication, of course, is that they’ve been making things bad for themselves – that it’s their fault.
But the notion of fault can only serve to degrade the process. While the recognition of choice – AKA free will – is empowering, fault is disempowering. It leads us to think things like, “Why would I do this to myself? Why can’t I stop it?” The answer to those questions is, respectively, confusion and habit. Responding to feelings of fault (blame) with forgiveness and compassion for oneself will neutralize it, and this, too, requires discipline.
Throughout, the overarching practice of discipline is to pay attention to where your mind is going, and to not let it get away with taking you to dark or fearful places. And Mr. Miyagi, don Juan, and any Zen monk would probably add, practice the discipline of being deliberate about everything you do.
The life of a Zen monk, if fact, can teach us a lot about discipline. Discipline is not necessarily army boot camp or the One-Grape-a-Day Diet. It doesn’t imply restriction or deprivation as much as a continuous application of attention. (Our attention is more scattered than ever, due to the many things with screens in our lives.) Zen monks are, by and large, carefree and light of heart. And this results from prioritizing what is here and now, what is real, what is precious, over the moody demands of a wayward mind. Such a practice actually works best when guided by love – when you simply care too much about yourself to let your consciousness be degraded by mental bondage.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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[post_content] => It’s been about a decade since I wrote a series of articles about the “Chinese clock,” and I’ve been asked about it recently by several students and patients, so I decided it was time to revisit the topic. The “Chinese clock” is a concept of diurnal Qi movement in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) – meaning, the way energy ebbs and flows through the body over the course of the day. There are twelve main organs and each has a two-hour period of the day when its energy peaks. Paying attention to this cycle can help us achieve better health and can also offer clues about where problems may originate.
Before we explore the significance of each two-hour block, it’s important to note that I’ll be discussing the organs from a TCM perspective, which is a bit deeper than our Western understanding. Through this expanded view, each organ has both physical and mental functions, and it encompasses not just the internal organ but an energetic circuit called a channel or meridian.
5:00 to 7:00 AM – Large Intestine Time
According to Edison Research, among people who wake up before 10 AM, 30% are awake by 6:00. Another 23% awaken between 6:00 and 6:30, and 13% more wake up between 6:30 and 7:00. So, 66% of morning-wakers arise during Large Intestine Time. And to put it bluntly, this is the ideal time to poop. If you’re constipated, sometimes you can reset your bowels by simply sitting on the toilet during this period and waiting. (You can improve your chances by drinking a glass of hot water.)
The expanded version of the large intestine is that it represents our capacity to “take out the trash” – that is, to recognize and let go of the garbage we’re carrying around: thoughts, beliefs, habits, and attachments that burden, disempower, or degrade us rather than serving us. Anytime is a good time to let go, but during these two hours, before most of us get busy, before we check our email, get on Facebook, read the news, and start filling our minds with data, we have a special capacity to release.
When you have a bowel movement (regardless of whether or not it’s between 5:00 and 7:00 AM), you can intend that you’re letting go of anything you’re done with, even visualizing that you’re directing it into your intestines. The large intestine also has a close relationship with the lungs, which can facilitate letting go through the breath. Every exhale is a letting go and deepening the breath while relaxing the belly can help promote the wringing (peristaltic) movement of the intestines.
7:00 to 9:00 AM – Stomach Time
The stomach is the organ that first receives the food we swallow, and begins the process of breaking it down so we can absorb its nutrients. In the broader TCM concept of the stomach, it represents our ability to receive and accept nurturing and support, to recognize the fruits of our labors, and to allow ourselves to be mothered.
The peak period of the stomach is from 7:00 to 9:00 AM, which is the ideal time to have a fortifying meal. Your body is most likely to process this meal efficiently, which lends some credibility to the saying that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. In order to make the most of this special digestive mojo, it’s actually a great time to have some vegetables and protein, rather than, say, the empty calories of a bagel and coffee.
Meanwhile, set aside at least a moment in the breakfast process to consciously choose to be nourished and to receive the abundant gifts in your life. Close your eyes, savor the tastes and textures of what you’re chewing and be grateful. Of course, you can exercise your metaphoric stomach at any time by bringing your consciousness to the “harvest” that’s available to you.
9:00 to 11:00 AM – Pi Time
Following the stomach, our food passes into the small intestine where enzymes from the pancreas and bile from the gallbladder further prepare it to be absorbed and distributed. Most of these digestive functions fall under the role of the organ called the pi (pronounced “pee”) in Chinese Medicine. (It’s often mistranslated as “spleen,” an organ that has nothing to do with digestion.) The pi has two main jobs – the transformation of food into something the body can assimilate, and the transportation of these nutrients throughout the body.
To extend this idea beyond nutrition, the pi represents your capacity to nurture and hold the many parts of yourself, your life, and your world – people, projects, career, etc. The pi is associated with the earth element and works for us much in the same way that Mother Earth holds, supports, and feeds everything that lives upon her.
During this time of day, imagine that the energy from your breakfast is making its way into all your cells, fortifying your body, and strengthening and stabilizing your mind. You can facilitate this process by avoiding stress and intense exercise at this time. Consider the whole world, even the parts you dislike or disagree with, as an extension of your own body, and exclude nourishment from none of it.
I’ll discuss the remaining time periods over the next couple weeks, but for now, I wanted to avoid giving you too much new information to digest. Think about just these three time periods in the morning, and see how you’re affected by bringing consciousness to these phases of your day.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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