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Since at least several hundred years B.C., people in Greece, India, China, and elsewhere have used a technique of applying friction to the skin in order to resolve pain and treat deeper medical disorders, and it’s recently attracted the attention of mainstream medicine. The Greeks called it “frictioning.” The Chinese call it Gua Sha.
The technique involves using the hands, a piece of coarse cloth, or, more commonly, a ceramic spoon, a coin, a dull, thick blade, or the edge of a jar lid, to repeatedly stroke the skin until it becomes red. Nearly everyone in China (and much of greater East Asia) is familiar with Gua Sha, and parents routinely perform it on their children for colds and flus. Practitioners of Chinese medicine usually employ it to treat communicable diseases, conditions of internal toxicity, and to release tight tissues to alleviate pain and stiffness. Gua sha also has an extensive history of successfully treating cholera, a form of epidemic diarrhea.
When you receive Gua Sha, the practitioner usually oils your skin first, and then begins stroking the treatment area repeatedly with the blunt edge of their tool (I like a ceramic spoon or piece of water buffalo horn best). Often, dots begin to appear under the skin, ranging from bright red to deep purple, and with continued stroking, they multiply and fill in the area, until the whole region develops a diffuse bruise-like look. Actually, the marks left by Gua Sha have caused some problems in the U.S., where teachers who are unfamiliar with the technique have noticed the marks on some of their Asian students and alerted authorities of suspected child abuse!
To look at it, someone might think you were tortured, but it’s not a painful process. Many people enjoy the sensation, though it can occasionally feel a bit tickly or mildly sore. The marks disappear within a few days. When these dots arise quickly, and especially when they’re dark in color, we consider this to indicate poor circulation and/or a build-up of toxins in the area, which is a sign that the treatment was needed and should produce an improvement in health and a loosening of the muscles.
Frictioning techniques were initially understood by the Greeks as counteracting an existing condition – shifting the body’s attention by causing irritation (called “counter-irritation”) or a healing crisis elsewhere in the body. The minor trauma the technique caused was thought to elicit a broader healing response by the body, which would frequently resolve whatever other issue a person was grappling with.
The Chinese understand the technique as releasing something (pathogenic factors, such cold, dampness, stagnant blood, and toxins) through the surface of the body, and invigorating local circulation. Gua means “to scrape or scratch.” Sha means a sickness or evil that is retained in the body and also the rash-like expression when Gua Sha is performed. That is, Gua Sha is the process of intentionally bringing Sha to the surface. Other terms, such as Pak Sha (“pak” means “to slap”) and Xian Sha (“xian” means “to pinch”), describe different ways of eliciting Sha.
It has been said that, “Gua Sha is to an Asian family what chicken soup is to a family in the West.” Because this practice is so ubiquitous, and so humble, it’s especially funny that opportunists in the West have reframed this method as a brand new, cutting edge medical technique, dubbing it the Graston Technique and Astym (among other monikers). What’s more, I know people who have paid large sums to receive these techniques, under the impression that they are culmination of modern Western scientific research.
For instance, the Astym website features the question, “Can’t I just do this myself?” and the response: “You can only get the results ASTYM treatment delivers from a certified ASTYM therapist…. The ASTYM system’s outstanding results can not be achieved by picking up something you have at home and rubbing it along your skin. If this worked, there wouldn’t have been any need to spend years on the research and development process.” Millions of acupuncturists and Chinese lay people would beg to differ!
Don’t get me wrong. I do think it’s worth paying a trained medical professional to help you deal with your pain. And while I’ve never received The Graston Technique or Astym from a professional, I wouldn’t be surprised if they work – because I know Gua Sha works. My purpose is not to disparage these Western spin-offs, but to illuminate the true historical context and persistence of this technique. Medicines don’t usually stick around for over 2000 years if they don’t work! If you’re interested in learning more, ask an acupuncturist, or check out the authoritative book on the subject by my colleague Arya Neilsen, called simply Gua Sha.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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Some years ago, I was apprenticing under an elder practitioner, and we stepped into the treatment room to meet a tan, muscular guy with a crushing handshake, a loud voice, and a surplus of confidence. “I just need a tune up,” he yelled immediately, lest we consider for even a moment that there could be anything wrong with him. He went on describe a life of conquest and wealth, from climbing Mount Everest to buying, selling, and merging companies. He was also kind enough to share his personal credo: that everyone should maintain a “cash cushion” of at least a million dollars – just in case. The only health issue he could think of was an old ankle injury.
But my mentor was a healer of spirits, not ankles. And I could sense, as he felt the patient’s pulses and asked polite questions, that he was smelling, seeing, hearing, and feeling information on another dimension. We stepped out of the room and he said, “The bigger the front, the bigger the back.”
I’m sure you get the gist of this expression even if you’re not familiar with it. You’ve heard about the preacher who foams at the mouth about moral depravity and then gets caught with a prostitute. In this patient’s case, we didn’t uncover anything scandalous, just a cowering core of insecurity and isolation that made all his accomplishments feel worthless. He had so much invested in the “front” in order to avoid revealing or confronting the “back.” To use the Japanese terminology from last week, we could see these fronts and backs as jitsu (“jit-soo”) and kyo (“kee-oh”).
If a kyo is an inner weakness, instability, or deficiency, a jitsu is the resulting drive to protect, acquire, and resist. Greed is always a jitsu emanating from some misunderstood or unrecognized kyo, and the same is usually the case with other strong drives that benefit only the individual’s ego or pocketbook.
Psychologists and philosophers have been digging for the secret kyos behind pathological behaviors for centuries. Many kyos would fall under what Carl Jung referred to as the “shadow aspect” – that usually hidden part of the personality where we keep everything we regard as wrong or bad. Jung said, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”
It’s interesting to consider this front/back dynamic in an age when obesity is epidemic, military spending is outrageous, and people stab each other for Black Friday deals. What’s the hole we’re trying to fill or protect with so much acquisition and armor?
Whatever our individual kyos, I’m inclined to believe there is a deeper, central kyo embedded in the collective unconscious. It’s the kyo of the kyo, a core weakness that’s the same for everyone even if it’s expressed uniquely by each of us. While it’s gratifying when our jitsu activities lead to the recognition and treatment of our personal kyo, it’s monumental when we uncover and heal the one primal kyo.
As I see it, the fundamental kyo is the belief that we are separate from our world. Separate from God, Nature, Spirit (or whatever other term you like), separate from other humans, and separate even from ourselves, i.e., ultimately alone. This apparent separation is what allows us to perceive a world of attack and defense; a world in which our gains come at the expense of another’s loss; a feeling of guilt (for separating from our source) and blame; and an endless drive to find something that will correct this unsettled feeling.
All these expressions of the kyo are confused except possibly the last – a drive to find something that will correct this unsettled feeling. Of course it’s possible, if this drive is outwardly directed, for it to lead to overeating, gambling, hyper-acqusition, drug addiction, and more instability. But it’s also possible that it might direct us to uncover the truth: that we’re not actually separate or alone, and that we need nothing but to wake up.
Oneness with everything – sometimes called Self realization or unity consciousness – is a theme common to so many spiritual traditions and described by so many thoroughly rational, nonzealous people, that it would be difficult for an intelligent and open-minded person to dismiss it, even if the mind has no point of reference for it. In fact, I’ve noticed that once the seed of this concept is willingly invited into one’s mind, it tends not to leave. It’s compelling, because it would mean an end to so much conflict, an opening to such deep peace, and a resolution of our core kyo.
Over the week, I encourage you to feel into the underlying instability that compels you to seek for things outside yourself. Feel into the vulnerability that makes you want to attack others and defend yourself. Are these kyos different? Or do they emanate from one central idea? Can you determine what that idea is? If so, is it true? Tell me what you discover.
Regardless of your ability to unearth these feelings or beliefs, just arousing the spirit of curiosity is valuable. At the least, it’s better than being at the mercy of below-the-radar impulses.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. If you didn’t read last week’s article on jitsu, kyo, and amoebas, you can check it out HERE.
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[post_content] => After writing about
nondual philosophy a couple weeks ago, I received several requests from readers for more information on nondual Tantric philosophy. Tantra is a complicated subject; there are many forms, and it means different things to different people. In the West, the word “Tantric” is usually combined with the word “sex,” and this pair of words has been used to sell millions of books and workshops on mystical sexual practices that have almost nothing to do with Tantra. But Tantra doesn’t need that lascivious association to be significant; it was hugely influential on the development of yoga, which (in some circles) is almost as popular as sex.
Since I can’t possibly explain this entire system in a brief article, I’m going to focus today on just one of its concepts, called the Five Acts of Divine Consciousness. It is explained in the beginning of a work called Pratyabhijna Hrdayam, “The Heart of Recognition,” written by Rajanaka Kṣemaraja around 1000 A.D.
These five “acts” (pancha kritya) describe the Tantric view of how our reality is created. As Ksemaraja says, “Reverence to the Divine, who ceaselessly performs the Five Acts, and who, by so doing, reveals the ultimate reality of one’s own Self, brimming over with the bliss of Consciousness!” Regardless of where your philosophical and spiritual sensibilities lie, I think you’ll find it an intriguing perspective.
• Srsti. The first act, Srsti, means creation, emission, or the flowing forth of Self-expression. This is the process by which Divine Consciousness (use whatever word you like here – Love, Highest Self, God, Universe, Awareness, Goddess, Divine Light) expresses itself as something. It takes form. It emerges in the world as a person or a flower or a breeze.
• Sthiti. The second act, Sthiti, means holding, preservation, stasis, or maintenance. First Consciousness emerges in manifest form as something, then it holds this form – maybe for a moment, maybe for eons.
• Samhara. The third act, Samhara, means dissolution, resorption, or retraction. After emerging in the world as something and sustaining it for a while, the form dissolves – or is reabsorbed or retracted – back into Consciousness. This is why death of a body is not seen as the end of life in this system – because the body was just a temporary emergence of Consciousness into form, which is then reabsorbed into itself. Thus, none of the vulnerabilities of your body actually threaten what you really are. And consciousness never ends.
• Tirodhana. The fourth act, Tirodhana, means concealment, occlusion, or forgetting. An interesting property to ascribe to the Divine, no? Why would one of its five core acts be to conceal? Well, the explanation is that Undifferentiated Consciousness possesses all possible qualities; in order to manifest as one specific thing, it must conceal all the other qualities that don’t belong to that thing.
Additionally, it explains the limited awareness of sentient beings. When Consciousness emerges as, say, a human, as part of its Divine Play, it imparts itself with only a fraction of its unfathomable awareness. In the process, it forgets what it really is. In this way, rather than acting like its various creations, it immerses itself in them. It becomes them. It’s how you don’t realize you’re Divine Consciousness itself, instead believing you’re “only” a human, disconnected from your Source and all other humans. This also allows for each being to have the experience of free will.
• Anugraha. The fifth act, Anugraha, means revealing (revelation), remembering, or grace. Besides allowing for creative expression, the fourth act (Tirodhana) is also the reason why we suffer. We can’t see the truth of our reality and this is frightening and painful. But this is eventually resolved by Anugraha – when what was hidden is revealed and we remember. As author Christopher Wallis explains, it’s not meant to negate the act of concealment, but to bring it to fruition by revealing its deeper purpose: “Such reconciliation is thus also a reintegration; through it you experientially realize yourself as a complete and perfect expression of the deep pattern of the one Consciousness which moves and dances in all things.”
I’m curious to hear how this concept fits with your own worldview. How do you see things differently? Does this perspective feel more or less liberating than your own? Feel free to share your thoughts below.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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Since at least several hundred years B.C., people in Greece, India, China, and elsewhere have used a technique of applying friction to the skin in order to resolve pain and treat deeper medical disorders, and it’s recently attracted the attention of mainstream medicine. The Greeks called it “frictioning.” The Chinese call it Gua Sha.
The technique involves using the hands, a piece of coarse cloth, or, more commonly, a ceramic spoon, a coin, a dull, thick blade, or the edge of a jar lid, to repeatedly stroke the skin until it becomes red. Nearly everyone in China (and much of greater East Asia) is familiar with Gua Sha, and parents routinely perform it on their children for colds and flus. Practitioners of Chinese medicine usually employ it to treat communicable diseases, conditions of internal toxicity, and to release tight tissues to alleviate pain and stiffness. Gua sha also has an extensive history of successfully treating cholera, a form of epidemic diarrhea.
When you receive Gua Sha, the practitioner usually oils your skin first, and then begins stroking the treatment area repeatedly with the blunt edge of their tool (I like a ceramic spoon or piece of water buffalo horn best). Often, dots begin to appear under the skin, ranging from bright red to deep purple, and with continued stroking, they multiply and fill in the area, until the whole region develops a diffuse bruise-like look. Actually, the marks left by Gua Sha have caused some problems in the U.S., where teachers who are unfamiliar with the technique have noticed the marks on some of their Asian students and alerted authorities of suspected child abuse!
To look at it, someone might think you were tortured, but it’s not a painful process. Many people enjoy the sensation, though it can occasionally feel a bit tickly or mildly sore. The marks disappear within a few days. When these dots arise quickly, and especially when they’re dark in color, we consider this to indicate poor circulation and/or a build-up of toxins in the area, which is a sign that the treatment was needed and should produce an improvement in health and a loosening of the muscles.
Frictioning techniques were initially understood by the Greeks as counteracting an existing condition – shifting the body’s attention by causing irritation (called “counter-irritation”) or a healing crisis elsewhere in the body. The minor trauma the technique caused was thought to elicit a broader healing response by the body, which would frequently resolve whatever other issue a person was grappling with.
The Chinese understand the technique as releasing something (pathogenic factors, such cold, dampness, stagnant blood, and toxins) through the surface of the body, and invigorating local circulation. Gua means “to scrape or scratch.” Sha means a sickness or evil that is retained in the body and also the rash-like expression when Gua Sha is performed. That is, Gua Sha is the process of intentionally bringing Sha to the surface. Other terms, such as Pak Sha (“pak” means “to slap”) and Xian Sha (“xian” means “to pinch”), describe different ways of eliciting Sha.
It has been said that, “Gua Sha is to an Asian family what chicken soup is to a family in the West.” Because this practice is so ubiquitous, and so humble, it’s especially funny that opportunists in the West have reframed this method as a brand new, cutting edge medical technique, dubbing it the Graston Technique and Astym (among other monikers). What’s more, I know people who have paid large sums to receive these techniques, under the impression that they are culmination of modern Western scientific research.
For instance, the Astym website features the question, “Can’t I just do this myself?” and the response: “You can only get the results ASTYM treatment delivers from a certified ASTYM therapist…. The ASTYM system’s outstanding results can not be achieved by picking up something you have at home and rubbing it along your skin. If this worked, there wouldn’t have been any need to spend years on the research and development process.” Millions of acupuncturists and Chinese lay people would beg to differ!
Don’t get me wrong. I do think it’s worth paying a trained medical professional to help you deal with your pain. And while I’ve never received The Graston Technique or Astym from a professional, I wouldn’t be surprised if they work – because I know Gua Sha works. My purpose is not to disparage these Western spin-offs, but to illuminate the true historical context and persistence of this technique. Medicines don’t usually stick around for over 2000 years if they don’t work! If you’re interested in learning more, ask an acupuncturist, or check out the authoritative book on the subject by my colleague Arya Neilsen, called simply Gua Sha.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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