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Today we’re going to wrap up our series on the Chinese Clock – a concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) whereby each organ has a two-hour period of the day when it does its best work. (At the end there are links to the previous three articles in case you missed them.) Often you can experience a sense of alignment or improved health by doing certain activities during each time slot. But several of the organs peak while you’re sleeping and you won’t always be able to schedule your life around this system, so the important part is simply to recognize and appreciate that you have these amazing capacities.
11:00 PM to 1:00 AM – Gallbladder Time
In China, a brave person is sometimes said to have a “big gallbladder” – while a timid person has a small one. The TCM view of the organ is a bit more specific – the gallbladder doesn’t preside over all forms of bravery, but specifically the courage to be decisive in accordance with one’s plan. In order for you to understand the role of the gallbladder among our society of organs, I need to tell you a little about the liver.
The liver has the role of the general or chief planner. The general uses her keen vision to strategize and plan – everything from the many tiny plans that make your day work to the big Life Plans that make your life feel productive and gratifying. We might even think of the liver as the architect, in which case the gallbladder would be the foreman – the guy (or girl) on the ground overseeing the implementation of the plan and making all the minute-to-minute decisions about how best to bring the plan to life.
The gallbladder acupuncture meridian covers the sides of the body – the sides of the head, the sides of the torso, and the outer side of the leg. Once I had a patient who had been experiencing pain in this area of his leg, and offhandedly I mentioned the gallbladder’s association with decision-making. “Sometimes people experience discomfort along this pathway when they’re blocked around some important decision,” I told him, barely expecting it to mean anything.
With great excitement, he responded that he had been contemplating quitting the band he played drums for, and he now realized the pain began the same day he started thinking about it. In that moment, lying on my table, he decided to leave the band, and in an instant the pain was gone from his leg.
The best way to spend Gallbladder Time is sleeping. There’s a lot of energy in the decision-maker, and if you stay up until this time, it’s likely that you’ll get a second wind which will take you the whole way to 1:00 AM. But at the end of the day, you’re probably experiencing “decision fatigue” from all the day’s decisions, and this energy is likely to be squandered. If you’re asleep, the mind can work things out without interference, and you’ll wake with a freshness that’s ideal for good decisions.
Biologically, the gallbladder is a small pouch attached to the liver that stores and releases bile to help us digest fats. Gallbladders are prone to get inflamed and painful when we chronically expose ourselves to food that we’re sensitive to. Many gallbladder removals could be avoided through identifying and removing these foods while taking Chinese herbs to dissolve gallstones and reduce inflammation (the most common formula is called Li Dan Pian and it’s often miraculous).
1:00 to 3:00 AM – Liver Time
As I explained, the liver is the general or chief planner. It’s considered to be closely connected to the eyes, which gives the general the faculty of keen vision, allowing for a clear life plan and goals, as well as a view of the “big picture.”
The liver’s weakness is a tendency to become frustrated or angry when it encounters obstacles to its plans – like an overly rigid general – and in the presence of anger, its vision is lost and growth becomes stagnation. It loses sight of the big picture and instead sees only the obstacle at hand, which is perceived as an injustice.
We need flexibility and perspective to get back on track. By stepping back, we can see the larger scheme of things, remember where we were headed, appreciate the enhanced growth that obstacles promote, and recognize there are more important things than being “right.”
Like Gallbladder Time, Liver Time is best spent asleep, so the mind can clean house and restructure our plans without our interference. But this is a common time for insomniacs to awaken, as the planner, like the decision-maker, often has a powerful, even domineering, energy. Sometimes this can be avoided by writing down unresolved plans and decisions before bed, so the mind doesn’t feel it needs to keep track.
3:00 to 5:00 AM – Lung Time
The lungs are associated in TCM with the fall season. After the robust growth of spring and summer, fall is about letting go, especially of outward appearances (like leaves), and the certain bareness that results. For some, this part of the cycle feels like loss and evokes grief. But there’s a lesson in this loss – it causes us to focus on what’s left: the intangible and eternal Oneness that connects everything.
Every act of letting go (exhalation or expiration) is paired with a filling up (inhalation of inspiration). And "inspiration" is a perfect word for this phase of the lungs' work - to make within us a rich spaciousness.
The lungs remind us of this as they take in and let go of the intangible all day long (which actually consists of the atoms of the world around us, including those breathed by virtually everyone else in history). The rhythm of the breath is a mantra that offers a perpetual opportunity to connect with our expanded self – to remember.
Most people are asleep during this time, which makes it easier for the mind to let go without our conscious clinging, but yogis have long considered these hours ideal for their morning practice. The crispness of early morning is much like the crispness of fall air, and it can be especially conducive to meditation, breath work, letting go, and tuning in.
Again, my intention in writing this series wasn’t so much to convince you to build your life around these two-hour time periods but to give you a look at the cycles you move through each day. So many wondrous things are happening in your body, mind, and spirit. I hope these articles have made you aware of the tremendous opportunity for healing, connection, and expansion that’s always available.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. In case you missed them, here are links to Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
[post_title] => Tick Tock, Part Four – How to Follow the Clock of Life
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http://www.thedragontree.com/2017/02/14/tick-tock-part-three-follow-clock-life/
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Over the years, my therapeutic focus has shifted increasingly toward what I would call “expansion.” I continue to see patients for issues as apparently one-dimensional as a sore knee, but what I really want for them is so much more than the disappearance of their knee soreness. My highest intention is that they will have an experience of lasting peace, happiness, and freedom. (I want this also for anyone who reads an article or book I’ve written, or takes one of my courses – and also for everyone else, too!)
The tricky part is that we tend to have these virtuous qualities wrapped up in causes. For instance, we may think, I feel peaceful because my surroundings are safe and it’s my day off. Or, I feel happy because I have good food and friends. Or, I feel free because my country has laws that protect my rights and I just dumped my boyfriend.
Yet, in order to embody these states in a deep, lasting way, they must become uncaused. That is, we find our way to them regardless of what’s happening with our body, our mind, or our life circumstances. And I believe the most likely way to discover such uncaused happiness, peace, and freedom is through an expansion of consciousness.
Limited or narrowed states of consciousness get us into trouble. When we identify with only one facet of all that we are, this sets us up for suffering.
Let’s look at some states of “contracted” consciousness. One of the most detailed frameworks for such an examination comes from the Tantrik tradition, which defines a set of layers of the Being. Although as a human you are all of these layers simultaneously, in any moment you’re likely to be identifying primarily with a single layer.
The center of the being is called cit (“chit”), which means absolute, nondual, nonlocal consciousness. It is consciousness that is completely unbound from a body, a mind, a personality, or any other labels. It is undying and eternal. You experience cit at all times, but it’s very difficult for a human to identify with it because it’s so basic, and so beyond our humanness.
The first layer outward is called sunya, which means emptiness. It is stillness, like what we experience in the deepest, dreamless sleep. It can also be experienced in meditation. Sometimes it feels so right and restful to a meditator that they believe this is what they are. While this is true, if it is worn as an identity to the exclusion of their more human layers – as in, “The human part isn’t the real me,” – then it’s still a contraction of consciousness, and brings problems – such as neglect of the body and inability to relate to others.
The next layer outward, called prana, is our vital energy, like the Chinese concept of Qi. Prana is considered to be an interface between the body and mind. And even though we have an individual experience of prana, like the two deeper layers previously mentioned, it’s a communal layer – we share it with everyone.
The next layer outward is citta (“chitta”), meaning “heart-mind” – or the layer of thoughts and feelings. In Tantra Illuminated, author Christopher Wallis explains that thoughts and feelings are considered essentially one, with the difference that thoughts are vibrations with a greater linguistic or logical component while feelings are vibrations with a stronger affective or “felt” charge. Humans tend to be more identified with this layer than any other. If our consciousness is mainly narrowed to this level, our thoughts and feelings run the show. We might say things like, “I am sad,” or “I am stupid,” as an expression of our identification with this layer. Because the mind and feelings can change so rapidly, when we live in this layer, we attempt to create stability by building repetitive patterns and forging rules for how the world should behave – and this greatly squelches our freedom.
The next layer outward is deha, the body. When we believe “I am my body,” – and especially when we simultaneously forget all the rest that we are, we base our self-worth on it and we feel vulnerable because of it. We know, of course, that it’s bound to age and decay.
Finally, there is a layer so superficial that it’s not even really part of our being. It’s called vastu – our possessions or “stuff.” Our possessions have a way of going along with us through life, they reflect our self-image, and it’s quite common to identify ourselves with them. This causes us to invest a lot of time and energy into accumulating, tending to, and protecting this stuff. We may even feel personally assaulted if our stuff gets stolen or damaged.
It’s important to note that there’s nothing bad about identifying with any of these layers, even the “stuff” layer. As you enter and embody each of these layers, there’s rich opportunity to experience, explore, and play. Again, the trap is in identifying with some small portion of all that you are – to the exclusion of the rest.
So, the simplest instruction I could give is to remember. Remember that you’re more than whatever facet of yourself you’re currently immersed in. The more you are able to expand your consciousness to include a broader, all-inclusive sense of self, the greater your potential to access peace, freedom, and happiness.
Give it a try and let me know what happens.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => Welcoming the Many Layers of YOU
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[post_content] => A patient last week told me a story I’ve heard many times in many forms. She started experiencing chest pain that radiated down her left arm. She went to the hospital. There was nothing wrong with her that any test could reveal. She wasn’t having panic attacks and her heart was fine. She went from practitioner to practitioner before someone finally figured it out: it was muscular. In other forms of this story the symptom is abdominal pain, or diarrhea, or sinus congestion, or painful intercourse, or ear ringing, or acid reflux, but the common thread is that multiple doctors failed to consider that the origin was structural.
Often, these mystery symptoms – along with most cases of muscle pain – are caused by a phenomenon known as “myofascial trigger points,” and I believe everyone should know what they are and how they work. I’ve written about trigger points in the past, but I feel moved to explain some of the basics again because this concept remains largely unknown to both practitioners and laypeople. It’s not exactly a fringe idea either – it was developed primarily by President Kennedy’s personal doctor, Janet Travell (the first female White House physician, by the way), whom he credited with saving his political career after she cured his back pain. Her first journal article on the subject was published over 60 years ago.
What exactly is a “myofascial trigger point” anyway? Basically, a trigger point is a small, irritable region in a muscle (or the surrounding connective tissue – “fascia”) that stays stuck in a contracted state and can produce pain, other sensory changes, tightness, and dysfunction. A unique property of trigger points is that they’re able to produce symptoms in other parts of the body – from a few inches to a couple feet away. One of the most valuable contributions of Travell’s work was to map out hundreds common locations of trigger points and their referral patterns – i.e., where they produce symptoms.
If you know where to look for trigger points that could be implicated in an issue, it’s usually pretty quick and straightforward to determine if this is the cause. And if so, you can often fix them yourself.
How do trigger points form?
There are a handful of mechanisms that can promote trigger point formation, such as irritation of nerves, chronic organ problems, nutritional deficiencies, and autoimmune disorders. More often, though, the cause is trauma to our connective tissue. When a muscle is strained by being worked too hard, too fast, or beyond its natural range, there is frequently a sort of “recoil” that occurs as segments of the muscle fibers bunch up and remain that way. This is common in people who work out without warming up, or who suddenly do a very ambitious workout after having not exercised for a year. Even more commonly, the trauma is a form of “postural stress” that’s demanding on muscles in a way that’s difficult to perceive at the time – such as doing the same relatively motionless activity (like sitting at a desk or driving) for hours, days, months, or years.
A muscle contracts through the action of nerve impulses – electrical signals that deliver the command to shorten. These impulses stream into the muscle for as long as we wish to hold this contraction. The impulses aren’t distributed throughout the muscle in an even way, though, and the muscle “belly” (the bulky contractile part) becomes slightly twisted during each contraction.
This isn’t usually a problem if we’re doing repeated isotonic contractions. Isotonic contractions are where the muscle causes movement and it alternately shortens and lengthens, working and relaxing. The issue lies more in prolonged isometric contraction or “static” contraction. That’s where a muscle stays contracted without movement – like the way you hold your arms up for hours while typing or driving. The muscle is under constant pressure and the continuous stream of nerve impulses produces a sustained deformation of the muscle belly.
I need a little more science to explain what happens next, so get ready. Over time, the ongoing tension and twisting of the muscle fibers causes an elevation in the resting muscle tone – that is, eventually, the muscle never completely relaxes. It’s always a bit contracted, meaning a bit shortened, and therefore a bit taut. This tightness causes local vasoconstriction – the blood vessels are constricted – and this translates to local ischemia – inadequate blood supply to the tissue (the same thing that happens to heart muscle in a heart attack). The arteries can’t bring in enough fresh blood and oxygen, the veins and lymphatic vessels can’t adequately drain waste and deoxygenated blood. The tissue pH changes, local metabolism is impaired, and fluid and waste products build up in the area.
This combination of factors ultimately activates pain receptors – it starts to hurt – and when this happens you use the affected muscle less. Instead, you overload “synergists” – nearby helper muscles. The body makes the surrounding musculature tense as a protective mechanism. Meanwhile, there’s a disruption of the balance between the affected muscles and their “antagonists” – those muscles that lengthen when the primary muscles shorten and vice-versa (for example, the triceps is an antagonist of the biceps). Altogether, this restricts natural movement of the original muscle, which just perpetuates the imbalance.
Over time, this situation results in the development of trigger points. A muscle is composed of numerous parallel fibers and each fiber consists of many end-to-end contractile segments called sarcomeres. When they’re working correctly, they all shorten together when you contract the muscle and then return to their resting length when you relax. But trigger points involve a collection of sarcomeres that remain in a shortened, irritable state, which makes them bulge (often causing a palpable “knot”) and causing their muscle fibers to feel taut and stringy. Finally, with longstanding trigger points, the body deposits gooey lubricant compounds called glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) between these triggered muscle fibers, resulting in a gummy lump called a “myogelosis.”
Ok, enough with the big words.
The point is, there are tons of resources in print and online to help you locate trigger points and show you the kinds of problems they can cause. As for getting rid of them, the most basic method is to simply press and hold an active trigger point when you find one. After about 30 seconds, you’ll usually feel it soften. You can also press down the trigger point (with a thumb, fingers, or a tool) and then move the tissue, as if deliberately intending to re-lengthen this shortened part of the muscle.
Acupuncture is really excellent at releasing trigger points. Dr. Travell injected various agents into trigger points to cause them to deactivate, but later in her career, she began to realize that the most effective part of this process was simply jabbing the trigger point with the end of a needle. There wasn’t a need to inject any liquid; thus, this method became known as “dry needling.” She worked with an osteopath acupuncturist named Dr. Mark Seem who developed an acupuncture-based methodology for releasing trigger points in a holistic way – that is, while supporting the body as a whole to restore balance. (If you’re interested in trying dry needling, I strongly recommend you receive it from an acupuncturist rather than a physical therapist, since acupuncturists have an exponentially greater amount of needle training and a more sophisticated understanding of how to treat the big picture.)
If all of this sounds interesting and relevant to you, I encourage you to do a little research. It might well be the end of a problem you thought had no solution. And if you need more guidance, check out my online course, Live Pain Free, where I go deeper into trigger points and much, much more to help people get out of pain of all kinds.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
[post_title] => The Science Behind Wonky Body Things that Suck
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Today we’re going to wrap up our series on the Chinese Clock – a concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) whereby each organ has a two-hour period of the day when it does its best work. (At the end there are links to the previous three articles in case you missed them.) Often you can experience a sense of alignment or improved health by doing certain activities during each time slot. But several of the organs peak while you’re sleeping and you won’t always be able to schedule your life around this system, so the important part is simply to recognize and appreciate that you have these amazing capacities.
11:00 PM to 1:00 AM – Gallbladder Time
In China, a brave person is sometimes said to have a “big gallbladder” – while a timid person has a small one. The TCM view of the organ is a bit more specific – the gallbladder doesn’t preside over all forms of bravery, but specifically the courage to be decisive in accordance with one’s plan. In order for you to understand the role of the gallbladder among our society of organs, I need to tell you a little about the liver.
The liver has the role of the general or chief planner. The general uses her keen vision to strategize and plan – everything from the many tiny plans that make your day work to the big Life Plans that make your life feel productive and gratifying. We might even think of the liver as the architect, in which case the gallbladder would be the foreman – the guy (or girl) on the ground overseeing the implementation of the plan and making all the minute-to-minute decisions about how best to bring the plan to life.
The gallbladder acupuncture meridian covers the sides of the body – the sides of the head, the sides of the torso, and the outer side of the leg. Once I had a patient who had been experiencing pain in this area of his leg, and offhandedly I mentioned the gallbladder’s association with decision-making. “Sometimes people experience discomfort along this pathway when they’re blocked around some important decision,” I told him, barely expecting it to mean anything.
With great excitement, he responded that he had been contemplating quitting the band he played drums for, and he now realized the pain began the same day he started thinking about it. In that moment, lying on my table, he decided to leave the band, and in an instant the pain was gone from his leg.
The best way to spend Gallbladder Time is sleeping. There’s a lot of energy in the decision-maker, and if you stay up until this time, it’s likely that you’ll get a second wind which will take you the whole way to 1:00 AM. But at the end of the day, you’re probably experiencing “decision fatigue” from all the day’s decisions, and this energy is likely to be squandered. If you’re asleep, the mind can work things out without interference, and you’ll wake with a freshness that’s ideal for good decisions.
Biologically, the gallbladder is a small pouch attached to the liver that stores and releases bile to help us digest fats. Gallbladders are prone to get inflamed and painful when we chronically expose ourselves to food that we’re sensitive to. Many gallbladder removals could be avoided through identifying and removing these foods while taking Chinese herbs to dissolve gallstones and reduce inflammation (the most common formula is called Li Dan Pian and it’s often miraculous).
1:00 to 3:00 AM – Liver Time
As I explained, the liver is the general or chief planner. It’s considered to be closely connected to the eyes, which gives the general the faculty of keen vision, allowing for a clear life plan and goals, as well as a view of the “big picture.”
The liver’s weakness is a tendency to become frustrated or angry when it encounters obstacles to its plans – like an overly rigid general – and in the presence of anger, its vision is lost and growth becomes stagnation. It loses sight of the big picture and instead sees only the obstacle at hand, which is perceived as an injustice.
We need flexibility and perspective to get back on track. By stepping back, we can see the larger scheme of things, remember where we were headed, appreciate the enhanced growth that obstacles promote, and recognize there are more important things than being “right.”
Like Gallbladder Time, Liver Time is best spent asleep, so the mind can clean house and restructure our plans without our interference. But this is a common time for insomniacs to awaken, as the planner, like the decision-maker, often has a powerful, even domineering, energy. Sometimes this can be avoided by writing down unresolved plans and decisions before bed, so the mind doesn’t feel it needs to keep track.
3:00 to 5:00 AM – Lung Time
The lungs are associated in TCM with the fall season. After the robust growth of spring and summer, fall is about letting go, especially of outward appearances (like leaves), and the certain bareness that results. For some, this part of the cycle feels like loss and evokes grief. But there’s a lesson in this loss – it causes us to focus on what’s left: the intangible and eternal Oneness that connects everything.
Every act of letting go (exhalation or expiration) is paired with a filling up (inhalation of inspiration). And "inspiration" is a perfect word for this phase of the lungs' work - to make within us a rich spaciousness.
The lungs remind us of this as they take in and let go of the intangible all day long (which actually consists of the atoms of the world around us, including those breathed by virtually everyone else in history). The rhythm of the breath is a mantra that offers a perpetual opportunity to connect with our expanded self – to remember.
Most people are asleep during this time, which makes it easier for the mind to let go without our conscious clinging, but yogis have long considered these hours ideal for their morning practice. The crispness of early morning is much like the crispness of fall air, and it can be especially conducive to meditation, breath work, letting go, and tuning in.
Again, my intention in writing this series wasn’t so much to convince you to build your life around these two-hour time periods but to give you a look at the cycles you move through each day. So many wondrous things are happening in your body, mind, and spirit. I hope these articles have made you aware of the tremendous opportunity for healing, connection, and expansion that’s always available.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. In case you missed them, here are links to Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
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