On Bearing the Weight of the World

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The world is a tough place right now. Nearly everyone I know is witnessing a relentless daily assault on values we hold dear (like kindness, equality, fairness, honesty, mutuality, democracy, sustainability, accountability) delivered via our devices, if not firsthand. And it’s coming at us at an exponentially faster rate than humans have ever known.

If you’re suffering from Weltschmerz — my new favorite word, meaning “world-weariness” or a pervasive sense of despair at the general political and social climate, you’re in good company.

Like a toxin in our air or water supply, our relationship with The World at Large is something we have to contend with, process, and metabolize on an ongoing basis. It’s not going anywhere. And while I don’t have the antidote, I do have a few ideas for how to help it feel less overwhelming.

But first, a story.

I recently attended a four-day advanced workshop in Toronto on a cutting-edge neurological approach to acupuncture. Just before my twelve-hour travel day, I caught a virus — not bad enough to skip the training I’d invested thousands of dollars in, but annoying enough to make eight-to-nine-hour days in class exhausting. Having a drippy nose while double-gloved and masked in cadaver lab was an extra special challenge.

In  moments of acute brain fog and fatigue, my antidote to self-pity was remembering why I was there in the first place. This trip was a pilgrimage — part of my commitment to deepening my skills so I can better help my patients. It reflected two of my core values: being of service and pursuing professional excellence. Reconnecting with those values comforted me, and helped me feel more resilient and a lot less pathetic.

Living into our values can be a profound source of strength. Doing so can bolster a sense of integrity, resolve, and confidence, thus helping to stabilize us emotionally, physically and immunologically.

In Chinese Medicine, the Lungs govern both our immune system and our capacity to maintain healthy boundaries — to discern what should be let in and what should be kept out. Autumn, the season associated with the Lungs and the Large Intestine, is a perfect time to reflect on both what we want to preserve, and what it’s time to release.

So ask yourself:

  • What values are most important in this season of my life?
  • How can I embody these values more fully in my daily actions and way of being?
  • What might I let go of that no longer serves me — whether that’s doom-scrolling, buying from a to a company I don’t feel great about, or a story that’s keeping me stuck?

Even though we can’t stop feeling the world’s pain entirely, we can mitigate its effects by tending to our internal ecosystem. This starts with pausing long enough to feel and digest the feeling rather than dismissing it because it’s so ubiquitous. We can’t let go of what we haven’t yet acknowledged.

We can double down on such true medicine as connecting with loved ones, spending time in nature, doing what brings us joy, being of service, appreciating everyday moments, and practicing the unsexy basics of self-care — good sleep, nourishing food, breathing deeply, moving our bodies, and reaching out for help when we need it.

As three different acupuncture patients said to me just yesterday in clinic, “This is my happy place.”

Here’s to finding yours.

“Should I be taking [trendy supplement XYZ]?”

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99 times out of a 100, my answer is “it depends.”

In Chinese herbal medicine, formulas aren’t just tossed around like multivitamins — they’re carefully chosen to address specific imbalances in your body.
You take them for a period of time to correct something. And once that imbalance is gone? You stop.
If you don’t have that particular imbalance, taking the trending herb of the month might do nothing — or worse, create new symptoms.

Some herbs are warming, some cooling. Some dry things out, others moisten. Some lift energy, others descend it.

They target different organ systems and have specific actions. And it’s rarely about just one herb — it’s about synergy: blending herbs with complementary properties to nudge your body gently in the right direction without pushing too hard.

So rather than asking “Should I take supplement X?” ask your Chinese Medical practitioner:
👉 What’s the current state of my internal ecosystem?
👉 Given my unique imbalances, what foods, herbs, or lifestyle changes would help me the most?

Or if you want to ask AI instead, check out this new tongue-diagnosis tool. (yep, it’s a thing now — in beta but already pretty cool). You’re already googling your signs and symptoms– why not ask something trained to think like a master Chinese herbalist? 

For thousands of years, Chinese herbal medicine practitioners have relied on the tongue for insights into what’s going on internally. 

Turns out, science is proving us right. The tongue is a window into you what’s going on with your microbiota — your inner ecosystem. 

Trained on Traditional Chinese Medicine systems biology, microbiome science, and metabolomics researcher, this free AI engine asks for tongue photos, a few simple questions, and what symptoms you’re dealing with. It works even better if you give it a complex history and what medications you’re taking. 

You can find out what your tongue is telling you right now, for free, and get actual health suggestions (which you should run by your practitioner, obvs).

If you’re a patient of mine, click on the tiny “practitioner reasoning” link at the bottom and send me results so we can go over it together if you’re so inclined. My friends who founded this thing are collecting feedback on this to make it better, so let me know what you think and I’ll pass it on.

What I’ve been practicing

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Between the Solstice, my birthday, New Year’s, and the general darkness and cold, winter tends to be a inward, reflective season for me: taking stock on what this past year has wrought, and what seeds I’m planting and cultivating for the year to come. 

When people ask “what’s new?” I rarely have a good answer, but to “what have you been practicing?” I have lots to say:

This past year I practiced (as in did regularly, with intention, on repeat): 

  • daily movement –usually yoga, weight lifting, interoception followed by hiking or treadmilling 
  • lighting candles and tapping into gratitude every night at dinner
  • self-compassion when my inner critic acts up
  • weekly phone calls with my mom and one of my sisters
  • weekly massage trades with my husband
  • weekly hikes/ tea dates with my bestie
  • questioning and reframing anything that starts with “should” 
  • learning new music and playing cello with a new band
  • new acupuncture/ herb treatment strategies: at least an hour a week continuing education
  • making new recipes involving protein weekly
  • minimum 20 mins/ day of Spanish on Duolingo 
  • pausing a moment longer before responding when feeling reactive or tempted to problem-solve
  • re-writing outdated stories in more powerful ways
  • not catastrophizing
  • challenging my patients to take a stand for themselves through their daily actions /habits
  • reaching out to those I love who are going through tough times
  • internalizing those moments of beauty and connection and sweetness with my family, patients, and friends that I am so ridiculously fortunate to enjoy. 

A lot of these practices are going to ride on into this new year.

How about you? What are you practicing? 

What do you want from 2025? 

What’s the first tiny step you could take towards making that a reality?

If you want to get more consistent at something new, here are some tips:

Build on existing routines: I haven’t missed a single day of Spanish since I first started doing it over my morning coffee 422 days ago. My new habit had something to hang onto, and now the two are joined together. There are things you do every day that could serve as scaffolding for a new habit.

Bundle the new/ hard thing you want to do with something fun: There are shows I only watch while on my treadmill or foam roller No treadmill, no mindless entertainment

Make it easy: I keep my continuing education tab so if I have 10 minutes free, I can open it as easy as I can doomscroll.

Do the short version Life can be busy and demanding. To overcome that feeling that you don’t have time, decide that your new habit is non-negotiable but can shrink or expand as time allows. Even five minutes of stretching / meditating/ studying/ breathing (whatever) can be beneficial, rather than blowing it off entirely.

Dedicated time and place: Two key habit triggers are the When and Where your habit happens. Sundays and Wednesdays are the days I make soup. Your new habit needs a regular spot on your calendar if it’s destined 

Give yourself credit for any progress, even if you fall short. Any progress takes effort, and it’s important to internalize that effort (especially for us over-achievers) otherwise it can feel exhausting or pointless. A moment of thanking yourself, putting a check mark on a calendar, or an actual reward can help keep you motivated to continue.

For more on creating new habits I recommend the massive best-seller, Atomic Habits. Or you can listen to me interview the author, James Clear, here (from back in 2018,before it sold 20 million copies!)

Breathe and Move with Me: Embodied Meditation Class

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I’m excited to invite you to a one-hour experiential class I’ll be teaching next week:

​Intro to Qi Gong: Embodied Meditation for Your Nervous System

February 9, 11:00AM PST. (You’ll have access to the replay for 48 hours, so no worries if you can’t make it live.)

We’ll play with gentle flowing movements, connect our awareness, intention, and breath to release tension and support each organ system.

You’ll learn:
• The fundamentals of qi gong as a self-healing and embodied mediation practice
• How to use your breath to release stress and cultivate energy​
• Simple self-massage techniques
• Basic energy anatomy from Chinese Medicine

I’ll guide you through a simple qi gong routine that’s a moving meditation and gentle exercise all in one. Plus you’ll have a chance to ask questions.

It’s a chance to reconnect to yourself, to soothe your nervous system, and to build your energetic capacity.

The investment is just $15.

If you’ve ever wanted to study with me, this is a great opportunity, as I very rarely teach live these days.

I think you deserve an hour for yourself next week, don’t you? Hope to see you next week!
​Register now.

Big Yin January Energy

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Last weekend, I was catching up with a girlfriend when she said something kind of shocking. “I know this is controversial,” she confided in a hushed tone, “but I love January.”

She doesn’t ski or snowshoe or get anything special out of the season.

She loves January for the same reason most people – including me—tend to hate it: it’s super yin.

It’s dark. It’s cold.

Nature is quiet and seemingly dormant. And because we are a part of nature (though it’s easy to forget when we live inside and online) it can be harder to get motivated to do things.

In January, she argued, “it feels OK to do things like sleep late, stay inside all day, not talk to anyone, and take a nap. If this was my day in July, I’d judge myself.”

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Uh, yeah. In our yang-addicted society that glorifies productivity, speed, efficiency, doing, and hustling, it can be easy to judge ourselves for “giving in” to the desire to rest, to nap, to just chill. It can even feel morally wrong.

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But in January, doing less than you’re humanly capable of is seasonally appropriate. Once upon a time, your life may have even depended on it: if we didn’t conserve scarce resources like fuel and food, (literally the opposite of burning the candle at both ends) we would likely die in winter, as nature is not exactly supplying these in abundance.

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Slowing down, doing less, and giving ourselves permission to rest – especially when we’re managing a lot – is essential. This is the heart of true self-care.

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We need good deep rich, juicy yin (sleep, rest, inward, quiet, cool) to have good strong, vibrant yang (creative, warm, expansive, transformative) energy. But apart being a necessary counterpoint to the always-moving, relentless drumbeat of productivity that culture prizes and making a living often demands, we need some Big Yin January Energy for its own sake.

When we give ourselves permission to slow down, it’s easier to be better stewards of our bodies – and each other. We’re able to do things like:

  • Relax, get into parasympathetic mode, and heal. These things don’t happen very well when we’re stressed.
  • Be able to sense the sublte: like feel tension in our lower backs and be able to stretch it in just the right way to allow it to open up again: true self-healing qi gong, or
  • Stop eating when we’re 80% full, for optimal digestion and thus gut health, immune health, and overall energy
  • Sense reactivity in ourselves, thus being able to manage that reactivity, not blow up at people we love, gain deeper understanding of what’s triggering us so we can tone that down and keep our equanimity
  • Sense changes in other people’s voices or body language, allowing us to inquire about and better understand and empathize with their experience, thus enhancing our connections
  • Increase our ability to be present with and appreciate the present moment, thus waking up to our lives.

Since hearing of the passing of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist spiritual teacher, international ambassador of mindfulness and peace, I’ve been re-reading and listening to his teachings, among them that “true presence is the first act of love.”

We access true presence when we meet the present moment with as much mindful awareness as possible.

Whether we are sitting in meditation, moving in meditation like qi gong or yoga, washing the dishes, or eating a meal, we have the opportunity to practice giving that moment our full attention. And presence is the greatest gift we can give each other — and ourselves — especially when we are struggling.

So welcoming in the Big Yin January Energy is important.

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But what if you still want to get things done?

As I’ve been suggesting, low motivation this time of year might not be a problem in that we’re part of nature and subject to its cycles.

It might also be a sign that that

  • you’re fighting something off (your immune system is busy),
  • that you haven’t been digesting well (converting food into energy isn’t going well – simplify! Make soup!),
  • that that we’re almost three years into an exhausting, isolating global pandemic (long-term stress depletes your reserves)
  • the existential resignation over the state of the world and the collapse of American democracy, (the consciousness leads the energy),
  • or that you’re dealing with depression (mind-body-spirit connection is real) –all real, serious worthy of our utmost compassion towards ourselves, and attention.

Acupuncture, herbal medicine, qi gong, nourishing food, good sleep hygiene may all be important; I’m here to help if you need me – just hit reply and let me know what’s up.

I am all about giving you – and myself– permission to do less. But I also feel most alive and vital when I’m learning and growing in some way. I’ve had a bunch of continuing education classes I’ve enrolled in but haven’t completed for almost a year that I’ve been putting off. It’s felt kind of daunting to spend a weekend in class, even when it’s cold and rainy outside.

So I pretended I was one of my coaching clients and did 3 things:

1) I broke down the big, daunting thing into small digestible pieces. Rather than summoning the will to dedicate a whole weekend day to knocking it out, I decided I was going to take these classes in twenty- to sixty-minute chunks.

2) I put these class time chunks on my calendar.

3) I reduced friction: instead of having to log into the website, find a document to take notes in, O I have both the class tab and a word document open on my computer, so it’s just as easy to jump into class as it is to surf over to Facebook or play Wordle.

Not only am I over my resistance to doing these classes, I look forward to spending that time. Plus, I’m back in touch with the excitement and desire to help people that I felt when I first signed up.

Maybe there’s something you’ve been meaning to get off your plate but have been putting off. How could you make the big thing smaller? How could you reduce friction? Then commit: get it on your calendar and honor your commitment to yourself just as you would a meeting with a work colleague or your doctor.

May you receive and appreciate all the yin yumminess the season has to offer, while moving effortlessly in the direction of your goals.

 

Can Acupuncture Change Your Personality?

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If you’ve had acupuncture, you know that “just got off the table feeling,” usually some combination of calm, relaxed, light, and rebooted.

Aculand, as I call it, is a potent nervous system reboot, and a lovely place to visit. But does it last?

“John” had been dealing multiple kinds of arthritis, with pain in his hands, feet, neck, hips, knees, shoulders, mid- and lower back — for more than 10 years.

Pain disrupted his sleep.

It made him grumpy.

It curtailed his ability to make things with his hands, which he loved to do, and inclined him towards comfort-eating cookies, or buying things he didn’t need online.

After six acupuncture visits, a Chinese herbal formula and some dietary changes, John’s pain was dramatically reduced in some places, and gone entirely in others.

He was able to get back to his favorite crafty hobby, sleep through the night, and found he had a lot more patience for the people in his life. Both his weight and his credit card bill dropped as he wasn’t seeking dopamine in all the wrong places.

“I thought being irritable was just my personality. Turns out I was just like that from living with all that pain for so long. Now that it’s gone, I’m like a different person.”

What are you living with that you’ve accepted as a given? What if you didn’t have to? I’m now scheduling acupuncture clients for January;  Visit the Clinic tab of the website to schedule your treatment series if you’re a Willamette Valley local.