The Botanarchy
Times

RESISTENCE IS FERTILE: VOL XI

CAROLYN
BARRON
The moon lights up my door
the wind blows open my robe
sit down on a rock my friend
hear my mountain song
black hair turns to snow
dawn light to evening shade
everything is dew on the grass
nothing stays the same

— Stonehouse

Welcome to The Botanarchy Times: Everything Is Dew On The Grass edition! On this verdigris precipice of exuberant emergence, we shelve our fearful peregrinations in the winter larder and celebrate the victory of survival by raising our green fists. Winterlong, we gestated in the primordial waters of the mycelial womb, suspended in a liquid matrix of placental stillness. If we were wise enough to secure the wisdom of the dark in our taproots like nourishing sap, we sequestered the potency to burst forth into the light. And so it goes, by the miracle of soil and spore, we are vegetating again.


Some of our springs are savage and pale, and others, an Edward Ruscha kind of spring… swimming pool wet, pastel, mere droplets on a pristine horizon. Some springs leap forward with empyrean expansiveness and some springs are hesitant and demure, full of underworld power with scant above-ground growth. Spring is the unseen becoming seen, which comes with the aliveness of untameable, unnamable forces making themselves known. Theirs is a mythic power marked by quick transformation and procreative thrusts, an agitated choreography of chaotic bursting. During spring, nature’s resilience is on display. The bauhaus architecture of barren trees is replaced by riotous bulbs and bushy brows. Brambles become blackberry bushes and lichen laugh into existence, tumbling hither and thither down the faces of rocks like the fingers of a lover tracing contours on a cheek. The weave of procreativity begets infinite miracles, things we thought long-dead grow arms and animals reemerge from the borderlands with a leap and a bound. 

In Chinese medicine, spring belongs to the Wood Element, who represents the spirit of gigantic forces that reawaken after their winter rest. Wood pushes through the mossy detritus of winter from dormancy into action, bridging the potential energy of a buried seed with the manifest magic of emerging form. Its energy is one of bursting, birthing, sprouting, and hatching, tiny mysteries vegetating hither and thither. It’s flashy! It shows its hand! The Season Of Valiant Emergence is all about forward momentum, reaching upwards and outwards toward empyrean expansiveness like the branches of a tree.


We find the Wood Element’s somatic imprint in the support systems and connective tissues that keep us pliable and bending with the winds of change. We understand the stirring of wind between its branches through the movements of dispersion and dredging that regulate the circulation of qi, blood, and fluids throughout the internal ecosystem. We sense its clear direction and forward momentum through the faculty of vision that allows us to see the infinite horizon from atop a great branch. We behold its impulse to stretch and surge through sensations that rise strongly upwards, getting stuck in the head, neck, and shoulders. We feel its procreative capacity in the germinating thrust that initiates the growth and development of new cells.

The Wood Element says:

“I AM THE SALUTARY RUPTURE OF SPRING, BURSTING FORTH FROM A MYCELIAL MATRIX OF PLACENTAL STILLNESS ACROSS EMPTY MOUNTAINS SCOURED WITH COLD. MY BENEDICTION IS BLESSED RENEWAL, I COLLECT THE TEARS OF THE WINTER STORMS AND USE THEM TO PROLIFERATE MIRACLES OF GERMINATION. MY FLESH IS BOTH REFUGE AND VICTUAL, MY BODY IS RESIN, LUMBER, LATEX, GOD. THICK AND DEEP ARE THE SHELTERS OF MY BOURGEONING BOUGHS AND LONG IS THE LIST OF CREATURES AND FUNGI THAT FEED UPON MY PRODIGIOUS ELIXIRS. ALL MOSSES KNOW MY NAME AND ALL MOUNTAINS FEAR THE RECKLESS MOVEMENT OF MY LIMBS. WHEN I STRETCH THE EARTH PARTS OPEN, MAKING WAY FOR AIR AND WATER TO FLOW LIKE VEINS THROUGH CLODS OF SOIL. WHEN I BREATHE MY BREATH BECOMES CLOUDS, AND IN MY RESPIRATION ALL BEINGS ARE RENEWED. I AM THE SPIRIT OF VIRIDITAS, THE GREENING POWER OF THE DIVINE. I ENTER THE DAMAGED CELLS OF YOUR BODY AND RECREATE YOUR TISSUES FROM A MEMORY OF EDENIC ENTWINEMENT. I MAKE GROWTH A PROCESS OF EXTREME SPLENDOR, WITHIN ME FLOWS A RIVER OF SAP THAT PROPELS A MILLION ECSTASIES. WHEN YOU REACH THE LIMITS OF YOUR GROWTH, I TEACH YOU TO DROP YOUR LEAVES, ABANDON YOUR POSSESSIONS, AND BASK IN THE ESSENTIAL EMPTINESS OF NON-BEING. IF YOU DEVOTE YOURSELF TO ME, YOU WILL LIVE IN THE INFINITE INTENSITY OF THE EPHEMERAL MOMENT, BESOTTED WITH THE INTOXICATION OF PERPETUAL BECOMING. TO DO THIS, YOU MUST LEARN TO BE BOTH HOLLOW AND ROOTED, A CHANNEL BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH THAT ALLOWS TAO TO FLOW THROUGH IT LIKE NECTAROUS AMBER. WHEN YOU FEEL ME BECOMING A PART OF YOUR BODY, YOU WILL KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO ORIENT YOUR MOVEMENT TOWARDS THE RISING AND SETTING OF THE SUN. IN THIS, YOU WILL MASTER THE ART OF OCCULT REFORESTATION, USING YOUR BODY AS A RENEWABLE RESOURCE THAT CARRIES FORTH THE POLLEN OF THE TEN THOUSAND THINGS.”

As a taoist physician, it is my work to reinforce our fundamental form of belonging to natural processes, recover the self that is non-differentiated from the whole. For the body is an ecosystem expressing the entirety of earth’s forms, and we can understand just as much from assessing bloodwork as we can from observing the unceasing flow of existence as it manifests in mountains and landscapes, rivers and rocks, tendons and ligaments and the fascial planes that connect them like mycelial webs. A taoist physician must cultivate a reverential relationship with seasonal cycles and maintain erotic entanglement with all of creation, which helps us keep a wild mind and a heart that beats with the pace of the rain. Our work is scanning the horizon for patterns and imprints that are emerging from the web of life, utilizing both our our clinical skills and our observation of natural phenomena to guide us in creating fertile, thriving ecosystems for our patients in which to cultivate health and embrace their essential nature. It is from this tangle of relationality that I share the following spring tale.

The Su Wen, one of the oldest source texts of Chinese Medicine, says that:


“When the Liver is deficient, one dreams of very fragrant mushrooms. If the dream takes place in spring, one dreams of lying under a tree without being able to get up”


So when I awoke with a start at 1:30 am the first Saturday of March to the scent of fragrant mushrooms and the feeling of soil sporulating around me, I thought I must be lost in the liminal hinterlands of a spring liver dream, taking part of that underworld magic with me into the light. But then I noticed my dog on my chest, wide-eyed and anxious, and I suddenly felt surrounded by elemental powers and the sense that something tremendous was in the process of happening. There was a huge rumble as if ancient forces awakened deep within the earth, and the hill behind my bedroom wall cracked open like a chasm to Hades and came crashing down into the side of my house. An unending tumble of bramble and roots and mud and rock beseeched us, shaking the walls like Persephone returning from the underworld to unleash the Furies upon us mortals with vengeful bolts. A rogue tree even found its way through my bathroom window.

A week before this happened, I was alone in a bath a lover had drawn me on his land at the foot of the sierras, solitary in a huge bowl of night sky lit by a full moon and warmed underneath by a fire he built us. In a rare moment of absolute aloneness with natural forces, I was overtaken by a sense of sameness with the foreboding sky and the winter earth about to burst and busk. And then I was struck by the memory of a favorite Rilke quote, one that has always felt like a zen koan or a stanza of Chuang Tzu steeped in taoist lore: 

What is innerness, if not intensified sky?

The poem from which this stanza springs eternal unfolds as follows:

Oh, not to be separated,
shut off from the starry dimensions
by so thin a wall.
What is within us
if not intensified sky
traversed with birds
and deep
with winds of homecoming?
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Uncollected Poems

Something about the humble grace of this man and the land he so honorably stewards awakened a dormant part of my spirit, tearing down the thin wall between me and the starry dimensions and bringing with it a certain clamor. I began to weep at the recollection of this poem and the feeling of spring arriving in my body, because to arrive in spring is to mourn the loss of the generative safety that comes with being buried under earth. Spring comes with a certain violence, for when we rouse the Great Initiator - what Jodorowsky calls the intangible teacher crouched beneath matter -  we do not know what he will liberate and trample in his quest for forward movement. I have known my life is changing for a long while, and I know that I am outgrowing structures that have given me a profound since of purpose, comfort, and material stability. Yet I am not sure what lies beyond, or how to move from gestation into action without fear and trepidation.

So I did what I always do in the shadow of the Great Initiator at the feet of the unknown… I received the visions and spoke back to the earth in symbols and in gestures. When I returned home, I carved the classical Chinese character for Hexagram 51 of the I Ching on a lump of clay, and then began a nightly contemplation on how it would feel to move like this hexagram: an untameable, unnamable force full of unfettered movement. Hexagram 51 hearkens to the waking of the earth in early spring. From Hillary Barrett, a modern interpreter of the I Ching:

The name of Hexagram 51, zhen , means Shock and Quake, and encompasses both thunder and earthquake. The old character has two components: rain, and chen, the name of the fifth Earthly Branch in the Chinese calendar – which also means a plough, something that breaks open the earth.

In the family of trigrams, thunder is the first son of heaven and earth, entrusted with the sacred vessel. As the old is overthrown and the new embraced, he stands at the gates and opens them to the new time. This brings both the emotional experience of shock, and also the awareness of a sacred connection that continues and is renewed through upheaval.

Thunder is the voice of heaven; the shock itself is sacred. When you posit yourself within the relentless transformation of natural processes and court the Great Initiator, mountains move, the earth breaks open, and the upward thrust of spring rouses you from dormancy in your sleep. I cannot know where The Great Initiator will walk me. All I can do is build a prayer like one might build a fire, and have faith not in gods but in processes. It is my wish for this season and the intention of this newsletter to awaken within you the nascent magic of spring, to make your body a vessel for its nectar to flow through. May you drink deep from this dossier of gnostic nature transmissions, for everything is dew on the grass, nothing stays the same.

In health and solidarity,

Carolyn

Plantasia

Avoid Gurus, follow plants

A MANIFESTO AGAINST DETOX CULTURE

By Carolyn Barron

“The liver is the wood organ and the wind organ. Because the Ministerial Fire lodges inside of it, we can say that its structure is Yin while its function is Yang. Its nature is firm and resolute, and it is in charge of moving and ascending. It relies entirely on kidney Water to sustain it, on blood to moisten it, on lung metal’s clear nature and descending function to keep it in check, and on the generosity of the middle palace’s earth qi to nourish it. In this way, a firm and unrelenting character is being fitted with a soft and harmonious body, resulting in the liver’s balancing and free flowing nature.”
—Ye Tianshi, A Handbook of Clinical Case Histories (Linzheng zhinan yi’an), 1746
All life long 
the dew falls from heaven 
all life long 
trees climb up from underground waters. 

In the seed of the old god the new gods are swarming. 


Earth is ready for planting. 


The shut eye is opening. 


The heat. 

— Gerrit Lansing,
The Great Form is Without Shape

Wellness begins and ends with a connection to the body’s place in the dynamism of the natural world. When we pause to witness, sense, and revere the natural phenomena that we are forever ensconced within, we come to understand that we are Nature and an embodiment of her cycles and patterns. This cultivated awareness allows us to anticipate change and respond to it accordingly, awakening our primal flow and inner physician. The ideal condition of a “healthy” individual is ping, which lightly translates to harmony, a condition which is reached through “adjustments” tiao, among the forces in the body that mirror the adjustments that happen so effortlessly in the natural world. Spring’s energy is strong and forceful, establishing new growth and viability like trees that climb up from underground waters. Spring gives form to the swirling motions of the old gods swarming within us. Think of the wild dynamism flowing under your own static veneer, the strong endurance of the spindly tree full of flowing sap who somehow makes it through the winter undaunted. 

Spring belongs to the Wood element which is presided over by the liver and gallbladder organs. It represents the movement and vitality surging through a great tree, our seed potential being made manifest and carried out with natural vigor. The liver as an emissary of wood medicine needn’t be abstract. Think of the role it plays in our inner ecosystem and how that mirrors the role of a tree in the collective called Planet Earth: Growth, regeneration, and detoxification are their sacred tasks, and as the liver carries these out it courses the flow of qi, blood, and emotions as they move through the body. Five Element Acupuncturist Lonny Jarrett elucidates this relationship further, writing “the liver must tap the potential of jing and implement its internal organization in the world the same way a tree must send down roots to tap reserves of water, manifesting them on the surface as new growth.”

It is our natural drive to seek harmony in spring by mirroring the qi of nature. If we do not take the time to thaw out and slough off winters leaden grievances, we can become encumbered by their downward pull and stagnant restraint, which can thwart the emergent motion of Spring and keep us tethered to the underworld whilst everything else is leaping forward in Nature’s Grand Debutante Ball. As such, this is the time of year that primal desires for freedom, lightness, and unfettered movement beseech the body, and all of my patients become besotted with the idea of “spring cleansing.” I get asked constantly about a myriad of detoxes, from juice cleanses to prepackaged detox kits, bone broth diets to extended fasts. Everyone want to be on “detox herbs”, shed weight, GLOW. I understand the drive and while it is often necessary to support the body’s natural detoxification pathways, it is utterly superfluous and often harmful to “detox” the body in the absence of disease. 

There’s a core concept in taoism that I discuss with my patients each and every day: don’t push the river, it flows by itself. We have a built in reverence in Chinese medicine for the elegant perfection of an ecosystem left to its own devices. The capacity for growth, regulation, regeneration, and self-governance is intrinsic. As a taoist physician, we succeed where allopathic medicine fails because we aim to be in flow with the invisible rivers of life, gently coursing the movement of vital substances throughout the body instead of forcing them to move against their will. Using excessive strength to force an organ to work overtime depletes the body’s resources and courts ecological catastrophe, threatening biodiversity and disrupting the harmonious inter-functioning of the organ systems. When we study healthy ecosystems, whether they are within the body or throughout the cosmos, two key concepts arise:

  1. Biodiversity. A biodiverse forest is a sign that nature’s cycles are working harmoniously, and with these cycles in good working order the forest is more resilient to disease. Erroneous use of anti-microbial detox herbs, laxatives, and colon cleansing disrupt the microbiome, leaving the body more susceptible to digestive disorders, autoimmune conditions, and pathogenic infection.
  2. Inter-dependence. A healthy ecosystem is an ecosystem in which the physical, chemical, and biological components are co-dependent and capable of withstanding environmental change. Think about the web of life connecting your viscera and the consequential effect of forcing the liver to unnecessarily detox. The intestines, kidneys, bladder, lymphatics, and skin all have to work harder to clean up the mess, diverting them from their normal homeostatic functions that promote grace and ease in the face of changes. In most bodies, this can be handled swiftly and elegantly, but if you have outstanding issues in any of these systems detoxing will cause a flare up of symptoms and a slew of unwanted side effects. Everything touches everything!

In the parlance of Chinese medicine, we say that forcing an organ to overwork ‘insults’ its intelligence and capaciousness within a self-regulating system. In the theoretical framework of our medicine, the liver is likened to a general that is responsible for governing the free flow of qi throughout the entire body, and its ability to function properly impacts every system within the microcosm. It is in charge of dispersion and dredging, and is responsible for the regulation of emotion, the promotion of digestion and absorption, and the maintenance of the circulation of qi, blood, and bodily fluids. An emissary of viriditas, the liver has an incredible capacity for regeneration and a healthy individual can regenerate a brand new liver every month, even sans a Sakara Life Cleanse™. The nerve! At any given time, your liver contains 10% of your total blood and pumps 1.4 liters of blood every minute to filter toxins and infections. Malfunction of the liver can contribute to allergies, skin problems, digestive issues, hormonal imbalances, mood disorders, vision pathologies, and fat metabolism, as well as a slew of other complaints that get kicked around our clinics on the regular. Instead of forcing the liver to overwork in the face of these symptomologies, we will elegantly sleuth around to find the root dysfunction of the liver, and use needles and herbs to harmonize, disperse, soften, smooth, clear, resolve, regulate, descend, tonify, nourish, or dredge in order to re-direct patterns of movement within the body. It’s complicated! While there are bodies whose liver and lymphatics generally require a good swift kick in the keester - patients with mold exposure, patients whose fields expose them to chemicals and particulate matter (woodworking, art, construction, agriculture, firefighting, etc), patients on medications that are very taxing to the liver (NSAID’s, Dilantin, Tylenol, Methotrexate, etc), functional alcoholics, and patients with fatty liver disease to name a few - detoxing for the sake of ‘cleansing’ is superfluous at best, harmful at worst. Detoxing in the throes of a concurrent viral infection can be too depleting and impair the body’s ability to fight the pathogen (here’s looking at you Lyme, EBV, Long Covid, Herpes), and detoxing in a body with concurrent qi, blood, or yin deficiencies can lead to chronic fatigue, depression, nutrient deficiencies, diarrhea, hair loss, weak muscles, vision loss, menstrual cycle irregularities, skipped periods, poor concentration, insomnia, hot flashes, cramping, night sweats, dry mouth and throat, headaches, and anemia. Why do we do this to ourselves?

As someone who has the privilege of tending to bodies and secrets, I know how deep and vast our wounds with nourishment and cleanliness run, expressing themselves through disordered and dysregulated eating. Let’s get something straight - if we are eating outside the boundaries of Monsanto-fied foods that feed corporate egregores whilst robbing bodies and Earth of their legacies, there are no inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods. Where food falls on the spectrum between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is completely relative, and is one of the myriad ways we fall victim to internalized prejudices informed by a slew of various cultural conditionings that impose false hierarchies on things. Most of this has more to do with socio-economic biases (and sophisticated advertising both overt and covert) and less to do with nutrition. Your body is detoxing ALL THE TIME no matter what you eat. That said, food CAN support or negate our thriving, but this is different for everybody and informed by the climate of each person’s unique ecosystem, personal history, and stew of inflammatory predispositions that can take a lifetime to understand. This is where the Taoist approach to nourishment and cleansing diverges from most modern nutritional practices… we think seasonally and contextually, focusing on the relative truths of each person, and not a supreme truth, acknowledging that reality is in a state of process. Everything changes, nothing is constant, and sometimes things flourish best when left alone. We don’t need to obsess too much about these things (but I still do from time to time, it’s a hard knot to undo). The idea that you can flush your system of impurities and leave your organs squeaky clean is a puritanical pyramid scheme. We need to support them seasonally and gently through our everyday lifestyle choices, and we need to strengthen their natural function of elimination when the spirit calls for it. 

Why I Hate Detox Culture and Will Never Prescribe Cleanses:

  • They reinforce the belief that your body is somehow not good enough as is
  • They prey on insecurities and the false assumption of toxicity
  • They often carry the unspoken promise of weight loss whilst cloaking themselves in health and wellness jargon
  • They are driven by bodily perfection
  • They force your organs to work against their will, depleting rather than restoring
  • They can damage the gut lining causing nutrient depletion, dehydration, and malabsorption
  • They function as a coping mechanism for shame when someone feels the way that they have been eating is ‘bad’
  • They have somehow convinced us that stomach cramps and diarrhea are a healthy sign
  • They can promote an unhealthy addiction to feeling light and empty

Ritual purification when done right can be fierce and witchy like a torrid hermit receiving visions after fasting on foraged bark in a crag, but when we veer from using it as a tool for embodied grace into an obsession with inner cleanliness it becomes less elucidating and more pathological. An obsession with emptiness and purity can be thought of within the lens of the Elemental Medicine tradition as the ‘Metal Element insulting the Wood Element’. In a thriving inner ecosystem, Metal controls Wood, pruning and refining so that its growth is bushy, verdant, and upright. A sense of order and a vector of growth preserves the qi and prevents the wood element from toppling hither and thither in all directions. But if the Metal Element excessively cuts the Wood Element down, Wood can never carry out its sacred task as the grand architect for our vision of the future. In the body, our tendons, ligaments, and support systems become weak and devitalized, and the flexibility and strength of our connective tissues becomes compromised. When undernourished, Wood can wither into aimlessness, anxiety, timidity, and ambiguity of self and purpose.

Instead of Detoxing (so déclassé) Consider These:

  • Water your wood element with an abundance of minerals to encourage healthy growth and proliferation. The dankest sources are kelp, spirulina, organ meats, mushroom broth, and shellfish.
  • Eat pungent and aromatic foods to disperse the heaviness of winter. Incorporate mint, basil, fennel, marjoram, rosemary, caraway, and bay leaf into your spring diet.
  • Gently support the detoxification pathways of the liver by indulging in an abundance of green. Be it pea shoots, wheat grass, parsley, celery, wild lettuce, fennel fronds, farmers market salads, or fresh green juices, chlorophyll is the alchemical ally of the liver, swiftly engendering ease and transformation. 
  • The liver is also our body’s hormonal furnace, breaking down excess hormones and shuffling them with grace and ease to greener pastures. Boost the liver’s hormonal detoxification pathways by increasing dark leafy greens, high fiber grains, and cruciferous vegetables. Cruciferous vegetables like collard greens, Swiss chard, kale, mustard greens, and brussels sprouts, are high in a compound called Indol 3 carbonyl, which, like a wizened Pac Man, helps the body gobble up egregiously excess estrogens that aren’t being utilized by the body for homeostasis. I recommend eating at least one serving of green vegetables at every meal, making sure you are also eating enough fiber to shuttle debris out through the bowel. If you have hypothyroid issues, cruciferous should be avoided - or at the very least steamed or sautéed - as raw cruciferous can suppress thyroid hormones. 
  • Bitter and sour flavors are decongesting and cleansing for the liver, increasing the bile secretions which help our bodies breakdown fats and aid digestion. Adding lemon juice to warm water, sprinkling umeboshi vinegar on vegetables, or knocking back a few shots of raw apple cider vinegar are all ways to introduce the sour flavor into our predominately sweet Western palate. 
  • Spring teas that like to symphonize with the season include dandelion, nettle, chrysanthemum, and goji berry. For seasonal allergy prevention, add a teaspoon of local honey.
  • As most of us know, anything done in excess weakens the liver, causing it to rebel. Keep it simple, with small uncomplicated meals spaced frequently throughout the day, avoiding the cumbersome alembics of alcohol, caffeine, fried foods, and complicated meals, opting instead for a palate of inspired minimalism that embraces the nimble elegance of mother nature in her verdant prime. When in doubt, think of foods which emphasize the yang, ascending, and expansive qualities of spring.

Acupoint Alchemy

LIVER 8: 曲泉 "SPRING AT THE BEND"

By Carolyn Barron


“A murmuring stream is the tongue broad and unending, and isn’t a beautiful mountain the body pure and clear?”
— Su Tung-p’o

The poet sages that transmitted the Old Medicine knew that to be in good health, one must be intimately embroiled with the comings and goings of the seasons and starlings, to move as the rivers, mountains, and cosmos itself whose miraculous maneuverings are both predictable and astonishing. This was true of the Old Medicine in all of its guises, whether the Old Medicine was wearing a birch hat and bark clogs in a hermit hut on Wudang Mountain, or carrying a Rowan staff and chanting the runes in the Westfjords of Iceland. Mountains, streams, moons, and minerals don’t fight the will of their inner nature, they have something to teach us about following the spontaneous warp and weft of natural flow. When we come to understand that we are nature and an embodiment of its cycles, we reclaim the right to periodicity: we get to wax and wane, ebb and flow, leaf and bud like the best of them. Natural impulses awaken like a California poppy unfurling its tangerine-tinted hair on an April morning. For in the Mystery School of the Old Medicine, natural impulses are never arbitrary - they are connected to a divine inner authority, one that must be protected and cultivated at all costs. This is the work of acupuncture and the Chinese medical arts.

The landscapes of the Old Medicine are not padded behind chainlink and patrolled by armored vehicles. They let us enter into them and wander trails, explore their canyons, streams, and mountain peaks. The Old Medicine survives in cycles, seasons, and the five elements of water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. The Old Medicine survives in you. The rushing of water, the rising of sap, the steady embrace of earth… each of these elemental forces lives inside of you, and their movements and interactions form the basis of disease and health in your inner ecosystem. This is not merely an abstract concept, it has corporal truth in the soils, rivers, tissues, and vessels of your own body. The rushing of water is felt in the surging brine of blood through the vessels, the rising of sap as the upward directional flow of the cerebrospinal fluid coursing its way from the sacrum to the brain through the spinal canal. Lao Tzu, the mythic mage of Chinese Medicine, is known to have said “I am the wilderness before the dawn.” For in the parlance of the ancient sages, our bodies are sensuous, cyclic, fertile, and feral, full of the generative capacity and pluripotent possibility of an old growth forest on the brink of Spring.

It is impossible to state the principals of nature, but in the budding of leaves and the circulation of blood we see a spectrum of motions arising without conscious will or attention, we sense a remarkable naturalness that is ordinary and unlearned. This is tao in its simplest expression. Tao is the central concept of Chinese medicine, and like love and all mysterious forces that beseech life, it can never be defined by language alone. It can, however, be witnessed in observing the course, flow, drift, or processes of nature. Lao Tzu and Chuang-tzu use the flow of water as its principal metaphor, which prompted Alan Watts to call tao the Watercourse Way. From Watts:

“The taoist term, which we translate as “nature” is tzu-jan, meaning the spontaneous, that which is so of itself. Nature as tzu-jan might be taken to mean that everything grows and operates independently, on its own, and to be the meaning of the verse:

(As I) sit quietly, doing nothing,

Spring comes and grass grows of itself.”

Self-regulating interdependence is the mark of a healthy ecosystem, whose elegant feedback loops spiraling betwixt water, clouds, rocks, plants, and the ten thousand things inherently organize towards balance, connection, and regeneration. When I think about the health of an ecosystem in spring, I inevitably think of the acupuncture point Liver 8: 曲泉 "Spring at the Bend”.

Acupuncture point names are like poems that articulate the living mystery inside of us. These wilderness landscapes are a gateway into patterns and forms emerging within and throughout, and by making contact with our ecological imprints through acupuncture points we understand our embeddedness in greater cosmological processes. It is from this place of sensuous wholeness that we can come to approach our bodies with the same reverence and curiosity we might encounter while watching a condor on an alpine lake, or a redbud tree bewitch a grey roadtrip sky with an embarrassment of flushed flowers. Spring At The Bend holds the ecological imprint of a tree tapping the force of a bubbling spring and channeling it upwards for strong directional growth.

Spring At The Bend is located at the crook of the knee, where a surging rush of spring water percolates like a hidden current straight from the mystery school of the mycelial womb. To find it, bend your knee and glide your thumb across the surface of the patella over the knobby bone that juts out like a cliff, and let it fall like rainwater into the interior crease between the tendons. When you make contact with Spring At The Bend, you will feel the pulsation of primordial realms, cool rushing water brimming upwards through the vessels with the pluripotent potential of spring. It contains invisible landscapes of serene and terrifying beauty, the smell of wet wood engulfing you like a mycelial blanket, the guiding force of wu-wei that is always acting and growing in accord with the pattern of things as they exist in their unfettered form. It is the grace of a tree that appears motionless and fastened to earth, yet sequesters an occult pulsation of rushing life within its trunk. In its bowers are fragrant plants, jeweled cliffs that dive into placid lakewater, colored mists, the anointing beauty of frigid water bristling upwards from a perennial spring, the unstoppable motion of eternal source. It is your body’s locus of:

(As I) sit quietly, doing nothing,

Spring comes and grass grows of itself.

Liver 8: 曲泉 "Spring at the Bend" is in a class of acupuncture points we call he-sea points. Located around the elbow and knee joints where qi carried by many meridians 'gathers together as one hundred rivers meet before pouring into the sea’, life-force is deep and abundant in these flowing tributaries. As the he-sea point of our embodied wood element, we use this point clinically to water our wood, bringing movement, grace, adaptability and flow to the places the liver meridian inhabits. When water is deficient in the wood realm, there is an undernourished brittleness to the body that manifests in dry skin, brittle hair, nails that are weak and break often, fatigue, tight tendons, light or missed periods, and cramping muscles that plague the body with a pervasive tension. We may feel brittle from mental, physical, or emotional strain, pushing past our capacity without taking the time to regenerate in stillness and draw upwards from the depths. Water within wood allows it to be flexible, supple, and move smoothly in many directions, taking up nutrients from the water and soil and using them to fuel growth, development, and repair. If this transformation is impeded, rigidity takes hold and growth becomes impaired, thwarting the movement and fluidity needed to bring our creative visions to life. Spring At The Bend breaks us out of rigid structures, bringing us back into the spontaneous flow state of natural movement that is the watermark of wu-wei.

“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one.” 
– Jacques Cousteau

We also use Spring at the Bend to bring a surge of fresh, moving water to that which has stagnated in the crooks and bends of the body. Anyone who has observed a mountain stream in reverent awe knows what happens when water languishes too long in a crook or a bend - a layer of festering pond scum rises to the surface. In the parlance of the Old Medicine, we call these festering pockets of stagnation ‘damp-heat.’ Just as the wood element in nature facilitates the filtration of toxins by removing pollutants from soil and air, Spring at the Bend clears damp heat from the liver meridian. Damp heat in the crooks and bends of the liver meridian might manifest as an ovarian cyst, abdominal distention, a feeling of heaviness in the lower body, a bitter taste in the mouth, vaginal itching, discharge, burning urination, or pain and swelling in the genitals from a UTI, viral infection, yeast, or prostatitis.

Hows your wood?

Wood energy needs to grow and endeavor in order fulfill its natural impulse towards movement and flourishing expansiveness. Out of balance, wood energy can manifest as impediments to growth, purpose, vision, and clarity. If your wood energy is stuck, you may feel locked up with apathy, or beseeched by anger, indecision, depression, stubbornness, tension, hopelessness, and aimlessness. A person with strong wood energy needs to be beseeched by purpose, creating tangible things from intangible visions, and growing towards something in new and novel ways in order to feel fully alive.

Think about the qualities of resurgence, regeneration, and renewal in your life. Can you tap the underground coffers for the motive force to grow upright, have the vision and moxie to carry the will of water forward into the above-ground world? Or is your wood feeling soggy and water-logged, dampened by too many rains? Have you been scorned by fire? Do you have the grit and tenacity to hold soil in place in veneration of the earth? Can you shield us from the downfall of rain, sleet, and hail? Are you giving your carbons back? How can you participate in the local ecology? What creatures can you shelter in your boughs, what moths & mycelia can you feed from your prodigious body? Are the structures of your limbs supple and pliant, a haven from the eight winds that bend the flowers and leaves across the rocky cliffs of Reverence-Pavilion Mountain? Are you participating fully in the birth-death-rebirth cycle of life?

If any of these functions feel impaired, you can work Spring at the Bend to restore the self-regulating interdependence of a thriving inner ecosystem, to become the limbs of a sycamore interlocking in waves of undulation with mountains, clouds, and silent springs bubbling underfoot. You can work your fingers into your sinews, allowing the unstoppable motion of eternal source and the pulsing peregrinations of flowering seeds to dance together in the generative rites of spring, like an ivy-crowned Bacchus warbling his native wood-notes wild (thank you, Milton). As David Hinton writes in China Root:

“Sage wisdom in ancient China meant understanding the deep nature of consciousness and cosmos, how they are woven together into a single fabric, for such understanding enables us to dwell as integral to Tao’s generative cosmological process. This is the awakening of seeing ‘original nature.”

SPRING AT THE BEND READING & LISTENING

Botanarchy’s Mixtapes of the Tao: Spring :: Wood Element

Forest

VISIT THE VISUAL POEM

Five Minutes of Pink Oyster Mushroom Playing Modular Synthesizer

The Botanic Garden Part II: Containing The Loves of the Plants

A POEM WITH PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES BY ERASMUS DARWIN

Ruth Maclennan, ‘Treeline’ 2021

The Library of the Forest

HAVE A GANDER

The 2024 Wild Flower Hotline 

David George Haskell Treesounds Compilation

LET THE FOREST BE YOUR DJ

John Cage: A Mycological Foray

Vivian Perlis Forages For Mushrooms With John Cage

How Trees Mother Their Seedlings and What We Can Learn About Connection From Forests

READ ALL ABOUT IT

Music Made By Plants For Plants

NestWatch: Right Bird, Right House

BUILD A BIRDHOUSE FOR YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD HOI POLLOI

Studio Ghibli Nature Loop

The Atomic Tree

WHAT MEMORIES ARE HELD WITHIN THE RINGS OF A TREE?

Hildegard of Bingen: O Viriditas Digiti Dei

O Life-green finger of God,

in you God has placed a garden.

You reflect heaven's eminent radiancelike a raised pillar.

You are glorious as you perform God's deeds.

O sublime mountains, which can never be made low by the discretion of God.

Yet still you stand at a distance, as if in exile,

But there is no armed power which can tear you away.

The Betsy Gordon Psychoactive Substances Research Collection

BROWSE THE ARCHIVES

Sun Ra: Springtime Again

Herbage Verbiage

In solidarity with the willow catkins spewing their pollen poetry into the Four Winds, I offer a smattering of spring poems from China’s Northern, Southern, Tang, and Sung dynasties. Many of these poems are from China’s "rivers-and-mountains" wilderness poetry tradition, pastoral paeans to contemplative life in the wilderness deeply steeped in Taoist and Ch’an (Zen) principles and lore. I will preface this smattering by admitting that I learned more about being a physician from classical Chinese poetry than I ever did in medical school. These poems are Tao woven into simple vignettes of pastoral splendor, and in their uncluttered aloneness they allow us to bask in silence, non-being, emptiness, and the inter-connectedness of all things. A complex warp and weft emerges from their seemingly sparse vegetation. They become a perch to witness landscapes within and throughout, to sense the emerging forms of the seasons and feel the transformation of the Ten Thousand Things. I read classical Chinese poetry every morning - it keeps me sharp and true, makes me a better doctor, reminds me of the cosmic principles, and allows me to let nature take its course. 

You need to beckon a Mind of Spring when reading these poems, conjuring peony dewdrops falling into emerald grasses and glistening mosses breathing on the back of birch bark in a sunlit grove. You’ll come to find these poems aren’t about rivers and mountains, they are rivers and mountains, and you can wrap yourself around them like a gossamer fog, amble up and down them in your birch hat and bark clogs collecting rare roots from their sediment-rich riverbeds. So don your robe of fig leaves and sash of wisteria, and make like my favorite poet, the inimitable Hsieh Ling-yun, and

Cherish Transformation: mind will be unbound.

Embrace things: love will deepen. 

In Reply

By THE ANCIENT RECLUSE

Somehow I ended up beneath pines
sleeping in comfort on boulders
there aren’t any calendars in the mountains 
winter ends but who counts the years 

24.

By COLD MOUNTAIN

The new year ends a year of sorrow
spring finds everything fresh
mountain flowers laugh with green water
cliff trees dance with blue mist
bees and butterflies seem so happy
birds and fishes look lovelier still
the joy of companionship never ends
who can sleep past dawn?

XII

By TAO YUANMING

A graceful pine on the ridge
slender, supple, and young
a mere fifteen
its branches were weak
but with a trunk full of essence and qi
its spirit blazed forth

Turning Seasons

By HSIEH LING-YUN

Turning seasons turning wildly 
away, morning’s majestic calm 
unfolds. Out in spring clothes, 
I roam eastern fields. Lingering
clouds sweep mountains clean. 
Gossamer mist blurs open skies.
And soon, feeling south winds, 
young grain ripples like wings.

Early Spring East Of Town 

By YANG CHU-YUAN

The best time for a poet is when spring is new
when willows turn gold but not completely
if you wait until the Royal Woods look like brocade
the whole town will be out gawking at flowers

173.

By STONEHOUSE

The trees in the forest grow new leaves
surrounding my hut with more cool shade
tall grass hides my tracks
over the ridge I hear a woodcutter sing
I plow and I plant
my tree-bark coat and leaf hat askew
the rain comes in time
my rice sprouts are saved
I’ve scanned the whole world
everything fades
having understood emptiness
what do I do about sorrow

Occasional Poem On The Arrival Of Spring

By CHANG SHIH

The light is back the year is past ice and frost is rare
plants and trees all know spring is in the world
we see the force of life spread before our eyes
the East Wind blowing water ripples green

261.

By COLD MOUNTAIN

The floodplain river is wide
the Cinnabar Hills extend to Four Views
the City Of Immortals is a soaring flower
the crowd of peaks is a vast green screen
far off wherever I gaze
crags all lean in welcome
the lone beacon beyond the sea’s edge
everywhere spreads its fame

From South Hill to North Hill Passing 

By HSIEH LING-YUN

Dawn: off from the south cliff.
Sundown: rest on the north peak.
Boat left ashore, to pore into distant islands.
Staff laid aside, to lean on a thick pine.
Sidepaths lean and long.
Round islets bright and clear.
Looking down: tips of tall trees.
Harkening above: water rushes from large valleys. 
A crisscross rock splits the stream.
A dense forest blocks all paths.
Sky thaws: thundering rains: how about them?
Vegetation rises up in profusion.
First bamboo-shoots wrapped in green sheaths.
New reeds hold purple fluffs.
Seagulls sport on spring shores.
Pheasants play in mild winds.
Cherish Transformation: mind will be unbound.
Embrace things: love will deepen.
One need not regret that men of past are distant.
Sad it is to find no one of like mind.
To roam alone is not emotional relief:
Appreciation now abandoned-cosmic scheme: who knows

Idleness

By LU YU

I keep the rustic gate closed
For fear somebody might step
On the green moss. The sun grows
Warmer. You can tell it's Spring.
Once in a while, when the breeze
Shifts, I can hear the sounds of the
Village. My wife is reading
The classics. Now and then she
Asks me the meaning of a word.
I call for wine and my son
Fills my cup till it runs over.
I have only a little
Garden, but it is planted
With yellow and purple plums.


Light Rain In Early Spring

By HAN YU

The streets of Heaven glisten from light rain
grass appears far off but not nearby
this is truly the best time of spring
when the sight of misty willows fills the royal city

Spring Dawn

By MENG HAO-JAN

Sleeping in spring oblivious of dawn
everywhere I hear birds
after the wind and rain last night
I wonder how many petals fell

Chingping Ode

By LI BAI

Her cloudlike clothing and flowerlike face
spring wind at the threshold caresses her dewy luster 
if this isn’t a scene from the land of jade peaks
it must be Alabaster Terrace in the moonlight

Spring Day

By CHU HSI

Along the Ssu River it’s a fine day for blossoms
the landscape is endless and suddenly new
I recognize the East Wind’s familiar face
a thousand pinks and purples and everywhere spring

Spring Night

By SU SHIH

A spring night hour is worth a ton of gold
the pure scent of flowers the moon’s pale light
music from the terrace finer than silk
swinging in the courtyard far into the night

IV.

By TAO YUANMING

Mornings and evenings
I rest in my hut
rows of peonies
shaded by bamboo
zither on the table
half a jug of homemade wine
ancients beyond my reach
depression up to me

Following Axe-Bamboo Stream, I Cross Over a Ridge and Hike on Along the River

By HSIEH LING-YUN 

Though the cry of gibbons means sunrise, 
its radiance hasn’t touched this valley all
quiet mystery. Clouds gather below cliffs, 
and there’s still dew glistening on blossoms
when I set out along a wandering stream, 
climbing into narrow canyons far and high.
Ignoring my robe to wade through creeks,
I scale cliff-ladders and cross distant ridges
to the river beyond. It snakes and twists, 
but I follow it, happy just meandering along
past pepperwort and duckweed drifting deep, 
rushes and wild rice in crystalline shallows.
Reaching tiptoe to ladle sips from waterfalls 
and picking still unfurled leaves in forests,
I can almost see that lovely mountain spirit 
in a robe of fig leaves and sash of wisteria.
Gathering orchids brings no dear friends 
and picking hemp-flower no open warmth,
but the heart finds its beauty in adoration, 
and you can’t talk out such shadowy things:
in the eye’s depths you’re past worry here, 
awakened into things all wandering away.

Casual Poem on a Spring Day

By CH’ENG HAO

The clouds are thin the wind is light the sun is nearly overhead
past the flowers through the willows down along the stream
people don’t see the joy in my heart
they think I’m wasting time or acting like a child

Wandering Up Ample-Gauze Creek On A Spring Day

By LI PO

At the canyon’s mouth, I’m singing. Soon
the path ends. People don’t go any higher.
I scramble up cliffs into impossible valleys, 
and follow the creek back towards its source.
Up where newborn clouds rise over open rock,
a guest come into wildflower confusions,
I’m still lingering on, my climb unfinished,
as the sun sinks away west of peaks galore.

Visiting A Private Garden Without Success

By YEH SHAO-WENG

It must be because he hates clogs on his moss
I knocked ten times still his gate stayed closed
but spring can’t be kept locked in a garden
a branch of red blossoms reached past the wall

89.

By STONEHOUSE

What’s gone is already gone
and what hasn’t come needs no thought
right now I’m writing a right-now line
plums are ripe and gardenias in bloom

290. 

By COLD MOUNTAIN

Relaxing below Cold Cliff
the surprises are quite special
taking a basket to gather wild plants
bringing it back loaded with fruit
spreading fresh grass for a simple meal
nibbling on magic mushrooms
rinsing my ladle and bowl in a pool
making a stew from scraps
sitting in sunshine wrapped in a robe
reading the poems of the ancients

Night Rain At Luster Gap

By YANG WAN-LI

The gorge’s river all empty clarity, rain sweeps in,
cold breezy whispers beginning deep in the night,
and ten thousand pearls start clattering on a plate,
each one’s tic a perfect clarity piercing my bones.
I scratch my head in dream, then get up and listen
till dawn, hearing each sound appear and disappear.
I’ve listened to rain all my life. My hair’s white now,
and I still don’t know night rain on a spring river.

Thinking of Going Outside on a Rainy Day

By LU YU 

As the east wind gusts rain, travelers struggle
on a road of thin dust now paved with mud.
The flowers are napping, willows nod, even spring is lazy.
And I, I am even lazier than spring.

Little Garden

By LU YU 

I
Mist-veiled plants in the little garden
reach to the house next door;
mulberry trees make deep shade
one small path slanting through
I lie down to read T’ao’s poems-
less than one chapter,
when fine rain brings an excuse
to jump up and hoe the melons.
II
In village south, village north,
the wood-pigeons call;
water spikey with new seedlings,
stretching calm into the distance.
Round the sky’s edge I’ve traveled,
a thousand, ten thousand miles,
now-of all things-I take lessons in spring planting
from the old man next door.

The Wild Flower Man

By LU YU

Do you know the old man who
Sells flowers by the South Gate?
He lives on flowers like a bee.
In the morning he sells mallows,
In the evening he has poppies.
His shanty roof lets in the
Blue sky. His rice bin is
Always empty. When he has
Made enough money from his
Flowers, he heads for a teahouse.
When his money is gone, he
Gathers some more flowers.
All the spring weather, while the
Flowers are in bloom, he is
In bloom, too. Every day he
Is drunk all day long. What does
He care if new laws are posted
At the Emperor's palace?
What does it matter to him
If the government is built
On sand? If you try to talk
To him, he won't answer but
Only give you a drunken
Smile from under his tousled hair.

Chuchou’s West Stream

BY WEI YING-WU

I love unnoticed plants that grow beside a stream
orioles singing overhead somewhere in a tree
at dusk the current quickens fed by springtime rain
I pull myself across an unmanned country ferry

Responding to Secretary Chia Chih’s “Morning Court at Taming Palace”

By TU FU

The sound of nightlong dripping speeds the shaft of dawn
spring within the inner gates intoxicates the peach trees
dragons writhe on tapestries in the morning sun
tiny birds soar above on the faintest breeze
incense spills from our sleeves after court
pearls pour from your brush into a poem
how do generations learn such gossamer art
by the pond today I found a phoenix feather

North Mountain

By WANG AN-SHIH

North Mountain sends down green flooding the embankment
the city moat and crescent lake shimmer in the light
counting every falling petal I forget the time
searching for sweet-smelling plants I return home late

Dwelling in the Mountains #18 

By HSIEH LING-YUN

Slipping from gardens to fields
and from fields on toward lakes,
I float and drift on and on along
rivers to realms of distant water,
sage pools in mountain streams deepening into recluse dark
and hazy confusions of wild rice clearing away along islands.
Fragrant springwater swells into springtime cascades here,
and chilled waves quicken amid autumn’s passing clarity.
Wind churning up lakewater around islands full of orchids,
sunlight pours through pepper trees and on across the road,
and soaring lazily over the mid-stream island,
the pavillion there soaked in its luster, the moon in water is a perfect
joy.
Lingering out shadows, mornings infuse things with clarity,
and suffusing the air, fragrant scents settle into evenings
here, where thinking of loved ones lost to me forever now,
I can look forward to the evanescent visits of cloud guests.


Reflections While Reading — I.

By CHU HSI

A small square pond an uncovered mirror
where sunlight and clouds linger and leave
I asked how it stays so clear
it said spring water keeps flowing in

Bird-Cry Creek

By WANG WEI

In our idleness, cinnamon blossoms fall.
In night quiet, spring mountains stand 
empty. Moonrise startles mountain birds:
here and there, cries in a spring gorge.

Falling Flowers

By CHU SHU-CHEN

Whenever intertwined branches bloom
the jealous wind and rain strip away their flowers
if only the King Of Green could perpetuate his rule
they wouldn’t end up scattered across the moss

Spring Clearing

By WANG CHIA

Before the rain there were buds among the flowers
when it cleared even those below the leaves were gone
all the bees and butterflies flew across the wall
apparently spring has moved to the neighbor’s

Late Spring

By HAN YU

Every plant and tree knows spring will soon be gone
a hundred pinks and purples compete with their bouquets
willow fuzz and elm pods lack such clever means
they only know how to fill the sky with snow

Late Spring

By TS’AO PIN

No one comes out to look at fallen flowers
a canopy of green slowly veils the sky
the orioles in the trees have finally stopped singing
I only hear frogs in the grass-filled pond

Visiting A Private Garden In Late Spring

By WANG CHI’I

Once the plum casts off its faded charms
fresh rouge graces the begonia
which lasts until raspberry petals are gone
and willow catkins hang across the mossy wall

Begonia

By SU SHIH

The East Wind gently spreads her celestial glow
the moon slips behind her veil of perfumed mist
afraid this flower won’t stay up much longer
I light a tall candle to view her crimson face

Inspired

BY TU FU

The heartbreaking flood of spring is nearly over
I poke along with my staff and stand on a flowering shore
willow catkins dance wildly in the wind
peach petals float diaphanous in the current

Seeing Off Spring

By WANG FENG-YUAN

In April flowers fade and fall and more appear
swallow fly below the eaves back and forth all day
the cuckoo cries at midnight as if its voice would break
convinced it can still call the East Wind back

Climbing A Mountain

By LI SHE

All day I feel lost as if drunk or in a dream
then I hear spring is over and force myself to climb
passing a bamboo courtyard I meet a monk and talk
and spend another afternoon beyond this floating life

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I am the wilderness before the dawn - Tao Te Ching.
I am the wilderness before the dawn - Tao Te Ching.
I am the wilderness before the dawn - Tao Te Ching.
I am the wilderness before the dawn - Tao Te Ching.
I am the wilderness before the dawn - Tao Te Ching.
I am the wilderness before the dawn - Tao Te Ching.