Vitalism

VITALISM

questions, interpretations, and practices

What does it mean to be VITAL? What does perfect HEALTH mean to you? What does it mean to LIVE fully?

“VITALITY” means to experience vibrant ALIVENESS in body, mind, heart, and spirit, a feeling of deep internal and external connection and interconnection.

Vitalism focuses on a balanced lifestyle for optimum health and life enjoyment. “Health” includes physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

- BODY -

How does your body feel? What type of body were you born into? What kind of body do you have now? What is your innate constitution? What do you like and dislike about how you look and feel? What tends to unbalance you? How would you like to change?

A vibrant, vital, wholly healthy person complements their constitution with supportive foods and lifestyle practices. There is an abundance of energy in the body, a feeling of deep connection with nature, and a solid commitment to the wellness of all beings, including oneself.

How do your eyes and skin look? What is the quality of your voice? How is your posture? What are your daily routines? Which routines nourish you, which are rote, and which negatively affect you? Do you like yourself? How do you take care of your Being?

Here’s some physical exercise ideas:

- Practice 5 minutes of aerobic exercise first thing in the morning, or right after getting home from work.

- Practice a full set of stretches first thing upon waking, or after work.

How is your appetite and digestion? What foods and activities are you drawn to? How often do you exercise? How much water do you drink each day? Where does your water come from? How is the air that you breathe? What is the quality of your breath?

Some food/ water practices you can try:

- Drink 1 qt of warm water first thing in the morning. (You can add 1 T of lemon juice, if desired.)

- Say a brief gratitude prayer before eating.

- Eat in silence for at least one meal each day.

How much do you sleep each night? Are you connected with your dreams? Where do you live? Do you know the names and habits of your plant, stone, and creature neighbors? Do you notice seasonal changes? Do you feel connected with your environment?

A few nature connection practices you can try:

- Take a silent walk for 30 minutes each day, maintaining internal awareness on your breath, body, and mind. Simultaneously cultivate external awareness with wide peripheral vision and deep listening.

- Find a natural place outdoors within 3 minutes walking distance of your home that resonates with you. Come here daily to just sit in silence and observe internally and externally for 5-10 minutes each day.

- MIND/ HEART -

How do you feel right now? How do you generally feel? What are your emotional and mental tendencies? Do you allow yourself to cry? Do you belly laugh often? Do you feel a full spectrum of emotions? How do you react or respond to adversity?

A fully vital person is aware of, expressive of, and responsible for their mental and emotional states.

What makes you come alive? What are the supporting pillars of your life? Which pillars sustainably support you? How can you further cultivate these? Which pillars are unstable? How can you transform these? What is your role in your community? Who is your community?

Here’s some centering exercises:

- Meditate for 5 minutes each day.

- Integrate ritual into your life. Set intentions with each new moon, create community celebrations with each full moon.

- Go on a retreat once in a while (for at least a week each year) to retreat, rejuvenate, and revitalize.

- Journal a page of stream-of-consciousness thoughts and/ or feelings each night before sleeping.

What challenges you? What are you grateful for? What excites you? What frightens you? What delights you? What do you live for? What are you passionate about?

More life-affirming exercises:

- Do a gratitude prayer first thing in the morning, listing all the things you are thankful for.

- Say a prayer before going to sleep.

- Repeat a positive mental affirmation first thing in the morning, and right before sleeping.

- SPIRIT -

What is your connection with Spirit? Why are you here? What gives you purpose in life? What is your life philosophy, in one sentence?

All of the above practices support connection with Spirit. Vitalism tends to the roots of each person’s tree of life by nourishing, supporting, and care-taking the foundations of life itself, through lifestyle practices and supportive treatments as needed. Instead of treating the fruits (the surface manifestation of sickness), we treat the roots (the underlying origins of health and dis-ease). Sometimes, things must get worse to get better. In adversity, medicines/ actions are taken as needed to restore the body to balance, through resting, and supporting the body through its natural responses.

May your Life Journey be filled with vital health.

May you THRIVE.

2013

In 2013, I committed to one thing: the study of botanical medicine. Do one thing, and do it well. Dig a hole deep, not wide. Allow that hole to be your portal to the Universe. Through one thing, connect with all things. This has been my journey of 2013, and now continuing into 2014, and the rest of my life: 

creation

commitment 

clarity 

with Plants, with Earth

with Self, Community, and Spirit. 

May you enjoy this photo-diary, a daily ritual of photographing/ observing myself, assembled into contact sheets, and a video here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PUbMLqQIhk&feature=youtu.be

I started this project in December 2005. Thank you to all the people who have touched, and continue to touch, my life! Blessings on all your intentions and projects for 2014, this brand new year of the horse! Gallop away, with steady reins, bright laughter, and a gentle yet powerful wind to guide you! 

Namaste,

Jiling 

我二零零六年十二月開始天天給自己拍照一張大頭照。 以下是2013年天天拍的自拍。 我今年專心的在森林裡創自己的世界，陪老師學藥草療愈，和深入的去了解人體，自然世界，和靈體的關係和技巧。 感恩我生活中所有的老師，朋友，和學生們。祝福大家馬年快樂， 事事如意！

敬， 基玲

Vitalist reflections

(This was our first homework assignment for the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism. I enjoyed writing this paper, though I labored over the creation of it for many days. I am sharing it, in the hopes that it is useful to some of you! Green blessings, from herb school. Let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, reflections, etc. Thanks for reading!) 

~

I practiced chi-gong for five hours a day in Taiwan at this time, last year. I spent three years around Asia, primarily in Taiwan, immersing myself in my ancestors’ culture, studying Chinese Medicine and other ancient Asian healing modalities. Those experiences are still at the forefront of my consciousness, so reading these Vitalist texts made me think of a lot of those years of experiential education. Below, I will make some comparisons.

Describing Vital Power feels like describing Tao: one can use all the words in the world, and never be able to fully describe it. For, it is everything and nothing, it is seen and unseen, it is beyond words. Even just to say, “It just is,” is too much.

In Chinese, we call Vital Power “chi.” In yoga, we call it “prana.” Chi and prana are both the primary motivating force behind the body-mind-emotions-spirit self in Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda. Diseases are manifestations of obstructions to the natural energy flow of the body.

Each person is born with a certain constitution, certain tendencies. The natural state of the world is entropy, so we tend towards imbalance with our innate constitutions. Balance is health: a balance between the different elements that compose our body-mind-emotional-spiritual- Self, a balance between our inner and outer worlds. Through balanced diet, exercise, rest, community/ personal time, and work/ play, one builds ones’ health.

Vitalism focuses on a balanced lifestyle for optimum health and life enjoyment. It is preventative medicine, rather than treatment oriented. When needed, medicines/ actions are taken to restore the body to balance, by targeting the source of the issue at hand, instead of just symptomatic relief. Cook defines disease as a gradual destabilization, where one unbalanced point slowly teeters the delicate symmetry of the entire system. With the interrelation of the tissue systems, if one tissue system is off balance, then it may lead to related issues in related tissues.

Food is emphasized as medicine. We are what we eat. How and what one eats is the foundation of ones’ health. In Chinese culture, food energetics are part of the diet. “Leave your drugs in the chemist’s pot if you can heal the patient with food,” said Hippocrates. Alva Curtis notes that “real medicine, whether in the form of an herb or a food, will increase the energy in the vital centers without working any injury.” It’s better to nourish/ tonify, than to stimulate/ sedate. Use moderation, and treat as necessary, per the individual’s needs, on a case-by-case basis.

My body is material, immaterial, and energetic. It takes a grand choreography of various actions and effects to coordinate this seemingly simple process of typing this paper. Likewise, the breakfast I am currently eating has its own set of molecular and energetic symphonics, which dances with the harmony/ discordance of my bodily-mental-emotional-spirit interplaying being, and affects me. I am affecting, I am affected. I am creating, I am created. I am dying, I am birthed. Moment by moment, all this is happening. To say it is just visible material would be a grand generalization, a blind overlooking of the magic and wonder of being alive. There is a light that shines behind each person’s eyes. When I treat clients, I am treating that light, not just the physical substance of their bodies.

I like what Cook said: Man can never be viewed correctly in his wide relationships, unless his material and immaterial components are considered together. To take cognizance only of his material portion, would be to deal with him as if he were a mere dead animal. To be concerned only with his Vital Force, would be to study him as if he were a spirit.

External agents influence the body, while the Vital Power also acts upon the agents. T. J. Lyle notes that it is important to “differentiate between a normal vital effort, a vital effort resisting disease, and a vital effort under the influence of remedial measures,” and to “carefully differentiate between the disease and the efforts of the vital force in resisting disease.” Differing effects of medicines with differing constitutions must also be noted. “Always let the remedy correspond to the just proportion of the affliction,” said Culpeper. Galen and Culpeper notes herbal energetics by observing medicines’ properties of heat, coldness, dryness, or moisture.

Hippocrates said that, “Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine, ought to be possessed of a natural disposition; instruction; a favorable position for the study; early tuition; love of labor; leisure.” In traditional Chinese culture, the doctors usually came from wealthy families. Medicine was passed down like other professions, as a lineage from father to son. Doctors were not just skilled in the healing arts, but they were also well rounded in other ways: as highly aware martial arts practitioners, familiar with feeling chi coursing through their own bodies; artists who write/ draw excellent calligraphy; and home-owners with attention to the beauty, feng shui, and composition of their homes and gardens. Europeans would call them “Renaissance men.” I aspire to be such a well-rounded healer, too. It was said that you can tell the skill of the doctor by the quality of his handwriting and painting. Chinese doctors practiced a variety of skills, including acupuncture, tui na, chi-gong (energy work), bone-setting, cupping, moxibustion, and more. It’s said that the meridians were originally “discovered” by martial artists practicing chi-gong, who felt the energy coursing through their bodies, and decided to map it!

Hippocrates further notes that “instruction in medicine is like the culture of the productions of the earth.” Chinese medicine and Ayurveda also draw correlations between the natural world and our bodies and health. Taoist practices draw energy from the Earth through the bottom of the feet. Practicing outside is encouraged, as thousands still practice today in parks across Taiwan and China. “Chi” (氣) doesn’t just mean the Vital Force. The word literally translates to “breath.” It is part of and ties us together with all of existence. Breathing the natural air outdoors is said to enliven chi, similar to the Vitalist practices we do that engage with nature. According to Aristotle, “From the moment the breath receives its first beginning, all the other drives flow out from it.”

Rocky Mountains

California friends

my mountains, hometown below

 high school art teachers!

 

college buddies!

hiking tribe... now with children! 

www.LinJiling.blogspot.com

I just changed my blog address from the "jazart" name, into

www.LinJiling.blogspot.com 

Happy Holy Days! 
Jiling

我把網站地址改成
www.LinJiling.blogspot.com
祝你健康快樂！
敬， 基玲

dreams made real by living them

once upon a time, 

a woman danced to a man playing banjo

to the setting sun, the autumn harvest, and a huge fire that smelled of apples

she danced to his song, falling in love with the melodic sweetness and playfulness of his fingers caressing his banjo 

he played to her dance, falling in love with the grace of her curves bending and swaying, leaping and spinning, to his twirling tunes

they sat down next to the fire together

to sing more songs together with their extended community 

their eyes catching fire as they caught each other glancing at the other

one night, a few weeks later, he asked to come over to share dinner 

she had just come home from a full day of playing with plant alchemy 

it was dark, and she was tired 

"just jump," whispered her heart,

and so she said to the man,

"welcome" 

he came strolling into her forest with both banjo and guitar in hand 

they end up talking for hours and hours,

and just singing a little, right before he leaves 

they continued to meet 

at odd hours 

and in odd places 

eyes gazing deeper 

hearts opening further 

until 

the new moon

bloomed

---

(the rest of this story 

is still being written!)

(silhouette photo by Tom) 

--

 ~~~~~~~
  Jiling . 林基玲 

  www.JazArt.blogspot.com 

  626.344.9140 / 607.262.0302

Humanity on the Train

I keep in touch with at least one person that I've met in every long bus or train journey. So today, I met Dave. I want to write about Dave, because meeting him makes me think of meeting people in general, and of "yuan fen" (緣分), which translates partially as affinity, serendipity, Fate, and magic: it's the red thread of connection that ties us all together, some loosely interwoven, some tightly bound together, and some, like me and Dave today, quickly bumping into each other in fateful and delightful quick bounces of starlight bouncing off of starlight for once, and for eternity. 

I sat on one side of the viewing car, and he sat on the other side. I sat facing the sun, he sat facing the shade. After a whole day of grinning into the sun, I started getting light-headed, and decided to move to the shade. There happened to be an empty seat in an ideal-looking chair between a wall and a cute curly-headed man (Dave), so I moved there to sit. I started some light-hearted banter about how nice it is to be in the sun after being in the snow for so long, and how I over-fried my snowy self today. He asks, "Snow? Where?" and thus we begin sharing our life stories through the lens of our travel experiences: my eight years of wanderings, and his recent embarking on USA adventures and heading into Thailand adventures in a month, on a one-way ticket. 

The details of the conversation are not important to this story, but the delight, connection, and quickly-passed time spent in laughing, sharing, and listening are like bright red prickly pear cactus flowers amidst a dull-colored desert landscape. This experience, and experiences/ conversations like this, stood out for me, amidst a long train ride.

But, not so dull. 

Like the desertscape, or the winterscape, as you look closer, you begin to notice the super-fine and super-fabulous details. 

Here's a brief glimpse into the other characters that colored my 3.5 day train experience across the country: 

I'm currently sitting across the aisle from a loudly snoring woman, Pinky (all people given pseudonyms, to protect their privacy). I admired Pinky from afar, ever since Chicago. She patted me on my back every time she passed me by, saying things like, "You are so beautiful," and, "You have a great life ahead of you!" A bright individual who chatted it up with everyone who came her way, I admired her outgoing nature and positive approach to life. Well, seemingly positive. I bumped into Pinky in the bathroom with tears rolling down her usually smiley cheeks. She spilled out the quick low-down of all the current difficulties of her life, tightly hugging me, and crying. She smelled like alcohol... I learned that we may portray one image to the world, but actually be going through a whole different story in our own lives and minds. 

The person sitting in front of her, Charles, was always waiting with me at the door to leave the train, at every rest stop. He and I were also always the last to get back into the train. He seemed passionate about his cigarettes and cellphone, while I was passionate about walking as far and fast as possible during our limited train-breaks. Turns out we both graduated from the same college, except he is about my father's age, and attended my alma mater before I was born. He had a solid career as an engineer for 30 years, then got burnt out from having two jobs, a family, and sleeping on average of 4 hours a night. He couldn't retire fully and just rest and do nothing, because he would get bored, and resort to alcohol and drugs to fulfill his needs for mental stimulation. So, he started renting houses... and that's what he does, now! Funny how we may have certain ideas about our lives, and certain ways we plan things... and then, life happens. 

The first person I sat next to was Eddie, a jazz musician by heart, a salesman by trade. He's a salesman to make a living, but his true passion is making and listening to music. We had a great heart-to-heart, as well. 

A quicker verbal photograph of some more characters, before I head to sleep (earplugs are in, but Pinky's snores shake the entire train and render me sleepless!): 

- The family of four, mama saying, "Look at how some people live," pointing at the Mexican shacks across the fence border. I play peekaboo with the little girl, and she responds by laughing and calling me, "Friend!" singing, "Jingle Bells" with gusto. 

- The round-bellied older man who called me, "Yoga instructor!" as I led our group of stragglers, almost midnight, to the back end of the train to look for an open door to get back onto the train. "Teach me some moves?" he asked me. 

- The older women who smiled at me as I practiced yoga in the lower compartment of the train. Later, during a train break, I noticed them extending their limbs into Superman pose, and even Warrior pose. 

- The older woman who initially sat across from me. We informed each other when the conductor walked down our aisle, so we could pretend to be asleep, and compared notes about how to keep an open seat next to both of us, to facilitate comfortable sleeping at night. She couldn't get over our train being late, and kept asking about the time. 

- The mama who initially sat next to me in the Viewing Car. She asked me what I was studying. I said just one word, "Herbalism." She said, "Oh, that sounds interesting..." then launches into a lengthy monologue about all her children, the job that she just retired from, how proud she is of her children, etc. A whole life story, unasked for, but still touching. Like Pinky, she just needed to be heard. 

- The young man from Long Beach who wore sunglasses, because his eyes were too sensitive to the light, and he couldn't fall asleep, because the train was too exciting, the light too intense, the sounds all too loud. He said, "Hey, you're a pretty Asian girl," then, after looking me up and down as I tried not to laugh, gaging whether or not he was for reals, "I could fall for a pretty Asian girl like you." He's serious. I admire his easy way of chatting with different people, and don't need to set boundaries around not wanting a hot train date. 

- The two military veterans who talked with each other at length about their battle scars. I was surprised and frightened to hear one say that he thought the best way to "deal with the Mexican problem" was to "have towers along the border, and just shoot down whoever tries to sneak through. That'll teach them." He related heart-wrenching tales from his war days. Now, he's headed for his friends thousand-acre farm to enjoy the silence and hunt for deer. I walked with the veteran in a fast walk-trot around the block during a train-break. His blue eyes were like bright blue stars, sharp and piercing, yet also gentle and with authentic humor and caring. 

-... and, more stories abound. But it's time for me to go to sleep. 

With gratitude for how we interweave,

and gratitude for the richness of humanity,

and your own richness of humanity, 

Jiling 

(photos: Ithaca, as viewed from the 10th floor of the Holiday Inn. And, women's feet from Gina's birthday party.) 

--

 ~~~~~~~
  Jiling . 林基玲 

  www.JazArt.blogspot.com 

  626.344.9140 / 607.262.0302