4: Shao-Yang and Chronic Illness

Stagnation, Illness, and Movement. Thoughts on Master Zhu's Teachings #4

The Taoist practice I’ve learned from Master Zhu is a study of Taoist theory with an exercise regiment consisting of stretching, repetitive exercises, and meditation. The exercises he calls the core basics are intended to undo stagnations and stiffnesses in our bodies to promote energy flow. The theory portion of his classes are question and answer.

Taoist Theory and Practice

After the first few years of my study with Zhu I had a working understanding of the Tao and how it related to my health. My practice during this time was focused on the idea that the energy work (Qi-gong) we practiced was a way of changing our bodies. I could remember a time when my body wasn’t sick, and that if I could change my body back to a state when it wasn’t unhealthy, the disease would recede and I would be symptom free. The idea comes from an understanding of change and the binary tree (Figure 1). The binary tree shows our lives as a collection of memories and experiences that have emotional components. As our lives and internal worlds become more defined (moving away from Wu-Ji) the changes in our internal world change our bodies creating stiffness and restrictions. This changes the shape of our energetic bodies which is what effects our health. From this perspective diseases are pathogenic patterns of energy rippling through our bodies created by stiffnesses and blockages.

If I were to sum up my practice at the time it would be:

If you understand how something has changed, you can understand how to un-change it.

Figure 1

Meeting a Different Master

I had been attending Master Zhu’s classes for a couple years with good results. The symptoms from the ulcerative colitis had been minimized and were less frequent. My study and understanding of the Taoist theory was growing as well. During this time I spent a significant amount of time reading the ancient Taoist texts and books on Taoist theory. Some of the books are well known like the “I-Ching” and the “Tao de Jing” others were more obscure like “Understanding Reality” and “Mysticism: Empowering the Spirit Within”. I’d show up to class booked up and filled with questions and ideas. During these years I’m sure I asked 1,000’s of questions. I thought I had the illness figured out… then the symptoms returned and were worse than before.

My first real contact with Chinese medicine and the Taoist practice came from my partner. She became friends with an acupuncturist they called “Doc” when she was in her early 20s who encouraged her to study Tai-Ji. For years she studied tai-ji and becoming interested in Chinese medicine along the way. It was through her I met Master Zhu, her class was planning a trip to Beijing to visit the park where he studied and to meet his classmates and sight see.

In 2007 her friend Doc passed away and she started asking around “Who would he seek out for treatments when he needed them?”. They all pointed her to a practitioner that lived in the mountains outside Denver. I refer to him now as the wise man on the mountain. For his anonymity I’ll refer to him as “G” in this article. As I sit and write this, I’m at a loss on how to describe him. He refers to himself as a man with 1,000 stories, which seems fitting.

The first time I met “G”, my partner was sick with some kind of flu and insisted she needed a treatment from him. It was in the winter and we drove through a snowy canyon along a mountain river, the road twisted and turned until we reached the small town where he lived. We pulled into a roundabout and walked past some pine trees and through the door into the house where he practiced. Through the door, you entered into a landing, on the right there was a shelf for your shoes and a book filled shelf. Then walked through another door into his office area, there was a stone fireplace with a fire burning on the left, to the right there was a seating area. Along the wall past the fireplace there was a work bench with shelves filled with herbs. He walked into the room from his treatment area with wide open arms and a smile running cheek to cheek. He looked at her and said “Oh… let’s see what we can do…” and they went back to his treatment room. This was years before I started studying with Master Zhu, little did I know that I had just met a man that would become a catalyst for change in my life.

Fast-forward 4 or 5 years, I had been studying with Master Zhu for 3 or 4 years and my partner said “You should set up an appointment to see “G”, I heard he knows how to treat auto-immune disorders”. This was the first I had heard of alternate treatments for the disease I had. The treatment plans and options I heard from Western doctors were either for surgeries or pills that had little to no effect. I had good success with the Taoist path I had been on, for me I needed little convincing. I set up an appointment and within a week I was driving through the winding canyon for my first appointment. My appointments with him followed the same pattern, he would greet me with a hug, then we would talk about what I had going on, and then he’d sit across from me and read my pulses. Then, if necessary, he would apply needles or create an herbal formula for me. There was always conversation about a whole range of topics, Taoist theory, modern physics, or literature, he loves The Lord of the Rings. It was one of first sessions with “G”, he had me stuck with needles and we were talking about different things. I asked him how long he had been practicing acupuncture and he looked at me and said “I don’t practice acupuncture…”. My first thought was “What the #$*!” as I lay there with needles sticking out of me. So I asked him what he did? He looked at me and said “I don’t practice acupuncture. I practice Taoist magic!”. My next question was “What’s Taoist magic?” He looked at me and laughed…

Conversations on Taoist Theory

Over the course of 2 or 3 years I had regular appointments with “G”. It was during these appointments and our conversations my life got re-routed. If I were to boil our conversations and interactions down to their essence or content, there were maybe 12 sentences and 4 or 5 book recommendations over a couple years that changed my trajectory, my understanding of the world, and the Tao. One of the statements he said was “I think your auto-immune disease is a Shao-Yang disorder”. I had no understanding of what that was or what it meant, he recommended that I read the ancient text “The Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold-Induced Disorders)”. Needless to say I tried, but it didn’t make sense to me. The Shanghan Lun is an ancient Chinese Medical text, its contents on energetic meridians, pulses, and symptoms is still beyond my understanding. So what I did was study the shape of the I-Ching and the binary tree, looking for some kind of application or understanding.

A Philosophical Understanding of Shao-Yang and The Natural Arrangement

There are different understandings on how shao-yang works and how to apply it’s understanding. In the essay The Shape of Understanding, I look at the binary tree and talk about the 4 appearances (Si-Xiang 四象).

Here is my initial understanding of the Shao-Yang concept: At this point my understanding was limited to the names of the 4 appearances. From my understanding of change I studied the binary tree, I thought if I looked at the process of transformation from the level of 4 (Si-Xiang) to the level of 8 (Ba-gua) in the binary tree (Figure 2) I would find some insight.

Figure 2

From the level of 4 we have the 4 appearances; Tai-Yang, Shao-Yin, Shao-Yang, and Tai-Yin. If we look at Tai-Yang (2 solid Yang lines) and add a Yin/Yang pair to the gua, it splits and transforms into Heaven and Lake. Following this idea through we see that Shao-Yin transforms into Fire and Thunder, Shao-Yang transforms into Wind and Water, and Tai-Yin transforms into Mountain and Earth.

When I think of the 4 appearances I think of things that are incomplete or without resolution. When I was thinking through these ideas, I thought that if the Bagua symbolizes and makes up the entire world (I-Ching), I should be seeing the remnants or the roots (4 appearances) of the Bagua everywhere. Following this line, I thought about the Bagua and what the essence of each Gua represented. I noticed that the only movement pieces in the Bagua were Wind and Water. The other guas are either static, constant, or instantaneous. Heaven, Lake, Mountain, and Earth are relatively static. Fire is a constant energetic entity, Thunder is an instantaneous event… Wind and Water were the only Guas that had to do with movement. From this point Shao-Yang became the root of movement in my understanding of the Bagua. From this came the idea that Shao-Yang represents what should be moving that isn’t. My understanding of incompleteness or stagnation came from this idea. When you add a Yin or Yang to Shao-Yang it becomes complete, transforming into Wind or Water and moves on.

A More Refined View

While tracking down and studying these ideas I became confused when looking into the 4 appearances. The 4-appearances made sense to me in relation to the binary tree, Tai-Yang, Shao-Yin, Shao-Yang, and Tai-Yin. In the texts I’d see 2 other names Yang-Ming and Jue Yin. The confusion came from the 4-appearances having 6 components. Years later I now understand it comes from naming and how you look at the binary tree (Figure 3). How I think about the 4 appearances hasn’t changed, how I view them within the binary tree has.

Figure 3

Emotional Stagnations

I had been working with “G” for a number of years and it was in one of his treatments, I was laying on the treatment table and he said “I’m pretty sure your Shao-Yang disorder is emotional based”. I had been working on changing the state of my body using Qi-gong removing stiffnesses and blockages. I wasn’t sure how to approach this new idea. A few months before this conversation Master Zhu had found a massage school located below the School where he taught, he had started studying massage! We were sitting in his apartment and I was telling him what “G” had told me, he said I should see this massage therapist he knew. She was a practitioner of a discipline called Somato Emotional Release, a technique that removes emotional stagnations from your body. I was seeing “G”, practicing with Master Zhu, and seeing the massage therapist. I was committed to the practice and the idea that I could change my body into a state where the disease would no longer be symptomatic. These massage sessions were a turning point for my practice, having someone helping with what I was trying to do accelerated my practice forward. This 3- or 4-year time period was terrible, I was dredging up every possible negative emotional memory or experience I could remember. I would show up at Zhu’s apartment somedays and just sleep on the floor. In the Jungian understanding this is called shadow work, I was working on removing all the negative emotional memories and remnants from my body.

Putting It All Together

When I think about shao-yang and our health. I think of it as what should be moving that isn’t. If we look at what we hold onto in our lives, the events and experiences that define us many times are the hard times with the perceived negative outcomes. This is where our defense mechanisms are likely to kick in. Holding onto these experiences isn’t always healthy, but many times they define who we are. I think of this as the Jungian understanding of “The Shadow”. These experiences are what shape our behaviors and what creates the foundation of our personalities. When I look at these in my own life there are two types of negative experiences I‘ve held onto:

• Things I have done that I’ve regretted.

• Things that had been done to me that I was unable to forgive.

Both of these types of experiences can change our trajectories. In the essay Unraveling Into Harmony I talk about a situation that was traumatic for me. That experience shaped my life and my relationship with education. That scenario could be viewed as something that was done to me. As a young kid I was traumatized by being praised and acknowledged for a poem I wrote when I didn’t feel I was worthy. When I worked through that experience, I had to reason it out as an adult for myself and change the narrative of that story. From the idea of Shao-Yang and what should be moving that isn’t, the Ying/Yang pair that represents behavior I see as:

• Things we have done that we’ve regretted. What we did vs what we should we have done.

• Things that had been done to us that we were unable to forgive. What did we need vs what did we receive.

While working through the story of the poem and the teacher I had to question what led me to think I wasn’t worthy of the praise or the acknowledgement, that the teacher wasn’t out to embarrass me and that my response wasn’t “reasonable” for me as an adult, I still held onto that behavior. I changed the narrative of the story for myself into something that wasn’t restrictive. This type of work in the modern world takes place in the many 12 step programs we have. The work these programs promote helps them work through these situations by making amends and forgiving others.

The Disease Moves Out

I had been studying with Master Zhu for 7 years at the time when it all came to a head. I had been experiencing symptoms and was sicker than I had ever been, pain was registering at an 8 or 9 out 10. The pain would come and my mind would shut down, all I could do was lay in bed and feel the waves of pain rippling and swelling through my body. I had been doing the Qi-gong, working through the emotional issues and blockages from my past as they came up. “G” had given me large doses of herbs to promote movement, as I lay there in bed filled with pain looking at the ceiling I thought “Maybe if I look at this physical pain as emotional pain something will happen”. As soon as I did I remembered being born… I remembered looking up at my mom right after I was born… I remembered laying in a crib in a nursery, the crib had a glass partition and I remembered rolling my head back and forth and seeing the other newborns in the cribs next to me…I remembered seeing parents looking though the glass partition in the nursery at us infants… then I remembered knowing that my mom wasn’t coming back! The emotion from this energetic memory was sheer terror! My body seized up and shook for a couple seconds as the terror moved out and that was it. The disease that haunted my existence for decades had moved out in less than a split second and I knew it instantly. I knew the disease had left my body and wasn’t coming back! I could feel it leaving… For me the adoption and knowing as an infant that my mom wasn’t coming back was the root and essence of my auto-immune disease. It was an emotional response that was trapped within my tissues since I was an infant.

When I reflect on this experience through this understanding, I think about the voice of our bodies from the essay Human Metaphors. How the terror (associated with the kidneys and bladder) transformed into sorrow (associated with the lungs and large intestine). My large intestine was unable to move the sorrow causing the auto-immune illness. From the idea of Shao-Yang what I needed was an acknowledgement and an expression of the voice of my body, the terror and sorrow I felt as an infant.

After my experience I can see how these ideas could be used to root out other diseases. When I think about it, I can see correlations between other chronic illnesses such as depression, some forms of cancer, and Parkinsons. These are diseases that I see as internal world illnesses reflected in our physical bodies.

Patterns, Illnesses, and The Natural Arrangement

Through my entire life and all my life experiences the main trunk of the binary tree of my life was the adoption. It had effected every aspect of my life, every decision, every reaction to every situation was rooted in that experience. As we traverse our lives we step away from Wu-Ji (Figure 1), every decision we’ve made is rooted in some other experience that has defined our trajectories. Our lives unfold through time as our emotional backbones entwines and braid with our experiences making us who we are and define our lives and experiences. The root of all my issues, woven through all my thoughts, decisions, and reactions was the adoption. My mom didn’t come back, there must be something wrong with me was the emotional core. It led to my reaction in class with the poem, I wasn’t worthy of praise because my mom didn’t want me and something was wrong with me. It was the sorrow of this loss that was my auto-immune disease. Part of my story as an adoptee was to track down my birth family, which I did a number of years ago. I know now that the situation wasn’t that my mom didn’t want me, or that there was something wrong with me. It was our life situations and circumstances. I look at the adoption now as the best thing that has happened to me.

Another Conversation

It had been years since I had seen “G”, he had retired on the Winter Solstice of his 70th year, and is living the life of a retiree. My partner still talked to him and I thought about him often. I don’t remember the circumstances, but we had been sending some emails back and forth and had made plans to meet up for breakfast. Our conversations on Shao-Yang while I was seeing him had been brief, him saying he thought the disease was a Shao-Yang disorder and encouraging me to read the Shanghan Lun. He never really gave answers to questions, he asked different questions. When we met up, we talked for hours, during this conversation I asked him “What do you think Shao-Yang is?” I told him I thought it was what should be moving that wasn’t. He said he thought it was a searching for an open door, or walking through a doorway, like an in between spot. I thought about what he said and it made sense to me. In my story it was the fear and the sorrow looking for an open door to move out, when it did it left…