By Clark Zimmerman, LAc.

Years ago, my wife and I were in Beijing, China to do some advance study in Chinese medicine and qi gong.  We arrived a couple of days before we were to meet the rest of our group.  We checked into our hotel, and were overwhelmed with the busyness of such a large and chaotic city.  The noise and pollution were disorienting.  So being the nature loving Oregonians that we are, we got a map of Beijing and looked for any green space we could find.  We discovered a park on the map, and took a very slow taxi ride the few miles to the park.  To our dismay, the park was as crowded as the rest of the city, with thousands of people apparently craving the same stillness that Ann and I were looking for.  We wondered around a bit disappointed for awhile, until we found a little walled garden where they served tea.  When we entered the unassuming space, we were instantly transported to a different world.  Away from the crowds and busyness of the park, a certain stillness permeated the place.  People already seated in the tea garden were speaking more softly, more slowly.  They were making eye contact with each other, and there seemed to be more smiles.  Every detail of the garden seemed to invite a greater sense of stillness.  The stones, the trees and plants, all seemed to dance together in perfect harmony.  Ann and I were struck by the amazing ability of a deliberate, sacred space to change our mood.  We were in a little oasis, away from all of the noise and clutter of the city.

This same phenomena is recognized all over the world.  In the great cathedrals, in the soft gardens, in the simple altars.  In this increasingly busy world we live in, it is more important that ever to visit, or even create our own version of these places in our lives.  The greatest ally we all have in our journey to good health is cultivating the ability to relax, and take a break from the chaos of the fast paced world.  This starts with finding a place that beckons us to slow down and just sit.  It can be a local garden, with plants, stone and water.  It can be in a silent alcove in our favorite church.  It can be a little nook in the corner of our yard.  The main criteria is that it is free of clutter and distraction:  No cell phones, televisions or emails. With all of the things that beg for our attention in this fast moving world, we need to create space to relax.  The effect of serene and sacred places can be instant; when we leave and rejoin the frenetic world we take a little piece of the stillness with us.  This is the gift of a quiet and sacred space.  

By Ann Zimmerman, LAc.

We have reached the time of year when we tend to do more than we “normally” would schedule on our calendar.  Somehow all the friends, family, camping trips, festivals, gardening, etc need to get squeezed into a few months.  The long days of light, warm weather, no school and the general energy of summer  bring forward a manic quality in most everyone.  We anxiously peruse our calendars looking for another way to take a Monday or Friday off or maybe even longer from work.  And if its not going to be a long weekend…..than we are willing to eek out everything we can for those 2 days. 

In Chinese medicine, summer is the season of the heart and the emotion that is associated with summer is joy.  In summer we have joy.  It almost feels like a mandate,  a must for surviving the other seasons.  A reward for the long winter and the busyness of spring.   Summer tends to swing our inner pendulum way past the middle place of balance.  This season tends to be a time of excess versus winter’s time of deficiency.  It’s the time of the year when you say, yes.

Yes…..I will paint my house, yes I will stay up all night dancing, yes I will travel across the country and visit 5 sets of friends, yes I will have another beer, yes you can stay at my house, yes I will be gone another weekend…………We naturally feel more energy and hopefully it will get us through the summer. Of course with excess comes the price of overdoing it.  We each know our unique way we overdo it in life.  

Over joy can often result from summer’s manic pace. The idea of over joy is unique to Chinese medicine, it certainly is not an american concept.  There can never be too much joy, right? Remember how you felt last September when you were finally ready to stay home and take it easy?  That is the effect of overjoy.  The drive for more and more joy tends to make our everyday jobs/chores feel mundane. This restlessness tends to build pushing us past when we would “normally” slow down.  

So the challenge here is to embrace the natural expansion of summer without pushing yourself into the excess of injury, compromised immunity, insomnia, anxiety, and overindulgence.  Good Luck!

By Clark Zimmerman, LAc.

When my teenage niece came to visit last year, she was shocked to find that our mountain home had no cell service. While we could have given her our wireless password, her dad had requested that we say we forgot it, so she could have a little vacation from her phone. Needless to say, she was not pleased. Though she could still use the internet to email friends, or look at social media, the fact that she couldn’t use her smart phone at our house caused several meltdowns. Though most of us don’t react as severely as my niece, it is becoming more and more common to see our phones as a sort of security blanket.

While technology provides many benefits, there also is a certain price that is becoming more apparent. The moments of stillness and quiet that used to exist between different parts of our day are disappearing; being replaced with more texts to return and more business to attend to. It is like we are all “on call” now. In my medical practice I have noticed the effect that this is having on most people. People feel more rushed, further behind and more anxious. I have patients who come in for an hour acupuncture treatment “to relax” who insist on having their cell phones on just in case there is an emergency. This way of thinking almost expects tragedy. The same technology that was supposed to make our lives easier, is now serving to make people less capable of being comfortable with a moment of silence. When we are expected to be readily available at any moment, this not only takes away from the little bits of downtime that we used to get, it makes us prone to feeling that if nothing new is coming in on our feed that we are somehow missing out on something.

Our grandparents could sit for half a day on the front porch and watch the birds, and now most of us can’t sit still for 15 minutes without some sort of stimulation. We have begun to collectively move away from valuing the reflective, quiet, contemplative time, and are choosing to replace it with constant stimulation, constant news, and constant conversation. It makes me wonder, what is daytime without night? What is summer without winter? What is activity without rest? Science says that if you go long enough without sleep that psychosis ensues. We are running a grand experiment, it will be interesting to see where this all leads…