Assumptions v. belief

Traditional Chinese Medicine makes assumptions about the world that Western culture does not.

For example:

Everything is Qi.

Qi flows freely between each of our bodies and the outer world.

Types of climatic Qi - wind, damp, cold - can enter the body and cause disorders such as common cold or headache.

A headache can be relieved by puncturing points on the toes because the head and toes share a relationship through various Qi pathways and tissue correspondences.

Each medicinal herb has an affinity for specific Qi pathways and tissues which, in part, determines its therapeutic effect.

There are many more.

It's tempting to start with the question of belief (i.e. "Do I believe Qi is real?").

That might be fine when the goal is to uncover facts and mechanisms.

But it's not a very good place to start when the goal is learning. When we make belief a gatekeeper for learning, we prematurely close ourselves off from entire systems of accumulated human thought and new vantages from which to peer at the conundrum of the world.

The question in the back of my mind when I study or write about Chinese Medicine (or any alternative framework) is "What can I learn from this about how we can live better?"

I try to start with assumptions ("For the sake of exploration, I assume _________ to be true.") and give Belief room to explore on her own.

"Yes" and "No"

Both are necessary. And both are learned skills.

Improvisation actors train using a game called "Yes, and...".

The rules are, you and your scene partner(s) are planning something (an event, a campaign, a craft). A discussion takes place, and every reply must begin with the words "Yes, and...".

It's training an essential skill.

An actor's power lies in her believability - her ability to react authentically to the circumstances and the behavior of her scene partner(s) in each moment.

This requires her to 100% accept (say "Yes" to) what's happening in front of her eyes. If her scene partner is crying, she can't ignore it because it doesn't suit her motives for the scene. Even if she's playing a comedy where her character is pretending not to notice the crying, she must still perceive it in a way that's observable to us, her audience. We won't consider the moment truthful (or funny) if she doesn't.

Truth flows from "Yes", and "Yes" requires practice.

The same is true off the stage. Vitality, authenticity, creativity, and peace flow from a practiced acceptance of what is happening moment to moment, day to day. Suffering is wanting things to be different.

But that's one side of the coin.

Vitality, authenticity, creativity, and peace also flow from effective allocation of one's attention and emotional/physical energy.

Saying "Yes" to the moment doesn't mean you have to answer every email, live up to every person's expectation, do every chore, and respond to every "emergency" yourself. That indeed is suffering.

Actors make choices all the time. And we should be choosing to spend our resources on impulses that our research and our guts tell us are most likely to move us in the direction we want to go.

It means getting very good at respectfully saying "No".

Useful positive thinking

I spent most of my boyhood as a competitive gymnast. I was a Maryland State floor and horizontal bar champion and a member of the Maryland State All Star Team.

We used to employ a technique called mental practice. Before performing a routine in practice or competition, we would stand with our eyes closed and go through the routine silently in our minds. We would visualize doing the routine flawlessly.

I did this so often that sometimes my parents would find me standing at the base of my bed in the middle of the night, asleep, moving ever so slightly to indicate that there was a gymnastics routine going on in my head (I was an occasional sleepwalker).

Mental practice has been used by many successful athletes and artists to get in the zone and improve performance. Today's research shows that visualizing a task can train the mind in some of the same ways as actually performing it.

Visualize things going well, and it's more likely to happen.

The essence of this idea has been applied more broadly in the positive thinking movement.

Visualize a great job, the perfect relationship, even wealth, and it will happen. [Visualize bad things happening (or good things not happening), and that's what you'll get.]

The Happiness Lab podcast did an episode about positive thinking, with a little history and some research about when it's useful and when it's not.

I've always wondered if positive thinking is inherently flawed because, like negative thinking, it takes the thinker out of the present moment and projects them into a made-up future. Peace and inspiration are found only in the present moment, right?

The thing is, sometimes our negative ruminations are unstoppable, at least by the usual methods (puttering, mindfulness, nature time). They need a more precise antidote.

If you're incessantly worried about money, you might visualize a time (perhaps a few years from now) when you have what you need. For example, during tight times, I've closed my eyes and imagined being at a restaurant and paying a waiter a large tip at the end of the meal. Or picking up the bill for a group of my closest friends. I smell the atmosphere, the wine, and the food and feel the good feelings of that moment.

Or you might imagine introducing a new partner to friends, planting a garden at a first house, enjoying a weekend off from a great new job, or hearing "thanks" from a difficult child.

You don't need to know how these things come into your life. Just visualize having them for a few moments, long enough to dissolve the negativity. The positive and the negative will cancel each other out and plop you back down where you belong: here, Now, neutral, peace.

And once it's done, it's done.

The future probably won't turn out just like you visualized. Maybe you planted a seed of abundance, health, or affiliation. It's a nice thought. I don't know.

At the very least, it's a useful tool. The point is to pivot back to peace.

Isn't that always the point?