Venerating the Root

After high school and undergraduate studies in East Asian Studies in Germany, I spent two years in Taiwan studying modern and classical Chinese. I then moved to the US for my graduate studies and have lived there most of the time since, teaching, writing, and farming. I am currently teaching courses on Chinese History and Culture, Classical Chinese, Classical Medical Texts (especially the Yellow Emperor's Classic), Gynecology, and occasional electives, at the National College of Natural Medicine, in the School of Classical Chinese Medicine in Portland, Oregon, and writing, translating, and publishing my own books on Chinese medicine.

I have been studying classical Chinese writings on medicine ever since my PhD research in Asian Studies and Medical Anthropology. While my academic background has given me a solid foundation in early Chinese philosophy, science, and cosmology, and therefore in a historically and culturally sensitive approach to classical Chinese medicine, I also enjoy an ethnomedical approach to Chinese medicine as a living, clinically effective, and ever-changing response to any given cultural environment.

Some of my favorite topics for research and teaching are

• gynecology, pediatrics, and reproduction
• yangsheng 養生 ("nurturing life") as understood in the broadest sense by the great medieval "King of Medicinals" Sun Simiao 孫思邈, including dietetics, lifestyle, regulating the emotions, moral cultivation, etc.
• medical ethics
• the modern clinical application of the wisdom from the classics, especially Zhuangzi.

In my academic life, I am happiest when engaging in a dialogue with practitioners on how to make this ancient wisdom come to life. In my other lives, I find bliss in holding newborn goats, racing horses in Mongolia, digging in the dirt and hugging a tree, making Sauerkraut or kimchi with my daughter, or playing cumbias on the accordion. It's all about harmonizing Heaven, Earth, and Humanity in the old yangsheng way for me.