Autumn is the season of metal. The performance brags of the summer quietly die away in preparation for hibernation. It is a season of taking stock and feeling losses. There is a nostalgia and sadness to autumn.

Metal is an energetic concept in Chinese medicine. Its core and unique properties are used as metaphor to describe and explain phenomena in nature, including human biology and experience. Metal is the energy of discretion, adaptation and values. It is how we flow with Life or seek to control it, how we allow or block our potential – for health, fertility, abundance, joy.

Alice was at Oriens yesterday. She came in for stress. Her boss just got let go and now she’s needing to take on his role and do her own, all while interviewing for other work since her division will eventually fold. While putting in her acupuncture points, we talked about negotiating – a metal activity – and mid-discussion we segued into a wonderful dialogue on chaos v. control (not Get Smart).

Alice the banker is highly organized and methodical and in awe of her artist cousin who can make an impromptu party out of a couple straggling items in the fridge! Alice was at her cousin’s recently for a clothes closet 911 emergency. The poor woman still had ex-boyfriend reminders and items from who knows when simply everywhere, making getting dressed a daily frightmare. Thank goodness this left-brained creative type has a right-brained Metal energy dominant cousin! Metal energy in balance is brilliant at assessing value, taking control and making decisions.

We all desire a productive, fruitful, meaningful life. Our metal energy helps us define what that is -- individually and collectively.  As a nation we are still undergoing full metal review as our money and every process around it is reconsidered. If your personal money matters need a make-over, I urge you attend our upcoming workshop, "It's Your Money So Take It Personally," coming up November 18.

Our metal energy is the evaluation process behind our decisions. The word decision comes from decidere, to cut off. When we decide something, we wield the [metal] knife and cut off other possibilities.

Eleanor was also at Oriens yesterday. A highly accomplished doctor, she struggles with IBS, anxiety and sciatica. This brilliant, insightful, self-aware mother of a teenager is the primary breadwinner. She sighed her tears, “I just feel so out of control!” Just last week she was feeling so proud and happy that she was now completely off prescription meds and these health issues that had been dominating her life for decades were all well-managed. Then, 2 mornings ago she rolled over in bed and POOF!...the sciatica reappears, she needs painkillers and she knows her IBS will flare in response, and it’s next to impossible to be a great doctor if your brain is sloshing through medication to focus. So how will she see patients? Not to mention the time, expense and hope she had put into her healing process.

The mind can run wild. What if it starts all over again? What if she can’t earn enough for her family? Feeling out of control can be so frightening and Life can feel so unfair.

Metal: chemistry, bonds, values, discretion, malleability, adaptation.

In the body metal relates to the lungs (breathing), immune system, the colon (excretion), and the skin (protection, temperature regulation, detoxification). These organs and systems discern and execute our safety through complicated biochemical reactions and other mechanics. They make physical value judgments for us: what we will allow in, how it gets filtered, what we will keep, what we will discard, how we will adapt to “news” from other systems and the environment. When something dangerous happens, these players rework the scenario to make it safe and keep operations going. They find value in refuse and supercharge our health when we treat them with respect.

On the Shen, or mental-emotional-spiritual level, metal energy is expressed in our ability to balance our survival instinct for control with our highest human desire for creative fulfillment.

Metal in balance:

• Sets goals and takes action – knowing the outcome is not certain
• Makes decisions and executes them creatively – without micromanaging
• Creates order through harmonious interaction with the other elemental energies: wisdom, creativity, spiritual joy, compassion
• Self-worth not tied to circumstance, accomplishment, possessions, family or other outside sources
• Attaches and lets go in response to changing circumstance – ideas about self, relationships, goals

Healthy metal energy inspires us toward appropriate action for the circumstance. Our lungs, gut, skin and our immune system,  guard our safety and adapt to change constantly.

Everyday cells are dying; others are born. Trillions of chemical reactions take place in the body moment to moment, all in response to shifting circumstance. Death brings life.

In Chinese medicine we understand that Life is movement and pain results from stuckness. Lack of flow (bioelectric current or qi, blood, fluids, mental energy, emotions) creates pain and disease.

The same is true with our Spiritual-emotional life.  Resistance and insistence are a health risk.

A couple years ago I was privileged to sit instruction with the well-known Tibetan Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron. I’ll never forget this sly grandmotherly type translating from the text, “There are only two causes of emotional pain: getting what you do not want, and not getting what you do want.” That stopped the room.

Oriens is blessed to help many women and couples conceive and have healthy babies. And if you will listen, you will read in this composite picture of almost every fertility-challenged woman I have been privileged to work with, you will see a part, or perhaps a great deal, of yourself somewhere in her story, and learn the lessons of metal with her.

The fertility struggle is often a heartbreaking and wrenching journey in which the patient has deep, deep yearning for a biologic child yet despite doing everything “right,” the child has not yet appeared. There are few circumstances in Life that will drop you to your knees in emotional pain this great.

Commonly fertility patients do their homework. They are fastidious record keepers. They manage their spouses, their doctors, their appointments. They research everything. Their stories include months and years of managing, trying, learning, changing doctors, trying new approaches. And if it were a Ph.D. or a promotion they were after, surely they would have attained it.

The more resolute and determined she is the more elusive pregnancy becomes as the immune system, the endocrine system, the circulatory system and the nervous system are insensitive to insistence, moving further out of balance the more she seeks to control the situation.

As this is going on, everyone around her from sisters to co-workers to friends are pregnant and starting families. A kind of shame often sets in, both at her body’s resistance and at her feelings of resentment toward the pregnant women everywhere.  In addition to resentment, if she is over 35, she is often reproaching herself --  for waiting  for the right partner, for not freezing her eggs, for smoking, for birth control . . . the list of self-recriminations can be long.  The information in circulation about "old eggs" and "advanced maternal age" can up-end her identity as a woman altogether.

Her frustration leads to deep sadness, questions about self-worth and whether God is punishing her. The sadness is so profound she fears its expression, and tries to “stay positive” because she has heard a “bad attitude” may put the baby farther out of reach.

Yet, tears are the most human of expressions, how we know we have been touched. Tears are honest. They teach us what we really believe, especially when we may have been telling ourselves some other story. Holding back our tears we block our energy. To cry is to free our qi to serve us, exercising the lungs, cleansing our emotions. If we do not acknowledge and vent our sadness, it transforms into a weapon against us. Along with deep breathing, crying exercises the lungs.  Dr. Christiane Northrup once said to me, "Crying is lancing an emotional abscess that might otherwise poison us."

The lungs must breathe deeply to pick up oxygen for delivery. Deep breathing, movement and emotional freedom  improve our circulation and chemistry, which all the players in conception depend upon -- the brain, the ovaries, uterus and testes. When we block emotions, we block Life. See Sharon’s Art of Breathing article for the fertility enhancing exercise: Microcosmic Breath.  The lungs also energetically pair with the colon through metal.  The more imbalanced her metal energy in unexpressed grief--the emotion of metal--the more blocked her bowel function is.  Most fertility patients struggle with constipation or IBS.

How we care for ourselves and having experts on our team makes a great difference.  Mechanical and chemical conditions must be met for conception to occur and pregnancy to carry.  Still, fertility is an expression of abundance, creativity, Life, flow. It resides in aligning oneself with the creative potential within – the Tao calls it the Mysterious Mother.  How do we access that part of ourselves?  If fertility were about the right doctor, drug or procedure, then IVF clinics would have success rates more than 5 times the statistical average! These are only tools to be used with discretion.  If fertility were about age, then why would women the world over be having unplanned babies in their 40's?

Life (and the ability to bring it forth) is impartial. Life comes through when circumstances are met. And, often, when we get out of our own way.

From the same place in the brain, we control response to danger and reproduction. It will always prioritize survival. When it senses danger, blood flow to reproductive organs is redirected. The fear we will not be able to reproduce is not distinguished from other survival threats. Further, our chemistry shifts to prioritize stress hormones over reproductive hormones. Blood work might come out normal, but can the hormones land? Some share receptor sites with our stress hormones.

The frustration of thwarted efforts, perfectionism, blaming ourselves and others, grudging others their successes, children and good luck -- these translate into a kind of "lock down" that further block us from our goal. Imbalanced metal thwarts our health and our bounty.

See Sandra’s article on Detoxing the Mind.

Our fertility, health and greatest potential are brought forward by playing along with Life.

When we take the "yin" position and yield and yet show up, when we let go yet do all we can, accepting there are no guarantees, then we live the virtue of metal.

The sacred text of the Hindus, the Bhagavad Gita, instructs us to be the warrior that takes action letting go of the result. The Tao tells us when we accept what is, the universe lies before us. Contraction - pain; flexibility - possibility.

The most beautiful and hard-won epiphany for fertility patient is this: that she is not in charge, Life is.  Her job is to nurture her potential and use metal effectively:  understand her own values to decide on her course and her team.   This aha often gives way to an alchemy in which pain and struggle transform into wisdom and new life.   What was once fingernails-on-a-chalkboard (“Just relax and it will happen."   "If you adopt you’ll get pregnant.”) takes on the power of a deep truth.  Opening, not controlling, is the big fertility secret.  Open to face the fear. Open the body through feeding and caring for it. Open the mind to the truth that a child is a miracle and that miracles cannot be forced.   Open to motherhood by mothering self first.  Open to hope.  She knows how to "do."  She has the discipline of metal.  When she learns malleability the rewards of metal are often hers.

Her pain shifts as, like carbon to diamonds, it is compressed into the gems of wisdom and compassion for herself and her spouse. Her sorrow becomes freedom allowing physical expression. Her relaxation becomes creativity and receptivity. Her alignment gives way to fertility. The alchemy is complete as she accepts the miraculous gift of a new life — literally, a child in her womb, or figuratively — health, joy, abundance.

Life comes through when we play on Life's terms and stop insisting on our own.   Life begets Life.

Nothing quite says Chinese Medicine like psychoneuroimmunology — and now, psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology.

I love it when science and western medicine explain Chinese medicine back to me in a fresh way, a more modern, causally investigated, deconstructed analytic way. Chinese medicine might have the edge on western medicine in terms of sheer volume of evidence and success data in humans. It most certainly has the more of user-friendly vocabulary. But the two play together so well and fill each other’s gaps marvelously.

Fresh from a very exciting conference on the brain and neurotransmitters, I’m still a-flutter thinking about neuron cascades, the blood-brain barrier and ... the 3 Treasures, that is to say the psychoneuroimmunoendocrine perspective on the essential components of a healthy happy life and that uber-control center, the Mind.

Looking at functional MRI’s while listening to a review of the literature on research detailing how everything we do, eat and think either enhances brain function or causes neurodegeneration is very excitiing — or devastating, depending how you view the control you potentially have over your health and the risk factors you are engaging.

We all know that the regulation of just about every one of our biologic functions ultimately tracks back to the brain. But how much do we think about it, say, when we experience digestive problems? Or immune challenges? Or hormone imbalances? Most of us typically associate brain chemistry issues with anxiety, depression, sleep and cognitive disorders related to aging or mental illness. And that is true. Yet are you aware that it is all completely connected? When you experience difficulty in these other areas, your brain is most likely unhappy as well. Pepsid and laxatives will not rescue your brain.

But good habits, skilled use of herbs and food, and a commitment to lofty but attainable goals such as self-understanding and contentment will. The brain loves it when you give it oxygen and food and decide that you are in agreement with what is happening in your life.

Our colloquialism for that is “peace of mind.” We commonly refer to its opposite as “stress.” Stress is a physics term for forces brought to bear. It’s normal and unavoidable. How we perceive stress and label it in our minds is ours to decide and the key determinant of what happens next – physically and emotionally. See this newsletter’s other features on Detoxing the Mind and Fertility Corner for more on this subject.

From your exercise habits to your food habits, your sugar habits to your sleep habits, your thought habits to your relaxation habits – you are constantly building or degenerating your brain and influencing the expression of your genetic potential. And therefore, you are either enhancing or destroying your immune function, your hormone health, your gut function and your long term mental capacity.

You are co-creating your life. One of my favorite sayings is, “your biography becomes your biology.” (Carolyn Myss)

This is Chinese medicine. But we call it The 3 Treasures: Jing-Qi-Shen.

By Jing we mean that through our parents, our ancestors have passed on to us the potential for many variations on the life we have. One concept of Jing is genes. Some things are determined, like eye or hair color. Others are plastic, or in an interdependent relationship with other variables like environmental exposure, nurturing, food, exercise, etc.

That potential meets up with Qi – the bioelectric current of our bodies and the way we live our lives.

When we live well —rest, play, contemplate, sleep, eat real food (at regular intervals and amounts), laugh, cry, express, relax, spend time alone with our selves, socialize, love — we enhance our Jing. We add to the reserve and increase the likelihood that our potential for health and a sense of fulfillment is expressed.

In contrast when don’t care for ourselves — overwork (especially for extended periods), choose fake foods over real foods (IF we remember to eat at all), select coffee and soda over water, obsess, let go of exercise, don’t get outdoors, live in resentment, don’t schedule time for ourselves, isolate — we drain our Jing and throw off our central nervous system and neurotransmitter interactions, potentially leading to less pleasure and lower health performance in the short term, and serious illness in the longer term.

But to get to the gym, choose dark chocolate over Snickers, give ourselves permission to take the night off in favor of that overdue date with our friends, and choose 5 minutes of self-reflection over checking email ... we need Shen.

Shen is spirit-mind. It is the highest expression of who we are, our spiritual nature peeking through our rational mind. It’s happy brain chemistry where we make great decisions that favor our health and our deeper satisfaction. These in turn cycle back to strengthen our qi and jing.

The 3 Treasures are interesting – and here we come back to psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology again – because they are interdependent. You can’t have great qi and bad shen. There is a principle in Chinese medicine called mutual transformation, which states that forms of energy morph into other forms energy. (For example, food breaks down to reassemble as fuel for our cellular requirements).

Our mental/emotional energy is the strongest driver we have of both how we behave and what happens for us physically ...which in turn affects our deeper programming ... which then cycles back into creating our mental/emotional state and the quality of our day-to-day lives. Jing-qi-shen are interwoven and constantly creating one another. Psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrinology. It’s all interconnected.

In the space program as well as in training for Olympic competition, there is a process used by some called “visual rehearsal.” Seated, the subject visualizes what s/he expects to do (launch into space, run the 100m, etc.). When the subject is monitored, it is clear the brain and all systems are responding as if the event were really taking place. Ponder that for a moment. What you are thinking is what your body believes is happening. Take it in deeper. Studies and life experience both remind us this is true. What we expect, often occurs. What we believe, is what we tell our bodies to enact cellularly, chemically! Our thoughts are indeed powerful. What do you expect in your life? In your health? In your relationships?

We cannot choose our parents and genetic blueprint. And sometimes the many factors converging to spell out our health and life experience are indeed beyond manipulation or control. But to varying extents, we all can leverage the script toward health and happiness.

3 Treasures. Treasures are things of immense value.

What are you doing with yours?

Here are some suggestions. For more, visit Sandra’s article on Detoxing the Mind!

• Play
• Eat regularly.
• 80/20 –80% of the time choose foods and drinks that build your health.
• Drink water – divide the number of pounds you weigh in two; that’s the minimum number of ounces of pure water your body wants every day.
• Spend at least 5 minutes without anything to do at the beginning and end of each day, and appreciate all you have.
• Move your body! Dance, gym, yoga, walking, martial arts...just get moving.
• Put your rants down on paper, where they can be seen and addressed instead of running the toxic mental tape loop of resentment, blame and anger that hurts only you.
• Make time for people and activities you love.
• Set boundaries around work.
• Get to know yourself, you’re worth it.
• Use Oriens as the resource it is, to help you build your health, treasure your treasures, learn from experts and experience community around issues important to you.

Oriens ~ Is That a Made up Word?

Welcome to Oriens! When searching for the name of the sanctuary I wanted to create for myself, my friends and my patients . . . and especially for women . . . I wanted the name to express what I was up to. But it also needed to look beautiful on the page and feel beautiful in the mouth. Here’s the story behind the name and an invitation to be part of what we are doing . . .

One evening I was taking the train upstate and perusing a professional journal on Chinese medicine. There was an article discussing the word, “Oriental.” The author noted the Latin root for the word was “oriens,” meaning from the east or toward the rising sun. Eureka.

This little Latin root encapsulates what we are doing here at Oriens — bringing you healing therapies and wisdom traditions from the East, but offering them in a way you will immediately find useful. Oriens is about the reframe for the modern western person. Raised Christian and coming from a family medical lineage, acupuncture, meditation, yoga, eastern philosophy . . . these tools have helped me care for my health, know myself more deeply, honor where I come from more authentically, use western medicine more skillfully.

With a commitment to science, evidence and research, we acknowledge also that Life is the ultimate laboratory. Stories hold our truths and Oriens is about yours, ours, and those we learn from.

Our motto is, “more of who you truly are.” Oriens is about helping you bring your best health and your best self forward, increasing your joy. We call that a fertile life . . . one that is rich, fruitful, well tended, enjoyed. We specialize in helping couples conceive, but really all our patients and clients are reclaiming their potential in some way.

Oriens offers you personalized attention and meaningful community.

We provide you with exceptional expert care in private sessions. And for those who select Surround & Support programming, our practitioner community becomes yours as we work as a team to serve you.

We like to have fun. Oriens has parties where you can gather with people you would like to know. We develop workshops and host experts to speak on topics vital to your health and personal growth — things that matter to you. We have yoga and dance classes for you to exercise safely, passionately and joyfully. And make friends.

For Oriens community also means service. We are grateful for our relationship with you and for the bounty in our lives. Your choice to invest in your own health and well-being through Oriens allows us to partner with charities serving children and women in need.

The full name is Oriens Healing Sanctuary. I chose to call it a sanctuary because it is place to feel apart and yet at home. A respite from your daily life, where you can access more of yourself . . . more health, a new perspective, an “aha” to improve your Life.

Blessings to you,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Carpenter, MS, L.Ac.

Founder and owner

Advice for Challenging Times

What is a toxic mind and how do you know if your mind is toxic?

If you feel powerless, hopeless, intimidated, angry, frustrated, ineffective and stuck, these are excellent clues. Everyone feels like this occasionally, but if you spend the majority of your time feeling like this, you’ve definitely got “Mind Toxin Overload”. And certainly given what many of us have been facing in our current economic climate, we can all admit to feeling powerless and full of fear, fear for our future and that of our families.

As with all challenging life situations we may ask ourselves, “Why me?” Some of us have lost our jobs, or our husbands have lost their jobs. Our investments have taken a hit and we are afraid for our future and for the future of our family. And most debilitating is the notion that we’ve done everything “correctly,” and still we are hit over and over again. The sense of unfairness can cut deep. And yet, in a deeper place, we know that we all have collectively created the ecomomic climate we are living in together. We are a part of the political and financial systems as surely as those in high places, those very ones that we want to blame.

All of the major religious traditions offer ways to deal with challenging times.

The Buddhist tradition is perhaps one of the most clear and effective in dealing with “mind toxin overload”. The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths that correspond to the concept of suffering.

Mind Toxin Overload can be described as the first two of these truths:

The First Noble Truth ~ there is suffering in life, and the origen of that suffering is attachment. What does that mean? To live in this world brings suffering, because human nature is never perfect and neither is the world we live in. Over the course of our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological/spiritual suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, grief, depression, lack of faith and trust in the world around us.

The Second Noble Truth ~ the Buddha explained that the origin of suffering is attachment to transient things. Transient things do not only include the physical objects that surround us, but also ideas and beliefs about life and our place in it, and the personal identifications to which we cling. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. Because the objects of our attachment are transient, their loss is inevitable, and so the suffering is exacerbated and the cycle of “Mind Toxin Overload” begins.

The Buddha’s Fourth Noble Truth states that there is a clear pathway out of suffering and offers the cultivation of 8 factors or qualities (The 8-fold Path) as the map that leads to gradual self-improvement and ultimately greater self awareness.

To deal with Mind Toxin Overload, we’ll focus on one of the 8 ~ Right Mindfulness, or as I like to think of it, Skillful Mindfulness.

The first line of the sacred text called the Dhammapada, the most loved of all the Buddhist texts, is “All we are is the result of what we have thought.” Our culture has been saturated with information on metaphysical laws stating that “As we think, so we create”, that our belief system creates the world around us. Skillful mindfulness is the mental ability to see things as they are, with clear consciousness.

How can we begin with Skillful Mindfulness?

By getting on board with what is happening! By understanding that the recession or whatever it is you are facing, is not happening to you. What you believe is ultimately your choice. Your belief is not fact; it is perception. Like it or not, the recession and circumstances are not about you and you must not take them personally. Even as you acknowledge your role as creator of your life.

Your every belief and thought is your choice. We must get brutally honest about what we believe. And we must stop seeing the word “acceptance” as a bad word, one that admits weakness and “giving in” to defeat. Rather we must see acceptance as the ability to be see and respect what IS. Only in being truthful about what IS can we begin to see a solution. Life is transient and the quicker we accept that, the quicker we will discover new insights about our selves and life.

You can begin to develop a deeper sense of who you are. If you do not have a strong sense of who you are, you will be a victim in all of life’s challenges, including the recent financial troubles.

By having this larger and deeper sense of who you are, you can begin to understand that life Your Life, is ultimately in complete support of YOU, and you can either see the challenges as punishments or you choose to see them as opportunities for greater self discovery.

Take time each day for self reflection. Here are some ideas to Detox Your Mind and Create a Skillful Mind practice!

• Keep a journal that documents your rants as well as your raves and discoveries
• Learn to meditate. If you would like help, go to the Oriens Store or come in for simple, gentle, easy instruction with me or Christina in person.
• Engage in breathing exercise – breathe deeply and slowly down into the belly and observe how your mind settles. See the article on breathing in this newsletter for more detail.
• Stop taking things personally. What others do and say is about them, not you, even if you are the subject. You may want to pick up The Four Agreements, ancient Toltec wisdom on a happy mind and life.
• Stop complaining and focus your attention on the best case scenarios. (read the Psychoneuroimmunology article in this newsletter for more on this)
• Stop comparing yourself to everyone else.
• Take the time to get to know yourself more deeply.