Shen: the elegance of being in TCM

Welcome

Welcome to my monthly talk where as my daughters were reassuring me today as they were leaving to get the train they said “that’s okay mommy don’t be nervous you’re just gonna go online and nerd Jack for for an hour” and I said “well actually I’m only nerd jacking for a half an hour” but that’s our favorite word in our house right now where we just like whatever the special interest subject is of the moment our nerd jacking for however long that takes.

So anyway I’m gonna get started here today we’re going to talk about Shen or as I’ve titled this lecture the Elegance of being. People often ask me why I chose Chinese medicine and I always tell them it’s because it’s the most elegant way I’ve ever found that someone has been able to explain the way the human body works to me. And I feel like that concept of Elegance really has to do with both the complexity and the Simplicity of it um it’s there’s an aesthetic there that I I like a lot about it so anyway um this month we’re going to continue our theme of Chinese medicine and mental health um and for us that means talking about the Shen and how that word integrates through Chinese medicine the concept of the Mind Spirit Soul Etc into the holistic model of our human design.

What is Shen…a translation

So we’re going to start by just asking the very basic question what is Shen. It’s a good question and I think it’s important because for me, I find that word Shen to be a lot like the word Qi to a non-Chinese speaker like myself. There’s clearly no one-to-one translation and yet it’s the complexity of the language and translation that really give it the fluidity that it needs to occupy the multiple layers of purpose that it has within the body. And this is where that Elegance lives the The Poetry if you will of Medicine. I’m going to start off by saying that I’ve relied really heavily on the translations of Elizabeth Rochat because I have found (and you can’t blame my husband for this) that when attempting to explain different cultural concepts it really helps to come back to a really good translation of the language and the nuance of the specific words we use to describe that language. Elizabeth is one of the foremost translators that we have and she’s more than a translator that doesn’t do her justice but she’s just one of the great minds we have of somebody who’s coming in and really integrating for us the way we translate language and the way we experience the language of Chinese medicine. So she does a great job of sort of digging into these words and her best translation of this Shen is sort of Mind spirit. I’ll do my best to explain how that works by starting with a spirit part this character that you see here by Shen. I put it there next to the word this character it can literally be translated to Spirits in Chinese medicine and we say that these Spirits are pure right and Celestial or Heavenly and that they dwell in the heart um and I like to think of this as the bit of spiritual stuff that we’ve borrowed to imbue our own consciousness

um and this is a quote from her book The Eight extraordinary meridians uh when we are dealing with a Spirits Shen we are dealing with our most precious intermediary with heaven but the special connection between heaven and each individual is that the Shen come from heaven and dwell in the heart as long as the heart is tranquil and still the spirits are always moving around and if they come and stay they change our state of mind because mind and heart here we see the character Shin are the same character in Chinese medicine um and I just love that quote because it kind of sets you up a little bit for the the biology if you will of how we look at this in Chinese medicine um and it it really gives you a sense that again I think as I mentioned in my lecture last month we were talking about how the vestiges of spiritual medicine really still exist in the language that we use to talk about Chinese medicine today and um and we’re going to take a little bit of a look at how you know we can use a language and it serves its purpose but we also have the biology to back that up but um I think it’s really important to begin here like we begin at the beginning and the idea that that there is that spiritual thing because I think there’s some stuff about the intangible right that we have to take into account and this is another reason why I think the the word for Shen and the word for Chi when we’re looking at those they’re difficult to describe there is a bit of intangibility within these words um but much in the same way that we talk about um our mental health um or that thing that makes us us right that you know the the all of the little bits of us that sort of that spark of of life right so I just I think that it’s important that we kind of start or we begin and I like this idea that they’re the most precious intermediary with Heaven whether you believe in heaven or not I tend to use that as a very basic term it’s it’s language it’s not truth so um anyway it kind of brings me to the other piece of the Shen so we talked about mind spirit so that is the spiritual aspect of what that word Shen means in Chinese according to Chinese medicine but we also say that it’s the mind because some of these Spirits are stored in the brain um and uh they they take the clear Essence from the organs and they turn it into Enlightenment and I think this is one of the reasons why I talk so much to my patients who suffer from anxiety about how and why intellectual Pursuits have a cost um and the cost takes the form of the essence that we make using our blood and so when we’re doing brain heavy work it’s particularly important to nourish our blood which um if you can see here this is how we I tend to treat you know blood deficiency in my clinic you know with rest and beets and eggs and protein and fruit and B vitamins and things that are sweet and salty and these are all foods that really nourish the blood but this is also how you look to treat things like anemia in Western medicine and so again we’re kind of coming back to this there is there’s a brain connection there’s a spiritual connection there’s also a Body Connection so um Shen work is brain work it takes Essence um in the brain with the Shen to do things and so um that’s one of the ways that we sort of prioritize our health when we’re doing stuff that requires intellectual Pursuit um and finally there’s a really strong correlation between a Shen and Consciousness in a way that sort of all of these things Spirit Essence Enlightenment they sort of coalesce into what we would call the orifices which in Chinese medicine sort of generally refer to the sensory organs most prominently the eyes and thus there’s a connection to how we experience our world from a receptive point of view which is also echoed in the association with the Shen of the heart and the Emperor who can only lead from a place of receiving really all of the information right about the status of his Empire and any potential incoming threats so you’ll see this metaphor play out in our in our our classical works and things like that but we will refer to the heart as the emperor and we’re going to get into that other shed in a minute but this idea that the emperor is there sitting on high gathering information with which he can use to rule and govern the kingdom and so this is an important piece of how we look at the Shen it’s the it’s all kind of wrapped up in that language but but these are all the nuances to what that word really means to us from my perspective of of what it means in Chinese medicine so um yes the Shen is there and it’s connected to the eyes and to our sensory input and it’s connected to the brain and how we think and within our intellect and it’s connected to the spirit that peace of ourselves that is sort of not of this world but connects us with you know the energies of life and so um I wanted to make sure we could hit all of those pieces uh in this first part here and next um I hate to break it to you now that we’ve had a little bit of introduction into what the Shen is uh hey guess what kids there’s more than one [Laughter] there are in fact uh six if you count them and I’ve only put five here because I’m they I just to begin that conversation we really have to go back to the five elements um and then there are six but if you consider the six really comes if you consider their unification right as an independent concept of like the whooshing right as we would say but um I have to bring you back to the five elements and there’s a lecture about the five elements here um on YouTube if you’d like to go and look at it I’ve got a whole series of TCM foundations where I go into a lot of these sort of strange Concepts um within Chinese medicine or they might seem strange to you know a non-chinese person like myself um and so I I talk a little bit about that but some of these fundamental concepts we’re going to touch back to again and again like the yin and the Yong um and the five elements and I even go into some of the substances the ways we break down and categorize the body so uh I love the five elements I’ll come back to them again again because I just think they’re beautiful um but I digress um the five Shen when coming together make the sixth solution are associated here with um the five elements and they are sort of as follows we’ve got the Shen uh of the heart the emperor of the heart right and this is heavily associated with awareness um and um and so again you see here over the five elements diagram the heart is the fire organ It’s associated with fire but we find that that fusion and communication play an important role here this is that Emperor sitting in the tower gathering information being able to make decisions more importantly being able to communicate and give orders to the rest of the body which is huge so they are aware and communicating and that’s the Shen when we say Shen like it’s I know it’s confusing but like there is the shin with a capital S and and I put a capital in there I’m sorry you guys but and then there’s the Shen so um but anyway and then there’s also um the jur which is down here in the water element and that’s the kidneys the will to act um and this is very much associated with intention and effort right the word that comes to mind too is Imagination this idea that like you know through this water element like all the things are possible with the right amount of effort and direction right um the Yi is the intellect of the spleen and that’s associated with the Earth element and that um that is very heavily associated with discernment so we find that like overthinking is the pathology of the spleen you know a mind that can’t stop making uh decisions and judgments and you know Discerning all of the details like analyzing every little bit that’s a that’s a Yi thing um but they also like really excels at things like um negotiation and moderation so because the Yi can sort of go through and discern there’s a sense of justice and a sense of balance um that exists within that organ that doesn’t exist other places um and then we have the PO which is associated with the metal element and that is the corporeal soul of the lungs um and again we talk about things like discrimination or boundaries with the pill but most importantly the thing that sort of defines the PO in my mind is that it’s like the soul that’s attached to your body so it’s the one that’s really heavily body based when your body dies it dies with your body it doesn’t have a connection that sort of spiritual connection that the rest of them do um or maybe it does but only through its uh yin yang pear the Hun right which is the the other piece of the Sham that’s associated with the liver organ and the wood element um and the that’s called the Ethereal soul of the liver and it’s it really is that that bit of that that Soul bit that sort of like does the work during the body so it’s Tethered to the body and when the body dies it’s released from the body and so I think the Hun is like what a traditional Western Soul would be um but it’s Tethered to the PO which is the very bit of the Corporal corporeal gen that is part of the body and then the Yi and the ger are really about like what you’re doing in this life right like your action your intention your thinking thoughtful mind right and then of course you’ve got the Shen of the heart which is guiding and and leading everybody where they need to be and I I just want to say that like there’s entire branches of treatment and diagnosis models that rely heavily on the Five Element cycle um or the whooshing as it’s called in TCM and and they use them a lot to treat mental health and so I just think it’s important to note that well like classically there are the five Shen of the Wu Shing right there’s also the element correspondences that fire earth metal water Wood Cycle and that influences a lot of the way that we use the mental emotional aspects that are sort of attributed to the Shen and they call that the five-phase theory when you start looking at those Elemental correspondences and you can see in the five-phase theory obviously it’s the the legacy of those five Shen but in this model it’s their linked organs that really help us form a constitutional diagnosis but again the Shen are linked to the organs in the body we make constitutional diagnoses from physical symptoms in the body and that’s what we use and then we use we we treat by treating a physical body we treat psycho-emotional conditions um and we’re going to get to more on that later but um you know well that’s about the next session section but again these are the ways that we connect that mind-body thing because yep if you’ve heard me say it once you’ve heard me say it a thousand times Chinese medicine is holistic medicine and in Chinese medicine the spirit and the body are one

um they are you know separate but equal no not so perfect that’s horrible now they they are one they are connected um and they they rely on each other and and you can’t separate you can’t have one without the other so um the entire system of explanation for the physiological workings of the human organism happen within the context of the larger natural world and with the understanding that we are a whole and not just the sum of our parts right and the words in Chinese medicine that we use to describe those are shin Shen or roughly translated into body mind um which uh according to Wu dunshu is a single unified concept right so body mind um I joke in our household I tell this story a lot um my husband and I have co-parented for the last almost 15 years now and uh the kids sort of like you never know which parents are sort of available at what time to do what you want and so they’ll always run into the room and they’ll they’ll say mommy but they’ll find daddy so they’ll say mommy daddy or they’ll run into the room and and they’ll they’ll say daddy oh and they’ll find me and they’ll be like Mommy and so we now affectionately refer to ourselves as the mommy daddy or the daddy mommy because like we’re kind of interchangeable like we’re just we’re the parent right um but I feel when I hear this word body mind I was like oh yeah it’s like Mommy Daddy body mind um but I think it’s important to understand that like they are connected right they are the same um and I like this quote uh spirit is the righteous G spirit is the Abode of the chi it is chi which transforms spirit and so in this way you can see that the tree of the body is the yin aspect right of the yin yang pair that the chi spirit that is kind of the tree Spirit relationship right or the chishan relationship and she is definitely of this physical world right and yet it is 100 interconnected to the Shen spirit and so along this line we also begin to sort of recognize that while there’s a religious context within the framework the word itself is actually referring to um physiological expressions and therefore was sort of when used in a medical context it can accommodate both the emotional and the physical effects of disorder or illness so some of the physical symptoms of a disordered Spirit are very physical really um you know we look at that in Chinese medicine a quiet voice a dullness in the eyes a collapsed physical affect apathy slow speech patterns and inability to respond to questions these all bear a striking resemblance to the alert and oriented that we’re taught to chart when interviewing a patient with normal Consciousness according to Western medicine right so that’s I.E like do you know who you are who others are where you are when you are and what’s going on and those are the kinds of questions that we ask a person who’s come in and when we’re concerned about just how conscious they are and that’s something that you everyone who’s you know been to medical school has taught um but um we kind of take that one step further in Chinese medicine and we look at things like a quiet voice dull eyes slow speech and ability to respond and so these are physical symptoms right of that disordered Body Mind um and so I think we can talk about whether it’s Spirits I was looking into all my books today you guys are yesterday I was looking at my books and I found some really really great quotes from some of the classics where you know doctors are talking about like and the spirits tapped me on the shoulder and whispered in my ear and so I you know you can’t deny that those exist and at the same time you know within a modern context that’s just not that’s not how we practice right um there was a quote that I was reading that I didn’t put in the slides but I’ll read it to you now and I really liked it it’s from Bob flaw’s Books right so uh following this line of reasoning in contemporary professional Chinese medicine spirit is nothing other than a certain quantity of heart Chi thus the concept of spirit in Chinese medicine is not spiritual in any conventional religious sense as we have seen the term Spirit within the Chinese language as a whole is multivalent in philosophical cosmological context it does refer to the ineffable motivating force of the universe in addition the same word meant God and spirit and the nature of spirits ghosts and other non-material beings however these other usages of the word Spirit should not be conflated with this same work when used in a Chinese medical context and so it’s interesting because again the Contemporary professional practice of Chinese medicine while it’s still there in our language and it’s still there when we try to define the concepts behind why this word is what it is and why the connections are the way they are the modern practice of Chinese medicine using the Shen today is very much body based um and so you know I just wanted to you know we’ve kind of danced around the language we’ve taken ourselves to the heavens and grounded back into our bodies in much the same way that she is sort of this ephemeral impulse between synapses right and Spark is that spark and spirit is that spark of life um we still don’t have the science for but that doesn’t make it any less real or valuable as a construct on which to attempt to treat The Human Condition using the human body and these are words that help us translate healing into a holistic context and that becomes a very powerful tool for modern illness um so that’s my presentation for today and if any of you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the chat either in the comments on the YouTube video or um in the Facebook live and I’m happy to answer any questions that you have and if you’re watching it on repeat just go ahead and give me a hashtag repeat and then and I’ll give you a shout out and see what I can do about answering any questions that you have um but um it was really fun exploration going back to my books on Shen and trying to dig a little bit deeper I do find that that that tether between you know the philosophical and the physical is an interesting subject and I like to keep an open mind and I also like to be well well grounded um as it were but um but ultimately you know when we’re talking about how we treat mental health being able to use the tools we have available to us um in a way that is Meaningful both physically and emotionally is a is a really beautiful thing um next month I’m going to be talking about fertility a little bit because I’ve had a lot of people asking me questions about that and so um if you have any questions about fertility or things that are sort of burning a burning questions uh go ahead and shoot me an email let me know I’ve put up the link to my website elementalwellness.net and you can always send me a contact form there or you can email me my email is Beth elementalwellness.net and yeah it was lovely talking with you guys today I hope you enjoyed hearing a little bit more about what we what we consider the mind the spirit the Shen and Chinese medicine so um yeah I’m gonna sign off here and uh hope you have a lovely evening and I’ll see you again next month bye guys