Eric Grey

About Me

I mostly blog about Chinese Medicine over at http://deepesthealth.com, but I needed a brain overflow container, and this is it.

On a daily basis, I think about (mostly) the following: spirituality and religion, small business ownership, raising kids, veganism, gardening, discipleship in an age of capitalism, computers and the appropriate use of contemporary technology, where did we come from, where do we go when we die, what is the meaning of life and also sometimes basketball. But, I can't really guarantee you'll see any of that in any given period of time. It's OVERFLOW, ok?

Also: I run a natural medicine clinic, Watershed Community Wellness, with my partner Amanda Barp. I think you might be interested in what we do there. You can find us over at : http://watershedcommunitywellness.com - visit us!

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Making choices

Sometimes, you just have to make choices. Look, the thing is, I've not always been great with this. I want to believe I have time and energy enough to do everything, all the time. Seriously. Now, of course, that's not quite true. I'm not trying to be a pro baseball player, start my own soft drink company, learn to make paper, doing elaborate recreations of Civil War battles or finding new and interesting recipes for Spam. To name five. One is always focusing, refocusing, choosing, choosing again. It's inevitable.

So, I guess, I've not been good at making a few specific choices. In fact, just one. It's a choice that lots of people would probably argue with me about, because that's typically what people like to do. It's a choice about what I devote my life to doing. It's about how closely I follow my ideal about that choice, that calling. It's about not giving into anxiety that I will fall behind in other things. I took a long time to choose Chinese medicine as something to do in this brief, harried life. I fell in love with it when we first met, and I've been in love ever since. But, like all love affairs, I've gone through my phases. There was the, "oh-my-god-i'll-never-learn-this-well-enough-to-do-it" phase, the "i'm-so-sick-of-studying-i-never-want-to-read-anything-about-chinese-medicine-again" phase, various phases of disillusionment and doubt, and so on. I've gone through that with other studies and potential careers as well. Mostly, I think that when things get hard and the thrill is gone, my interest wanes. Surely I'm not alone in this.

But, I'm in it hook, line and sinker. I'm not letting go, I'm not getting out. Not now, not ever. And the thing is that to me, this is more than a profession. It's not something I do from 9-5 and then go home. It's my life. The things I learn, the things I teach, they are part of me. An integral, kalidescopic part of me. The images of the Great Physicians of old, the persons of the Great Physicians I know today, the oath I took as a graduating student at NCNM, the words of Chapter 25 in the Neijing Suwen, the principles of Yin and Yang, the five elements, the endlessly dancing patterns of nature, the plants and animals all around me and those I use in formulas - these things paint for me a very coherent picture of the person I must become. Because it's the modern world and noone is going to pay me to study 16 hours a day, because I have a family and various worldly obligations, necessarily other things will come into the picture. But there is much that can, must and will fall by the wayside. It's not popular, but it's what I want for my life.

Wheeeeee!

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Posted 11 days ago

Ridemax at Disneyland - June 2010 - a random vacation post

I'm on vacation in San Diego with my lovely partner. We've actually been on vacation more or less for the last three weeks, and boy did we need it. Amazing.

Anyway - we went to Disneyland (rented a Zipcar, drove through SoCal traffic, no problems) because I'm a huge sucker for themed amusement parks. Especially that one - long history, lots of good memories. Because we only had one day, and knew we probably wouldn't be back for a while, I wanted to maximize our use of time. The worst part of these huge parks is the huge lines, long waits, etc... I found this software online called Ridemax (http://www.ridemax.com/index.php). It's Windows only right now, but runs famously in Parallels if you're on a Mac. It took me a while to find it and I couldn't find many user reviews online, so I thought I'd put a quick one up here. Why not?

We got there on a day that was quite cloudy (blissfully - nothing worse than Disneyland lines in the blazing LA sun) and thusly a little less packed than usual. We were able to park in the LOT, not the parking garage, which is a first in my adult life. Anyway - got in line and followed our ambitious Ridemax itinerary. See - you enter in all the rides you want to ride, and it develops a plan using Fastpass (a "get through the line more quickly" card you can get periodically in the park) and avoiding the busiest times of day for the busiest rides. You then spend maximal time either ON RIDES or just hanging out people watching/eating/resting and minimal time walking around and waiting in line.

It worked. Like a charm. We had such an amazing time. I was really floored by how well it worked. It was as if we were on some kind of alternate flow from everyone else in the park and could just do what we wanted to do. It was totally awesome.

Proof positive:

Me in line for Space Mountain for the third time. Stoked. Amanda has a similar picture, but I'll spare her the public embarrassment.

Thanks for listening. :D

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Posted 14 days ago

Family

I've been making lots of family connections lately. Been integrating (I hope) into my new family - the Barps, Fears and so on. Great reunion in rural Wyoming - learned how to sharpen knives - learned more than I ever wanted to know about mosquitos - got some kayaking done... Got to see my most favorite parts of my blood family (mom, dad, little bro) in Idaho and just chill, tour around my home valley, enjoy mountain thunder storms... Just recently connected with some long "lost" parts of my blood family via Facebook/email and so far, so good. With all of this and the wedding stuff coming up, I'm really becoming quite reflective about the role of "family" in our lives.

I don't really have anything deep to say about it. Just something I'm thinking about. Maybe more later. For now, a couple of photos from the trip...

       

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Posted 22 days ago

Most health information is just totally boring

As I work on the Deepest Health redesign, but also my (our) clinic I am occasionally paralyzed.  This mostly has to do with one unavoidable fact.  The vast, vast, vast majority of information out there about health, wellness, Chinese medicine and the rest, regardless of intended audience, is unbelievably boring.  One of my least favorite posts is the, "This is what Chinese medicine thinks about the Spring season"  type of post.

Please.  Please.  Just stop.

I've written a couple of posts like that and I tried to make it less boring by making it more scholarly.  My thought was that the "boring" came from it being "shallow."  The shallowness comes from the fact that most people in Chinese medicine learn that little Neijing chart of correspondences, but learn them like they're learning the dials on their dashboard from their car's owner's manual.  Mechanistic, simplistic, boring.  Boring, boring, boring.  Unfortunately, I don't think that "more scholarly" is what MOST people want or need.

So, my job right now is figuring out how to write what I want/need to write and not fall into the boring trap.  But, I must also avoid the "being more scholarly will make this less boring" trap.  At the same time, I must be wary of the "desecrating the medicine by making Chinese medicine like totally web 2.0" trap.  So many traps, so few escape routes.  Good thing I'm in a couple of writing classes right now.  Phew.  I'm also surrounded by some pretty not-boring writers.  They all have different ways of approaching things, but it's all incredibly helpful.

Yeah, thinking as I'm writing, I'm struck by the thought that the main tension is this...

I want to have some depth and some scholarly rigor (cause, you know, I'm LIKE that), also be accessible (cause, you know, not everybody is a Chinese medicine DORK) and also be deeply engaging (cause, you know, that's what makes people want to actually DO something).  Check out THAT sentence.  

It's tough to balance those factors.  I'm not sure I'm often very successful.  But, I plan to keep trying.  Thoughts?

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Posted 2 months ago

Michael Jackson singularity + Chinese medicine

Gaze upon this insane mindmap/ Venn diagram I made while explaining the value of TCM "clinical experience" to a small group of students.

Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone

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Posted 2 months ago

Behold the MORA vial holder

I use a MORA electrodermal machine in my practice and I love it. Anyway, I traded a guy acupuncture and massage to design and handcraft a portable yet sturdy holder for all my little tester vials. It's beautiful and perfect and yes, I might just marry it.

Sent from my iPhone

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Posted 2 months ago

On using the time that's given us

Something happened in the last... um, maybe 3 weeks that has really just blown the lid off of absolutely everything.  I'm sure it has something to do with the treatment I'm getting (herbs, homeopathy, nutritional supplements) and something to do with my ongoing meditation practice (and recent meeting with my meditation teacher) and something to do with the Metal Tiger year.  Maybe also something to do with my life settling into its newest manifestation.  Where "settling" is defined by two or three day long plateaus punctuated by many week long hurricanes.  Unsteady, but steady in that.

Anyway, Jason Lay - my friend and soon to be student (weird) just hit on something in a recent blog post that totally rides the wave of my energy over these weeks.  I don't think I could really explain it, even though I want to do so very badly.  It feels something like leaving the shore, at night, on a ship you don't know, with an uncertain destination and only a dog for a companion.  With no map.

Exhilirating!  And terrifying.  (PS:  I somehow now want to do exactly that... anyone have a ship?)

In no particular order, here are some things that have to do with all of that:

  1. New and slowly developing book project re: Chinese materia medica PLUS+
  2. New and slowly developing book project re: a rigorous phenomenological approach to understanding and practicing Chinese medicine as science
  3. The not very new but now rapidly accelerating plan to utterly revolutionize the structure and aim of my website Deepest Health
  4. The ongoing development of my clinical practice
  5. The growth of my clinic, Watershed Community Wellness
  6. Various personal life developments involving relationships, lifestyle design and so on

The dark, lonely, scary part is the degree to which I'm being asked to really make use of the time given me.  I spend a lot of time not saying things, not "putting myself out there," for fear that I will be criticized.  The funny thing about that is I'm not even that worried about the criticism that actually comes out in the open.  I worry about the criticism I never hear.  I don't fear confrontation, I fear silent condemnation.  I don't fear closed doors, I fear the doors that I never noticed should be open in the first place.  I don't fear the open warfare of philosophical objection, I fear the subtle disharmony of uneasy interaction.  As poetic as that all is (wow, I'm amazing) it really is just stupid.  Neither end of the spectrum is worthy of fear, because in less than a century it will all be forgotten anyway.

That doesn't make me despair, it invigorates me.  There's no more emboldening future than one that is a blank canvas, erased regularly.  Why not go for it?

I've been learning Chinese medicine for five years.  Given my sickening work ethic and insatiable appetite for near-constant information consumption, I've packed about 10 "regular" years into that 5.  I still don't think it's enough to say anything about Chinese medicine.  But let's consider. The ten years before that, with no less insatiable an appetite, I've been a gluttonous student of human society, human interaction, biology, epistemology and the art of thinking.  

I've been tutored by laboratory scientists, Harvard educated biochemists, prize winning environmental ethicists, free thinking religious mavericks, artists, soldiers and my daughter.  I've travelled, played in bands, reinvented myself ceaselessly, spoken publicly, fallen into obscurity and generally done everything I can to learn everything I'm able about this conundrum of living in the world.  

But I've been timid.  I've been reluctant to put all of this developed skill and insight to the test.  I've been afraid to expose myself, either to praise or to criticism.  I've insulated myself from entering into the kind of fertile cacophany that raw exposure, collaboration and conflict enable.  I've figured that I need to gather more information, and that there will be plenty of time for that later.

Today I'm serving myself notice that safety is no longer available.  Pulling all of this together and leaving it raw and open for examination, reflection and revision is now my sole occupation.  I must grab hold of my birthright, this peculiar amalgam of insanity and experience and see what can come forth from it.  

I'm saying goodbye to the shore.

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Posted 2 months ago

We saw shadows of the morning light, shadows of the evening sun, till the shadows and the light were one

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Posted 3 months ago

An example of my globalization-enabled musical multiple personality disorder

In the space of two minutes I got these two albums via the Internet (no elaborate record-store-to-record-store hunting required):

The Flowers of Hell - Come Hell or High Water
http://img.noiset.com/images/album/the-flowers-of-hell-come-hell-or-high-water-cd-album-art-25069.jpeg
and...

http://p.playme.com/cspv/31-01-60-20-00-MetaPreview-Cover-JPEG256x256/lei-qiang/chinese-traditional-erhu-music-1.jpg
Lei Qiang : Chinese Traditional Erhu Music

I love the future.

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Posted 3 months ago

On weird ideas about balance

I have this problem. It's a sort of constant struggle between seeking, desiring, needing some measure of purity and falling far short of achieving it. Mostly, the dance has to do with thoughts and behaviors I don't want, things that I sense take me far from the type of consciousness I'd like to develop. Let me tell you something, though, I'm afraid to talk about that. At least to anyone other than my cat, and my partner (who gets it). Why?

It's very popular right now, among the people I know, to talk about balance. In general, folks talk about this when they are doing something (or have done something) that they sense may have the potential to throw them off balance. For instance - drinking too much with friends one night. That's an easy example, and lots of them might involve food/drink/exercise, but there are more interesting instances as well. Action and inaction in intimate relationships, television watching, cleaning/not cleaning house, spending too much money on things they don't need. I do all of these things, save the TV.

What really bothers me is how all of these things are justified with a glib, "All things in moderation, especially moderation!" There's a general feeling that drinking, smoking, staying up too late, eating doughnuts, watching six hours of television a day, etc... these are all potential things to include in a balanced life. Lots of defensiveness around these issues. I understand, I understand. There's some self-righteousness that goes on among people. Lots of guilt piled on, not a lot of compassion. I get it.

But see, I'm just not sure any of those things above can be counterbalanced by anything. I know, I know. You can point to saints and mystics who have done, do, all these things. Yes, I know, what is sacred in one culture is abused and desecrated in another. What is used in ceremony here is a rank addiction there. I'm not trying to make any grand proclamations about you, so relax. Maybe to soothe your frazzled nerves, I can say "I'm just not sure any of those things above can be counterbalanced by anything in MY LIFE." Perhaps your holy times are just so holy that any blackness in the world cannot overcome them. Maybe you're just better than me at avoiding the negative consequences. Whatever.

Here's the rub: I don't know what life is like without those things, or MY things that are like what I'm talking about. My unbalanceable stuff. My sense is that it controls me more than I might like. Caffeine? That's a big one. It totally weirds me out that I simply have no experience of my life where caffeine, alcohol, etc etc etc wasn't part of the picture, somehow. Seriously? Weird. So for the sake of having a unique experience alone, it's worth stepping away. Maybe.

In my meditation practice, the thing I'm working with the most is the arising of urges. The origin of impetus. The more I sit, the more I stay awake in my daily life, the more these things - these little compulsions - these substances and social whims - bother me. I have no delusion that I will ever be free, totally. But becoming the kind of doctor I want to be, getting to the level of awareness I desire, being the person that I have always dreamed of being...

I think it's going to require running afoul of all those people who would say waking up still drunk can possibly be part of a balanced, principled life. I don't want to argue or anything, don't get me wrong. I'd just like to get on with it.

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Posted 3 months ago