From several thousand years of continuous development, Chinese medicine has developed numerous in-depth, far-reaching perspectives on promoting well-being and treating sickness. Part of what is unique about the Chinese medical tradition is that a great deal of it has been written down, unlike other Indigenous medical traditions that are exclusively oral. We can read today what Chinese acupuncturists and herbalists have been thinking about and debating for millennia. Without these texts, it’s possible that a gap in practice and teaching of a generation or two might allow large parts of the tradition to be compromised or lost entirely. We’re seeing this now with the diminishment and loss of other traditional medicine systems worldwide, including those of Indigenous peoples here in the United States. Fortunately, not only are their numerous detailed traditional Chinese medical texts still available, but many have been translated into English. As mentioned earlier, one of the oldest and most wide-reaching is the Nei Jing, or Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine. The Nei Jing is well-known in Chinese medicine as the original text presenting what are commonly called the Five Elements, transliterated as wu xing. When Chinese medical practitioners refer to wu xing, they are talking about five phases of movement that create and control everything within us and within nature.1
As with the understanding of Yin and Yang, with the Five Phases, the emphasis is on balance. Even in our era of a rapidly warming and destabilizing planet, Yang is not bad. Even with our systemic overemphasis on doing, new, and more, we still need the influence of Yang to maintain our health and the well-being of our country. Similarly, each of the Five Phases is essential to our healing and that of our culture. Going from one extreme to another is not a sign of real change or an indication of lasting progress. As with Yin and Yang, the place of health with the Five Phases occurs from harmony among the different physical, mental, and emotional aspects of our lives.
Just as the appropriateness of the term Five Elements2 is open to discussion, the entire original text associated with this tradition has, not surprisingly, been open to many different interpretations. Thousands of years of continuous application of the ideas in the Nei Jing obviously have provided ample opportunity for divergent opinions. The Five Element perspective here in the United States is often associated with the work of J. R. Worsley, who drew on several medical perspectives, both Asian and Western, to create his interpretation of the tradition.3
As we talked about in chapter 1, the Five Phases tradition includes a list of correspondences associated with each element. In addition to their physical functions, which are often understood similarly in Chinese and Western medical frameworks, the organs associated with each element are also understood to have emotional and spiritual functions as well. Western medicine, like Western culture more broadly, generally sees a world of separation. While there are emerging exceptions, it generally sees the body as separate from the mind, organs as separate from other organs, and humans as separate from one another and from nature. As discussed earlier, the older Chinese medical views assume interconnection: body, mind, and spirit are connected; organs are interdependent; we human beings are connected to the world around us. And rather than searching for some form of absolute truth—as is common in Western culture and Western medicine—Chinese medicine’s inductive reasoning is looking at patterns and tendencies in our lives and in nature.
These assumptions of interconnection and inductive thinking have helped create a very well-developed set of associations in which elements are connected to seasons, weather, emotions, colors, organs, stages of life, and deeper energetic nature. For example, Water is associated with the season of winter, the climate of cold, the emotion of fear, the color blue, the Kidney and Bladder, and the virtues of willpower and wisdom. Water is also associated with the very beginning and very end of life, and is the basis not only of Yin, which it is often used to describe, but of Yang as well.
Water by its nature is yielding; it will easily take any form. If you place water in a small cup, it will take the shape of a cup. If you spill water on the floor, it will naturally flow to the lowest spot on the ground and take the shape of the contour. In this respect, water is humble and an embodiment of Yin: it doesn’t insist on being one particular way.
At the same time, water is understood to have incredible power. The increasingly strong and numerous storms we are experiencing from the changes in the climate are an example of this. Watching the water rise below our clinic during Tropical Storm Irene clearly brought this global phenomenon home to me. During the second so-called “hundred-year flood” of that year, it became clear that if the water continued to rise, nothing could stop it. Coupled with water’s Yin flexibility and humility is its great Yang power.
This Yin and Yang of the Water phase is housed within the human body in the Kidneys. Located in the lower back, they provide support for the rest of the organs.4 A good analogy that demonstrates the Kidneys’ importance is the foundation of a house. If the foundation is strong, it’s possible for the rest of the structure to be in good shape. If it’s weak—if it is cracked or decaying—then eventually the rest of the house will be affected. The interior and exterior paint on the house might look nice, there may be new windows and a new roof, but if the foundation isn’t solid, the house itself isn’t solid. As the Kidney is the basis of the body’s Yin and Yang, its condition fundamentally affects the well-being of all the other organs. As organs are responsible for physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of who we are, the effect of the Kidney reaches from the level of the functioning of the body to the inner depths of our psyche and spirit.
Water is also associated with winter, as that season is both the beginning and end of the year. Although there have been recent dramatic exceptions, winter is the season of cold and dark. Here in the Green Mountains, plants go dormant and animals hibernate or migrate to warmer places. Water freezes, days get shorter, temperatures drop, and life in nature slows down. It’s not surprising that winter is associated with the Yin as this cold, darkness, and slowing are all examples of the quality of Yin. While the effects of winter might be less dramatic in more southern places, there is still a similar contraction from the relative decrease in temperature and light.
Fear is associated with Water, as it can be about life and death. As anyone who lives in a place with cold winters knows, even with our modern conveniences, extended subzero temperatures can reduce life to basic issues like warmth and shelter. Living in Vermont and Montana has shown me that a week or two of howling winds at twenty degrees below zero can sharpen the senses and make stoking the wood stove a top priority. The reason for this, of course, is that when the temperature is that cold for that long, our basic need for warmth takes on life-threatening urgency.
As with any emotion, fear can be experienced and expressed in balanced and imbalanced ways. Fear may seem on the surface like a negative emotion, but part of what keeps us feeding wood into the stove in the depth of winter is fear—of discomfort from the cold and even of death. If we were completely without fear of pain or of our own demise, we might not be as motivated to keep the fire going during the frigid weather. The commitment to stoking the fire is part of a basic, healthy survival instinct.
Also part of the Water element is wisdom.5 As the basis of Yin and Yang for all the other organs, the Kidney also houses what Chinese medicine calls jing. Very generally speaking, and in a physical sense, the jing is roughly analogous to the modern understanding of DNA—we get half from each biological parent, who in turn received half of their genetic makeup from each of their parents. In addition to providing the blueprints for our bodies, the jing also includes our unique mental, emotional, and spiritual tendencies.6
Our jing holds our reserves of Yin and Yang; at the same time, jing is the wisdom of knowing who we are as unique individuals.7 Just as each oak seed has the energy and the genetic plan to potentially grow into a towering tree, we each have our own internal jing. Every oak tree looks like an oak tree, but the way each one grows and thereby expresses itself in the world is unique. Similarly, we are all human, but how we express our own version of humanity will be unique based on the inherent uniqueness of our jing.
An oak tree will always be an oak tree. If an oak tree were to have an existential crisis and suddenly want to become a turnip, no amount of emotional angst would create this transformation. An oak tree is an oak tree is an oak tree. But within the confines that define an oak tree, there are countless variations. Some oak trees are short, some are tall, some are wide, some are narrow, some have darker or lighter bark, some grow in the sun and some in the shade. Based on its jing and its environmental influences, the way each oak tree appears in the world is unique. Yes, it is still an oak tree, but no, it is not the same as any other oak tree. Similarly, our jing is what makes us similar as humans as well as inherently unique. Yes, we as humans generally look the same, but no, no one else can express our unique humanity as we can.
In our overly active, overly stimulated culture, we individually and collectively often rely on our deep reserves of jing to keep going.8 When we suddenly get a second wind, for example from drinking a hot stimulant like coffee, we are likely uncoiling these concentrated reserves. Coffee in particular helps us override our sense of being tired by stimulating us. But stimulation is not strength; it’s heat. And stimulation is like running on fumes rather than running on a source of sustainable fuel; you can do it for a while, but there is inevitably a price to pay.
Chinese medicine emphasizes that our jing is best used for two things. First, it’s there to enable us to live a long and healthy life. Our jing helps us understand who we are and have the time to express our unique purpose in the world. Second, our jing is an energetic reserve that we can draw on in times of life-threatening sickness.9 Like a deep-reaching, long-term, generational savings account, jing is a store from which we can make withdrawals when we really need them to maintain our lives. Not surprisingly, Chinese medicine and internal practices such as Tai Chi and Qi Gong emphasize concentrating this energy and living a balanced life to avoid unnecessarily squandering these finite reserves.
To understand the state of our own jing, we need look no further than our current use of oil. Our burning of fossil fuels is clearly an example of our collective lack of wisdom about how to live a healthy and sustainable life. Part of the significance of burning oil is that the oil itself can be understood as the jing of the planet. Just as our jing is described as being our dark, concentrated reserve of Qi, oil is similarly both dark in color and a source of very concentrated energy. With the inductive thinking that the microcosm of our lives is reflected in the macrocosm of the planet, Chinese medicine’s understanding of jing holds real relevance not only for personal health, but for the root issues of climate change.
In looking at the development of petroleum’s use, the iconic image of the first American wells spouting oil out of the top of their wooden structures is significant on a number of levels. The first, which has been discussed by many authors, is that the discovery and use of oil and the industrial revolution are inextricably intertwined. Without exaggeration, the extraordinary growth of production and consumption that has been industrialization would not have been possible without cheap oil. The concentrated energy that oil provides has been a fundamental force that the United States and the world have used to create the infrastructure of the global economy.10
As we face peak oil, the era when fuel was literally flowing out of the ground is over.11 The oil that still exists is deeper below the surface, in much harder to reach locations, and in much harder to access forms. Once we drilled down a few hundred feet in the open plains of Oklahoma or Texas and thick, black liquid came pouring out. Now we drill miles below the surface in places like the Arctic and the deep ocean. And rather than it being in liquid form, large deposits of oil are mixed with sand and shale.
This change in the location, accessibility, and form of oil obviously has economic and ecological consequences. Drilling at greater depths and in less hospitable locations obviously increases the economic costs and has helped to create ecological catastrophes like the Gulf of Mexico spill in 2010 off the coast of Louisiana. Similarly, extracting semisolid oil out of sand and shale is both economically more expensive and ecologically more destructive. As has been discussed and written about extensively in the last few years, extracting tar sands oil costs a lot more money and has a lot greater environmental impact than accessing the oil that once easily flowed out of the ground. Enormous areas are deforested and dug up to get at oil in tar form, and it is attached to rock and dirt. The intensive extraction process and the chemicals necessary to separate it also contribute to the ecological costs.12
In addition to these more discussed economic and ecological issues, changes in the form of oil and our access to it also speak to the condition of the planet itself. If the oil of the planet is indeed analogous to our own jing, then our burning of fossil fuels has not only fundamentally destabilized the climate but also depleted the planet’s deep reserves as well. Bill McKibben notes in Eaarth that it is no coincidence that peak oil and climate destabilization are occurring simultaneously.13 From the viewpoint of Chinese medicine’s understanding of jing, we can see a clear connection between the two.
Part of what the oil itself has been providing the planet is a source of deep, cooling reserves. While part of the nature of oil is concentrated energy—concentrated Yang—another part of its nature as the planet’s jing is its concentrated cooling—concentrated Yin. From this perspective, not only will the burning of fossil fuels increase greenhouse gases, thereby warming the climate, but the loss of the oil reserve itself could have a warming effect.
It’s not coincidental that the end of easy-to-get oil is occurring as the climate warms and destabilizes. The connection between the two is the nature of the oil itself. Part of the effect of oil as planetary jing is to keep things cool and stable. Oil is a dark, heavy, concentrated fluid, all of which speaks to its Yin nature and its similarity to our own jing. The fact that it takes millions of years to create oil is also analogous to the generational nature of our personal jing. Within us, our jing is passed on generationally. Similarly, we can see oil as coming from the lives and eventual deaths of countless animals and plants whose carbon and Qi were concentrated into black, thick, viscous, energy-concentrated oil.
Of course, we are not simply removing oil from the ground; we obviously have a very specific intent—to burn the oil as fuel. When oil is burned, greenhouse gases are created that trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet. But this warming can also be understood to come from the removal of the planet’s deep reserves of coolant. The connection between jing and oil implies that climate change is a process that involves more than just heating, but an equally important decrease in coolant. As we convert oil into greenhouse gases that warm the planet, we are simultaneously losing the planetary jing’s cooling capacity. Forests, oceans, and glaciers are losing their ability to keep things stable because our burning of the planet’s jing is compromising its Yin. This is increasingly important as the processes of increasing heat and decreasing coolant can interact in increasingly dramatic ways.
As mentioned earlier, in chapter 2, senior NASA scientist James Hansen and other climatologists are describing feedback loops due to changes in climate that were once thought to be distant and unlikely possibilities that are now happening. For example, the rapid collapse of Antarctic ice shelves and the melting of Siberian permafrost are happening at much faster rates than were recently anticipated. Simultaneously, huge, unanticipated plumes of the potent greenhouse gas methane are bubbling from the ocean floor. And the oceans themselves may have reached the saturation point of the greenhouse gases they hold. As all of these very significant changes happen simultaneously, the planet is warming quickly and the weather is becoming more unstable.
In understanding oil as the planet’s jing, an important question becomes: What does it mean for us and for the planet itself when there is global jing deficiency? As is often the case when looking through the lens of Chinese medicine, the question can be answered on many levels. As already discussed, the first and more physical answer is that the climate can warm, especially as the planet’s cooling jing is converted into warming greenhouse gases. At a deeper, and perhaps more important level, our use of oil can also be seen as a loss of the collective experience and wisdom of several millions years of life on the planet.
Our personal jing is passed along to us from our parents. From this generational perspective, the jing we have is not ours alone. We’ve gotten it from our ancestors and will share it with our descendants. At the deepest level, jing is about wisdom. It’s what connects us to the countless generations who have come before us and to the generations that we hope will come after us. Our individual jing is central to our individual long-term health, and our collective planetary jing is crucial to long-term environmental sustainability.14 The planet’s jing holds the wisdom and life experience not only of the people who came before us, but of our nonhuman ancestors as well. For millions of years, countless animals and plants have lived, died, decayed, and become oil. We can see all of that living, adaptation, and evolution as contained within the oil itself. The oil is not only the concentrated energy of all of that life, but it’s also the concentrated experience and wisdom of those innumerable generations.
Part of what our global economy is doing is converting this ancient planetary jing into the production of disposable things for short-term profit. In light of the information we now have about climate change, both scientific and personal, our use of oil speaks to our individual and collective lack of wisdom.
Only from a perspective of separation could we ever assume that burning massive amounts of oil might somehow not affect our individual and collective well-being. Think about it for a moment. Oil is discovered in Texas and Oklahoma in the 1800s. We quickly learn to convert it into a fuel usable in transportation and manufacturing. More deposits are found around the world, and between then and now we burn billions and billions of barrels of it.
By the end of the nineteenth century, we did have evidence that burning oil would create gases that would warm the planet. But even more importantly, the holistic thinking of Chinese medicine makes it clear that pulling anything out of the ground on such a huge scale will affect the planet. This is particularly true when we then combust it to create energy. It’s only from a perspective that is unable to see things as interconnected that we’re unable to anticipate that drilling for oil and burning it on a massive scale will eventually change the planet.
With even a basic understanding of Yin and Yang, we could have anticipated that burning anything on such an enormous scale, year after year, would create warmth. As things overheat, Chinese medicine shows us that the coolant can evaporate, creating Yin-deficient heat. We might not have known specifically that methane gas would be released from the ocean or that the ocean would reach a saturation point. But an understanding of Yin and Yang demonstrates that as the planet warms, its coolant will eventually decrease.
That we didn’t see something like climate change coming speaks to our lack of cultural wisdom. You don’t need to be a scholar of Chinese medicine to appreciate that continuously pulling things out of the ground will affect the planet. You also don’t need to be a climatologist to recognize that burning billions of barrels of concentrated fuel will eventually warm things up.
And the use of the oil itself is directly contributing to this condition as our lack of wisdom is consuming the jing of the planet. We are not only affecting the planet’s deep reserves; we’re also depleting a source of our own personal and societal wisdom. Everything within us and around us is composed of Qi. With the understanding that microcosmic and macrocosmic events play out the same way on different scales, what is happening to the planet and its oil must be affecting us.
As with the overall state of our climate, there is good news about the condition of our jing. With a country and a culture that lack wisdom, there are well-established methods to strengthen our deep reserves. There are several Chinese herbs that can help do so. Cuscuta, which is a dense, black seed—like jing itself—is well-known in Chinese medicine for tonifying our foundational strength. Prepared Rehmannia root is heavy and black—again like our jing—and is also recognized to replenish our deep reserves. Polygonum root is a dark, blackish-colored root that is dense like Rehmannia and is also a well-known jing tonic. Together, they are three well-recognized, much-discussed herbs that have been used for generations to tonify jing.15 There is also a Chinese herbal formula that combines these three herbs with four others to fortify our deep reserves; it has the poetic English translation of Seven-Treasure Special Pill for Beautiful Whiskers, and it is also used specifically to tonify jing.16 Considering the state of the planet and how it reflects our own internal condition, it’s not surprising that we prescribe these herbs frequently at our clinic.
As we are all individuals, each with a unique balance of the Five Phases, not everyone will need jing tonics or be able to digest them. As is the nature of jing itself, jing tonics are often heavy, and we need to have enough digestive Qi to assimilate them. Individual herbs and herbal combinations are most effective when they are formulated to address a person’s individual condition at a specific time. While many of us could clearly benefit on many levels from jing tonics, we don’t all need them all the time. However, it’s clear that our country and our culture are in urgent need of generational wisdom right now.
From our usual Western perspective, it might seem like a stretch in logic to equate oil with our jing and the planet’s oil with our own health. You might be asking, How can the oil in the ground really affect my health? And what does our understanding of individual health have to do with our understanding of global sustainability? But our doubts about the links between the personal and the global, between individual health and climate sustainability, speak to some of the basic beliefs that have helped to create the climate conditions that now confront us. In particular, these doubts speak to our conscious and unconscious belief that we are separate from the world around us.
Rather than questioning our connection, Chinese medicine historically asks, When could we ever be disconnected from nature? Rather than wondering if our jing and the deep reserves of the planet are connected, Chinese medicine’s holistic view understands that we are a reflection of nature, and nature a reflection of us. For several thousand years, Chinese medicine has featured a deeply embedded understanding that the microcosm of our individual lives is a mirror of the macrocosm of the natural world.
Using the inductive thinking that characterizes Chinese medicine, we can come to recognize that part of the importance of leaving the last of the oil in the ground is that it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And, at least as importantly, it will preserve some of the collective experience and wisdom of hundreds of millions of years of life that is the jing of the planet. In this era of short-term profit, pathological materialism, and countless other signs of a culture lacking wisdom, jing is part of the antidote to the sickness of climate change.