Author’s Note

An oral tradition is an evolving body of knowledge and wisdom. It is influenced by the quality of consciousness of the speaker and the listener, and by the ethos of the time.

The risk of putting an oral tradition to the page is that it will be pointed to as “fact,” that it will stop evolving and potentially become only a collection of dry, lifeless concepts. My teacher Dr. Jeffrey C. Yuen, eighty-eighth-generation lineage holder of the Jade Purity school of Daoism, frequently reminds his students that he reserves “the right to contradict” himself, changing the information he presents depending on the context of the lecture.

This work is a distillation of knowledge that I personally received from Dr. Yuen. To claim authorship for such material would be hubris. I have, nevertheless, worked diligently to incorporate this knowledge into my own life experience. My hope is that the reading of this text will serve as a basis to inspire personal transformation and further exploration of the vast repository of ancient Chinese medical knowledge, and that the process will prove as meaningful and valuable to the reader as it has been for me.

Stone Medicine is offered as my humble and respectful “digestion” of Dr. Yuen’s teaching.