My Chinese Friend, George

Hi ppl,
I have a Chinese friend, he has a successful clinic in Double Bay in Sydney, who I dropped in on this afternoon. He showed me around. His library is packed with Chinese language titles and the wooden shelves are bending with the weight! He also showed me his exercises for hand strengthening to help his Chinese massage technique. No joke: two round ball bearings, of what I presume were the bearings of a giant mine truck and weighing about 2 kgs each, were spun around on one palm in the same style as the small Chinese meditation balls that make a light clang when moved. Except these solid steel balls thudded against each other. Then he gave me a massage and really helped me with my knowledge of technique. My shoulders will be fine in a few days...(joke). Thanks George.

Bob Flaws Book Review

I've picked up some reading in the uni break to help me understand TCM more and I came across this book. It's by Bob Flaws and is called Before Completion. Bob Flaws is well known because he's to the point, easy to read and has a bit of experience. This is a book I would really recommend. It's just so plain and to the point about all the grey areas and weird areas of TCM that have been bothering me during my study. I would suggest it's helpful to people who have completed first year, due to all the TCM terms he uses in it. This collection of published essays all in one place is a really good, helpful and inspiring set of writings.

Chinese Medicine Acupuncture Point Location Measuring Device

Hi wonderful members of the blogosphere!

Here's a sneak peak, for first years, of a piece of radical TCM equipment that you cannot go without! Forget needles or cups for this is the "cun" measuring device. You need stretchy pants elastic, a marker and your thumb. A cun is a Chinese inch and this is used to measure distance between landmarks on the body and acupuncture points. A cun is the distance at the fattest part of the thumb knuckle, or first joint of the thumb. There you have it. Now everybody is different in size. With the flexible measuring device you adjust the distance between body landmarks to fit a measurement. For example I have a wide knuckle compared to the knuckle of a delicate Chinese Princess. The cun measurement across is still the same for us both as the distance is relative to size of the person. The elastic stretches to compensate and therefore you read the same distance between landmarks. Now even though that makes sense to me I can understand how it might come across as a little bit abstract. In practice you'll get it and that is basically how Chinese Medicine works...