What matters most for health and well-being is what you do every day. Paying people for various therapies can be helpful, but it has its limits, especially if they don’t understand your unique energetic constitution.
The same goes for many of the daily so-called healthy supplements and practices–without a knowledge of the energetic factors involved, they can be quite unhealthy. Admittedly, many are general enough to be safe or helpful for most people. Massage without a Chinese medical diagnosis is still usually pretty beneficial, same with many energetically neutral foods and herbs. Some light yoga stretching is hard to go wrong with.
But body work, supplements, and energetic exercises can all become quite dangerous—or quite transformative—when more powerful techniques or substances are used. It all depends on matching them to the right person—to the right pattern of symptoms—and using them with the right awareness and knowledge of the body.
In my last post, I shared an unedited conversation with DEEPSEEK AI about my own struggles with an acute illness against the background of my general health and symptom patterns. The sheer complexity of analysis and possible treatment options was displayed to illustrate how what would have probably been labeled “covid” by most people was actually a rich stage in a journey of meaning and learning. Had I just called it “covid”, even an alternative health person would have left it there and inevitably given me the wrong treatment for my particular energetics.
However, this doesn’t mean the Chinese have all the answers and the Western tradition has none. I, for one, prefer using Western herbs, or rather, I prefer being able to use what is available, to understand any food or product as an energetic or alchemical substance that could help or harm someone depending on their pattern. The problem, of course, is that there is no well-developed model of analysis outside the Chinese system. And the few books out there trying to apply TCM or general energetics to Western herbs are rudimentary.
The bigger issue is that getting a good diagnosis often requires a good Chinese medical doctor, and these are few and far between. And even when one is found, they aren’t trained to help people discover their own pattern and apply it to their lives. And in any case, without personal knowledge, how would one even know if their doctor is good?
Self-diagnosis has its dangers, but with the help of AI, even amateur diagnosis is going to be better than the status quo of consuming food and medicine without any idea of how well they match your pattern. AI has its problems, but it can be very powerful in helping people take control over their own health. A basic description of one’s tongue appearance, combined with a detailed symptom list and health history entered into DEEPSEEK, can go a long way towards achieving this goal of self-knowledge and practical energetic wisdom.
Even just a quick look at one’s tongue and looking up herbal energetics before buying a simple cold remedy can make a huge difference. For instance, one of the most common herbal cough remedies, Wild Cherry Bark is actually CONTRAINDICATED in TCM for what is usually classified as the common cold by Westerners. Even “Planetary Herbalist” Michael Tierra puts it in his company’s cough syrups. Here are a couple links to some DEEPSEEK example charts I generated for those interested, starting with :
respiratory herbs
mushrooms
And here is me figuring out the best feng shui for my bedroom, an often neglected dimension of health!