Moxa is Life
One of my favorite supervisors during my Chinese Medicine doctoral program was a Persian man named “Dr. J”. I wasn’t able to get on his shift until my last term and so I actually did a double with him on Fridays in order to get as much time as possible to learn and enjoy all that he had to offer. He was always so nice to everyone and so helpful no matter how stupid your question was that it was kind of hard to tell if Dr. J had actual respect for you as a practitioner. I started to get some hints a few weeks into the shift that he was supportive of my treatment style. He joked with me one day that someone was looking for me and he told them to just “Follow the smoke!” I use a lot of moxa, you see, and so there was always smoke coming out under the door of my treatment room.
Dr. J then started telling me that in his time working in China they used tons of moxa and those patients always saw the best results. Coming to America, however, was different. Many clinics here aren’t allowed to use moxa because it violates their lease to use smoke indoors. It is also more of a liability: moxibustion entails burning dried mugwort either over the skin, on the tip of the needle, or even directly on the skin. This means you can’t treat 5-10 patients at a time and need to stay with patients the entire treatment. And furthermore, while the smoke doesn’t cause a major health risk for patients and the benefits far outweigh those risks—unless working in a properly ventilated space—practitioners breathing in smoke all day every day will suffer health consequences in the longterm. So because of all these reasons, moxa is often left out.
I don’t leave moxa out. It is too good. I would rather treat one patient at a time and give them them most effective treatment possible with moxa than treat five patients at a time and not be able to use this incredible modality. I treat in a space on my own property next to downtown San Diego. No issues there. And, as per the advice of Dr J, I’ve installed two high-powered moxa ventilation fans that expel all the smoke as it rises to the ceiling and subsequently pull in several hundred cubic feet of fresh air per minute. This allows me to protect my own lungs, and those of my patients.
1 of 2 moxa exhaust fans up in the rafters in my treatment space.
Keep the fresh air coming!
Just real quick before I go, here’s a bit on what moxa actually does in case you were wondering. The ancient Chinese Taoist priests found through the inner & outer exploration of countless generations that mugwort (moxa), when burned, has a nearly perfect energetic match to that of a ray of sunshine. The sun is our source of life; without it we would grind to a halt and freeze. Every thing that has ever happened in the history of happenings has required the sun in order for it to even have a chance to exist in the first place. Without the sun, nothing moves, nothing lives. So moxa is, in essence, life. When we use moxa during your treatments you can think of life coming in. A gift from nature.
It’s New Year’s Eve here in San Diego. Cheers to many more years of effective moxa treatments on all of you. Time to get some ham hock & black eyed peas with collard greens cooking for tonight and some pork & sauerkraut for tomorrow. I’ll be up bright and early tinkering around as usual.
See you at your next appointment.
—Jaime