Welcome to White Pine Institute
Home Of
Welcome to White Pine
The white pine tree is a symbol of longevity to the Algonquian tribes of the northeast. To the Anishinabe and the Potawatomi, pine trees also represent wisdom and harmony with nature. Hence we have chosen White Pine to be the name and symbolic image for our mission.
The guiding principle in the interconnected aspects of White Pine is Reciprocity. This principle is expressed, taught, and experienced through the institute, the clinic and the community.
What does reciprocity mean in the context of healing?
互 Starting with the Chinese character Hù, one can see that there is a line coming down from above and turning right. Then there is a line coming from below and turning left. This character is a picture of heaven and earth interacting harmoniously with each other. Its meaning is reciprocal, mutual, each other. Imagine a pine tree reaching up from inside the earth toward the sun. The sun is shining down to energize and promote the tree’s growth. This is the image of 互, Hù.
In farming, reciprocity goes beyond sustainability, which promotes sustaining our ability to take from the earth. Reciprocal farming means giving back as much if not more than what we take. By giving, we receive.
Reciprocal medicine recognizes that healing occurs naturally when we align ourselves so that, like the pine tree, heaven and earth can interact through us. And through the life that is given to us, we give of ourselves in a natural and unobstructed way. Illness is the forgetting of our nature as a conduit between heaven and earth.
A practitioner of medicine, working with the principles of reciprocity, experiences the magic of an incredible flow coming toward and through him or her. The interaction with a patient represents the opportunity for the practitioner to enjoy being herself. Who is this practitioner? She is by nature someone who cares, is curious, and wants to help. It is not her job to help. It is her nature. He is someone who enjoys learning and loves to consider the diagnosis and the herbs that will best match the diagnosis. By showing up, the patient is giving the practitioner so much and it comes right back to the patient. It is reciprocal.
The principles of reciprocity are the foundation of Chinese medicine. It is the deep meaning of Yin and Yang and flows throughout the classic texts, the Nei Jing and the Shang Han Lun. The White Pine Institute’s Graduate Mentorship Program reveals these principles through teaching these classic texts. This brings out the profound clinical effectiveness of Chinese medicine. We bring teachers from China and the USA to keep these traditions as living traditions. The texts and teachers are part of the flow that is coming to the practitioner. Connecting to the lineage of the medicine is like aligning with a tremendous nourishment that grows the practitioners knowledge and wisdom while offering this to the community.
