A reflection on a passage from Huáng Yuányù's Heart Source of the Four Sages, centered on one image: underground springs stay warm through winter, making spring possible from within, not from external sunlight. Huáng applies this to fertility and blood physiology, arguing that life, whether seasonal or bodily, depends on preserved internal warmth rather than outside stimulation. Living on a farm makes the medicine viscerally legible.
One of my students, Polina Shneyderman, recently posted her results using Zhīzǐ Chǐ Tāng as follows:
I wanted to share a case that was helped so much by a tiny formula I learned from Sharon in her GMP. I have a patient who is a textbook Guìzhī Tāng pattern and who has done really well on different modifications of Guìzhī Tāng. She has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, where her body produces too much collagen, and as a result, she has heart palpitations, agitation, and very loose joints. Guìzhī Tāng has helped with heart palpitations, periods, cold, and body aches. One thing I could not tackle was her waking up before her alarm in the morning, feeling a sense of terror or fear of missing something important.
I learned from Sharon that there is a formula called Zhīzǐ Chǐ Tāng—zhīzǐ and dàndòuchǐ—and that it can help with this kind of terror. I added these two herbs to her formula, and she now sleeps soundly and peacefully until her alarm wakes her up. The bonus—her blood pressure is normal now, too—patients with EDS tend to have dangerously low blood pressure.
Just wanted to share a success story and thank Sharon and other White Pine mentors who help us all be better clinicians.
In the next post, I will discuss this […]