Qi gong can look deceptively simple. From the outside it looks like stillness in motion, but what is unfolding on the inside is another matter entirely. Here in the West we are used to aggressive, outward motion while being distracted with TV shows, music or magazines at the gym. But the Chinese internal arts, while…
Taste of Taiwan: An Afternoon in a Tea Shop • Pia Giammasi • EAP080
Taiwan is famous for it’s high tech computer technology, bicycles, fragrant tofu, rivers of scooters, delicious street food, and of course, tea. Today’s episode is a bit of a soundscape as we spend a portion of the afternoon drinking and discussing tea. Unlike your Western coffeeshop where you pop in for a beverage to go,…
Buff Bones: movement practices that promote healthy lively bones • Rebekah Rotstein • EAP079
A low reading on a bone density scan does not equal a Fosamax deficiency. Healthy bones are hard, living tissue, but they also have a certain amount of flexibility. They are designed to bend and absorb shock and stress, and in fact one of the ways that bones become stronger is by challenging them. We…
Reckoning The Unknown: A Conversation on Cancer • Josephine Spilka • EAP077
Cancer is a curious disease. It’s something we fight as an invader, but at its root it is a part of us. A part of us that is apart from us. We are in essence fighting against ourselves. In this conversation we meander through some perspectives that come from Chinese medicine. Along the way we…
You can’t think your way out of thinking • EAP071
You can’t think you way out of thinking. And constant ruminative thought is often at the root of a variety of issues from anxiety and depression, to issues with anger, body image, and the limits we place on ourselves. Our physiology is not disconnected from our emotional lives or endocrinological systems, and so our states…
Live Long, Live Well: The Chinese Traditions of Nourishing Life • EAP067
Chinese medicine does not just have a 2500 year history of written and practical application of treating illness and disease. It also has an equally long tradition of cultivating health and well-being. Here in the West we say “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” so like the Chinese, we have this…
How to transform your relationship with sugar • EAP066
Sugar addiction is something that usually gets laughed off with a wink and smile. And yet, as Gary Taubes says in his latest book, The Case Against Sugar, if the increasing rates of diabetes were related to a pathogen instead of a lifestyle, we would be in the midst of an all out “war” on…
Chewing the fat: what you know about fat is not just wrong, but dangerously wrong • EAP065
Growing up we used to laugh about great-grandma’s can of schmaltz that lived in the corner of the kitchen. It’s taken the turn of more than a few decades to recognize the value of her peasant wisdom. And might have something to do with her making it into her 90’s. In this episode we chew…
Causes and conditions of illness and health • EAP061
We often think of germs, genetic abnormalities, poor lifestyle choices or plain bad luck as being the cause of illness and disease. We go looking for the “smoking gun,” for the one thing that was the source of our troubles, but often the health issues we face arise out of a much more complex stew…
