Energetics

Energy is the capacity of a physical system to perform work, exists in several forms - In the words of Richard Feynman "It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount.". The term "energetics" is fairly new. Its a "pattern language".

Through intuition, a field of data is seen as a pattern, pattern language can be agreed upon and discussed. An important aspect of design patterns is to identify and document the key ideas that make a good system different from a poor system), and to assist in the design of future systems. The idea expressed in a pattern should be general enough to be applied in very different systems within its context, but still specific enough to give constructive guidance. The problems and solutions described in a pattern can vary in their level of abstraction and generality on the one side, and specificity on the other side. In the end this depends on the author's preferences. However, even a very abstract pattern will usually contain examples that are, by nature, absolutely concrete and specific.

Patterns can also vary in how far they are proven in the real world. The range of situations in which the problems and solutions addressed in a pattern apply is called its context. An important part in each pattern is to describe this context. Examples can further illustrate how the pattern applies to very different situation.

Herbal energetics have been used for thousands of years.

At most basic level it describes the qualities of heat and moisture. Excess or deficiency.

Today we need to merge our tradition with our science. But first we need to recover our lost Western tradition. David Winston; constituents to tastes to energetics. Mathew Wood; holistic herbalism unites tradition, pharmacology and energetics.

7Song points out that there are many different protocols that help people recover from pathologies and serve as a navigation system through healthcare. He recommends that the practitioner thoroughly learn one system rather than try to combine them all. Others have managed to integrate several systems into a viable navigation tool. Differences exist between Western, Chinese, Ayurvedic energetic systems which can be confusing. There are also differences within Western energetics as it unfolds through time,”dry” meant something different to the Ancient Greeks than it does to us today for example. All of these systems are valid when understood in context and metaphor. Example: “heat” is valid in the context of taking a temperature, also valid when it doesn’t refer so much to raised body temperature but to exaggerated response in tissue “excitation”. So learn one system and then gradually expand it by listening to practitioners using a different system…the different context can integrate into your own. Once we recover our own tradition we can better compare it with other traditions and with modern pharmacology.

Develop your organoleptic abilities as an aid to using energetics; using the senses to understand energetics; taste, touch, listening, seeing.

All traditional systems of herbal medicine in the Old World relied heavily on a system of energetics (yin/yang, the five elements, the four elements, the four qualities, the three doshas, etc.) to describe pathological and curative phenomenon, and a system of tastes to analyze plant properties. Usually these are placed together, so that in Chinese medicine there are five elements with five corresponding tastes (wood/sour, bitter/fire, sweet/earth, pungent/metal, salty/water). In Ayurveda there are six tastes: sweet (earth, water), sour (earth, fire), salty (water, fire), pungent (fire, air), bitter (ether), astringent (earth, air).

Not all energetic systems are in agreement. In Chinese medicine sour is relaxing (wood), in Ayurveda it is warming, while in Greek medicine it is cooling. In Chinese medicine bitter is warming, while in Ayurveda, Greek, and modern European phytotherapy it is cooling. Pharmacologically, bitterness is complex since we have, on the one hand, the bitter cyanogens that interfere with the Kreb’s cycle and are therefore cooling, the bitter iridoids that are ‘alterative,’ and the bitter anthroquinones that are purgative. The effects of tastes are fairly complex; reducing them to elemental rulerships and a specific number (four, five, six) is artificial.

Tastes do reflect pharmacological properties. The cooling flavonoids are usually associated with sour acids in fruits, sweet remedies are usually building because high in carbs, the pungent remedies are almost all warming. All pungent remedies may be considered stimulating. In Greek medicine pungence is termed ‘sharp.’ The Greeks thoughts that fire particles were sharp edged, while particles of air, water, or earth were not.

Many traditions do not differentiate between spicy, pungent, and acrid. Acridity, though burning and irritating, is very different from pungence or spicyness, which is warming, burning, and stimulating. Acridity may be defined as the taste of bile in the back of the throat (think of lobelia or raw jack in the pulpit). Acridity was probably associated with anti-malarial and anti-bilious remedies in the nineteenth century and these balance the sympathetic/parasympathetic (digestion, chills, fever), so they are in fact relaxants and antispasmodics (lobelia, catnip, valerian, hops, crampbark).

Tastes are a bridge or intermediary between energetics and pharmacology because they relate to hot, cold, damp, dry, wind, etc., on the one hand, and secondary metabolites on the other. For instance, mucopolysaccarides or mucilages are moist, soothing, and cooling. Flavonoids are often known as ‘anti-oxidants,’ the fancy scientific word for opposing burning or weathering. Thus, flavonoids are cooling, and indeed, flavonoids usually occur in fruits, which we eat in summer to cool off. Most aromatics are stimulating (essential oils in rosemary, thyme, sage, etc. are all warming and stimulating), but a few are cooling. The volatile oil limonene, found in lemons and melissa, is cooling. Some flavors do not easily fall into simple energetic or pharmacological categories. Despite exceptions, there are general relationships between energetics, tastes, and pharmacology .

In herbalism we do not use the ‘active ingredient’ but the combination presented by nature. We use a ‘slurry’ of constituents which, altogether, nudge the organism in a certain direction. The power of the herb is not based on the sheer force of the radical active ingredient, as in biomedicine, but on the cumulative power of a bunch of little ‘nudges’ all operating in a certain direction, i.e., on a physiological mechanism in the organism which is itself the product of a ‘slurry’ of biochemical processes and changes.

Biomedicists often consider the contents of herbs, as found in nature, to be either laughably miniscule and irrelevant, or somehow unknown and potentially toxic. Herbs, however, do have great internal logic. This logic was mapped out by the ancients, using energetics and tastes, and by the moderns, using pharmacology, and the two correlate with each other nicely