Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Why not try Tao?
Trying to conceive? Why not try Tao?
The ancient Chinese method of using diet to help women get pregnant
getCSS("17452499")
Books on
Smart new titles for your kids
James Patterson asks: What's on your bookshelf?
Discuss: Are you a Harry Potter fan?
An interview with author Sonia Manzano
Get your kids reading, join Max's flock
getCSS("3315076")
Special series: “I Want a Baby”
In a special series, TODAY talks to expectant parents and experts about infertility and solutions.
Video: Viewers' questions answered
Excerpt: 'Gay Dads'
Video: Parents discuss adopting
6 common adoption myths dispelled
Video: Why women miscarry
allDAY: Painful loss of a miscarriage
Video: Women who face infertility
How to up your pregnancy odds
RESOLVE: National infertility resource
Miscarriages: Facts and treatments
Discuss: Can't get pregnant?
getCSS("3314183")
INTERACTIVE
TODAY anchors pick their favorite kids' books Meredith, Al, Ann, Matt and Natalie fondly recall their childhood favorites.
TODAY
updated 6:30 p.m. ET May 3, 2008
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Getting pregnant is one of those things that most women try to avoid for years. But when a woman finally decides it is time, her chances of getting pregnant can be hindered by her fertility. Dr. Daoshing Ni, a specialist in reproductive medicine, and Dana Herko, a patient, have written a how-to guide of Chinese medicine to help woman having trouble conceiving. Here's an excerpt: Finding Your FootingAfter thousands and thousands of years in exile, the Monkey King finally gets a break. Buddha summons him and tells him to get ready, for a long journey awaits him. A monk has been appointed to bring back the sacred scriptures. He will have to travel all the way from China to India and then back again, with the Monkey King as his escort.
Fortunately, the journey you are about to embark on is not quite as long, at least not when measured in miles. But the challenges you face trying to get pregnant can be every bit as daunting. You need to prepare yourself for whatever lies ahead. How can you do this when you might not even know what you are facing? You do it by making sure you are physically, emotionally, and spiritually strong before taking even a single step.In traditional Chinese medicine, the mind, the body, and the spirit are one. You do not live your life in a vacuum. Nor do you stand still — you are in motion every second, every minute, every day of your life. Imagine a clock with the pendulum swinging. But while the pendulum is moving, so is the clock, trying to find balance in motion. Now think of your body. When you are stressed, overworked, emotional ... guess what happens?
You leave yourself vulnerable to outside forces like viruses, germs, and bacteria. Sickness, by definition, is the imbalance of yin and yang, or interopposing and intersupporting forces.
Story continues below ↓
advertisement
dap('&PG=NBC9CO&AP=1089','300','250');
You are a complete and complex individual with a unique constitution. What establishes being in balance for you is entirely different than balance for someone else. Our circumstances, our surroundings, our genetics all leave an imprint on us. In traditional Chinese medicine, there are no absolutes. Everything is relative. There’s no such thing as perfect health. But there is better health. And better health means better fertility. You hold the power to attain it.
You could say that my family has been at this for a long time. I come from almost seventy-six generations of Taoists. Taoism is a lineage, in the same way Judaism and many other spiritual traditions are. But it’s less a religion than a way of life. It is based on embracing nature and understanding the world. It teaches you to care about improving yourself. Most importantly, it teaches you to always embrace nature rather than damage it. In a way, it’s not that different from what Henry David Thoreau, in Walden Pond, believed: that you must preserve nature at all costs. We believe this because the answers to life’s questions lie in nature.In order to try and understand the philosophical underpinnings of balance — of health and sickness, of life and death — Taoists focus on.
“Don’t give up until you’ve opened yourself up to alternatives. This is something that is holistic. Your spirit is so crushed by the process of fertility, and Dao raises up your spirit in a human way. He thinks of you as a person and not just a baby machine. This is part of what he offers — a way of treating the whole person. He gives you a realistic picture in a very ancient but modern way. He allowed me to go on with my life when I was in my deepest despair.”
A child growing up as I did in the Taoist tradition chooses early on which of these paths to walk. There’s astrology, as in fortune-telling, which teaches how constellations and human energies affect out lives. I Ching is another form of fortune-telling, but one based on randomness. It teaches how to handle and manage changes in our lives. Another path is feng shui, the study of how the placement of objects affects our energy and how our physical environment can be conducive to our life force. There’s martial arts, which teaches how to find inspiration and knowledge in the observation of animal movement in nature — a knowledge that can then be used to strengthen our body and increase our understanding of the relationships among people. And finally, there is healing.
I was predestined to be a healer. I started on this path when I was just a little boy. But I did not start with the study of medicine or healing, because for Taoists, the five paths are just extensions of life itself. My father and mother taught me first and above all how to be a good person. That is the Taoist way. We started with an understanding of the good and the bad in the universe, and learned how life worked. My brother — who is also a healer — and I learned to sweep floors, to help out, to understand the importance of family and the social unit. We also learned the importance of cultivating yourself and taking personal responsibility. Many people hear the word responsibility and think of some heavy burden. But as a child, my responsibility was to play hard and study hard, and to appreciate the life I was given. That’s all I was asked to do.
Yet even as I went about my everyday life of playing and doing simple chores, I was learning profound lessons. Take a little thing like sweeping the floor. Looking back, I see that sweeping was so much more than cleaning. It was the way I swept the floor: the patterns I created, the way I felt when I was doing the task. Every day, there was a different energy to my sweeping. Some days, I felt impatient. Other days, I felt so good that I did a little extra work. And on those days when I felt particularly happy, I could see things I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, like the dust particles on the hardwood floor and the way they danced in the light.
By the time I was in elementary school, I started learning tai chi chuan and chi gong, two Taoist forms of meditative exercise that require.
“There are so few people who really love what they do — and he [Dr. Dao] does. You can read it on his face. But I don’t know if he understands how much he empowers the women he sees.” contemplative thinking and silence. At the time, I didn’t understand this silence and why the people were standing like statues. But slowly I could see the value of this kind of quiet time and the lessons you could learn from it. It taught me how to be calm. That was the real beginning of becoming a healer. I was learning the Taoist ways that would prepare me to go on and learn the practice of Chinese medicine.
So what is Taoism? As I’ve mentioned, it’s the philosophy that you are one hundred percent responsible for your behavior. You are your own behavior; your actions are a reflection of your energy. Above all, Taoism means looking beyond your immediate world. If, for example, safety and prosperity are provided to me, I, in turn, give back more to the world to make it a more peaceful place. As a healer, one of the ways I can do that is to help people actualize their life and their potential. If your goal is motherhood, my role is to serve as your guide along the way.
I am thankful for what I have. I must embrace whatever life dishes out. And I must do so without prejudice, without blame, and without frustration. That is what the Taoist tradition teaches me. Life is a process, a journey of many different destinations. So come, let us begin.
The Importance of Good Nutrition Have you ever seen a beautiful flower growing in concrete? Most likely, you have not. A flower needs more than the sun and water to grow. It needs nourishment. It cannot thrive in rocks and dry dirt. If it doesn’t get the right mix of soil and nutrients, it will wither and eventually die.
Like that flower, you need good nutrition in order to maintain good health and to ensure your fertility. The best way to good nutrition is through food. Obviously, there are situations where you might use supplements and vitamins. But if you are relying on them as your main focus, you are wrong. Eating healthy foods should be your primary concern. Your body absorbs nutrients the best from whole foods. Taoists have a particular perspective when it comes to food. In the United States, we tend to talk about food in terms of the form it takes. Is it fast food? Organic? Natural? Processed? Prepared? But food is like everything else in the Taoist tradition: it’s all about harmony and balance — yin and yang.
getCSS("3088867")
Video
'The Tao of Fertility'May 2: Dr. Daoshing Ni and Dana Herko, authors of the new book "The Tao of Fertility," explain how traditional Chinese ways of preparing for pregnancy can complement Western medicine.
Today Show HealthGrowing up, I ate the food my mother prepared. It wasn’t until I began to learn Taoist and traditional Chinese medicine that I realized her cooking and food preparation have always been based on the yin-and-yang principle, which takes into consideration both the energetic qualities and the taste of food.
All foods — and for that matter, herbs — have five tastes. The sweet taste is nourishing and calming. If you have ever suffered from PMS and craved sweets, then you know what I am talking about.
Sweet foods can calm and quiet down the nervous system when inner stress strikes. The sour taste is astringent and consolidating. Berries, oranges, and vinegars are a few examples of sour foods. They are very good at holding up the body, especially when it is fatigued. The third taste, pungent, is dispersing and moving. Spicy foods fall into this group. They are good at warming the body by moving our circulation. The fourth taste is bitter. The body craves bitter foods like coffee or tea when it needs an energy or mood pickup, or when it needs to feel cleansed. And finally, there is the salty taste. Think of meat tenderizers — they soften the meat. So salt relaxes and softens the body.
In addition, all foods carry one of four qualities. Foods are hot (to invigorate and heat up the body), warm (to gently warm the body), cool (to gently cool the body), or cold (to vigorously cleanse the body). It’s all a matter of common sense, really. When you are chilled in the winter, you need foods like hot soup, beef, or lamb. If, however, you are running a fever and need to be cooled down, pears, watermelon, and water can help.The Chinese believe that the end result of observing these food qualities and then combining them in a harmonious manner is good health and a sense of well-being. There’s nothing mysterious or complicated about it. It’s another way of saying that you should be mindful of what you eat, and of when and why you are eating it. As we shall see, these things are greatly important when you are eating to improve your fertility.
Excerpted from "The Tao of Fertility," by Dr. Daoshing Ni and Dana Herko. Copyright 2008. Reprinted with permission from HarperCollins. All rights reserved.
http://world-taiji.blogspot.com
The ancient Chinese method of using diet to help women get pregnant
getCSS("17452499")
Books on
Smart new titles for your kids
James Patterson asks: What's on your bookshelf?
Discuss: Are you a Harry Potter fan?
An interview with author Sonia Manzano
Get your kids reading, join Max's flock
getCSS("3315076")
Special series: “I Want a Baby”
In a special series, TODAY talks to expectant parents and experts about infertility and solutions.
Video: Viewers' questions answered
Excerpt: 'Gay Dads'
Video: Parents discuss adopting
6 common adoption myths dispelled
Video: Why women miscarry
allDAY: Painful loss of a miscarriage
Video: Women who face infertility
How to up your pregnancy odds
RESOLVE: National infertility resource
Miscarriages: Facts and treatments
Discuss: Can't get pregnant?
getCSS("3314183")
INTERACTIVE
TODAY anchors pick their favorite kids' books Meredith, Al, Ann, Matt and Natalie fondly recall their childhood favorites.
TODAY
updated 6:30 p.m. ET May 3, 2008
function UpdateTimeStamp(pdt) {
var n = document.getElementById("udtD");
if(pdt != '' && n && window.DateTime) {
var dt = new DateTime();
pdt = dt.T2D(pdt);
if(dt.GetTZ(pdt)) {n.innerHTML = dt.D2S(pdt,((''.toLowerCase()=='false')?false:true));}
}
}
UpdateTimeStamp('633454506131000000');
Getting pregnant is one of those things that most women try to avoid for years. But when a woman finally decides it is time, her chances of getting pregnant can be hindered by her fertility. Dr. Daoshing Ni, a specialist in reproductive medicine, and Dana Herko, a patient, have written a how-to guide of Chinese medicine to help woman having trouble conceiving. Here's an excerpt: Finding Your FootingAfter thousands and thousands of years in exile, the Monkey King finally gets a break. Buddha summons him and tells him to get ready, for a long journey awaits him. A monk has been appointed to bring back the sacred scriptures. He will have to travel all the way from China to India and then back again, with the Monkey King as his escort.
Fortunately, the journey you are about to embark on is not quite as long, at least not when measured in miles. But the challenges you face trying to get pregnant can be every bit as daunting. You need to prepare yourself for whatever lies ahead. How can you do this when you might not even know what you are facing? You do it by making sure you are physically, emotionally, and spiritually strong before taking even a single step.In traditional Chinese medicine, the mind, the body, and the spirit are one. You do not live your life in a vacuum. Nor do you stand still — you are in motion every second, every minute, every day of your life. Imagine a clock with the pendulum swinging. But while the pendulum is moving, so is the clock, trying to find balance in motion. Now think of your body. When you are stressed, overworked, emotional ... guess what happens?
You leave yourself vulnerable to outside forces like viruses, germs, and bacteria. Sickness, by definition, is the imbalance of yin and yang, or interopposing and intersupporting forces.
Story continues below ↓
advertisement
dap('&PG=NBC9CO&AP=1089','300','250');
You are a complete and complex individual with a unique constitution. What establishes being in balance for you is entirely different than balance for someone else. Our circumstances, our surroundings, our genetics all leave an imprint on us. In traditional Chinese medicine, there are no absolutes. Everything is relative. There’s no such thing as perfect health. But there is better health. And better health means better fertility. You hold the power to attain it.
You could say that my family has been at this for a long time. I come from almost seventy-six generations of Taoists. Taoism is a lineage, in the same way Judaism and many other spiritual traditions are. But it’s less a religion than a way of life. It is based on embracing nature and understanding the world. It teaches you to care about improving yourself. Most importantly, it teaches you to always embrace nature rather than damage it. In a way, it’s not that different from what Henry David Thoreau, in Walden Pond, believed: that you must preserve nature at all costs. We believe this because the answers to life’s questions lie in nature.In order to try and understand the philosophical underpinnings of balance — of health and sickness, of life and death — Taoists focus on.
“Don’t give up until you’ve opened yourself up to alternatives. This is something that is holistic. Your spirit is so crushed by the process of fertility, and Dao raises up your spirit in a human way. He thinks of you as a person and not just a baby machine. This is part of what he offers — a way of treating the whole person. He gives you a realistic picture in a very ancient but modern way. He allowed me to go on with my life when I was in my deepest despair.”
A child growing up as I did in the Taoist tradition chooses early on which of these paths to walk. There’s astrology, as in fortune-telling, which teaches how constellations and human energies affect out lives. I Ching is another form of fortune-telling, but one based on randomness. It teaches how to handle and manage changes in our lives. Another path is feng shui, the study of how the placement of objects affects our energy and how our physical environment can be conducive to our life force. There’s martial arts, which teaches how to find inspiration and knowledge in the observation of animal movement in nature — a knowledge that can then be used to strengthen our body and increase our understanding of the relationships among people. And finally, there is healing.
I was predestined to be a healer. I started on this path when I was just a little boy. But I did not start with the study of medicine or healing, because for Taoists, the five paths are just extensions of life itself. My father and mother taught me first and above all how to be a good person. That is the Taoist way. We started with an understanding of the good and the bad in the universe, and learned how life worked. My brother — who is also a healer — and I learned to sweep floors, to help out, to understand the importance of family and the social unit. We also learned the importance of cultivating yourself and taking personal responsibility. Many people hear the word responsibility and think of some heavy burden. But as a child, my responsibility was to play hard and study hard, and to appreciate the life I was given. That’s all I was asked to do.
Yet even as I went about my everyday life of playing and doing simple chores, I was learning profound lessons. Take a little thing like sweeping the floor. Looking back, I see that sweeping was so much more than cleaning. It was the way I swept the floor: the patterns I created, the way I felt when I was doing the task. Every day, there was a different energy to my sweeping. Some days, I felt impatient. Other days, I felt so good that I did a little extra work. And on those days when I felt particularly happy, I could see things I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, like the dust particles on the hardwood floor and the way they danced in the light.
By the time I was in elementary school, I started learning tai chi chuan and chi gong, two Taoist forms of meditative exercise that require.
“There are so few people who really love what they do — and he [Dr. Dao] does. You can read it on his face. But I don’t know if he understands how much he empowers the women he sees.” contemplative thinking and silence. At the time, I didn’t understand this silence and why the people were standing like statues. But slowly I could see the value of this kind of quiet time and the lessons you could learn from it. It taught me how to be calm. That was the real beginning of becoming a healer. I was learning the Taoist ways that would prepare me to go on and learn the practice of Chinese medicine.
So what is Taoism? As I’ve mentioned, it’s the philosophy that you are one hundred percent responsible for your behavior. You are your own behavior; your actions are a reflection of your energy. Above all, Taoism means looking beyond your immediate world. If, for example, safety and prosperity are provided to me, I, in turn, give back more to the world to make it a more peaceful place. As a healer, one of the ways I can do that is to help people actualize their life and their potential. If your goal is motherhood, my role is to serve as your guide along the way.
I am thankful for what I have. I must embrace whatever life dishes out. And I must do so without prejudice, without blame, and without frustration. That is what the Taoist tradition teaches me. Life is a process, a journey of many different destinations. So come, let us begin.
The Importance of Good Nutrition Have you ever seen a beautiful flower growing in concrete? Most likely, you have not. A flower needs more than the sun and water to grow. It needs nourishment. It cannot thrive in rocks and dry dirt. If it doesn’t get the right mix of soil and nutrients, it will wither and eventually die.
Like that flower, you need good nutrition in order to maintain good health and to ensure your fertility. The best way to good nutrition is through food. Obviously, there are situations where you might use supplements and vitamins. But if you are relying on them as your main focus, you are wrong. Eating healthy foods should be your primary concern. Your body absorbs nutrients the best from whole foods. Taoists have a particular perspective when it comes to food. In the United States, we tend to talk about food in terms of the form it takes. Is it fast food? Organic? Natural? Processed? Prepared? But food is like everything else in the Taoist tradition: it’s all about harmony and balance — yin and yang.
getCSS("3088867")
Video
'The Tao of Fertility'May 2: Dr. Daoshing Ni and Dana Herko, authors of the new book "The Tao of Fertility," explain how traditional Chinese ways of preparing for pregnancy can complement Western medicine.
Today Show HealthGrowing up, I ate the food my mother prepared. It wasn’t until I began to learn Taoist and traditional Chinese medicine that I realized her cooking and food preparation have always been based on the yin-and-yang principle, which takes into consideration both the energetic qualities and the taste of food.
All foods — and for that matter, herbs — have five tastes. The sweet taste is nourishing and calming. If you have ever suffered from PMS and craved sweets, then you know what I am talking about.
Sweet foods can calm and quiet down the nervous system when inner stress strikes. The sour taste is astringent and consolidating. Berries, oranges, and vinegars are a few examples of sour foods. They are very good at holding up the body, especially when it is fatigued. The third taste, pungent, is dispersing and moving. Spicy foods fall into this group. They are good at warming the body by moving our circulation. The fourth taste is bitter. The body craves bitter foods like coffee or tea when it needs an energy or mood pickup, or when it needs to feel cleansed. And finally, there is the salty taste. Think of meat tenderizers — they soften the meat. So salt relaxes and softens the body.
In addition, all foods carry one of four qualities. Foods are hot (to invigorate and heat up the body), warm (to gently warm the body), cool (to gently cool the body), or cold (to vigorously cleanse the body). It’s all a matter of common sense, really. When you are chilled in the winter, you need foods like hot soup, beef, or lamb. If, however, you are running a fever and need to be cooled down, pears, watermelon, and water can help.The Chinese believe that the end result of observing these food qualities and then combining them in a harmonious manner is good health and a sense of well-being. There’s nothing mysterious or complicated about it. It’s another way of saying that you should be mindful of what you eat, and of when and why you are eating it. As we shall see, these things are greatly important when you are eating to improve your fertility.
Excerpted from "The Tao of Fertility," by Dr. Daoshing Ni and Dana Herko. Copyright 2008. Reprinted with permission from HarperCollins. All rights reserved.
http://world-taiji.blogspot.com
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