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Consultation with Staff Herbalist: John Anthony Bright, Certified Clinical Herbalist
Truly Holistic Healing with Chinese Medicine
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Who Am I?
Hello and welcome! I studied at the Traditions School of Herbal Studies in St Petersburg, FL under the tutelage of AHG Registered Herbalists Robert Linde and Renee Crozier-Prince. I graduated from their 2-year Chinese Herbalism program in 2018 and have been seeing clients privately since then. I am also the staff herbalist for Best Chinese Medicines, for which I research and evaluate products already on the market, formulate new products, and consult regarding the safety and effective usage of Chinese Herbal formulas.
My mission is to work with people to help them learn how to help themselves heal. I have been on my own journey doing this for the last 7-8 years and I’d like to share what I’ve learned. My deep belief is that true healing comes from a feeling of safety and trust in the people around you; it springs out of acting from a place of integrity—that is, we are all adults and responsible for our choices, but we also don’t know everything and need help. The body knows what to do; it just needs the confidence that it is possible to heal… That’s where my work comes in, working in tandem with your body, helping you become more aware of your body as you gain confidence in your own healing.
What do we offer – the 30 minute consult
The main assumption behind offering an abbreviated, one-off consult is that you have a health issue you need to resolve and that you would like explore Chinese Medicine as a means of addressing it; and the 30 minute consult is designed to provide basic assistance in choosing a formula that might help you do this.
This will entail:
- some discussion of medical history (as it directly pertains to the health issue being considered);
- pharmaceutical drugs and/or supplements you are currently using to address the problem; and
- an overview of your current situation regarding: food choices, sleep, diet, and other spheres of activity pertaining to the chief complaint.
At the conclusion of our conversation, I would suggest a formula or two to use that may best address your issue(s). If you are interested in what a full consultation/on-going relationship might look like, please continue reading below.
Process and Practice of Chinese Medicine: Healing Patterns of Imbalance
When someone comes to see me in my private practice (physical or virtual), we start with an initial consult of 90 – 120 minutes in which we discuss the current situation you are dealing with. We talk about the main symptoms of your “chief complaint” and what you are currently doing to address it; this entails disussing current medications, supplements, and other things you might be doing to address your chief complaint. We’ll also look into your medical history, including taking a “deeper dive” into the past (e.g. surgeries, past antibiotic use, traumas—both physical and emotional, etc.).
After discussing medical history, we then have a rather broad ranging conversation about daily life, health, and habits directed toward determining your particular pattern of imbalances. This is at the heart of what the practice of Chinese Medicine is all about. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) theory assumes that a body in balance (not too hot, not too cold; not to damp, not too dry) is relatively healthy. So therefore, an unhealthy body must be out of balance in some way (which is why we see symptoms). In the full consult, we talk together about these symptoms, and through these conversations work toward a progressively more nuanced understanding of these underlying patterns.
So, in this broad-ranging conversation, for example, I might ask for specific details about sleep patterns: do you fall asleep easily but wake up at the same time almost every night?… do you have night sweats?… how many times a night do you wake up to urinate?… are your dreams vivid to the point that sleep is not restful? … We would then cover other relevant areas of life (for example: food choices and intake, stress levels, menses/gynecological concerns, stool, urination, digestion, etc. …), thinking about this information as “symptoms” and figuring out how these “symptoms” fit into/suggest specific patterns of imbalance. These patterns constitute the TCM diagnosis and are the basis on which we choose a starting formula or two.
There is one other thing that is important to note here: In the practice of Chinese Medicine there is not a separation of the body and the mind/emotions. A simple, relatable example of this is how long-term stress (e.g. a terrible boss/work situation or an on-going marital quarrel) can lead to digestive difficulties. In this case you’re not nauseous and have loose stools because of a virus but rather because of an emotional disturbance has thrown the body the out of balance. This emotional upset itself has caused “symptoms” of an illness. This is why the initial consult takes so long—because digging this emotional stuff out into the open makes the practice of Chinese Medicine much more effective… Other emotional factors worth mentioning in a consult include things like death of a loved one, major life changes, things you worry about, things that make you angry, people and situations that trigger you, etc…
The point here is that you are encouraged to talk about things that may not seem to have anything to do with the physical symptoms as they are being expressed in your body (that you have come here to resolve). It’s all relevant, and sorting through & thinking about this information guides our conversation toward things that are relevant to the practice of TCM and the determination of your particular pattern of imbalances.
Ongoing Relationship
After the initial, in-depth consult, the client and I maintain a relationship that depends on the client’s needs. Often what happens is that after taking herbs for a while, the initial pattern of imbalances will evolve into something else, necessitating a change in formulas… or occasionally certain herbs just don’t go well with an individual (too hard to digest, too heating, etc…) and so again the formula would need some tweaking… and occasionally the formulas don’t seem to be having the expected effect. If that happens we would go back into the “history and habits” conversations and figure out why. If the herbs don’t work exactly as expected, we would then look together for the causes.
The eventual goal is to become progressively more and more attuned to how your system works so you can learn how to take care of yourself intuitively, both through herbs and other lifestyle changes to help you learn how to maintain and re-establish balance. My main goal is to empower you to be your own healer, and I will be there with you every step of the way.
