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While my clinic is not seeing active COVID-19 patients in person, one demographic we’ve been seeing and having a lot of success with have been COVID long haulers. A ‘COVID long hauler’, ‘long COVID’ or ‘chronic COVID’ is when symptoms persist beyond the active infection time, these symptoms can persist for weeks to months and risk for long term permanent effects seems to be likely. This presentation has been likened to Lyme’s Disease in that the precipitating factor is a viral infection followed by a chronic presentation of symptoms that range in severity from mild to severely disabling. Long COVID patients are typically burdened with shortness of breath, difficulty with exertion, dizziness, fatigue that can be extreme, continuation of loss of smell and taste, brain fog and much more. It’s a disheartening condition to watch, because of so many unknown factors there isn’t a lot of help from modern medicine and many patients are simply told to wait it out. Patients go from active healthy individuals to barely being able to get out of bed, this type of condition takes its toll not only on the body but particularly the mind, emotions and spirit. Our work with Long Haulers is to help encourage healing in the body, benefit the Qi - the vital life force of the patient and help patients find their center again in the midst of sometimes devastating circumstances. By helping bring peace and hope back into the healing process we have seen many patients make great strides in their healing. 
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The Branch, Root and the Soil - A Chinese Medicine Perspective on Pandemic Denial and Anger12/3/2020 We live in a world where, for all of our lives - beauty and status have been paramount: we crave it, we seek it, we spend our extra money on attaining it, seek out jobs that can provide for it, it’s ‘necessary’ for assimilating into social culture or being ‘seen’ … It. Is. So. Important. But… is it? When we first experienced our ‘lockdown’ in the Spring I was aghast at the level of denial and flat out refusal of some people to follow safety guidelines. It made no sense… Why are people so readily willing to throw common sense out the window for a haircut? Are eyelash extensions really that important? Who benefits from outright denying this pandemic actually exists? Why is there so much hostility over a tiny piece of fabric? As time has passed the deniers and rebels against protocols became louder and more polarized, likely due to the politicization of the entire process. And while doing a little self-care to pump up our self esteem and confidence is an absolutely valid process, it always seemed like something much, much deeper was at play. In Chinese medicine one of the first diagnostic principles we learn is to differentiate the root from the branch. The branch might be the presenting symptoms a patient walks in with, knee pain, insomnia, headaches, stress, anxiety, you name it - it’s the first thing that the patient complains about when you ask what they would like to work on today. The root is that underlying cause that created the environment for the current symptoms to arise in the first place. We often think of this as a constitutional imbalance, meaning that everyone has their own predisposed weaknesses and strengths, perhaps this is passed on from our parents and ancestors, maybe a result of early childhood illness or trauma or other underlying issues. The root is often extremely complex, and can sometimes be difficult to diagnose, but once we can get to it, or pointed in the right direction we often will see transformative shifts occur in the patient. The knee pain that hardly responded to direct treatment now can begin to release because we’ve found the root of the issue in a deficiency of the Water element and Kidneys due to some repressed fear. As we begin to unpack this root cause, the physical or emotional symptoms start to give way to the healing that is present. I also like to look another step deeper, to the soil, this is the deepest layer, this unseen and usually unnameable force that sets us up to create and experience certain things in our lives, perhaps another name for this is fate or predisposition. Dr David Hawkins, PhD calls it the ‘attractor pattern’, it’s the unseeable pattern that sets up the visible and nameable string of events that eventually leads to the presentation we are looking at in our office.  How’s life going for you? Do you feel like something is missing? A lack of inspiration perhaps? Feeling closed off from others or even yourself? A sense of despair or an absence of the ‘heart and soul’ of life? Maybe you’ve been having trouble sleeping? Feeling anxious? Restless? Difficulty concentrating? If this sounds a little too familiar read on… it might be a disruption or disturbance of your Shen. ‘My what?’ Let me explain… In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) the way we look at our mental, emotional and spiritual health is by looking at the Five Spirits - these spirits are aspects of our complete animation as a human on Earth from our Divine spiritual nature to our animal instincts to the connection with the collective unconscious. These spirits all serve different aspects of the self and our interaction and experience on Earth, as such we can address issues that arise in the psyche by addressing these spirits. As goes with all illness and disorder in TCM these issues with the spirits can be experienced in a range of severity and intensity and also duration - meaning we can have a mild and brief Shen disturbance that lasts a day or two or we can have a more severe and chronic presentation that lasts for months, years or a lifetime, there are many causes and reasons why which I’ll get into later on.  Embody Compassion, Neutrality and Self Awareness in Uncertain TimesPart of life is that we are always going to experience a certain amount of uncertainty, unknowns and great changes - we’re currently having an increased experience of this right now - and it brings up a lot of heightened emotions - like fear, anxiety, worry, stress, anger and grief. It’s important to remember that all of these emotions are completely normal to be experiencing, and by processing them personally we actually help the collective consciousness move through them as well.
It’s when we get stuck in these emotions - where we chew on them over and over and get stuck, where they start to take us away from being present in our lives. When we aren’t present we tend to experience increased amounts of these emotions but we also have difficulty making clear decisions, focusing on daily tasks and our relationships with our family, friends and ourselves tend to suffer. Paths to Presence is a brief but in depth dive into different avenues we can take to be more present in our lives - through increased self awareness, embodying compassion and having more neutrality we can experience more peace, ease and grace no matter what we’re facing. This self guided course offers guided meditations, short exercises and transformational tools to help you cultivate each aspect of presence that you can implement into your daily life and reclaim your personal power! I'm excited for you to take this next step on your journey! With Gratitude, Dr. Kim *PS: This course is donation based! Please feel free to use the discount code that reflects what you are able to afford*
What is TeleHealth?Telehealth, or remote healing sessions are simply sessions that are conducted via phone or online. You can receive healing, coaching and consultations from anywhere in the World with Dr. Kim, so you won't have to break your consistency with treatments during travel, or if you're not local to Marin County you can still work with Dr. Kim! We serve patients from all over the World! Read below for more information on specific offerings for telehealth visits.  |
AuthorDr. Kim Peirano, DACM, LAc is the Owner and Acupuncturist at Lion's Heart Wellness, the San Francisco Bay Area and Marin's #1 Cosmetic Acupuncturist and #1 Holistic Healer. Archives
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