Psycho emotional illness is often at the root of most diseases. In Chinese Medicine we say this is a disease of the shen spirit which comes from the heart. It is common when people think of treating an organ in Chinese medicine to throw a common tonic formula at the problem. We often hear, “oh it’s her liver give her dandelion and milk thistle”, or “it’s her heart give her hawthorn” . With a little bit of nuance one can achieve way better results. For example most skin conditions are the result of emotions building up and causing heart fire which flushes to the skin and needs to be drained from the patient. Anxiety is usually the result of the patient’s heart being closed and the brain running overtime to try and make sense of the world without the sensory input from the heart. But what is keeping the heart closed in the first place? Lack of nourishment, phlegm blocking perception of the world? overwhelmedness? Each cause requires a different approach.

I’ll show in this workshop some basic differentiation and theory which will allow an herbalist to choose the correct approach to treating various presentations of distressed spirit using mostly Chinese herbs but also applicable to using western and local herbs.