The qualities of a superior herbalist are well described in ancient texts that all of us involved in the Asian health arts love and respect. The Yellow Emperor's Classic, especially Chapter 8 of the Lingshu portion, details the attributes and character of the "superior doctor." I have based my personal practice on the teachings of this section for over 30 years, and I have found it to be a profound guiding light to me and of almost unlimited benefit to my clients.
My great Daoist Master, Grandmaster Sung Jin Park, once gave me this simple instruction: "Do not focus on being the healer – be 'the Light'." This metaphorical instruction may seem out of place in the world of the healing arts, but it is not. We all have "healer" in our blood, and that is why we are involved in the Oriental health arts. But according to the true Daoist teachings, "healing" is not as important as being the light. It is just like the old saying, "give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats forever." "Healing" is often (almost always) something of an illusion. If you "heal" a client but they go back out into the world and do the same stupid things, and do not support and protect themselves, they will soon lose their balance and become ill again, and will simply accumulate more disharmony in their lives.
The true master of the health arts serves their client by guiding them to become a healthy member of the Earth, a harmonious being who develops both health and wisdom through their thoughts and actions, on a moment-to-moment basis throughout their lifetime. Whatever "healing" we do is but a nudge in the right direction. Thus the master knows that "healing" can be important, "healing" can forestall and relieve misery, "healing" can change a person's life for a short time, but being the Light toward radiant health is the pre-eminent goal of every superior practitioner of the Oriental health arts.
I'm sure you know about Li Shizhen, the most famous herbalist in Chinese history. Nobody has ever known more about Chinese herbs than Master Li. He studied and documented thousands of herbs, formulations and protocols, and left us the great herbal classic Bencao Gangmu, a text that has benefited the lives of millions of people. Interestingly, much less well known to most modern practitioners of Oriental medicine, is the fact that Li Shizhen personally avoided medicinal herbs. He was a practicing Daoist who revered tonic herbs and a range of supportive herbs that helped open the Eight Extraordinary Channels, the framework of the Daoist health system. For his personal life, he followed the Light of the great Daoist herbal masters. The same was true of the "Herb King," Sun Simiao. Master Sun lived to be over 100 years old, relying on tonic herbs as his personal herbal protocol.
I would be the last person to suggest you abandon your knowledge and application of the principles of Chinese medicine, including the principles of Yin and Yang, the Five Elements and the principles of differential diagnosis and treatment. The Oriental medical system is indeed profound. I am suggesting that you use this great knowledge to promote radiant health rather than just chasing the eternal tail of disease.
On that note, I will provide you with some tips on how to become a Superior Herbalist. This is a lesson in attitude.
The Way of the Superior Herbalist
The calling to become a Superior Herbalist is a very high one. Superior Herbalism is a proactive, positive, highly effective way to help people establish radiant health, and to help people to grow, evolve and transform into their higher selves. Superior Herbalism encompasses the use of all three levels of herbalism – tonic ("superior"), preventive ("general") and medicinal ("inferior"). The Superior Herbalist may start off using medicinal and general herbs, but very quickly proceeds to supporting the root of the client with appropriate tonics and general herbs. I believe that using medicinal herbs for an extended period of time is a path to failure. People who spend their lives "healing" eventually die at an early age from disease, while those who promote their health and become radiantly healthy can live to be very old and wise. So I encourage you to become a Superior Herbalist, for the sake of your clients.
The amount of knowledge one must learn to be a real tonic herbalist is surely significant. One must learn the principles, traditional theories, the herbs, formulations, art of personal analysis, and how to put a person on an appropriate herbal program, as well as the ethics and responsibilities of being a Superior Herbalist. The Superior Herbalist must also understand Nature and the interaction of a human being and Nature.
However, in the big scheme of things, these things are sometimes easier to learn than the art of being "the Light," that is, being a wise and effective teacher and guide to their clients. Superior Herbalism is not a purely clinical practice. It is a way to guide clients to develop on every level, starting with their physical health, but ending with sublime transformation on all levels, including the mental and spiritual levels.
It becomes clear that to be a true Superior Herbalist, one must be patient, humble, intelligent, deep, insightful, compassionate, respectful and wise. In addition, a Superior Herbalist will be passionate about the art of tonic herbalism. Excellent communication skills are necessary because communication is the primary means by which we educate and guide those who seek our guidance. We also guide by example and by the nature of our presence.
If the client does not use the herbs, the herbs will not be of any use to them. It is imperative that the Superior Herbalist learns the art of connecting with the client – as a guide, confidant and teacher. Natural ability is a definite factor, but most of the requisite skill can be developed. Being a Superior Herbalist is an art that must be developed and honed, just as becoming a gongfu or Daoist master is cultivated over the span of years.
This is a lesson in how to interact with clients so that they develop trust in you in such a way that you can become their guide on the path to radiant health – how to become their "Light." These are lessons in how to build a relationship with the client so that you can gain essential knowledge of their real condition, life history and nature, so that you can best serve them and aid them on their path. This ability to become "the Light," to be able to successfully guide people on their path to radiant health, is what distinguishes the master, the Superior Herbalist, from other practitioners of herbalism.
Help The Client Attain Radiant Health
One of the great secrets of a long, satisfying and happy life, according to Eastern wisdom, is to focus on health instead of disease. This is the psychological basis of the "way of radiant health." Develop the attitude of radiant health and radiant health can be attained surprisingly easily. Once we have trained ourselves to focus on the attainment and maintenance of radiant health, and have acquired the tools for accomplishing our goal, the functions of the mind, body and spirit can flourish. Once we have achieved a state of radiant health, the bodily functions cannot easily fall into disharmony, disease cannot readily arise in the body and, from the perspective of our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, we are indeed beyond most dangers.
The attainment of radiant health is definitely attainable by most people who have not already severely damaged themselves. And it is also attainable by many who have severely damaged themselves through abuse and wrong living but have the will to regain true health. In life, it is sometimes necessary to hit a low point before we discover the motivation to work at attaining radiant health. Complete success takes determination, knowledge, discipline and skill.
But we cannot do it by "ourselves." We need help. Nature can provide that help. One of the ultimate sources of help from Nature lies in dietary resources. The tonic herbs, being one of the richest sources of protective and supportive bio-nutrients, are used to promote overall wellbeing, to enhance the body's energy, and to regulate bodily and psychic functioning, resulting in radiant health.
"Radiant health" is the highest level of health to which a person can attain and is defined as "health beyond danger." In other words, the person is so internally strong and adaptive that they are able to adapt to virtually all normal stresses, as well as many extreme stresses, and is thus capable of overcoming most serious dangers. My teacher, Sung Jin Park, emphasized that protection is one of the primary characteristics of health and the higher the level of protection the better. When one's protection has reached the stage of "health beyond danger," then that person has achieved radiant health.
Elements of Great Client Service
Enjoy Your Work
It All Begins With First Impressions
Greet Clients Warmly
Establish A Connection
In summary: It all begins with the way you greet people. So much is expressed in the first few seconds: Your sincerity, your love for what you do, your genuine interest in people, and your satisfaction with who you are. These expressions produce the effects of putting people at ease and making them feel welcome. They are the underlying basis of your communication with the client.
Value Clients
Remember, from a "business point of view," the client is your business. The client pays your salary, so treat them very well.
Determining People's Needs
It is our responsibility to determine what our client's needs are. People's needs aren't always logical.
Sometimes people's real needs have little to do with logic. Often their real needs are emotional. It may be that people who contact you or come in to see you are unsure of what they want. That's where you can fill a very valuable role and fulfill important human needs.
Here are some of your client's needs:
Fundamental Goal: Develop Trust
A genuine desire to understand a person's needs (or wants) will impact your client and place you ahead of most of your competition. By "connecting" with the client, you develop deep trust. A connection develops between you and the client based on your depth of eye contact, mind contact, emotional contact; and by sharing insightful comments, wisdom and stories that you understand, on an emotional and intellectual level, both the nature of the problems and the answers (within reason).
When you develop trust with people you'll find they'll accept your ideas better and will want to return to see you.
Whenever possible, if you sense that a person needs to open up, let them. Don't unconsciously cut them off. Let the person talk as long as they want (provide facial tissue if necessary). Try to be perceptive enough to help the person discover their real needs. The need many people have is to find someone they can trust to help them. Many people are lost. Many people don't know what they're looking for – they just know they need help because their health is poor or they are unhappy or unsatisfied. It is okay to set boundaries, so this does not have to be interminable.
Know this: Clients are very sensitive and know whether or not you really care about them. If you really gain a person's trust, price will prove to not be a dominant factor in what they purchase, even though the person might have previously thought so and told you it was.
How To Help Clients
Your client's needs aren't for the product or service! Rather their needs are for what the product or service will do for them - the end-result benefits it'll give them. How it will help them be happier, healthier, wiser, more lovely or handsome, more creative and more successful. Remember, it's important to understand that people don't buy products or services. They buy products or services in order to fulfill NEEDS they have, to satisfy wants or gratify desires they have.
What the product is, how it's made or how you perform your service is only of secondary importance. Clients really appreciate information because it will help them make good decisions in their quest for satisfying end-result benefits for themselves or people they love.
Information serves three purposes:
In other words:
Action Guides For Finding Out How You Can Help People
Your main objective is to focus on understanding what the client wants. Clichés such as, "May I help you?" aren't as complete as, "How may I help you?" The first question calls for a quick turn-off response ("I'm just checking this out"); the other calls for an explanation. What are they looking for from you (and from herbs)? Take them on a little journey. Help them figure out what they really want. Take them beyond their surface desires into the realm of deeper desire and need. Introduce a bigger dream.
Remember – People don't buy products or services just to have the products or services. They buy them in order to satisfy needs, fulfill wants, solve problems, or gratify desires. They want a definable end result. With education, the end result they desire may change or expand, but right from the beginning they have a target. It is your job to discover this first target or goal.
Asking open-ended questions and listening to people's responses can help you enjoy trust and rapport with them. Asking open-ended questions will not only help you understand people, but it can help you demonstrate your concern and care for their needs. Asking open-ended questions helps YOU to further understand their needs. Part of your role in satisfying clients is to first understand their needs. You do this by asking "open-ended" questions. Open-ended questions get you lots of information and encourage conversation. Open-ended questions are ones that call for explanations.
"Close-ended" questions are ones that call for "yes" or "no" responses. They don't get much information for you and they tend to stall conversation.
Not only will these questions help you get information to understand a person's needs, you'll also strengthen your rapport by showing your concern and by actively listening to the client or prospective client provide an answer. These questions provide an avenue of huge insight.
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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