Acchs Bio and Physics

I think most of the evidence I can find for synchronicity comes from fairly simple experiences in my own life. Things like someone being on your mind seemingly randomly for a few days, and all of a sudden they get in touch with you for the first time in years. Or knowing exactly what a person is going to say before they say it - things like that. I actually really love this concept because it cements in the fact that we are all connected, and that we pick up on things and are aware of things that our rational minds are not. Intuition might be explained in this way - we are connected to everything, and therefore, there are things that we just know without being able to explain why. When we feel particularly connected to other people, it is sort of like quantum entanglement - just like the particles are in relationship with each other, we are also in relationship with this other person. And just like the particles, separating people/places/animals/etc doesn't change this connection. ...

In many ways I think it makes a lot of sense that we share 99.4% of critical DNA sites with chimps. If you think about how crazy diverse life on this planet is, and how, in the grand scheme of things, we are so similar to chimps, it makes some sense. What really makes us different? Yes, we're less hairy, walk upright most of the time, have a more developed vocabulary, and maybe are even better with tools  - but should that account for more than .6% if our genome? In many ways, it is miraculous that we as creatures work so well - that all the complex processes and mechanics that go into making us function even exist. There are so many very complicated things that happened and are happening to even allow us to breath, walk, sit, eat, see. Chimps can do all these things too, plus they do them in a way that is relatively similar to us. I think humans want to think that we're the most evolved (although, what does that even mean?) and so different from other creatures, but with this ...

My feeling on uncertainty after last class was that everything seems to be uncertain, or that the only certainty is uncertainty. But maybe it is uncertain that everything is uncertain so maybe certainty exists? Mostly I feel confused about the whole thing. Just like the Schrodiner's cat problem - it is hard to apply to every day life, making it hard to conceptualize. To us, there are certainties - pick up a hot pan, burn your hand; tease the cat too much, get scratched -- and it is hard to take away that framework with which we organize our lives. I guess this also goes hand in hand with causality. It is mind boggling to take away the relationship we understand between cause and effect. Everything we have experienced in out lives lead us to believe one thing. But maybe it is all a problem of frame of reference which we talked about in our last class - the difficulty in seeing the world through another view point. All of a sudden, we are trying to see the world though the view point...

One of the things that struck me in our discussion about evo/devo was the extreme similarity of our genomes to other species and how those genomes get differentiated in development. The fact that genes are switched on and off so that very similar genomes can create two very different species is truly amazing. You have to then wonder at what is directing these genes to switch on and off? As well as wondering what those extra "off" genes we have do for us? Just like we have so much extra brain power that we do not use, we have so much genetic material that apparently goes unused. Unlikely that it is just pure junk - it must be there for a purpose, but what is it? Another thing that interested me was how much time and dedication it takes to make one new discovery about evolution, and just how contentions these theories and discoveries can be. Through one fossil -- Lucy, they could start to extrapolate so much about our history. The idea of looking at pelvis size and then unders...

When we were talking about the big bang in class it made me think of my TCM foundations teacher talking about the moment of conception, about how the Wu Ji - the pregnant void- suddenly gets a spark of yang and separates into yin and yang, and keeps separating and dividing and growing until we become adults. The universe did the same thing on a macroscale that happens on a microscale in the human body. A spark of energy caused a growing and continual expansion. We have a finite amount of energy in our bodies. One day our Jing gets used up. It made me wonder - what is the Jing of earth? Of the universe? Will it get used up too? Our medicine connects small themes to larger ones - the body to nature that surrounds us, but how far does that go? Can we really related our bodies to the whole universe? But also, why not?

One of the things that really struck me this week in class is how important the pysco-emotional state is in the healing process. The fact that a placebo effect even exisits - that because we believe we are getting medication, we get better - means that we have yet to really understand the mind's and emotions' ability to help or hinder healing. Additionally, nocebo proves this even further, if we truly believe our body will experience negative consequences, then it will, regardless of if we are or are not exposed to what is causing the negative consequences. This leads me to believe that the mind is far more powerful than we give it credit for. Our outlook on healing might have just as much to do with if we get better as does the medicine and modalities we employ in this process. Perhaps we need to rethink how we test drugs if this is the case. Perhaps we need to rethink if drugs are always the solution - if it's possible to harness the minds ability to heal itself, that see...

Hi! My name is Emma and I'm a 2nd year student at Acchs. I live in Oakland with my best friend and cat. I grew up in Michigan on a small farm and went to Oberlin college in Ohio, where I studied comparative literature. I love reading, hanging out at Lake Merritt, cooking and eating, and taking care of my numerous plant buddies in my apartment. I'm looking forward to these classes and my continued studies in Chinese medicine this term.