By Eric Brand I was looking over some notes on herbal product labeling in Canada, and I noticed a few interesting things. I wrote another blog that talked about the advantages and the disadvantages of the laws that regulate herbal products in Canada… more »

by Malia Kirby In my last post, So You Think You're Present, Part One, I discussed being present and centered in the context of Chinese medicine and introduced an exercise to help us determine how mindful we may or may not be. Today's posting, part… more »

By Eric Brand Here are some nice specimens of San Qi that show the root with its tails and head still attached. Most San Qi is much tighter and denser, and all the rootlets are trimmed off, as is the head (neck). By looking at the whole root like t… more »

By Eric Brand Ginseng is by far the most famous herb in Chinese medicine; in fact, it is arguably the most famous botanical medicine in the world. The Chinese name for ginseng (Ren Shen) literally means “man root,” which alludes to its human-like s… more »

By Eric Brand I recently moved back to my hometown of Boulder after spending the past ten years or so living in Taiwan and California. In each place, it seems that the local culture has a strong influence on people’s perception of health and medicin… more »

By Eric Brand We often comment on the fact that Blue Poppy’s website is one of the finest resources in the industry for free professional information. However, our website is huge, with thousands of pages of content. Where should one look to find a… more »

By Eric Brand I have mentioned a number of modern masters on my blog. Regular readers will notice that several posts have referenced the work of Prof. Chang Hsien-Cheh, a teacher that I look up to with the upmost respect. In the West, Chinese m… more »

by Malia Kirby A few months ago, Shawn wrote an excellent post on needle technique (How to Needle Like a Mosquito...Without Sucking) and discussed the need to be present while locating points and performing assorted techniques. The question is, how… more »

by Eric Brand Our esteemed colleagues Marnae and Kevin Ergil recently won first prize in the prestigious PROSE Awards for their book “Pocket Atlas of Chinese Medicine.” This year’s PROSE (Professional and Scholarly Excellence) Awards received a reco… more »

by Eric Brand Honora alerted me to a very interesting article on BBC News today, located at the following link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8520171.stm The headline of the article is “Guilty plea in Chinese herbal ‘cancer’ case,” and the ar… more »

by Bob Flaws In my experience, as recent converts to Chinese medicine, we tend to be starry-eyed and gullible as a group. We are so enamored of this new love of our life that we often fail to ask some really important questions, questions we would no… more »

by Eric Brand This is a nice specimen of wild Huang Qi. Wild Huang Qi has a very deep, powerful tap root. It is less uniform and much larger than the cultivated product, which is often pressed and sliced longitudinally to create decoction pieces tha… more »

I know very few people who have come through the last year financially unaffected. Almost everyone has had some shift in their financial life: lowered spending expectations, higher credit card interest rates, retirees having to go back to work, people l… more »

by Eric Brand This is a nice specimen of wild Dang Shen. I put a pen in there to give it a sense of scale. These roots are much, much larger than the cultivated product, and the "lion's head" (shi zi tou) characteristic of Dang Shen is clearly evid… more »

by Eric Brand I have to say, I love working at Blue Poppy. We have a team of incredibly intelligent and benevolent people working together in a beautiful office overlooking the mountains, and the company feels like a family. Like many practitioners… more »

by Eric Brand Pictured above is a collage of different types of ginseng. I’ll probably do future side-by-side photos that illustrate differences in grades and styles of ginseng, for example, comparing red slices, red whole roots, white whole roots,… more »

by Eric Brand Shi Hu is a yin-supplementing medicinal that is sold in many different grades and qualities. True Shi Hu refers to dendrobium orchid, but in actuality most of what is used as Shi Hu on the market is a tolerated substitute rather than t… more »