How to be Active in the Healing Process

Video Transcript

"SARAH HAUER: Hi, I'm Sarah Hauer. SIG HAUER: And I'm Sig Hauer and we're professional practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine. SARAH HAUER: We're here on behalf of Expert Village. SIG HAUER: And welcome to our video. Once we've put the formula together, of course, we're going to send you home with those herbs and you get to cook the herbs, so you become an active participant in your healing in that sense. And many of our patients find that a very healing process itself where they feel empowered, feel like they're actually doing something for themselves. So, we will give specific instructions of how to cook the herbs, how many cups of water to add to the herbs. Typically, we'll have people soak the herbs for about an hour first with water and then bring the herbs to a boil and reduce it to a simmer, typically about 30 minutes. Some herbs, you may add just at the last five minutes or even one or two minutes. Some herbs, you'll cook ahead of time a little bit for maybe an hour for example. The mineral substances generally, we cook for about an hour at first. And then, of course, what you will do is strain the liquid and you're going to save the liquid and, typically, we'll have the people cook the herbs again with half as much water. Again, this can all vary. And with the second cook, again, they'll drain that liquid into the first batch of liquid. That's what the person is going to take. And the dosage, again, according to the person's pattern, is going to vary. We may have people take a cup twice a day, for example, or maybe half a cup three times a day. Again, we'll kinda have to determine what the person's strengths are digestibly, how much they're going to respond to the herbs, et cetera. SARAH HAUER: This is a really powerful way to administer herbal therapy to yourself because you're decocting it right there in your kitchen. The energetics are being released right there, you're saving it in your refrigerator and reheating it over the next few days. So, it's very potent. It's very strong. It's also custom. The herbs that are in a prepared formula in a prepared pill, we can't change that. We can't really modify that formula. And those have their places, of course, they can be very effective in some conditions. But for people who are agreeable to it, this is really--the loose herb formula is really the way we prefer to prescribe herbs. It does require a little bit more work on your part but it is also, as Sig said, very empowering."