This piece was written for Scene Report, a publication out of Dominica Press in L.A. edited by the artist Rocket Caleshu.
Q: What is wind?
A: Wind is one of these concepts that takes into assumption a whole cosmology of the human being existing somewhere in the universe--standing on planet earth, and looking up at the sky and the moon and into the space of this galaxy we are a part of. As humans, we are microcosms of our universe, and so ‘wind’ is going to involve the weather that goes on inside and outside us. Of course you are familiar with windy weather - which often comes with a change in season or big change in weather - or is found at the tops of mountains or in deserts or on big wide manhattan avenues. And in medicine, there is both the idea of wind invasion and internal wind. Wind invasion refers to “catching” something, as in something contagious, or something brought on by the environment, as in walking around on a cold, damp, windy day without a scarf and waking up the next day with a stiff dull neck, or developing a headache after being in a “heady” environment. Internal wind describes all sorts of tremors and tremulous motion within the body, anywhere from a stroke, to a severe migraine, or any other undisruptive or disruptive spastic movement. This just gives you a picture of how to think about it, in terms of wind as pathology. But conceptually, and also in my practice as an acupuncturist, I prefer to frame ‘wind’ as an agent of change, as an aspect of the constant changing and fluctuating of our environments, contextualized within a causeless perfection of everything. Wind does not really possess a linear pathway. It’s more something you get caught up in. At least once a week, I witness, within an acupuncture treatment, wind moving from an internal place to a more external place in the body, to then exit the body. Bones, muscles, skin tremble and twitch sometimes very dramatically or often quite gently. This manifestation of wind is always accompanied by a change in the person, in their health and or their life. Wind is change. I often notice that externally contracted wind seem to be perfectly timed with a massive change that the person is seeking to create, in other words not accidental at all. The resolution of the injury or cold is concurrent with a transformation that would not have happened otherwise. What initiated that accident or cold to penetrate and cause us to become ill or have to lie down and stop at that moment and not another? It’s hard to answer that question, because it doesn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular. But when there is wind, there is certainly a change happening, or wanting to happen.