New Revelstoke Mountaineer series: Jade Mountain TCM practitioner Erin Potter on mountain wellness

The Revelstoke Mountaineer welcomes Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner Erin Potter’s summer series focusing on the cornerstone elements of TCM, and how they relate to your physical, mental, and emotional health and well being. The series will explore how TCM is interconnected with the seasonal rhythms of mountain life, and how it can help you achieve goals like improved athletic performance or a more healthful harmony with our mountain climate. Welcome Erin Potter:

Have you ever wondered how different ailments may be connected or related in some way?

Have you noticed that certain afflictions occur around the same time, such as feeling tired after a meal, getting headaches first thing in the morning, or skin issues that get worse in the fall?

The Revelstoke Mountaineer has partnered with Erin Potter of Jade Mountain Wellness and Acupuncture on a summer series exploring mountain wellness from the Traditional Chinese Medicine perspective. Photo: by William Eaton, contributed by Jade Mountain Wellness & Acupuncture

My name is Erin Potter; I am a registered Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner here in Revelstoke. I would like to share with you a little bit of the wisdom passed down by ancient sages, and explain a little bit about how the body works from a traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) perspective.

When I began school in 2000, I clearly remember one of my teachers saying that in order to understand TCM we first must let go of what we have learned from our western perspective.

This wasn’t just regarding medicine. He explained that in China when addressing a letter you begin with the country, then the province, then city, street and finally the name.

This is a good analogy for how the health of the body is viewed. TCM first looks at the big picture, then slowly and systematically work in to the finer details. In this way nothing is overlooked and all potentially unrelated symptoms are addressed.

Over the next couple months you will be introduced to the five main elements of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water and how they relate to our physical, mental, and emotional health and well being.