Acupuncturist Gavin McClure gives public lecture on Dao, qi, yin-yang and five elements

Gavin McClure, an acupuncturist at Good Medicine Clinic, opened a community lecture on Chinese medicine theory, saying, “I am an acupuncturist,” and telling the audience the session would cover the theories that underlie Chinese medicine.

McClure said the talk framed the Dao (Tao) as a generative process from which distinctions arise: “The Tao that can be or the path that can be walked is not the true path,” he read from the Tao Te Ching while explaining that the Dao continually gives rise to being and nonbeing. He then stepped through classical categories used in Chinese medicine—yin and yang, the three treasures (jing, qi, shen), the four seasons and directions, the five elements, and the six phases—to show how practitioners relate cosmology to diagnosis and treatment.

The lecture matters to people seeking or curious about traditional East Asian medicine because McClure connected abstract ideas to clinical signs and to everyday health practices. He explained how yin-yang balance maps to symptoms—an excess of yang manifests as fever or inflammation, a deficiency of yin can appear as hot…