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The Art & Science of Herbal Formulation: Traditional Chinese Medicine

  • Sebastian Pole
    Sebastian Pole

    I am a registered member of the Ayurvedic Professionals Association, Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine and a Fellow of the Unified Register of Herbal Practitioners. I qualified as a herbalist with the aim of using the principles of Ayurveda (the ancient art of living wisely) and the Herbal tradition to help transform health. I have been in clinical practice since 1998.

    Having co-founded Pukka Herbs in 2001 I have become experienced in organic herb growing, practitioner grade quality and sustainable value chains. I am a Trustee of the FairWild Foundation, a Director of The Betonica School of Herbal Medicine and an Advisor to The American Herbal Pharmacopoeia and The Sustainable Herbs Project. Fluent in Hindi, a qualified Yoga therapist and passionate about projects with a higher purpose, I am on a mission to bring the incredible power of plants into people’s life. And that is why I started Herbal Reality and what it is all about.

    I live in a forest garden farm in Somerset growing over 100 species of medicinal plants and trees. And a lot of weeds!

    Author of Ayurvedic Medicine, The Principles of Traditional Practice (Elsevier 2006), A Pukka Life (Quadrille 2011), Celebrating 10 Pukka years (2012) and Cleanse, Nurture, Restore with Herbal Tea (Frances Lincoln 2016).

    Listen to our Herbcast podcast with Sebastian as the host.

  • 9:30 reading time (ish)
  • Chinese Herbal Medicine Herbal Research

Written by Sebastian Pole

Introduction

In Traditional Chinese Medicine a formula is known as fang ji. This saying combines the meaning behind the creativity and the creation of a herbal prescription. ‘Fang’ is the actual paper the formula is written on, ‘ji’ is the practice of formula creation and administration itself. In TCM, understanding the classical formulae is as essential as understanding the theory, the treatment strategy and the individual herbs themselves (this package is known as (li fa fang yao). It is a perfectly logical approach to help guide the practitioner in pursuit of a successful clinical outcome.

The first job in creating a formula is to differentiate the root causes from the manifesting signs and symptom branches of an illness. TCM practitioners are always seeking to determine what is the ben – the root – and what is the biao – the branch. Simply put, you treat the manifestations of illness in acute disease and you treat the root patterns in a chronic syndrome, though of course, clinical necessity means you are often treating both root and branch at the same time. As TCM is not primarily disease orientated but more strategy orientated, this leads to what is probably one of the most insightful dictats in traditional medicine:

‘Yi bing tong zi, Tong bing yi zi’
‘One disease has different treatments,
Different diseases have the same treatment’.

This is entirely obvious and basic in clinical experience; for example, one person’s upset tummy is not the same as another’s. Whether you call it IBS, Crohn’s or Ulcerative colitis, from a TCM perspective the patterns can include various configurations of heat-cold-wind-damp. Get it wrong at your patient’s peril. Conversely a well-known formula such as Si wu tang; including Dang gui (Angelica sinenis), Bai shao yao (Peonia lactiflora), Chuan xiong (Ligusticum chinensis), Gan cao, (Glycyrrhiza uralensis) can be used for a range of diseases such as anemia, amenorrhoea, constipation, dry skin or insomnia.

Sebastian Pole

I am a registered member of the Ayurvedic Professionals Association, Register of Chinese Herbal Medicine and a Fellow of the Unified Register of Herbal Practitioners. I qualified as a herbalist with... Read more

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