I have been a healer for nearly sixty years. I did not choose this work. My grandmother saw something in me when I was a child gathering herbs on the hillsides above our village, and a traveling physician later confirmed it. By the time I understood what was happening, I was already doing the work.
People often ask me how I help them heal. I will tell you honestly, though it may not be what you expect.
I do not cure anyone. The body cures itself with your attention. What I do is more important: I help a person listen to the body they have been ignoring.
When someone comes to me, I do not first look at their symptom. I look at their life. I ask about their sleep. I ask what they eat, and how quickly they eat it, and whether they sit down while doing so. I ask about the mornings - whether they give themselves a quiet quarter hour before the world begins to speak. I ask about the evenings - whether there is a clear hour when the day ends. I ask about the people they love, and the ones they have lost, and the ones they have not forgiven.
Only then do I look at the pulse, the tongue, the eyes. Only then do I offer what the old medicine offers - a warming food, a simple breath, a small daily practice, sometimes a herb, sometimes only a conversation.
These are not remedies in the way modern people expect. They are invitations to a body that has forgotten how to receive.
The healing, when it comes, is not my doing. It is the body's own quiet work, finally given room to begin.
I am only an old man who has learned how to make that room.
— Shen Lu, the Divine Deer Shandong Province, China