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[Editor’s Note: Jann’s Chinese Medicine (CM)/biodynamic (BD) story below is the result of a phone conversation she had with the office earlier in the year. She requested a framework of questions, which we drafted and sent her. The result is this fascinating and informative account of her alternative medicine experience and then her contact with biodynamic farming, which has had a profound impact on her. We are grateful for this in-depth response, which so well conveys Jann’s enthusiasm for the subtleties and benefits of CM and biodynamics.]
I first heard about BD farming when I moved my CM practice to Balmain in 1990. Darling street, Balmain, was called ‘the Macquarie Street of alternative medicine’ in the 1980s and 1990s, because it was a melting pot of alternative ideas and ‘alternative medicine practitioners’, as they were called in the day. On Darling Street I joined the Euroa Centre as an acupuncturist and CM herbalist, and it was here that I met Siglinde Leferink, a fifth generation German herbalist, and assistant to the extraordinary Sydney herbalist, Peter De Ruyter. Moving to the Inner West of Sydney was transformative; I felt like I found my tribe and remain deeply connected to the people and their humanity.
Meeting Siglinde Leferink also changed my life. Siglinde had the most beautiful skin I had ever seen, despite being in her mid-50s. For this reason, I think I was very open to the beautiful Dr Hauschka skin care range and their philosophy linked to BD farming. I still love Dr Hauschka products and use them to this day.
With Siglinde’s encouragement, I occasionally worked on BD farms as a volunteer WOOFER (willing workers on organic farms) during holidays, and looking back, what stood out the most was the extraordinary life force of the people living on these farms. The children were like Titans and Amazons, and some women were still conceiving naturally after 44 years of age. During and after these stints, my eyes and skin glowed, and my energy was fabulous from living off the BD land.
On another holiday I escaped to a deserted island of the Hapai group, Tonga, and studied Steiners book ‘Agriculture’, while living on pipis and pasta, snorkelling and kayaking pristine coral reefs and being a surrogate mother to two small piglets, who followed me everywhere and slept on my feet while I read.
Ultimately, my introduction to BD farming changed my life, habits and food choices. BD also changed how I understood, practiced, communicated and explained CM theories, to my patients and colleagues. I like to think BD helped me become a better CM practitioner as well. Much later, BD principals influenced how I conducted clinical trials, analysed research data, and taught assessment and intervention strategies in CM.
BD concepts gave me a picture of the interconnectivity and co-dependence of humans, soil, plants, animals and their environment that I found relatable, perhaps because I grew up pottering around the home garden with my father. BD concepts gave me an environmental vision of the micro and macro environments that helped me think holistically and more deeply grasp CM theories which at the time I found less relatable.
To be fair, CM theories also discuss an interconnectedness and co-dependency of humans to their environment, but initially I found the language and concepts of qi, yin and yang and other theories on cause of disease, quite confusing. Later I realised CM language, metaphors, analogies and theories were designed for my (practitioner) benefit; to help me think outside the square, and problem solve. BD concepts became the stepping stone I needed to translate CM language on a more practical and profound level so that I could live and breathe traditional CM.
The integration of CM and BD concepts has stayed with me all my life, influencing how I observe patterns, connections and associations. This was possible, because these two systems have so many things in common.
BD and CM provide a model of health
CM and BD concepts quite wonderfully complement each other, because they have many concepts in common. First, both systems provide a model of health in two separate but interconnected ecosystems. The BD ecosystem focuses on the soil and all life on a farm, including quality of plant health. CM focuses on a model of robust human health, and both systems explain how their models of health provide resilience to disease.
BD and CM provide wholistic solutions
Both systems also provide significant structure and practical guidelines and solutions to nurture and maintain balance and health in their respective ecosystems. Both have a wholistic understanding of the co-dependency and interconnectedness of humans to their environment. CM incorporates a wholistic approach to cause of disease. For example, CM theories first recognised that poor diet and excessive stress can cause disease while biomedicine dismissed these association. Meanwhile, BD solutions support soil and atmosphere health which in turn supports farm, animal, plant and human health through a concept that acknowledges the co-dependency of all these players.
BD and CM support fostering the life force and detoxification
BD acknowledges the soil is a living organism while CM introduces the concept of the life force Qi. Detoxification processes are foundational in both systems. BD has extraordinary solutions that support the life force of the soil, but these solutions also break down soil xenobiotics such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Meanwhile, CM theories introduce the importance of maintaining the smooth flow of liver Qi and has sophisticated and well-developed strategies in both acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine to maintain liver Qi flow. Both systems understand contaminants undermine health and resilience and have strategies to address.
BD and CM are living systems
Both CM and BD are living systems that place great emphasis on continual learning through ongoing observation, agility, adaption and experience. I have not been a BD farmer, so I have little to add, but through observing how plants behave in my garden I have learned that Japanese mizuna has a mutually antagonist relationship with chilli, that I didn’t appreciate until I placed them together.
On the other hand, because of my clinical and research collaboration over many years with a leading seminologist and researcher on the cause of male infertility, I was given the opportunity to observe several new and novel CM patterns and associations to disease in the large cohort of men attending my clinic. For example, I was able to observe associations between excessive heavy metals causing disease and CM markers, such as tongue, palpation, pulse and CM patterns of disharmony, so that heavy metal risk may not be overlooked.
I also observed associations between abnormalities in semen analysis results and specific CM markers that provide insight into the different causes of sperm and seminal plasma abnormalities. Dramatic improvement in semen analysis results or otherwise was an excellent objective report that helped me observe specific associations and develop intervention strategies using this feedback. This has been an extraordinarily exciting and rewarding field of clinical practice and research for me, ultimately supporting new and advanced CM assessment and treatment strategies that can be added to the CM lexicon.
BD and CM support healthy microbiome
CM and BD have always held their respective microbiomes in high regard, despite using different language to explain the actions of the microbiome in their different ecosystems. For example, in BD, fostering the soil microbiome is foundational to the health of the ecosystem of the farm. In CM the Qi or life force of organs such as the liver, spleen, stomach, small intestine and bowel is pivotal to maintaining whole system health. Protecting these organs and the whole digestive system is the most important priority in CM treatment strategies to prevent and resolve serious human pathology.
Recent microbiome research validates BD and CM theories
New research analysing the microbiome of the gut and soil through next generation gene sequencing (NGS) technology has provided new and exciting validation of BD soil and CM gut theories. For example, there is evidence now that the soil is not dead matter but a living organism, and more than 100 years after Rudolf Steiner first gave his lectures on agriculture, NGS research has found, the microbiome of BD solutions can break down contaminants in soils such as PCBs. For example, in 2024, Vaish and colleagues used NGS technology to study the microbiome of BD solutions, BD 501 and BD 506. The authors found:
“The bacterial communities in BD506 and BD501 are found to be unique and rare; they belong to functional categories that are involved in enzyme activity, membrane transport, xenobiotic degradation, and carbohydrate metabolism”.
The full paper is worth reading for a complete overview of this research and the teams’ findings.
Meanwhile, NGS analysis of the human gut microbiome has discovered that the gut microbiome’s influence is so vast and significant, it is now referred to as the ‘second brain’. Further, some organs whose function were considered less vital, such as the colon, are now understood to be the largest endocrine and immune organ in the body.
NGS research on the soil microbiome increases my appreciation of the importance of BD as we navigate a growing and poorly regulated global chemical environmental catastrophe. NGS research also gives me reason to be very proud of the ancients who developed CM foundational assessment and treatment theories. NGS research explains how the intricate CM channels or meridian system has such wide-ranging influence through the vast interconnecting microbial network that use immune, neural, and endocrine pathways.
This research is exciting news for both BD and CM, and is close to my heart because I am currently writing, researching and preparing to teach the early CM indicators of significant heavy metal exposure as well as introduce an integrated naturopathic and CM treatment strategy to address excessive heavy metal exposure.
I am also writing and researching extensively on the associations I observed between CM patterns and men’s seminal microbiome, spermatozoa and general reproductive and prostate health. I think this work is important to improve diagnosis and treatment strategies in not just male urology and infertility, but men’s health generally because the main body of research confirms my observations that men’s semen quality is a blueprint of their health. Unfortunately, today, we are not using this extraordinary tool, semen analysis, to its full potential, and that needs to change if we are to improve men’s general health outcomes.
This is also quite a personal project, because my dad and his brothers have all suffered from endocrine related cancers, such as prostate cancer, very likely related to their exposure to dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), when their drinking water was contaminated to eradicate malaria on the small island Cyperus, where they were born. Once it was realised that DDT was a powerful insecticide, DDT was used to eliminate both malaria and typhoid after around 1945. I am also particularly interested in men’s health and environmental contaminants, I suspect from growing up watching my dad’s young work mates die riddled with mesothelioma from working without protection from asbestos contamination in the local power stations.
To better support my writing and research, five years ago, I left Sydney and my busy clinical practice (my team of CM practitioners and I conducted over 9000 assessment and treatments annually) and moved to a little beachside suburb on the Central Coast called Norah Head. Now I also have more time to enjoy growing food in my little BD garden on my suburban block.
Five years ago, my garden soil was a dead sandy clay, with no sign of any life force at all. I have been determined to heal this soil, and even within the first year of using BD solutions, I am happy to say my efforts did not go unnoticed. After their visits to my new home in the first year, several friends from Sydney have attended BD workshops and left Sydney to buy land and grow BD crops. Some of my neighbours now buy BD solutions because my young fruit trees production and flavours are so outstanding. One of my favourite comments was made by my cousin in the first year. He asked me, ‘Where did you get that fig tree?’ after he noticed its extraordinary fruit. I was quite surprised by his comment because this tree came from a cutting he gave me. On hearing this he said, ‘Well my tree doesn’t give me fruit like that! What are you doing?’ I love it. What was I doing indeed!
Meanwhile I really love making a daily salad from my bitter greens and I feel so good after eating this freshly picked food. My neighbours know they are welcome to drop by and forage, because my sense of connection goes well beyond the soil and my garden. The local neighbours, especially in my street, are an important part of my world and ecosystem. We look out for each other and constantly do small things for each other. My home has become the social centre of the street. I invite everyone over for dinner each Friday evening and we share a meal and play cards and board games. Once a month the local book club meets at my place as well and a local friend cooks us dinner.
The real reason I invite my neighbours for dinner is because my default is to be ruthlessly competitive and take no prisoners when it comes to cards and if I feed everyone a lovely meal, I feel less guilty when I win. On the other hand, I do try and keep the big picture in mind, and my mantra is, ‘I just want everybody to have a good time and feel good about themselves’…yep okay, okay. Work in progress. On that note, all are welcome, come join us!
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