What if the herbs and formula structures you’re searching for is already inside the symptoms your patient is showing you? InTraditional East Asian Medicine, we don’t treat symptoms - we decode them. Because the solution is already inside the problem - if you know how to see it.
The phrase “the solution is inside the problem” is most famously associated with a Canadian philosopher and media theorist, Marshall McLuhan. He wrote:
“The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the problem. The solution is in the problem.”
This concept has also been echoed in various forms of Zen philosophy, psychology, and more recently in design thinking and systems theory, where thoughts and problems are seen not as obstacles but as gateways to insight - the idea being that by deeply understanding a problem, its solution reveals itself.
In TEAM™, we take that literally. Every clinical presentation is a shape, and that shape has a formula structure embedded in it. But to see it, you must have a deliberate and systematic way to understand and identify herbs and formula prescriptions. You need principles that guide your decisions. Without them, it’s easy to get lost in symptoms - and end up guessing.
The body always presents signs and symptoms according to a story. It’s this story that helps guide the practitioner to understand the origin, the primary cause or obstruction. Everything starts at zero. Most people think a health journey is about adding things. More herbs, more supplements, more prescriptions. But what if it’s the opposite?
What if healing isn’t about adding… It’s about subtracting. About taking things back to zero. Zero is where it all began. And zero is where it all ends.
Imagine this: there’s an internal bleed. You feel weak. Dizzy. In pain. Do you just treat the symptoms? Or do you go in and stop the bleed? Or if one develops an intestinal obstruction that causes constipation, abdominal pain, indigestion, vexation and agitation, and exhaustion - do you add herbs chasing symptoms and maybe even try to “tonify energy”? Or do you identify the primary cause, the intestinal obstruction, and remove it to eliminate the source?
If you don’t remove the source, the body will never return to original health - it will manifest more and more indications as the story continues. The body isn’t random. It’s speaking in a language. The primary indications, abdominal signs, the pulse, the tongue - they form a precise configuration. When you treat that structure, not just the symptoms, your formulas work. They can be prescribed with confidence and replicated. But you must have a deliberate and systematic way to understand and identify herbs and formula structures. You need principles that guide your decisions. Without them, it’s easy to get lost in symptoms - and end up guessing.
When we say, "the solution is inside the problem," we mean it literally. The body is speaking, and the practitioner’s duty is to listen. Carefully, repeatedly, and without preconceived ideas. Because when we do, the medicine works. Not because we believe in it, but because we can prove it.
