Mnemonics for Chinese Herbs

[Guest guest]

The two tools I have seen are the herbzoo

from www.HerbZoo.com, and Dr Calamari,

for which I have no web address. Regarding memorization, try to engage as

many senses as possible when memorizing (sight, smell, taste, sound, touch) in

order to engage different hemispheres of your brain. This can be

accomplished by studying with your herb samples, and by creative visualization.

Some have told me that they have success studying each herb category in a

different room. Then when considering a category they think of the herbs

they studied in a specific room. If your wife is Chinese, she may be able

to associate certain herbs with Chinese homonyms ( for ban xia I think of xia

as descending in keeping with the Chinese character xia4 which means “under,

lower, or below” – in reality, the character xia4 used in ban xia

means summer). This trick may only work for foreign students of mandarin;

a Chinese person may not make any identification between the two different

characters that are pronounced identically.

Here is an example of another type of association

trick I use: For bai fu zi I think of it’s latin name ‘typhonium’

and imagine a strong wet wind blowing in my face (typhoon). This helps me

remember that it can treat wind and phlegm attacking the face. I can make

associations like this for a large percentage of herbs. The trouble is to

not be limited to solely the information in your association tool. The herb

zoo cards attempt to cover all the bases by creating imagery that takes most

things into account. They can be very affective as long as you can force

yourself to make sense of a walrus standing on a beach ball urinating on the

ground while eating a slice of cheeseless pizza with a mismatched pair of

chopsticks (those that have seen herbzoo cards know what I mean). Ultimately,

making associations and engaging more gray matter are the tools that have

helped contestants in memory competitions since their inception. Unfortunately

these techniques require a lot of work, just like old-school brute

memorization.

 

Coming from another memory challenged soul

I wish you all the luck in the world,

Tim

 

 

 

 

Sunday, July 06, 2003 2:19

PM

cha

Fwd:

Mnemonics for Chinese Herbs

 

can

anyone help?

 

 

 

Owyangvarela

Sun Jul 06, 2003 11:22:03 AM US/Pacific

 

Mnemonics for Chinese Herbs

 

HELP

My wife is attending the Academy of Chinese Culture & Health Sciences on

Clay Street in Oakland. She desperately needs a Mnemonics system for all the

Chinese herbs along with function. She studies day and night and can't seem to

remember it all. she is also Chinese and hopes to complete the course to become

an acupuncturist. Anybody out there who has a bonafide mnemonics system for

Chinese herbs.? .........

 

 

 

Chinese Herbs

 

 

 

" Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre

minds " -- Albert Einstein