In Traditional Chinese Medicine, herbs are rarely taken one at a time; they’re composed into formulas, and the formula is composed around you.
Long before acupuncture needles, there were herbs. For well over two thousand years, Chinese herbal medicine has been the other half of Traditional Chinese Medicine: a vast, carefully recorded tradition of plants, minerals, and the formulas that combine them, passed down through generations of practitioners and still studied closely today.
At Morning Sun Acupuncture in North Central Austin, Stephen Andrews, L.Ac., MAOM, has worked within this tradition for more than 25 years. He trained here in Austin at AOMA and holds national certification through the NCCAOM, and herbal medicine has been part of his practice from the beginning.
If you’re curious about Chinese herbal medicine, this page is a quiet place to start. What it is, how a formula comes together, and what a quarter century of practice brings to the process.
Chinese herbal medicine is one of the oldest continuously practiced herbal traditions in the world. Its foundational texts go back nearly two millennia; the Shang Han Lun, a classic compiled around 200 AD, records formulas that practitioners still study and compose from today. Over the centuries, hundreds of herbs were cataloged, tested in practice, and organized into a working language of combinations.
That word, combinations, is the heart of it. Where the modern habit is to reach for a single herb for a single purpose, the Chinese tradition almost never works that way. Herbs are composed into formulas, classically with each ingredient playing a named role: a chief, a deputy, an assistant, an envoy. And the formula is composed for a whole person, not an isolated complaint. The tradition’s lens is balance and harmony: how everything in a person relates to everything else.
A formula at Morning Sun begins with a conversation. Stephen will ask about things that might seem unrelated: how you sleep, how you eat, how the seasons sit with you. In the traditional manner he’ll also look at the tongue and feel the pulse, two of the oldest observation tools in Chinese medicine. From that whole picture, he composes a formula, often starting from a classical base and then adjusting it herb by herb for the person in front of him. Two people who sound similar on paper can leave with very different formulas.
And the formula doesn’t stand still. As the body changes, the formula is revisited and refined, an herb raised, another lowered, something swapped out entirely. In the language of the tradition, the aim is harmony at the root level, which is why the composing is never quite finished.
Composing formulas well is a craft, and like any craft it deepens with repetition. Stephen has been practicing Chinese herbal medicine for more than 25 years, since his training at AOMA here in Austin, and that experience shows up in the small decisions: which classical formula to start from, which single adjustment matters most, when to leave well enough alone.
It also shows up in where the herbs come from. A formula is only as good as its ingredients, so sourcing and quality are treated as part of the care itself, not an afterthought. In practice, herbal medicine at Morning Sun can stand on its own or sit alongside acupuncture; the two have traveled together for most of their history, and many people choose both.
An old medicine, read freshly for one person at a time.
Call Morning Sun Acupuncture or book a visit online, and bring your questions. Stephen is glad to talk through whether Chinese herbal medicine belongs in your care.