by Anne Shelton Crute, LAc DAOM
If you’re interested in how to actually use the Tong Shu, the Chinese almanac, today is a good example.
This is how I work with it in real time, and I’m curious what you notice if you check in with your own day alongside this.
It’s not something you have to get “right.” It’s a matter of familiarity over time. You can look up free versions of the Tong Shu any day and simply observe. Sensitivity develops naturally.
So, what kind of day is today?
For starters, it’s a double black dot day, which means there isn’t much available qi. The baseline is restraint. Think retreat. Think cancel what you can. Not a day to push or initiate. (I don't tend to look at black/red dot days, but since they are an easy entry point, I mention it first.)
At the same time, the solar index is a “Destroy” day. That’s actually quite useful. It supports clearing what is already loose. Tying up ends, small tasks, returning things, light organizing. Very much the energy of piddling around the house, spring cleaning, getting rid of what’s already on its way out. I'm boxing up some Zappos shoes that didn't work.
The lunar mansion for today is “The Beak,” which carries a warning. Don’t get too far into something that isn’t actually right for you. Watch for overextending, overstepping, or inserting yourself where you don’t quite belong.
And then the lunar hexagram--which I tend to lean on the most, or at least equally with the solar and lunar-- adds another layer. Today is Hexagram 34 with the top line changing. If you look that up, the message is clear. It’s not a day to press forward. Pushing at the wrong time creates its own friction.
For me, the day started off fine. I had taken the day off for no good reason, which is unusual and just felt right. I woke up with plans to get a lot done: errands, writing, catching up on things. Very quickly, I could feel that level of productivity wasn’t going to land. So, I let all ideas about missions out of the house fall away and stayed close to home.
Even then, there was a kind of tension in my stomach. It was really building by noon, 1:00, 2:00...but not tied to anything specific. Just a feeling of moving sort of upstream, even though nothing was actually wrong.
That's when I looked at the Tong Shu. There was the confirmation of what I was sensing. It didn’t make the feeling disappear, but it did remove any lingering impulse to fix it or pathologize myself. This is where people often go wrong. We assume something is off that needs to be corrected.
Sometimes it’s just the quality of the day.
So instead of trying to override it, I’m letting things be simple. Maybe I’ll stretch, maybe I’ll roll around on a foam roller, maybe I’ll do even less than that. The point is not to force a different experience.
This is how I use the Tong Shu. Not as a set of rules, but as a way of recognizing what kind of time I’m in and adjusting accordingly.
If you track it for yourself, you’ll start to see it. I've been practicing with this tool for 23 years now when Ming first taught be how and I've gone through different phases. For years I would check auspices at the beginning of the day and just watch. Other years, I would just live and check at the end of the day to compare. Some periods, looking mainly at the earthly branch of the day and hour. Other periods, looking mainly at lunar mansion. Still others, studying the hexagrams.
There is no single correct entry point. Just follow what catches your attention and stay with it.
At a certain point, you’re no longer “using” the Tong Shu. You’re recognizing the quality of time as it’s already moving through you.
About the author
Dr. Anne Shelton Crute, L.Ac., DAOM is an acupuncturist, teacher, and writer working at the intersection of Classical Chinese Medicine and Chinese cosmology. She is the founder of Ritual Health Acupuncture & Herbalism in Berkeley, Albany, and El Cerrito in the San Francisco East Bay.