The COVID-19 pandemic dominated the globe for at least three years, and infected a large proportion of the worldwide population. After the acute infection, many stay in poor health for months. The nature of this aftermath is not yet fully understood, therefore the management of this syndrome through biomedical therapy is not ideal. Health services are struggling to help those who are still suffering. The condition has now been recognised as post-COVID-19 syndrome (PCS) — providing a common platform for academic exchange.Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been applied to similar conditions for over 2,000 years, including in the aftermath of previous pandemics, and this understanding of such conditions has been validated in clinical practice. In TCM, patterns are established to group the weakness, the residue of pathogens or interaction between pathogens and the defence system. Those patterns form the framework for understanding the illness after acute infections. The authors use this ancient understanding in their own contemporary practice, which is particularly rewarding when the illness within PCS is treated with acupuncture, Chinese herbs, and other therapies in tandem. This is the holistic TCM approach strongly recommended by the authors as they demonstrate great outcomes. The whole-system TCM approach for PCS is now presented in this book to health professions for PCS.

In Lapis, poet Kerri Webster writes into the vast space left by the deaths of three women: her mother, a mentor, and a friend. Using a wide array of lyric forms and meditations, Webster explores matrilineages both familial and poetic, weaving together death, spirituality, women, and a sense of the shifting earth into one "doctrine of Non-linear Revelation."

"What desire doesn't seem as of the distance across a sea?" asks the voice in Kerri Webster's debut collection of poetry, even as the poems attempt the transformation of that liminal space wherein word meets sense, loneliness meets solitude, and surface meets interior. Here, "the surface is our signature," and the image of stain presents a way for that surface to reflect that which it conceals. In this space, human intimacy encounters the transience and frailty of language, and through these encounters we discover that grace lies in "believing always in imprint."