cancer study

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http://www.cancerwise.org/April_2004/display.cfm?id=02425079-ADC6-425F

-93908398C2DA3ADE & method=displayFull & color=red

 

 

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some of you who don't understand my position on this topic may be

surprised to know that I wholeheartedly support the inclusion of qi

qong in this study and further, I would even predict that qi gong will

be shown to more useful than acupuncture, but

 

1. that does not mean anything magical will have been demonstrated; in

fact the study will likely reveal reproducible physiological mechanisms

at play and may even lead to further development of technological

methods of inducing the same or similar effects (do a google search for

body/mind and brainwave machines to learn more about this).

 

2. note the study authors did not use the term spirit, but rather

body/mind interventions, thus denoting a rationalistic perspective, the

same perspective which was embraced by the ancient philosophical

taoists themselves, IMO. the great tao cannot be known in words; it is

not understood at all by discussion and thus has no place in rational

discourse. In fact, when one speaks of knowing or applying the great

tao in daily life or medicine, one is actually furthest from the truth

at that point. Yet religious taoists often did just that. We should

make their mistake.

 

3. this still does not mean that qi gong was ever part of the

mainstream medical chinese tradition; it was rather one of numerous

health practices that were taught mainly by those who were the

equivalent of todays fitness trainers, tai ji and yoga teacher. This

is not to belittle those professions either as I truly believe all

those activities are far more essential to health than acupuncture or

herbology. It is merely to point out that no medical education is

required to effectively teach any of these things. This is also not to

suggest that learning to do any of these things well is easy. It is

just that the education is not of a medical nature in most cases (it

may, but it need not be) and the effective application of these

practices has not typically taken place in a medical context, either

historically or presently.

 

Validating qi gong says nothing about the practice of chinese medicine

per se. It merely lends more weight to a half century of evidence

already accumulated on the stress and relaxation responses and altered

states of consciousness. I will be happy to see the positive results

of such research and for those who teach qi gong, your practice will be

further validated. But I will still send out my patients to train with

qi gong teachers far more skilled than I. And they will do well as a

result. The point is that one can teach qi gong and also practice TCM

if they want to, just that there is no inherent historical connection

between the two (as a survey of the most influential texts of the last

1000 years would seem to indicate). Thus I do not consider such

practices to be core subject matter. And I utterly reject any

presentation of such material that even remotely smacks of some type of

religious indoctrination.

 

I once thought I would go into behavioral medicine because of my

lifelong fascination with meditative practices and altered states of

consciousness (this was before I began my study of chinese herbology).

But when I started to get more discriminating about what chinese

medical source materials I would trust, it became quite evident that

essentially all the literature on qi gong did not pass muster. I

decided there was not at all a well developed chinese model of

behavioral medicine, but rather a myriad of disparate health practices,

cloaked in every possible garb. In fact, behavioral medicine using

meditation, yoga, biofeedback, etc. seems to be far more developed as a

mainstream medical modality in modern america than it ever was in

ancient china. But much of the value still remains to be demonstrated

in very rigorous ways. Skeptics have made mincemeat of most earlier

research on such phenomena due to shoddy experimental design. And in

all likelihood, their will not be distinct differences demonstrated

between different styles of practice. While I think the continued

development of this modality is very desirable, we have no particular

claim on it, as its effectiveness is not in any way connected to a TCM

education. I actually think the ideal place for such things is in our

educational system, not healthcare. If everyone learned body/mind

techniques in youth, the world would be quite a different place. I am

sure some are thinking that doctor means teacher, but the fact remains

that the knowledge necessary to effectively practice chinese herbology

and teach qi gong are two unrelated skill sets. For those who can

master both, more power to you.

 

 

 

Chinese Herbs

 

 

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