REFLECTION JUNE 19

I spent the day at a workshop on Qi-Gong Meridian Therapy, that is, an introduction to traditional Chinese medicine. While I have picked up dribs and drabs of Chinese thought over the years, this was the first coherent presentation I've attended. I can't represent the whole day here with any fidelity. Nevertheless, here are some of the things I learned:

1. The body has the capacity to do many of the same things that we expect of the Western medical profession. What's missing is our willingness to accept responsibility for our health on a daily basis.
2. As with our precept, Chinese medicine is founded on a respect for the body, a willingness to treat the body as possessing intelligence and to take a posture of responsibility towards the body.
3. There is a necessary relationship between physical intervention and meditative practice
4. We are better to spend 10 years preventing illness than 1 year curing it.
5. Chinese medicine is suited to prevention in the context of sustained health, Western medicine is suited to urgent and aggressive interventions in the context of crisis or trauma.
6. Chinese medicine is a coherent body of knowledge and practice; we are mistaken to think we can borrow isolated pieces of it without training; (as with Dharma practice,) we are foolish, and perhaps even putting ourselves at risk, to "cherry-pick" the pieces we like out of the historical, philosophical and theoretical context.
7. Chinese medicine is concerned with a holistic approach to healing and health that involves both the patient and physician, as opposed to Western medicine which has been preoccupied with an expert applying technological fixes to isolated body parts that it defines as being "dis-eased", with the patient playing a largely passive role.

from this body,
Innen