Examining Traditional Chinese Essay Research Paper Examining

Examining Traditional Chinese Essay, Research Paper

Examining Traditional Chinese Medicine and Chi Theory

Traditional Chinese medicine is thousands of years old and has literally more than a billion satisfied customers. Many of its treatments and teachings are based on the effects of Chi, a mystical form of bio-energy.

Peter Huston

Today in America, traditional Chinese medicine is undergoing something of a rebirth. Although at first this seems curious, from a historical perspective and seen in hindsight it is really not much of a surprise. The history of Sino-American relations is in part a story of Americans looking to the East and interpreting a huge, complex, and, to an outsider, confusing culture in such a way that they see what they desire or fear the most. Like a cosmic Rorschach test, China has been many things, including the Yellow peril, the Red peril, and paradoxically a land full of loving workers united in harmony and living in communes. During the Depression to many “the China market” was going to save us and our economy. Ronald Reagan once referred to China as a “so-called Communist country; when in fact it actually was (and still is) a Communist country.

Today, many people, often with good reason, are apprehensive about modern scientific medicine. Although it is undoubtedly one of the most effective forms of health care ever seen on earth, there is little doubt that modern science has produced a system of care that can be frighteningly impersonal. Too often the patient is reduced almost to the level of a defective machine while being cared for by an overworked staff of specialists with little chance to provide the patient with personal attention or emotional support. Treatments tend to be invasive, frighteningly complex in theory and practice, and seem to function without any input from the patient. The sterile hospital walls, mysterious shots and capsules, and complex machinery seem far removed from how nature intended us to live. Occasionally we read of treatments that cause serious harm, and of cases where impersonal healthcare results in accidental, or sometimes even intentional, tragedies.

It was almost inevitable that many people would look for alternative forms of treatment, and that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) would be one of them. At first TCM seems to be Just what the doctor ordered.” With its long history, many assume its techniques have been proved to work. Others are attracted by its emphasis on gentle remedies made from organic compounds. TCM emphasizes improving bodily harmony and focuses on the growth of Chi energy. Since TCM was a subject of Bill Moyers’s recent television series, “The Mind and Healing,” which surveyed much of the system’s appeal in an interesting manner, I will occasionally cite examples from that show.

The basis of much of TCM’s teachings lies in the manipulation of Chi, supposedly one’s life energies. It is nearly impossible to give a definition of Chi without somehow mentioning “energy.” With few, if any, peculiar exceptions, to be alive means to create, use, and exchange energy. This energy is of many different sorts. For instance, we are dealing with one sort of chemical process when we digest our morning bowl of breakfast cereal. We use a different sort of energy when our muscles are activated to throw a basketball. And when the brain creates small amounts of electricity to pass down to the nerves and stimulate the muscles and the heart to contract, this electricity is created by a large number of small cellular microbatteries inside the skull.

But this is a new and relatively unnatural way for humans to see themselves. To the ancients it seemed natural to hypothesize that the energy of life was a single and quite special sort. This idea continues to flavor some of our popular notions when we speak of a “life force”or when we refer to a person who appears vibrant and energetic as being “full of life.” The Chinese of ancient times felt, and many if not most Chinese today feel, that there is a special sort of life energy that flows through us and keeps us alive.(1) This energy is called “Chi” or “Qi.”(2) According to traditional Chinese thinking, the Chi flows through our body in a rhythmic manner, and most acupuncture and acupressure methods employ stimulation of points that lie along the acupuncture “meridians” through which Chi is said to flow. When one manipulates an acupuncture point, the traditional explanation for any effect that occurs is that it is caused by an alteration of the flow of Chi under that point.

In TCM, the notion of Chi and Chi-flow is probably the single most important concept. If a patient is feeling weak and lethargic, then a healer will embark on a course of action that he or she feels will increase the patient’s flow of Chi. He will do this according to carefully taught ancient techniques. Treatment options might include changes in diet, a prescribed course of exercises, massage, herbal or other organic medicines, and perhaps techniques like acupuncture, although Westerners should keep in mind that these are only one small part of the overall system. There is also the more esoteric belief that through the manipulation of Chi one can ultimately learn to perform superhuman feats and display miraculous powers. Claims for these powers vary greatly, some of which make one immediately suspicious, such as telepathic effects,