I am becoming increasingly concerned about how I will integrate my philosophy of healing with the actual practice of it. Acupuncture is so dense and vast that it would be so easy to get lost in its inner workings and become, in essence, a technician. There are always stories of practitioners who put a few needles into the patient or prescribed a few herbs, resulting in a permanent remission of disease. There are many acupuncturists, and physicians of all sorts, who get good results. And after all, as the master of Chinese medicine Dr. Leon Hammer says, we use Chinese medicine because, “It works.”

But still, something doesn’t sit right with me when I imagine myself seeing a patient, asking some questions, putting in a few needles, giving them a bottle of herb pills, and telling them to come back next week. It feels like something is missing.

This dialogue between Hermetic practitioner Rawn Clark and others helps to flesh this issue out for me. According to Rawn,

Treatment must address the whole person and not just the physical manifestation. In other words, it must start at the higher levels of Self and progress downward into the physical body. … True healing of any kind addresses the root [emotional/mental] cause along with the physical symptoms. If the [emotional/mental] cause is not rectified then the physical symptoms will return even if they have been eliminated once.

… We fear disease and fear witnessing another suffer, so we tend to think of illness and suffering as a negative things that must be obliterated as soon as possible and by whatever means available. However, from a perspective of Universal Legality [i.e. Divine Law], illness is a gift that is meant to teach us an important karmic lesson that we have not been able to learn in the absence of disease. A healer interferes with a patient’s karma the moment they remove the symptoms of disease without assuring that the patient does indeed learn the lesson that the disease was meant to teach them. If the patient does not learn the karmic lesson then what the “healer” has done is taken away an opportunity for the patient’s growth. That specific opportunity that the “healer” has taken away was the most appropriate way that was available for the patient to learn their karmic lesson. This means that the patient will still have to learn that lesson, either by other means or by a recurrence of the same disease that the “healer” has just treated.

From a Legalistic perspective, true healing occurs when the subject has learned the karmic lesson that the disease is intended to teach. So in effect, when only the symptoms of disease are eliminated and the lesson is thus avoided (albeit, temporarily) the evolution of the patient has been slowed or diverted. This does incur a karmic debt for the “healer.”

I’m very concerned about the potential for taking away someone’s karma and taking it on myself. My general problem with the philosophy of Western allopathic medicine is that they primarily just treat symptoms. However, thus far in Chinese medicine I haven’t seen a tremendous difference on this fundamental level. Although many acupuncturists say that they treat the root cause, it seems to me that diagnosing someone with Liver-Wind or Spleen Qi deficiency and then poking needles into points and prescribing herbs is not that different from making a Western diagnosis, doing surgery, and prescribing drugs. Only the most superficial, symptomatic level is treated, and therefore the deeper lessons are not learned. Even in terms of practicality, that means that the disharmony was not really addressed on a fundamental level and will find some other way to manifest itself.

Then too there is the problem of presuming to believe that one can know another’s karma.

Not many people would be able to see what the patient’s karma is. And not all disease is due to karma. So what right do I have to go around starting to guess about what is caused by karma, and what not?

My point is that everything that happens in our lives is due to karma. Disease is karma shouting at us in the only voice we can hear in that moment. And it is the point at which it is most important that the karmic lesson is looked for and pursued, simply because it is Divine Providence handing us an opportunity on a silver platter, so to speak.

I think perhaps you are defining “karma” as only the truly major things that arise in life or only those issues that stretch back through past incarnations. I think that is a very Western over-simplification (or rather, a mis-simplification) of what karma really is. Each action creates a consequence and karma, simply put, is our responsibility for the consequences of each of our actions, no matter how small. We can easily recognize the “negative karma” of our big goofs, but seldom do we recognize the cumulative karma of all the small goofs or that of all the positive, “right” actions we take.

A common cold for example, provides an opportunity to learn a lesson about taking care of oneself, about getting the proper rest and about managing stress. And the reason this lesson is presented in the form of a cold is because of the accumulated “negative” karma of having ignored our self-care, our stress management, etc. Having a cold (ideally) forces the person to address these issues. Granted, we can obliterate the symptoms of a cold by taking a remedy or simply ignore it, but unless we learn and incorporate the karmic lesson of the cold, we will remain susceptible to catching yet another cold.

… Manipulation of a patient’s energy body alone does not address the whole of the patient. When only the symptom of disease is affected, the patient misses an opportunity to learn the karmic lesson through the experience of those symptoms. In effect, the healer has robbed the patient of an opportunity to truly find curation and the final resolution of the karmic issue at hand. [Emphasis added.] This means that the patient will have to learn the same karmic lesson by other means or by recurrence of the disease. The “Lords of Karma” demand that this process be repeated until the karmic lesson is learned.

In other words, any therapeutic practice that focuses exclusively on just the elimination of symptoms and does not engage with resolving the karmic lesson, does not conform with Legality. Furthermore, according to the Law of Karma, the practice of such a modality incurs a responsibility on the part of the practitioner for the consequences inherent to postponing the natural fulfillment of the patient’s karma.

[A particular healing modality] is only a technique and as a technique, its principles are obviously based upon an awareness of Universal Legality. Where the question of Legality arises is with its practice. Is the practitioner helping the patient address the karmic lesson inherent to disease, in addition to the … treatment of their [body]? If so, then Legality is satisfied, but if not, then karmic responsibility is incurred.

Recently I’ve been reading a book by Five-Element acupuncturist Lonny Jarrett called Nourishing Destiny. It’s one of the few books I’ve read so far that access this level of healing practice, which he calls the “inner tradition.” Jarrett writes,

We have the opportunity to acknowledge the essential nature of life based on our connection to the dao or to create meanings that distort events and conform instead to our own belief process. Health is embodied to the degree that we accurately perceive life, and illness is embodied to the degree that our interpretations deviate from reality. If we accept the premise that attitudes, thoughts, and interpretations play a significant role in influencing health, then it becomes of primary importance to intervene therapeutically at the level of the patient’s belief system.

Jarrett concurs that symptomatic treatment merely drives illness deeper. He describes true health as synonymous with the oneness of the Dao, and the separation from this primal source as the beginnings of disharmony. Therefore the path of healing in its deepest sense is completely concerned with regaining a sense of the true self. Thus a healer’s role is ultimately to assist others in regaining perception of their deepest selves or what he calls “original nature,” and what Rawn would call “essential meaning.”

It is … the healer’s charge to perceive and empower each patient’s life purpose. The healer has no agenda other than to bring the dao uniquely into the world through the patient, and therefore “does not mutilate” by imposing his or her will on the patient. In describing the way of the sage we are told that “He works, but does not contend.” Emperor Yu, in diverting the waters to the sea, did so “as if he were acting without any special effort (for he followed the natural tendencies).” So too must the healer follow the natural tendencies of the dao as they strive to assert themselves in ordering each patient’s life. The Dao De Jing emphasizes this principle:

Therefore the sage says
I do not act,
Hence the people transform by themselves;
I love tranquility,
Hence the people are normal by themselves;
I have no business,
Hence the people grow rich by themselves;
I have no desire,
Hence the people are like uncarved wood by themselves.

The therapeutic goal of the inner tradition is to assist patients in “transforming by themselves.” It is as though the patient is on a journey and the practitioner, noticing the patient’s own inner direction, travels around each corner just ahead, clearing the path of obstacles. The patient is only aware of effortlessly proceeding on his or her journey and not of being acted upon by the sage’s will. In the cultivation of original nature it is necessary to approach our heart and the heart of the patient as if we were trying to entice a deer to eat out of our hand. Hence we must sit still and merely extend our hand, allowing the deer to draw closer with each encounter. The boundary must be set entirely by the deer, whose nature is to be timid and shy. Eventually, with trust established through the stillness of the practitioner’s own heart, contact may be made with the truth that lies guarded in the patient’s heart.

… The healer as sage assesses each patient in terms of what is appropriate individually as a unique expression of his or her own being. The sole purpose for choosing to treat any condition is to remove the obstacles that prevent patients from bringing themselves more fully into the world. [Emphasis added.]

… Any action we take in life has one of two consequences: We perpetuate ignorance or we dispel ignorance. Regardless of the relative seriousness of a patient’s symptoms, the commitment of the practitioner in the inner tradition must be to educate the patient about the basis of the illness and to aid in the restoration of original nature. Patients ultimately must be empowered to be the agents of transformation in their own healing process. In so doing, the patient may be restored to the eternal virtue of the dao’s ziran, or self-becoming.

But how is this practicable? After all, simply by needling, or prescribing an herb, or doing anything, from a light touch to surgery, doesn’t this interaction affect a patient?

Returning to the dialogue with Rawn:

But there’s a bigger question here. On one hand you go through a lot of trouble to work on every plane and level to help this person, you go beyond any healing method I’ve heard of to ensure the completeness of treatment and then in the end you say you merely mean to support and encourage the subject’s own “natural” healing process?? When we take a pill for a headache, to me that is short cutting the “natural” healing process. Now if I were to take a pill that you guys created which was infused with energies from every plane imaginable and cures my cancer or whatever overnight, how is that merely encouraging the “natural” healing process?

… Instead of interfering with the subject’s karma by interposing what we think needs to be done, we are harmonizing with and supporting the subject’s own karmic path.

We’d never consider creating a silver bullet. Every body has the capacity to heal itself. Instead of forcing that healing, we are supporting and encouraging the subject’s own healing process and are not trying to speed it up to match our conception of how quick it “should” be. In this regard, we are like homeopathy which also seeks to support the subject’s own self-healing processes.

Jarrett actually describes needling acupuncture points as providing a sort of gentle suggestion to heal.

Ultimately, all interventions, whether they be acupuncture, herbs, or dietary advice, are merely suggestions made by the practitioner to some aspect of the patient’s being that it function in a more balanced way … The acupuncture points treated have potential effects that they empower by activating specific qualities of function. The aspects of being supported by a point’s function, whether it be to improve circulation to an area or empower emotional openness, are again only suggestions that the patient may or may not take. People are not machines and acupuncture points are not switches that “automatically” make things happen. Like a laser, all suggestions in therapy must be congruent in illuminating that aspect of personal expression which has been lost.

So. All in all, what seems to be the consensus is that the most effective way is to perceive the patient deeply, and then seek to align oneself with the patient and assist him or her toward fulfilling karma and returning to original nature.

So what does that mean to me right now? I mean, I just took a midterm about identifying patterns of organ disharmony, next week I have a quiz about herb actions and a quiz on acupuncture point locations and actions. These are all very technical and, in the practice of acupuncture, indispensable. But all are primarily located on the physical plane, and of course there’s a place for that. The physical body may not be the deepest level where healing has to take place, but when there is illness, it is the doorway through which the karmic lessons are learned. It is the opportunity for growth. So of course I have to learn these things.

But then what?

The Worsley school of Five-Element acupuncture focuses on using the senses to diagnose: perceiving the color, sound, odor, and emotion in each individual, and from those perceptions, seeing the deeper individual. We’re actually getting some of that in our schooling, which is more than I can say for most schools of Traditional Chinese Medicine based on a more standardized post-Communist China curriculum. But since it’s not our main focus, and the Five Element aspects of our education are, from what I’ve seen, poorly integrated into the clinical practice at this school, I wonder if it will be enough. I may have to pursue this above and beyond my education here.

On the other hand, a main reason I chose this school was because of the strong emphasis on a complex system of pulse diagnosis, which, can tell a great deal.

In terms of the past one should be able to learn something about the person’s constitution, about the course of their life, about their previous illnesses, about their emotional state, and about their habits e.g., work, exercise, nutrition, drugs and sex. In terms of the present, one should be able to say something about lifestyle and habits; the total body condition or True Qi; strong or weak confirmation; balance in terms of the relationship of the various organ systems to each other and between, them and external factors; whether Hot or Cold, active or passive, internal or external, deficiency or excess, stagnation or weakness are the significant pathological issues to the patient; the extent that the problems that confront the person are due more to the amount, balance, rhythm and/or circulation of fundamental substances such as Qi, Yin, Blood, Fluid, Essence or Spirit, and the stage of disease. It should tell us about the function of what Dr. Shen [Dr. Hammer's teacher] refers to as the Nervous System, Circulatory System, Digestive and Organ Systems.

The pulse should tell us much about the mind and the spirit, in terms of mental status and behavioral style, methods of coping, stability, worry, guilt, fear, depression, mania, tension, and frustration, recent and past emotional and physical trauma, recent and past sadness, psychotic and/or epileptic tendencies, disappointments, and unexpressed anger. Central nervous system diseases can sometimes manifest as signs on the pulse.

The pulse, because it reveals so much immediately on an emotional level, has been, for my patients, an objective reading of their emotional state which bypasses the usual resistance to interpretation that one encounters in psychotherapeutic practices.

Lonny Jarrett, who studied for a time under Dr. Hammer, offers a different angle on the topic:

Anybody who looks and knows it is to be called a spirit;
anybody who listens and knows it is to be called a sage;
anybody who asks and knows it is to be called an artisan;
anybody who feels the vessels and knows it is to be called a skilled workman.

- Nanjing

The Nanjing compares the abilities of those who diagnose by looking (color) to that of the spirits (shen), by sound to that of the sages, by asking to that of the artisans, and by pulse to the ability of the skilled worker. I take this as a hierarchy indicating that even using physical indicators such as the pulse is not as “deep” (revealing of spirit) a diagnostic method as the others mentioned. Just to look at the patient and know the diagnosis (destiny) is thus the highest form of practice.

… The amount of information gleaned from the pulse is limited only by the ability of the practitioner and the sophistication of the system being used. Nonetheless, because pulse information is conveyed through physical touch, I feel that it is skewed toward providing information about relatively more physical levels of being than the other diagnostic methods mentioned.

And maybe that’s appropriate, in a way. After all, I have spent much of my life ignoring my physical body, focusing my attention much more on my mind and to some degree on my emotions. Perhaps it’s part of my karma to be in a place where I can learn that the body, while being a manifestation of mind and soul, is also an entity in its own right and must be respected and related to as such.

Still, on some level all of these things do tie in together. It seems to me that the core skill is to be able to perceive clearly. These have to do with (1) the training of the mind, and (2) the training of the senses. The Worsley school strongly emphasizes developing the senses. As J.R. Worsley himself writes:

It is by developing and using our sensory skills fully that we truly begin to see the patient in front of us and to understand what he needs and what he really wants, which may be different from what he says he wants.

Jarrett, whose perspective has a strong grounding in that system, writes,

The way an individual attaches meaning to life becomes embodied in every aspect of his or her being and is decipherable using the associations in the five-element system. By noticing every spoken word and subtle gesture and the patterns of behavior and attitude they reveal, the practitioner may weave a personal tapestry from the patient’s presentation of color, sound, odor, and emotion that corresponds to the constitutional theme of the person’s life.

Diagnosing [in this way] ensures that the practitioner is perceiving the whole of the patient using the entire sensory apparatus. The practitioner becomes a finely tuned instrument for reception of data as he or she is able to discern finer and finer shades of human expression. The practitioner’s intuitive capabilities are empowered as he or she is able to more readily assimilate diagnostic information. In cultivating awareness of these subtle cues we are called to remove all obstacles between our own hearts and minds that impede the accurate perception of reality. Hence the process of practicing in this way is actually a path that may lead to the rectification of the practitioner’s own heart.

Rawn concurs,

The way to discern a root cause of anything (including illness) is through the direct perception of essential meaning. In other words, through developing one’s powers of perception.

So in the end, for me right now it comes down to one thing: Coming back to myself, harmonizing my relationship with my body, awakening my senses. Precisely my most prominent and difficult obstacle in my enjoyment of life.

Everything fits perfectly.

Now all that remains is to do it: To relearn how to be, to bring an active presence into the world, to be open to receiving and allowing and perceiving, rather than withdrawing and hiding. To open to the vast beauty of the sensory world, and to the vast knowledge and wisdom that is in it.