Zhang Yanhua’s book, Transforming Emotions with Chinese Medicine, is a genuine mesh of anthropological, contemporary analytic, and Chinese Scholarship. It examines how Chinese Medicine has change over the past 100 years in modernisation. It examines how in this brief period, compared to the history of the medicine, it has struggled in its legitimacy against western bio-medicine. In comparison, He uses Tiao and Du, as valuable tools for a Practitioner in achieving results.
Tiao, attunement, is a gauge where health is a negotiation between the Practitioner and the Patient. Tiao is the patient’s sense as where his health is an where it is going. For the Practitioner, it is the constant assessment of the patient’s state at any particular time, whether it is measured by pulse, tongue, examination, and relation. The Practitioner does his best to understand from where the patient is coming from, and this leads us to Du- position or degree. Du, tells us everything about the patient, whether, his circumstances are created or caused by environmental, accidental, emotional, or other particulars. It is the intensity and the severity of the said illness, or discomfort. The Practitioner, does his best to ameliorate, abate, or strengthen from the position that as most efficacious. Clinically different methods could be used, but most importantly is the one of connection. Though, the Practitioner is not a therapist or psycho-analyst, He/She must do what is necessary to relate and extract the most salient information from the patient so as to create the best situation for healing. This is a very insightful book, since it give a glimpse into what Chinese Medicine can be at these crossroads in time
Transforming Emotion with Chinese Medicine.
Categories: Acupuncture, Chinese Herbs, Uncategorized
Edwin Alvarez 