Category: Sharing Thoughts

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Patient As Koan

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

“If [man] thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.”

David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980

R. Buckminster Fuller is a known name to most of my generation. He was on the cover of Time magazine; he traveled to hundreds of campuses lecturing; he was said to be the only person over 30 that the hippies trusted; he was called the first poet-saint of technology. Fuller was a pioneer of what might be called a whole systems approach to life on earth. He advised us in every endeavor to start always with the whole. What might this mean for us in Chinese medicine?

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Whither Our Profession?

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

I came across an article recently in which I read surprisingly that the number of practicing acupuncturists in the US is rather flat when measured over the last few years. It seems that with 3000+ students in the tube in our various schools we would be growing at a steady rate, not holding at a standstill. Apparently, we are losing as many as we are gaining. Not a good situation, obviously, and one that invites speculation.

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What & How

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

I have been practicing acupuncture-herbal medicine-bodywork for 20 years now. It’s hard to believe that many years have gone by. What a fascinating journey it has been. For most of that time I have invested my time and energy into mastering what we could call the “what” of East Asian Medicine, which is to say the information side of things: What do you do when you feel this particular pulse quality, what do you understand when you palpate the abdomen and discover a certain finding, what does this herb do when combined with another herb, and so on. This is all very important knowledge of course.

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Mentorship

A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn

Training under a mentor has long been a part of Chinese medicine. It is in the clinic that we learn how the theoretical side of Chinese medicine gets put into action. This past weekend I had an opportunity to see how this plays out for the fortunate ones who have access to such a mentor.

On Saturday and Sunday I hosted Junko Shuto, the daughter of the most famous traditional pediatric specialist in Japan, Masanori Tanioka, Junko sensei brought three of her students with her, and it was evident in their skill demonstrations that the long-term contact with a talented mentor has benefitted them enormously. Junko herself gives 500- 600 pediatric treatments every month and has been doing this for 30+ years; I doubt anyone in the US has treated even half this many. It is difficult for us to duplicate this mentor-student system in the US for a few reasons, the most obvious and important of which is that we lack sufficient senior practitioners with enough experience.

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Defending What Is Sacred

“Our problems are so complex that only a truly simple solution will do.” 

Jiddhu Krishnamurti

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty, but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”

R. Buckminster Fuller

The radical theologian-ecologist Matthew Fox tells of having a dream long ago in which a voice tells him that the only problem humans have is that they have lost a sense of the sacred. This is surprising. I would have thought we had a lot of big problems, not just one. When I contemplated the message of his dream, it demanded a reorganization of my typical thought process. Could this be true? Only one problem?

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Easter Reflections

On this eve of Easter, 2017, I find myself reflecting on a great teacher who walked among his fellow humans some 2000 years ago and brought a message of love. I refer of course to Jesus of Nazareth. The Jesus depicted in the Gospel of Thomas is the one dearest to my heart—much like a great Zen teacher in many respects. 

Sometimes I wonder what he would make of the world we have built with its institutional greed, insensitivity, racism, sexism, hatred, militarism, ecological destruction, and on and on the depressing list might run. Have we progressed at all since his day? Likely yes, but hardly enough to be proud of. Deep problems abound.

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Autumn

Here in Portland, Oregon even though our days are still warm, it is clear that we find ourselves firmly in autumn—fall air feels so different from summer air. The kids are back in school, and next week my teaching duties start again at NUNM with a new cohort of students eager to make Chinese medicine their career. There is a great poem from Rainer Maria Rilke that captures masterfully the feeling of the fall time (below is my translation):

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Treating The Cause?

I often hear it said in Chinese Medicine circles that we focus on the “cause” of the patient’s problem, but biomedicine focuses on the symptoms. This is not of course accurate. There are a lot of pages in our tradition devoted to getting this or that symptom to change, e.g., giving ban xia for insomnia in the Nei Jing to give just one simple example. I want to share some thoughts on this issue. It seems simple enough on the face of it, but it deserves a deeper scrutiny.

Naturopathic medicine as well talks of treating the root cause, i.e., Chinese Medicine is not alone in this claim. It is in fact one of their foundational guiding principles. But do we (or the NDs) really arrive at a “root” cause. The word “root” would to my mind imply we have discovered the core of the issue. The root of a plant is foundational; cut off the root and most plants will die.

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The Sacred?

We live in a secular age—at least it would be true to say that the dominant culture is largely secular in orientation. The Catholic Church no longer calls the shots and carries the weight it once did centuries ago, and this would be true of other faiths as well, although obviously religions are still functioning and still have a great deal of power. Thus, I tread carefully around this word “sacred.” It has typically been considered the exclusive province of the religions.

I bring this word “sacred” up because two weeks ago it dropped in my lap so to speak in my teaching at NUNM in Portland, OR. A few of our students and recent graduates drove to North Dakota to offer support in the medical yurts for the Standing Rock water protectors. I salute them for their actions. They returned with wonderful, inspiring stories.

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