Re: Tai-Chi, Chi and Other Such Things

October 24, 2001

Mel Siff wrote:

<What your friend has said is just as discrediting towards Tai-Chi as by all

those mystics whom he has seen fit to decry. Body healing is far more

complex that what he believes and there are many other biochemicals involved

in the process than this apparent sole hero called hydrolonic acid.>

Reply:

What Dan's friend has said is not unique to one teacher. It is the common

health food, semi-mystic, macrobiotic, Ohsawa, Michio Kushi, teaching

about the body. The first you must accept is that Western medicine is wrong

about " nearly everything. " (One interesting key to this teaching is that

there is no such thing as overpopulation. Food produces life and if there

is life, there is enough food. Get it. I didn't say it. I am repeating it.)

In studying the body, what the foolish West has discovered as a pump is

actually a valve and the movement of blood through the valve is caused by

the contraction of various Chinese words that I cannot think of at the moment.

Tai Chi, Chi Gong are obviously beneficial to many people. That has been

proven over years of practice. I do not understand why practitioners find

it so necessary to explain it in Western medical terms. It may be that the

series of those movements have been discovered to be beneficial to people.

Isn't that enough?

Many teaching hospitals are training nurses with " healing touch. " The truth

is that most of the nurses are so skeptical and learn so little about the

practice that they are not really doing anything but touching the patient.

But it helps (if the nurse is kind and gentle). Is she transferring chi?

Maybe? Who cares. Kindness and caring are part of the healing practice. Is that

chi?

I studied Reiki. It works. The Japanese use it in some of their hospitals.

I rather doubt much of their explanations. To spend 45 minutes comforting

an ailing person must have some positive effect. It doesn't have to be

reduced to some specious scientific explanation. The songs are true but the

singers are off key.

Ron dobrin

new york city

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