CIA-RDP96-00792R000300430002-6

Body & Soul
EN. BEST
Fel
FRY 19/1693
Connecting
With Chi
East Meets West in 'Energy Medicine'
By Margaret Mason
Special to The Washington Post
M
ore than a dozen years
ago David Eisenberg's
Chinese calligraphy
teacher presented him
with one bold brush
stroke.
"It was the most ancient charac-
ter for a bird," says Eisenberg. "He
gave it to me as a symbol, encourag-
ing me to fly and to be free and to try
and let my mind and my sense of
wonder explore like a bird."
Fortunately for the rest of us, Ei-
senberg never has forgotten that gift,
nor the giver, Wang Jinhuai, under
whom Eisenberg studied calligraphy
in 1979-80 as the first American med-
ical student sent by the National
Academy of Sciences to the People's
Republic of China. They continue to
be very close friends.
" 'A teacher for one day,' " Eisen-
berg quotes a proverb, " 'is like a
parent for a lifetime.'
"He's a great mentor of mine, about
chi [from the word, Qi, for vital ener-
gy, pronounced 'chee'], and about bal-
ance and about yin and yang and
Chinese medicine," says Eisenberg.
"He's an example of a man who really
tries to understand the best from
ancient and modern culture."
As does Eisenberg. "I am breathing
life into a bridge that has been there a
long time," he says.
An internist at Beth Israel Hospital
in Boston, Eisenberg is director of
exchange activities between Harvard
Medical School (where he is on staff),
the Peking Union Medical College and
the Chinese Academy of Medical Sci-
ences. He also is a member of the ad
hoc advisory panel for NIH's Office of
Alternative Medicine.
You'll meet him in "The Mystery of
Chi," Monday night's first segment of
the five-part PBS documentary, "Heal-
ing and the Mind With Bill Moyers." I
met Eisenberg in his book, "Encoun-
ters With Chi," and in several tele-
phone conversations, which helped me
grasp some of the profound, yet sub-
tle, differences in Chinese and West-
ern medicine.
In the exchange on film between
Eisenberg and his calligraphy teacher,
for example, I understood for a mo-
ment the Chinese culture premise
that healing is not separate from the
rest of life, that mind, body and spirit
are linked in everything, including art.
Approved For Release 2001/02/07
PHOTO BY FORREST ANDERSON
Tai chi chuan teacher Master Shir with a class in Beijing.
Thus, the line, "the brush stroke is the
man."
But the more I learn, the more I
realize that Chinese medicine goes
way beyond acupuncture, however
dramatic that is. The internal dra-
ma -- the stuff of "energy medicine"
and other ways of tapping into and
using our own "chi" for health and
healing-is even more compelling.
No wonder Eisenberg keeps re-
turning to China, at once "humbled," a
word he uses often, and skeptical.
He'd like nothing better than to see
more research on the principles of
Chinese medicine using Western sci-
entific methodologies.
"The art of healing is thousands of
years old," he writes in his book. "The
science of healing is still in the process
of being born."
But now to get to the part of the
Roodede4spots rost for me. "In
Chinese medicine," says Eisenberg,
"there's the idea that the body has to
move, and that movement is as impor-
tant as eating or sleeping or drinking."
The Chinese believe, he says, that
if you don't move the body every day,
it becomes stagnant. Thus, hundreds
of millions of people in China come out
every morning at dawn-as they have
for 24 centuries-to perform their
daily exercises, known as "t'ai chi
ch'uan" and "chi gong." Unlike West-
ern aerobics, the movements are slow
and careful, combined with medita-
tion.
In northern China, they come at
dawn even when there is snow and
ice. "In Chinese medicine," says Ei-
senberg, "the body is a microcosm of
the universe, a part of nature, so that
as the seasons and temperatures
change, people also experience these
changes."
And as I think about the serenity on
the faces of those old men and wom-
en, I learn from the Center for Inter-
national Research that 15 percent of
the world's population of people 80
and over is in China, and from the
looks of the PBS film and from what
I've read, all of them must be out
there moving about at dawn. And then
I think about the second highest per-
centage of 80-and-uppers, the 13 per-
cent from this country. I don't picture
most of them moving about in the
fresh air at dawn. I picture them
banging their canes in a nursing home.
We have a lot to learn from each
other.
But to keep things in perspective,
consider that 3,000 years before the
birth of psychoneuroimmunology ----
the new interdisciplinary field that is
redefining the links between brain and
body-Chinese doctors were strug-
gling with the same mind-body rela-
tions.
After reading that in Eisenberg's
book, I tacked up on my wall still
another Chinese proverb:
"Make small progress day by day."
Everyone who watches the Bill
Moyers series will come away with a
different opinion, depending on their
own health, state of mind and expo-
sure to mind/body concepts. But
chances are, particularly if the ideas
are new, you'll want to talk about
them.
Here's a time and place: 7 p.m.
March 7, Washington Ethical Society,
7750 16th St. NW.
Elliott S. Dacher, a Reston physi-
cian with a long-time personal and
professional interest in holistic medi-
cine and author of a book on
mind/body healing, will speak. The
title of his talk, "The Mind Is the
Body; The Body Is the Mind," is
borrowed from the Moyers series.
T
he line-which does get
your attention-belongs to
molecular biologist Can-
dace Pert, in a segment on
chemical communicators.
(Pert discovered the opiate receptor
and other peptide receptors in the
brain and body, which led to an under-
standing of the chemicals that travel
between the mind and body.)
The session, says Dacher, "is a
celebration of the series and a chance
to explore and discuss how our own
experiences relate to this information,
and the implications of this informa-
tion in our lives." After Dacher's talk,
participants will break into small dis-
cussion groups, each with a trained
leader.
The event, sponsored by the Shen-
andoah Institute, a nonprofit educa-
tional organization, is free. To regis-
ter, which is required, call
703-558-0833.
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A Remarkable Finish Is Just
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