In Chinese culture, there is no animal that is more mythical, more powerful or more auspicious than the dragon. This Chinese New Year is the Year of the Yang Water Dragon. (Sounds like a good year to do a lot of swimming, coiling Silk Reeling, doesn’t it?)
To you and yours, we here at the Sun Tai Chi Institute of Boston and Silk Reeling wish you nothing but happiness, health, luck and prosperity.
I just returned last week from a five-day training camp with my Chen taijiquan teacher, Master Wang Haijun. And every time I touch arms with him for Push Hands, I’m always amazed at how he feels: so solid, so heavy. It’s as if his molecular density is twice that of a normal human being, as if every single one of his cells has absorbed the maximum amount of qi possible. And it stands to reason he feels that way. After all, he’s spent over three decades cultivating his qi.
Imagine I blindfolded you and touched a steel bar against your forearm (you wearing a long-sleeved shirt), and then I touched a cardboard tube against your forearm. Would you be able to tell the difference? It’s the same way touching arms with Master Wang, that sense of mass and substance and presence.
So how can us mere mortals cultivate our qi to this degree? Lots of practice, of course, but a big part of it is also imagery and how we imagine our qi being stored.
What’s in a dan tian?
Many taiji teachers always recite, as if by rote, that you should “store your qi in your dan tian.” But what exactly does this mean?
Technically speaking, the dan tian corresponds to the qihai (CV6) acupuncture point, about an inch and a half below your navel. Depending on who you ask, it’s anywhere from the size of a marble to a golf ball to a grapefruit, and one-third to one-half of the way into your abdomen.
Chen taiji Grandmaster Chen Zhenglei once suggested that the dan tian be thought of as the entire abdominal cavity, rather than a smaller space within the abdominal cavity.
For “centering” purposes, I like visualizing the dan tian as the size of a golf ball. For drawing on the dan tian as the “central gear” that generates all taiji movement, I like taking Grandmaster Chen’s idea and imagining a large, spinning ball inside my entire abdomen, like a bowling ball.
But for the idea of qi storage, there’s another visualization I much prefer.
The whole-body qi soak
To me, it seems limiting to imagine my qi stored in a container in my abdomen. What if you utilized your entire body to store your qi?
Imagine your body is a sponge clenched up in your fist:
Here’s another way to think of it:
(Vegetarians, you can skip the chicken analogy and stick with the sponge!)
I like the sponge image because there’s a more obvious “absorbing” feeling, plus it extends the idea to martial application. But I like the chicken visualization, too, because it includes this idea that practicing taiji can change the very fabric of your body.
So this is what I’m feeling when I touch arms with Master Wang. I’m not feeling qi ebb and flow from his dan tian, I’m feeling it everywhere.
Now, please understand I’m not totally dismissing the idea of storing qi in the dan tian. If the dan tian is your center of gravity and the seat of power, then of course issuing qi from there is of prime importance. Perhaps if your body is a sponge, then there’s a sphere-shaped area in your abdomen that is especially dense sponge material.
But the idea behind these visualizations is to take your qi retention to the next level, and beyond just the classic concept of storing qi in your dan tian.
15 months ago, I wrote about the ill effects of too much sitting. That post was prompted by an Australian study that found each hour of daily sitting correlated to an 18% increase in heart disease and an 11% overall increase in mortality.
Now sitting is in the news again, and still not in a good way. Recently a study conducted by the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University found that people who sit for a large portion of the day are 54% more likely to die of heart attack.
And just yesterday, NPR did a piece on sedentary behavior that cited a University of South Carolina study, which found men who reported more than 23 hours a week of sedentary activity had a 64% greater risk of dying from heart disease.
All of this points to a behavioral change in the workplace that many of you may find onerous, but it just might save your life: get rid of your office chair and stand while you work. Pester your boss and/or HR department for an adjustable sitting/standing workstation like the Ergotron WorkFit-S Single HD Sit-Stand Workstation.
There’s even a website sounding the klaxon call for the standing revolution: JustStand.org
All of this research and evidence only supports one of my favorite internal martial arts practices: zhan zhuang, otherwise known as standing post or standing meditation. There will be countless posts (and maybe even a dedicated website!) devoted to zhan zhuang, so stay tuned.
I practiced 30 minutes of baguazhang circle walking tonight, then sat down and watched Zen Noir. If that’s not a recipe for turning your mind inside out, I don’t know what is.
First, let me play film critic. Zen Noir is very low budget, very bizarre and incredibly well done. It’s Mike Hammer meets The Buddhist Twilight Zone; murder mystery meets mystery of life; “Whodunit?” meets “Who am I?” I highly recommend the movie – it’ll change your life at least for a day, if not a lifetime.
But as I was watching it, Zen Noir’s off-kilter soul-searching made me completely reexamine my perception of bagua. Just this morning, I was talking with a student of mine about different bagua styles and lineages, and characteristics that were added or left out or changed. And with the perfect storm of that conversation, my own circle walking and Zen Noir all in a single day, I realized for the first time in my life just how silly the concepts of “style” and “technique” are with regard to bagua.
Let’s take a step back for a minute. Dong Haichuan (1797-1882) is widely acknowledged as the founder of baguazhang. From Wikipedia (bolding is mine):
As a child and young man he intensely trained in the martial arts of his village. The arts were probably Shaolin-based and may have included Bafanshan (a possible precursor to Fanziquan), Hongquan, Xingmenquan, and Jingangquan. These were the arts being taught in and around Dong’s village at this time. Alternatively, Dong is sometimes said to have learned and practiced Erlangquan, Luohanquan, or other arts.
His family is thought to have been so poor, at some point around 1853, Dong left Hebei Province to seek work elsewhere. By many accounts he is described as spending his youth travelling, penniless, and often getting in trouble. But he, even by his own claims, continued to study martial arts intensely during his travels. Where, by whom, and what he was taught, varies depending on the source. But it is generally accepted that, during this time, Dong studied Taoist training methods that included some kind of circle walking practice.
So basically, the takeaway here is that Dong Haichuan married his countless martial arts influences with circle walking to create baguazhang. But it doesn’t end there. All of his bagua descendants took the art off in numerous directions and styles – Cheng, Yin Fu, Gao, Liang, Jiang, Sha, Sun, Dragon, Jin Men, Fu Xi, Tian, Wudang, Zhao, the list goes on and on, each style with its own specific characteristics and palm changes. All of which, after watching Zen Noir, brought me back to the innocent, stark and existential question: what is baguazhang?
If the very nature of bagua is to be fluid and ever-changing, then does it really matter which style you study? This question could be asked of taijiquan, baguazhang, xingyiquan or any other kung fu style, but it is especially pertinent to bagua. If all bagua styles have circle walking in common, then perhaps it could be said that the only technique that is truly, uniquely baguazhang is the circle walking itself. All the rest is just people choreographing their own palm changes from their own personal martial arts influences, and stamping their own name onto a new style.
Even from a philosophical standpoint, baguazhang places inordinate emphasis on the changes. The eight trigrams of the I Ching form the basis for every style’s eight palm changes, and some styles extrapolate by another factor of eight to come up with 64 different hand techniques.
But in the same way Bruce Lee and Wang Xiangzhai (the founder of yiquan/dachengquan) eschewed choreographed movements, forms and styles, perhaps all these different baguazhang styles and palm changes are distracting us from the true heart and soul of bagua – perhaps the real secret lies simply in the meditation of walking the circle. Around and around and around. Changing directions with a single, simple, generic palm change, then around and around the other way.
Perhaps it is there, in the endless, infinite circle, where you will truly find yourself, and the answer to that most Zen of riddles in the Chinese internal martial arts: what is baguazhang?
Today was the second day of Master Wang Haijun’s three-day weekend workshop, and it’s been a fantastic weekend for revelations. In talking with him yesterday about the correct posture for Jin Ji Du Li (Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg), plus listening to him mention countless times today about maintaining the feeling of peng in all the form postures, it got me thinking about peng energy and fa jin potential, and how these qualities live within the sinews.
I came up with the idea for a series of exercises I call La Rou Peng Jin as a way of accelerating peng development. These exercises methodically stretch the tissues and infuse them with a more “active” feeling of peng, adding a more “seeking” quality to peng.
I’ll be debuting these exercises in class next week, and hope to have more details and explanation in the future after they undergo more development and thought.
This past weekend, I was fooling around with some taiji and qigong movements, and I came up with a series of “moving standing” postures that I call Yin Yang Circulatory Zhan Zhuang. I’ll be introducing these in classes this week and getting some student feedback. I’m extremely excited about the creation of this qigong set, and I hope to provide more details in the future.
I’ve spent the last two blog posts dissecting Dr. Stephen Barrett’s article, Be Wary of Acupuncture, Qigong, and ‘Chinese Medicine’” on Quackwatch.com. The article devotes most of its time trying to undermine acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), but it does devote one paragraph to qigong:
Qigong is also claimed to influence the flow of “vital energy.” Internal Qigong involves deep breathing, concentration, and relaxation techniques used by individuals for themselves. External Qigong is performed by “Qigong masters” who claim to cure a wide variety of diseases with energy released from their fingertips. However, scientific investigators of Qigong masters in China have found no evidence of paranormal powers and some evidence of deception. They found, for example, that a patient lying on a table about eight feet from a Qigong master moved rhythmically or thrashed about as the master moved his hands. But when she was placed so that she could no longer see him, her movements were unrelated to his. Falun gong, which China banned several years ago, is a Qigong varient (sic) claimed to be “a powerful mechanism for healing, stress relief and health improvements.”
There are two things that need to be separated here. First, there are a few taijiquan and qigong “masters” who claim to be able to stand at a distance from someone, and without touching them, manipulate their qi so that they dance and twitch at the (puppet)master’s will. This is closely related to people who claim to be able to use their qi to repel attackers from a distance.
I’m not going to name any names here, but if you know what to search for on YouTube, you can create many hours of entertainment for yourself. I remember the very first time I saw a demonstration video of “qi self-defense” from a group founded in Bali (hint hint). The video showed a practitioner with something like eight attackers draped all over him, like a dogpile from a football game. The practitioner then let out a bloodcurling scream, and all the attackers fell to the ground in a lovely flower pattern, writhing and convulsing as if they had just hugged an electric eel. (I have to confess that I burst out laughing.)
I want to be very, very clear on this point. I do believe qi can be felt from a distance without being touched. However, I do not believe you can command another person’s qi like puppet strings. I do not believe you can drop an attacker from a distance by screaming your qi at them. In this regard, Dr. Barrett and I are in agreement.
What’s Behind the Curtain?
However, “qi magicians” aside, Barrett’s paragraph on qigong goes to the heart of a question that forms the basis for the rest of the article, and his criticism of acupuncture and TCM: does qi exist?
Skeptics like Barrett will tell you that the answer is no. This definition of qi from Skepdic.com probably sums up how disbelievers feel:
chi (ch’i or qi)
Ch’i or qi (pronounced “chee” and henceforth spelled “chi“) is the Chinese word used to describe “the natural energy of the Universe.” This energy, though called “natural,” is spiritual or supernatural, and is part of a metaphysical, not an empirical, belief system. New Agers often refer to this energy as subtle energy. Chi is thought to permeate all things, including the human body. Such metaphysical systems are generally referred to as types of vitalism. One of the key concepts related to chi is the concept of harmony. Trouble, whether in the universe or in the body, is a function of disharmony, of things being out of balance and in need of restoration to equilibrium.
Proponents claim to prove the existence and power of chi by healing people with acupuncture or chi kung (qi gong), by doing magic tricks such as breaking a chopstick with the edge of a piece of paper or resuscitating a “dead” fly, or by martial arts stunts like breaking a brick with a bare hand or foot. When examined under controlled conditions, however, the seemingly paranormal or supernatural feats of masters of chi turn out to be quite ordinary feats of magic, deception, or natural powers.
Vitalism is a popular philosophy in many cultures. Thus, chi has many counterparts: prana (India and therapeutic touch), ki (Japan); Wilhelm Reich’s orgone, Mesmer’s animal magnetism, Bergson’s élan vital (vital force), to name just a few. The concept is very popular among New Age thinking, where it generally goes by the name of energy, though the concept bears no resemblance to the concept as used by physicists.
By way of retort, I’ll start by quoting again from Barrett #2. In Rick Barrett’s book, Taijiquan: Through the Western Gate, Chapter 7, “Ask a Fish About Water,” explores the existence of qi.
While vital energy has been known and accepted in spiritual and healing circles throughout the world since prehistory, qi has been easy to discount by the more skeptical among us because of its relative lack of substance.
Barrett goes on to point out, however, that even in Western science, this idea of “substance,” this distinction between a tangible, material vessel (body) and an intangible energy that flows through it (qi) must be discarded:
Scientists now concede that neither matter nor energy can be defined independently of each other. Einstein’s equation E=mc2 tells us that mass must be multiplied by the speed of light times itself to reveal the energy hidden within. Matter is not just convertible into energy; it is energy. Lots of energy. The form that this energy takes is so condensed that we regard it as something quite different, yet both are woven from the same fabric.
Barrett then spends much of the rest of the chapter describing current scientific efforts to measure the bioelectricity and biomagnetism of qi in the human body, using such devices like the SQUID (superconducting quantum interference device). As technology advances, it improves our chances of detecting qi and satisfying the most ardent followers of materialism and mechanism.
Barrett closes the chapter by suggesting that the concept of qi and Western science are no longer mutually incompatible:
We can see that qi has a tangible aspect without compromising its transcendent nature. Science has just begun to show better ways of understanding the substantial side. Even if science can’t fully explain what is there, it can verify that energy does radiate from our bodies, that this energy has many of the qualities necessary for health and healing., and that is can be controlled and amplified by those practiced in the internal arts and energy medicine. Qi is no longer just a subjective perception. Available instruments can easily record it. Instead of questioning whether qi exists, therefore, science now needs to explore its physically measurable qualities and the ways in which it can be used.
Me and Qi
Now to set aside both Barretts and speak for myself. I believe in qi. I have to. Whether you’re in it for health or the more martial aspects, increased circulation and awareness of qi is the ultimate goal of taijiquan. And I do not consider myself a blind believer. I reserved my full 100% faith in qi until I felt it within myself, and also had it demonstrated upon me by my teachers.
I hope that all beginning students go into taijiquan with the same small percentage of skepticism that I did. For the first two years of my taijiquan practice, I thought I was feeling qi, wanted to believe I was feeling qi. But only after I hit the two-year mark and really started feeling it in my hands, did I realize the previous 24 months had been largely wishful thinking and imagination.
Every martial arts student also wants to see what is possible at the highest level. And not to simply watch it happen, but to feel it for him/herself. For me, the deal was sealed, all doubts tossed to the winds, with one of my former teachers and one of my current teachers.
In the first instance, my former teacher, the very first time I met him, demonstrated how he used his hand/forearm to block my punch, then placed his right elbow on my upper left chest. He then gave a little snap of his body. It’s important to note that he did not withdraw his elbow to strike my chest; his elbow was already touching my chest. He did not advance his feet. And the total sum of his elbow’s forward movement was maybe two inches at most, but the result was shocking. I felt as if I had been stuck with an electric cattle prod. Being the only newbie there and surrounded by a crowd of (then) strangers, I put on my best macho face and didn’t flinch. But what I really wanted to do was let out a huge groan, fall to one knee, then get up and walk it off, rubbing my chest. I ended up with a bruise that lasted a week.
In the second instance, at a seminar held by my Chen taijiquan teacher, Master Wang Haijun, I watched him do a push hands demonstration and send a student flying. Then it was my turn, and he summarily sent me flying. And by flying, I mean flying. Again, with no advancement of his feet, only a little jerk of his waist, Master Wang launched me backwards a good 20-25 feet, fully laid out on my back, polishing the wooden floor with my ass the entire length of my ignoble journey, like something out of a Hollywood stunt.
I am sure that both of these demonstrations are tame compared to what other internal arts students may have experienced at the hands of their teachers. But they’re enough for me. Both instances cannot be explained by physics alone. With all due respect to Sir Isaac Newton, there is far more going on here than F=ma, far more than the mechanics of mass times acceleration.
Having felt it for myself, I fully believe that what I experienced, in a very tangible way, was fa jin, the martial, explosive discharge of qi. For me, it is no longer a question to be debated. Qi is real.
This train of thought and storytelling would not be complete without going back to Rick Barrett. In his book, he describes meeting taijiquan master Waysun Liao for the first time and being the recipient of Liao’s internal power:
He asked me to stand and relax about three feet in front of a wall. He lightly placed his fingertips on my chest. With no movement of his body, I was suddenly slammed into the wall behind me and fell to the floor. More remarkable, I had no sense of time having elapsed. There was just a simultaneous “touch-wall-floor.” My subjective experience was of time having been compressed into a single moment.
And again:
…he just placed his fingertips on my forearm, and again, without movement by him, I was instantly on the floor. There had only been the slightest touch on my arm. My subjective experience was that the floor sucked me down in a single moment. Resistance was not just futile; it was incomprehensible. Space and time had collapsed. Something dramatically beyond my normal experience had just happened. I knew I did not yet have the language to explain it.
How I would love to put Dr. Stephen Barrett in front of Waysun Liao and let him experience that!
Duck, Duck…
In closing, I’d like to circle back to the beginning, as all things must. I titled the two leadoff blog posts “If It Quacks Like a Duck…” partly in reference to Quackwatch.com, but also in reference to the classic saying, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”
This is the Everyman’s axiom of inductive reasoning, the Average Joe’s folk version of the scientific method. But like Western science itself, not everything is as it appears. Sometimes the question and the answer, the hypothesis and the result, the cause and the effect, don’t always follow a sensible line of logic.
The existence and nature of qi, the abilities and capabilities of true taijiquan/qigong masters, and the miraculous things that can sometimes be witnessed with Eastern practices go far beyond what our puny minds can comprehend. Taijiquan is an expression of the infinite, cosmic power of qi and the vast, limitless potential that sleeps within each one of us.
Sometimes, just sometimes, if it quacks like a duck, it may very well be… the dragon.
Continuing my analysis of the article from Quackwatch.com, “Be Wary of Acupuncture, Qigong, and ‘Chinese Medicine’,” authored by the site’s owner, Dr. Stephen Barrett.
Quack 3, Quack 4 (Echo)
Here I’ll combine the first section, “Dubious Claims,” with the last section, “Diagnostic Studies,” since both of these speak to the heart of the matter: does acupuncture really work?
A frequent reference throughout “Dubious Claims” is the placebo effect. The placebo effect is a phenomenon where the mind paves the way for the treatment to be a self-fulfilling prophecy; that is, merely suggesting or anticipating acupuncture – or having acupuncture done with a fake needle – is enough to provoke the physiological response necessary to remedy the pain, condition or illness.
This is a real problem for acupuncture research and for getting acupuncture accepted into mainstream Western medicine and medical insurance. If sham acupuncture is just as effective as the real thing – or if real acupuncture is no better than a fake needle – then does it really work? Is the research that’s been done so far conclusive enough to condemn acupuncture as a hoax?
One way to tell is not just to study the before and after, but during. In 2005, acupuncture researchers in England conducted a study separating subjects into three groups. The first group was touched with blunt needles at acupuncture points, and they knew in advance that the needles were blunt. The second group was treated with specially developed needles that looked like they penetrated the skin, but actually didn’t. And the third group was treated with real acupuncture.
All subjects’ brains were monitored with PET (positron emission tomography) scans during their procedure, and, well, the results speak for themselves. This is an extremely significant study, because it manages, in a very scientific way, to make a distinction between the placebo effect and real acupuncture efficacy. But of course, one study does not a paradigm make, so more studies need to be done.
Placebo effect aside, there is a variation on needle acupuncture that is mentioned several times in this section: electroacupuncture, or electrical stimulation at acupuncture points. Barrett and Dr. George A. Ulett (see previous blog post) seem to want to distance electroacupuncture from traditional needle acupuncture, as if one is real science and the other is Asian voodoo.
I’ll be generous towards the good doctors here and say that perhaps electroacupuncture is indeed the next evolutionary stage of acupuncture. I’m perfectly open to it. After all, if needle acupuncture has been around for nearly two millennia, but electricity and bioelectricity were only discovered in the last 400 years (William Gilbert, 1600, and Luigi Galvani, 1791, respectively), perhaps we’re just getting around to putting the two together. But electroacupuncture does not invalidate needle acupuncture or the thousands of years of Chinese medicine that came before it. If anything, it’s just icing on the cake.
The last study Barrett references in this section is a 2004 study of postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) in women who underwent breast or gynecologic surgery. He notes that there was no significant difference between the study group and the control group, but also notes:
A subgroup analysis found that vomiting was “significantly reduced” among the acupuncture patients, but the authors correctly noted that this finding might be due to studying multiple outcomes.
My reply to that is, “Or… it might not.” Maybe it was the acupuncture that “significantly reduced” the women’s vomiting. And Barrett’s assertion that the authors “correctly noted the finding might be due to studying multiple outcomes” (bolding mine) has no place here. The study authors simply put an asterisk next to their finding. There is nothing “correct” about their note; Barrett is simply cheerleading and trying to influence the reader’s interpretation of the note.
As for the last section of the article, “Diagnostic Studies,” I find it rather thin. Barrett only relates one personal anecdote and one study. In the personal anecdote, he relates an experience where a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) diagnosed a woman with premature ventricular contractions (PVS), but when Barrett took her pulse, he found it to be “completely normal.”
If you believe in TCM, then you know that TCM practitioners are highly trained to distinguish nuances and subtleties in the pulse that Western doctors cannot. If you do not believe that the TCM practitioner was able to determine the presence of PVS, then you need to take Barrett’s pulse reading and “completely normal” conclusion with a pile of salt as well. The only way to know with 100% certainty whether that woman really had PVS would be with an electrocardiogram (ECG) or an echocardiogram (ECHO).
Finally, Barrett refers to a 2001 study that supposedly “illustrates the absurdity of TCM practices.” In it, a 40-year-old woman with chronic back pain is given a wide range of diagnoses by seven acupuncturists, as well as a wide range of proposed acupuncture points to treat her condition. Studies like this may have value in shedding light on how acupuncturists and TCM practitioners approach diagnosis and treatment, but it is absurd to allow Barrett to call this study absurd if the practitioners were not allowed to follow through and actually treat the patient. Diversity aside, would their diagnoses and treatments have relieved her chronic back pain?
Quack 5
In the last section we’ll examine, “The NIH Debacle,” Barrett laments the 1997 NIH (National Institutes of Health) endorsement of acupuncture, and the organization’s encouragement to conduct more studies on acupuncture and expand its presence in conventional medicine.
He points out that even the NIH Consensus Statement cautions:
Despite considerable efforts to understand the anatomy and physiology of the “acupuncture points,” the definition and characterization of these points remain controversial. Even more elusive is the scientific basis of some of the key traditional Eastern medical concepts such as the circulation of Qi, the meridian system, and other related theories, which are difficult to reconcile with contemporary biomedical information but continue to play an important role in the evaluation of patients and the formulation of treatment in acupuncture.
Barrett also counters with a position paper from the NCAHF (The National Council Against Health Fraud), which says about acupuncture, among other things:
Its theory and practice are based on primitive and fanciful concepts of health and disease that bear no relationship to present scientific knowledge.
I pull these quotes together to finish my analysis from a more high-level, philosophical standpoint. Conducting Western medical research on Eastern practices like acupuncture, TCM, taijiquan or qigong is like trying to fit the proverbial square peg in a round hole. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,” Shakespeare wrote, “Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
To help me illuminate these other things in heaven and earth, I invoke one Barrett (Rick) to counter another Barrett (Stephen). Rick Barrett is a taijiquan practitioner, instructor and author of Taijiquan: Through the Western Gate. At a minimum, Chapter 4, “The Western Gate,” should be required reading for anyone practicing acupuncture/TCM, taijiquan/qigong, martial arts, Western medicine or Western science.
Rick Barrett quoting Huston Smith, religious scholar:
The triumphs of modern science went to man’s head in something of the way rum does, causing him to grow loose in his logic. He came to think that what science discovers somehow casts doubt on things it does not discover; that the success it realizes in its own domain throws into question the reality of domains its devices cannot touch.
Rick Barrett quoting Paul Feyeraband, philosopher of science:
Science is much closer to myth than a scientific philosophy is prepared to admit. It is one of the many forms of thought that have been developed by man, and not necessarily the best. It is conspicuous, noisy, and impudent, but it is inherently superior only for those who have already decided in favour of a certain ideology, or who have accepted it without ever having examined its advantages and its limits.
Rick Barrett himself:
Science is an amazing tool, provided we recognize its limitations. [Philosopher Karl] Popper’s analogy compares science to “a searchlight, scanning the night sky for planes. For a plane to register, two things are required: it must exist, and it must be where the beam is.” To be of value, the focus of any particular scientific investigation must be narrow. It can tell us much about the planes caught in its beam but little about the blackness outside that beam. Most of the physical universe, the actual bailiwick of science, remains unknown and unknowable.
Going back to Stephen Barrett’s Quackwatch.com article, this quote he includes from fellow skeptic Harriet “The SkepDoc” Hall perfectly illustrates his and her lack of understanding on how Western scientific research intersects with Eastern healing practices:
Many acupuncture researchers are doing what I call Tooth Fairy science: measuring how much money is left under the pillow without bothering to ask if the Tooth Fairy is real.
I’m puzzled by this quote, I really am. All medical research fits what Hall disdainfully labels as “Tooth Fairy science.” All medical research, whether conducted on acupuncture or on a cholesterol drug, is only interested in the result, and by examining the result, validates or invalidates the hypothesis.
All medical research, whether conducted on acupuncture or on a cholesterol drug, measures how much money is left under the pillow. If the study group leaves more money under the pillow than the control group, then guess what? The Tooth Fairy is real (for the time being). If the control group leaves more money under the pillow than the study group, then the Tooth Fairy is not real (for the time being). It is disingenuous for Hall to suggest that a medical study which starts off with an acupuncture hypothesis is doomed to the realm of fantasy before it even begins, while a medical study which starts off with a chemical compound is destined for the Judgment of Eternal Truth.
Conclusion
To close out my thoughts and bring these first two blog posts full circle, I’d like to address a couple of overarching themes throughout Dr. Barrett’s article:
Overall, I find Dr. Barrett’s article quite inflammatory and narrow-minded; he would have you believe acupuncture is on par with snake oil and something to be entirely avoided. However, I would hope any intelligent, objective person reading this article might come away with the following conclusions:
We ignore acupuncture and TCM at our peril. We live in a world that is becoming increasingly toxic; where new diseases and viruses are blossoming, and with their ability to spread, are always one step ahead of us; where life is becoming more frenetic, more stressful, and going downhill in terms of quality.
Now more than ever, we need a new way to live and a new way of caring for the ill among us. How much better would the world be if acupuncture, TCM, taijiquan and qigong flourished alongside medical science and technology?
To be continued…
Recently I happened to do a Google Search for “qigong,” and much to my surprise, on the first page of search results was an article entitled, “Be Wary of Acupuncture, Qigong, and ‘Chinese Medicine’” from a website called Quackwatch. The site’s slogan is, “Your Guide to Quackery, Health Fraud, and Intelligent Decisions,” and is run by a retired psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Barrett.
The article devotes almost all of its space cautioning against acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), but does offer up one paragraph on qigong:
Qigong is also claimed to influence the flow of “vital energy.” Internal Qigong involves deep breathing, concentration, and relaxation techniques used by individuals for themselves. External Qigong is performed by “Qigong masters” who claim to cure a wide variety of diseases with energy released from their fingertips. However, scientific investigators of Qigong masters in China have found no evidence of paranormal powers and some evidence of deception. They found, for example, that a patient lying on a table about eight feet from a Qigong master moved rhythmically or thrashed about as the master moved his hands. But when she was placed so that she could no longer see him, her movements were unrelated to his. Falun gong, which China banned several years ago, is a Qigong varient (sic) claimed to be “a powerful mechanism for healing, stress relief and health improvements.”
For the next two blog posts, I’m going to address the acupuncture/TCM aspects of Dr. Barrett’s article. The third blog post will focus on the qigong paragraph and use it as a springboard to a more wide-ranging treatise.
Let’s examine the five sections of Dr. Barrett’s article, “Dubious Claims,” “Risks Exist,” “Questionable Standards,” “The NIH Debacle,” and “Diagnostic Studies,” out of order.
Disclaimer: I have never studied acupuncture or TCM. My knowledge of them is as a layman. I speak simply from the perspective of a taijiquan/qigong practitioner and teacher; someone raised in the West who practices traditions from the East, and who I’d like to think is objective, fair and open-minded enough not to be blinded by either side.
Quack 1
First, the section titled “Risks Exist” can be significantly downplayed. To his credit, Dr. Barrett takes up half this section pointing out contradictions to his own premise that serious risks abound with acupuncture:
However, a 5-year study involving 76 acupuncturists at a Japanese medical facility tabulated only 64 adverse event reports (including 16 forgotten needles and 13 cases of transient low blood pressure) associated with 55,591 acupuncture treatments. No serious complications were reported. The researchers concluded that serious adverse reactions are uncommon among acupuncturists who are medically trained. In 2001, members of the British Acupuncture Council who participated in two prospective studies have reported low complication rates and no serious complications among patients who underwent a total of more than 66,000 treatments. An accompany (sic) editorial suggested that in competent hands, the likelihood of complcations (sic) is small.
And there is one sentence in this section that I completely agree with:
The herbs used by acupuncture practitioners are not regulated for safety, potency, or effectiveness.
I believe in Chinese herbs, I really do. But the reason I don’t drink Chinese herb concoctions isn’t because I don’t believe in the powers ascribed to them; it’s because I’m deeply paranoid about Chinese exports and quality control. Can you blame me, especially given the times? With children’s toys and jewelry laden with lead, cow’s milk tainted with melamine, how can you trust anything produced in China? When you distill/steep your Chinese herbs, how can you be sure you’re not ingesting as many pesticides and herbicides as you are beneficial compounds?
[UPDATE 2/26/10 I should have known that Google would provide me with alternatives. A quick search for "organic Chinese herbs" returns sites like Fu Tian Herbs and Chinese Medicinal Herb Farm, both in Petaluma, CA (same owner), and both using domestically and organically grown Chinese herbs in their products. I would guess they're more expensive than your garden-variety herbs from your local Chinatown, but hey, you get what you pay for, right?]
Quack 2
For the section titled “Questionable Standards,” when it comes to acupuncture/TCM licensing and certification, I agree with Dr. Barrett that having the initials C.A. (certified acupuncturist), Lic. Ac. (licensed acupuncturist), M.A. (master acupuncturist), Dip. Ac. (diplomate of acupuncture), Dipl.O.M. (diplomate of Oriental medicine), or O.M.D. (doctor of Oriental medicine) after one’s name is no guarantee of competence.
However, my criticism is not aimed at the acupuncture licensing boards and certification programs Dr. Barrett wishes to do away with. In fact, I applaud their efforts to standardize acupuncture training requirements and penetrate the mainstream Western medical and insurance industries. If anything, I wish acupuncture licensing and certification were more stringent – say, as grueling as getting one’s M.D.
This section also contains two other items of note. One is a quote from Dr. George A. Ulett, a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Missouri:
Certification of acupuncturists is a sham. While a few of those so accredited are naive physicians, most are nonmedical persons who only play at being doctor and use this certification as an umbrella for a host of unproven New Age hokum treatments. Unfortunately, a few HMOs, hospitals, and even medical schools are succumbing to the bait and exposing patients to such bogus treatments when they need real medical care.
Ulett’s condescension is astounding. With this blanket statement, he has reduced all acupuncturists to either “naive physicians” or “nonmedical persons who only play at being doctor.”
It’s interesting to note that Ulett is also author of the book, “The Biology of Acupuncture,” in which he advocates a form of electrical acupuncture that is supposedly superior to needle acupuncture. I have not read the book, and for all I know this method of electrical acupuncture may indeed be superior to needle acupuncture, but at least I am not one to paint a tradition thousands of years old with such a broad brush, the way Ulett does.
Lastly, this section contains a checklist of strikes against acupuncture, one of which reads:
Its theory and practice are based on primitive and fanciful concepts of health and disease that bear no relationship to present scientific knowledge.
More on this in the next blog post.
To be continued…
Happy Chinese New Year, everyone! It’s the year of the Yang Metal Tiger, and while Chinese astrology always forecasts varying degrees of happiness/success for people each year depending on when they were born, we here at the Sun Tai Chi Institute of Boston wish you nothing but peace, love and prosperity!
(I probably believe in Chinese astrology more than I believe in Western astrology, but even Chinese astrology isn’t perfect. For example, I’m a Ram, and Sue is an Ox. According to Chinese astrology, the most incompatible animal for a Ram is an Ox, and vice versa. So it just goes to show you…)