It’s great to hear from a graduate of Jung Tao. I have been a fan of Drs. Van Nghi, Tran, Marshall et al. for years. I think you are right in your assessment of the similarities, and I agree that it is good for the profession to have those programs out there. I’ve seen a few comments made by Ed Neal, MD, a teacher at NCNM that were very reminiscent of the Van Nghi/Tran style. There’s a link to it on the Life-Giving Sword blog, I think.

Jason-
I have not forgotten about your initial comment. I am going to contribute a full post on the subject.

Abdallah

-Abdallah

I very much enjoyed listening to Heiner talk about classical Chinese medicine. Listening to him was very reminiscent of listening to my own teacher at Jung Tao School of Classical Chinese Medicine in Sugar Grove, North Carolina.

One of the most important things that I learned, while I was a student, was that a change in mass is always preceded by a shift in energy.

It’s good to know that there’s another school, besides the one that I graduated from, that’s teaching classical Chinese medicine.

-Abdallah

Recently, I had read an article by Dr. Leon Hammer, author of Dragon Rises, Red Bird Flies entitled “Tradition and Revision.” In it, he issues a warning to students of the classics, whereby he first draws a distinction between the tradition of the court physicians which spawned the classic texts that have passed down through the various dynasties and into modern times and the unwritten, oral lineages of healing which were mostly kept secret.

Now, I don’t think Dr. Hammer is discouraging study of the classics, but he does say that “clinically, there is no contest between the efficacy of these verbally transmitted traditions and the often mystifying classics.” I guess I’m jumping the gun by not having even begun study of the classics, but I wanted to hear from others, what do these very poetic but seemingly very abstract texts, offer in terms of actual practice?

The other line from the article that made me think was “the human organism is constant, but the stresses to which it is subject have changed exponentially during these past three centuries. Currently, pulse diagnosis relies on information gathered in a largely agrarian culture expressed in a largely archaic language almost incomprehensible to the twentieth century practitioner. What is available today is material passed down 1900 years from civilizations whose daily life is so variant from our own that the information is often no longer clinically relevant.” So my question is again to teachers and current students of the Chinese classics, what is the continuing value of the classics, and what room is there for innovation in the various methods of diagnosis, needling, herbal remedies etc (and by innovation, I guess I mean new approaches to the human organism constant). How do we approach the classics with respect and at the same time, a critical eye, so that we can clearly perceive useful from not.

I suspect I opened up a can of worms, and again, all my questions are qualified as one who has only begun to skim the surface of Chinese medicine, as one not even technically a current student of this great art and science.

Eager to hear the rest of the interview. Thanks, Eric.