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I recall a conversation I had with oriental medicine elder Dr. Daniel Altschuler, who learned Chinese acupuncture in Taiwan, in Mandarin Chinese language medium. When he was hired as a professor the Seattle Institute of Oriental Medicine, he had to first study the standard acupunsture and Chinese herbal medicine textbooks used in American curricula, i.e., CAM, Deadman, etc., in order to learn how to communicate Chinese Medicine in English – for example, the numbering system of points along the meridian, which is a western advent. Of course, he also had to become familiar with popular English renditions of the operational vocabulary of Chinese medicine, i.e., ‘phlegm’, ‘tonify’, ‘repletion’, and of course, ‘qi’, ‘yin’, ‘yang’, etc. Daniel told me that it was bemusing how even relatively mainstream acupuncture literature made concepts such as qi, yin, yang, jing, etc., to be something ethereal and ineffable, whereas in Mandarin, they are very commonplace concepts that are not distinct from the mundane phenomena of life, not what we might call ‘spiritual.’ As an analogy, we might say that in our scientific culture, concepts such as gravity, matter as extension in space, inertia, and even predictable reducibility and emergent properties of matter are pedestrian, taken for granted, and not looked upon as unusual or mysterious. Someone from another culture studying these things may take them as being nebulous or somehow transcendental.
In order to fully take advantage of what acupuncture has to offer, I feel I must immerse my heart-mind in the Taoist-informed worldview, the foundational principles behind why tiny needles and smoldering balls of fluff can transform dis-ease into health, pain into well-being.
As are gravity, mass, and inertia, I must see qi, yin, yang, etc., as being irrefutable, intrinsic properties of the phenomenal world, and if the manner in which they manifest is well understood, the behaviour of the world, conditionality, cause-and-effect should be more predictable, and on the wisdom side of things, the parameters in which and by which I can affect change should become increasingly evident.
Kototama Inochi Medicine, in some ways, is more deeply faithful to applying the paradigm of universal yin/yang to health than is Tradition Chinese Medicine (TCM). For example, it is a popular cliché that one cannot fortify the body with needles – only disperse excess – but the Kototama model indicates that the sum of the mind-body is neutral – if there is excess, there must be a deficiency elsewhere, and vice versa – no smoke without fire. This model is something which is usually not explicit or even implicit in TCM.
Subsequently, perhaps plain needles in and of themselves cannot tonify, but they can strategically signal the body to transfer the excess to where the vacuity is. This is the general idea of many modes of Chinese and Japenese 5-Elements acupuncture, but this is the applied modus operandi of Kototama.
As in many other arts, sciences, and philosophies, the Japanese have a penchant for assimilating and re-interpreting a foreign teaching with a signature of subtlety, simplicity, and discipline. This is apparent in the Kototama Inochi style of acupuncture. So much of what is important in TCM has been radically pared down.
An important example would be the pulse.
While in TCM, pulses are one of many diagnostic tools, pulse diagnosis can be said to be the cornerstone of the entire Kototama world – all diagnoses are based on kyo and jitsu pulses, and all treatments are oriented towards balancing them. Diagnostically, the most popular TCM pulse models can be somewhat overwhelming – 9 positions and 38 or so pulse qualities. The Kototama pulse, in contrast, is deceptively reductionistic – for all intents and purposes, 3 natures: deficient, excess, and harmonious.
This drastic reduction of pulse possibilities is a reflection of the worldview of pathology of Kototama medicine. Although pathogens and their manifestations such as cold, heat, phlegm, damp, etc., are implicitly recognized – Kototama still takes the body of classic Chinese medical literature as its foundation – they are essentially disregarded or seen as secondary by Kototama. Treat the meridians using changes in pulse as a feedback mechanism, and all the extraneous pathologies will be resolved ipso facto. Even though TCM-based qualitative natures of the pulse such as ‘bowstring’, ‘rolling’, etc., are omitted, a greater subtlety of perception is necessary to properly ascertain the Kototama pulses.
Although one is relieved of the burden of discerning pulses of ‘wiry’, ‘rolling’, etc., Kototama wisdom asks the practitioner to cultivate a Zen-like “dont-know” mind as a requisite of accurately grokking the subtleties of kyo and jitsu (deficiency and excess). A very slightly excess pulse may manifest in a surface position, only detectable with palpating subtlety with the delicacy of a butterfly alighted on a leaf. Similarly, the ascertaining of a deficient pulse in the deep position can be lost if the practitioner’s mind and fingertips are not exquisitely quiet and attentive. During my Kototama Medicine studies, it was interesting observing Master Ted palpate pulses and listening to his interpretation of the pulses – it appears that after years of experience developing the skill, the pulses of the patient register more as impressions than as sensations.
With a quiet mind, one can hear the pulses speak. Their language is simple, and what they say is always completely true.
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