Qigong Meditation

Psychology and Psychiatry struggle for respect in the West. They are seen as less relevant and definitive as other professions and sciences. However the need for them has grown rapidly. This is seen even in the bastions of rationalist thought, our medical schools and halls of medicine. The statistics on student and clinician burnout are alarming, even prior to the last pandemic.

We witnessed this first hand at the student medical center I worked at in Oregon. OHSU had a forward-thinking, truly integrative student health center. We worked as a team of mostly psychologists, some MDs and a psychiatrist, a body-worker and myself as an acupuncturist. Why did the only state-supported medical school in my state hire me to treat medical and nursing students, along with post-doc researchers? It was because the mental health needs of the community needed more approaches, more answers.

I worked for a decade in mental health facilities as an acupuncturist. We learned nothing about it in our training, other than some vague ideas about emotional correlations with organ systems. In my unofficial residency at the Hooper Center in Portland, Oregon, I was tasked with treating patients with diagnosed psychosis, bipolar, suicidal depression, and acute anxiety. The programs were originally designed for homeless veterans, but we took in anyone. These were often the patients nobody else wanted or knew how to deal with.

I found the literature on Chinese medicine from Chinese translations going back centuries had the only relevant information for my clinical need. Acupuncture was known for a long time to have immediate effects: About 10 minutes to turn a mood around, in my experience. There is a classical quote to the effect that acupuncture works in about as much time as it takes to shed a jacket. It’s fast.

My deepest understandings from matching this clinical experience to any writings that came from our source text on acupuncture, the Inner Classic. Written about 2,200 years ago, it gave me the best insights into what I was treating in veterans with PTSD. There is a chapter called the Roots of Spirit in the second half of that book (Ling Shu Chapter 8) that gives a theory of consciousness:

1. Events come to us through our sensory organs, which are portals to our consciousness. This is housed in the Heart energetically. The Chinese term for Heart and Mind continues to be the same word, Xin. If the events are exciting, whether positive or negative, it excites the Heart-Mind. An example of this is the Christmas season for young children, who may become delirious with excitement, or witnessing an explosion. The Heart in Chinese medicine is the main one used for sleep disorders. Traumatic stimulation manifests as insomnia. It takes about 2-3 weeks to pass if untreated. If the patient had pre-existing heart issues, either energetic or physical, then it passes to the next stage.
2. Unprocessed trauma then leads to rumination. This can become a yang-type obsessiveness associated with the Stomach, or numbness and spaciness that is the yin domain of the Spleen. There are clear digestive symptoms of irregular appetite or bowel patterns. Many of my patients with avowed trauma are at this stage. If untreated after several months, it moves deeper into….
3. The Kidneys and their associated Central Nervous System. The Kidneys are the deepest energy of the organs. The Inner Classic compared human energy anatomy to a plant, with the Kidneys as the roots. The Kidneys are associated with the spine and brain as one energetic unit. I found as an acupuncturist treating head injuries that the brain is slow to heal due to this depth, and that treating the spine with focused exercises or bodywork is a runway for affecting the brain. One treatment strategy for treating patients with Alzheimer’s is to focus on the spine. Symptoms accumulate in areas associated with the Kidneys: bones, teeth, bladder and bowel weakness, low back and knee pain. These are common features of aging that are accelerated by untreated trauma that damages these core organ functions.

In our culture, people are not taught effective tools for managing trauma or stress. Alcohol or drugs are often attempted: These only make it worse.

The beauty of this energetic approach is its clarity. No other approaches I know of can differentiate or make predictions about trauma. We know from research that children who experience specific traumas will have negative health outcomes, but how that occurs or what treats it is unanswered.

For acupuncturists, diagnosis and treatment can be done with basic Yuan-Source points (such as Heart-7) for the Yin organs, and a category called the Lower He-Sea (Stomach-36). The points on the trunk show deeper, more organ-based issues than the channels on the limbs. The front has ‘Alarm’ points to flag an organ, known as Mu-points (like Ren 14 for the Heart and 17 for the Heart Wrapper). On the back, each vertebrae is associated with a different organ system. This correspondence extends from the base of each vertebrae on a horizontal axis into the soft tissue. Manual therapies in the West, such as Chiropractic and Osteopathic schools of bodywork, have the right idea with skillfully treating these directly. However my friends in those professions have no understanding of the direct mind-body connection at their fingertips that Chinese medicine provides. I did a clinical rotation in Nanjing, China that treated suicidal depression exclusively with acupuncture points along the spine; this had strong outcomes in both human and animal research.

What we are addressing here is called the Jing-Shen or ‘Essential-Spiritual aspect,’ the highest and purest Qi in the body. There are specific points that touch this directly, many along the outer edge of the para-spinal muscles. It is like talking to the commander of each organ. This is the finding of Dr. Tran, Viet-Dzung, who studied the Inner Classic of acupuncture with his teacher, Dr. Van Nghi, for over 50 years each. Tran’s finding is that these points need to be nourished and reinforced: He was concerned that conventional acupuncture may be too dispersing for them, leading to exhausted patients. His approach with these points was to use more Moxa, the warming Yang component of acupuncture. With Qigong, there is no such risk.

The West has gotten lost in the complexity of the brain, assuming that all psychological and psychiatric issues are features of brain damage or chemical imbalances there. The fact is that my colleagues in these worthy professions honestly confess the need for more tools and greater understanding for the growing crises they face.

In the West with our mistaken mind-body split taken centuries ago to calm the disagreements between religious orthodoxy and budding Enlightenment science. These were heated arguments that sometimes ended fatally for the latter party. Contemporary terms now include calling all this the ‘mental’ or ’emotional’ aspects humans, but both of these terms can be used as an insult, even by children. For adults, these terms are associated with the irrational and mysterious. This does not reflect the systematic clarity and decency that the literature of Chinese medicine brings to this topic. Likewise, calling this ‘Spiritual’ has its limits. For some, this denotes something that is experienced only on a Sabbath day, or removed from real or daily life. My experience working 6 days a week in a public health facility is that there is an ‘Essential-Spiritual’ aspect of human beings. Chinese medicine taught me that it is lofty, clear, and approachable. This needs to be accessed and understood for our survival, both individual and collective.