Week 11 Assignments - Energy Medicine and Energy Fields

Acupuncture as effective energy medicine:

In the most simplistic of terms, Qi can be described as energy. While this is not in any way a complete understanding of Qi - it is often the easiest concept for a western thinking person to get their head around. Likewise, this is often the easiest way for people to understand acupuncture and how it works; again, simply speaking, acupuncture taps into energy lines which run throughout the body, and then the treatment changes the course of that energy.

As for acupuncture being considered an affective energy medicine, I imagine that many of us as students have come to study TCM because of our experiences with acupuncture treatment. I suspect many of us have similar stories in the respect that we have sought treatment through conventional means and ultimately tried acupuncture - often as a last resort or with the attitude that there was nothing left to lose. In my own case, I definitely sought treatment out of a sense of desperation - in that western medicine had nothing much to offer me other than a dire diagnosis and even direr (is that a word???) prognosis. While I am probably a more open minded patient than most, I am also definitely a skeptic and for me often seeing is believing. While I have not found that acupuncture was a miracle cure for me, I have found that treatment makes me feel better than anything else has, and that over time I have regained some of the health that I thought was gone permanently. And so, in my own personally limited opinion, I would say that acupuncture has been proven to me to be an effective energy medicine.

On Kirlian photography:

I don't really know what I would draw in the way of conclusions about Kirlian photography. I think it is really interesting, and as I mentioned in class, I think that it isn't really all that far fetched to think that the energy field surrounding living beings is tangible enough to be photographed. What is fascinating to me is the variety of colors, and the correlation of those colors to certain spiritual systems and their beliefs about different colors relating to emotions or states of emotional being - and that upon interview, people who have those colors show up in these photos will often confirm the presence of those emotional factors. So, this does seem to suggest some sort of efficacy for this information being recorded on film....

Human Intent as it affects health:

This is probably something I have the least to say anything about - I have worked in both cancer and aids research and I have seen first hand how people are directly affected by their intent in the face of catastrophic and mortal health conditions. I have watched people who were simply unable to get past the anger over the injustice of their disease, and subsequently die rapidly and often badly. Conversely, I have watched people struggle to accept their mortality with grace and courage, and watched those people survive months and even years longer than anyone ever expected. Simply put, one's intent is the key to everything when it comes to health - both positively and negatively.