Issue 49 - Tse Qigong Centre

Skill in the art of knowing how to suppress symptoms,however noble it may seem, does not constitute a skill in healingnor are they (skill in healing methods and healing itself)necessarily found together. To suppress the symptoms ofdisharmony and regard this act as being a cure for illness is avery limited approach for a doctor to take as it can only everachieve exactly what it sets out to do namely the eradicationof symptoms. Another danger of such an approach lies in themethods used as a result of such a view. The development ofnew and more devastating forms of illnesses has brought evermore terrible sufferings in its wake and their symptoms requireeven more powerful drugs to be developed, manufactured andadministered. All too often a patient suffers more from theresults of a ’therapeutic’ chemical process than the illness it isheld to cure.What we experience as the symptoms of an illness aresimply the apparent effects of a more general state ofill health manifesting in a particular manner, or in aparticular place within the body. What we regard asits causes (if at all known) are usually theantecedents of the symptoms themselves ratherthan anything else. Orthodox preventativemedicine encourages us to understand and avoidsuch causes in the future. But of course if suchcauses are simply the causes of symptoms aloneillness will always arise anew. That such a stateof affairs is commonly understood to exist bythe orthodox healing professions can be seenin the fact that there is no general viewamongst them that such causes could everbe made to cease for ever. Nor is itconsidered a real possibility that a personcould ever attain a state in which theynever develop or ‘catch’ an illness. Suchconcepts or situations within peoplewould obviate the need and reasonfor the art of medicine to exist. Wecan see here that the danger ofdeveloping an inherentlypessimistic orientationfor theart of medicine isgreat and onebased upon whatare considered tobe the exper-“Patients could trusttheir doctor to beimpartial, honest andconfidential”iential inevitabilitiesexistingwithin a continualstate of struggleto be free fromillness. Insurancecompanies andthe commercialmanufacturers ofmedicines grow wealthy from such ideas and views.That the state of illness has been with us a long time isknown by the very ancient accounts of healing and medicinein all the civilised nations of the world. Some of them howeverdid consider illness with a more positive outlook particularly inthe case of Buddhism and Hinduism. Both these systems hadvery advanced concepts and theories about illness and itscauses. What is especially interesting is how they viewed thenature of illness itself. Their views resulted in very differentforms of diagnosis and from this the very therapies theypractised. In general both these great traditions of healingregarded many more factors than mere outward symptoms intheir evaluation of the nature and treatment of illness. Theyalso regarded understanding the nature and interaction ofmind/body complex as fundamental to evaluating both sicknessand health. Long before people such as Freud, Harvey, Pasteur,or arts such as psychiatry and chemotherapy, they had evolvedsophisticated ways of determining the nature of both mentaland physical illness as well as what are now called infections.Treatments arising from these ideas consisted of a wide varietyof therapeutic endeavours and practices many of which wouldnot nowadays be connected to the art of medicine at all. Thetypes of treatment applied by the ancient Buddhist and Hindudoctors involved practices which are still very new in moderntimes.T h ep r a c t i t i o n e r sthemselves werealso different inthat, in commonwith the ancientGreeks andEgyptians, the art ofhealing was regardedas religious practice andan exalted profession fitonly to be studied andperformed by priests orrenunciates. We can seefrom this fact that the healingart was considered to requirea special type of person, onenot involved or attached to thematerialistic aspects of life. Sucha requirement guaranteedpatients that they could trust theirdoctor to be impartial, honest andconfidential in histreatment of them.Echoes of such a bondbetween patient anddoctor can be found inthe wording of theancient oath ofHippocrates, the fatherof the ancient Greekforms of healing. Onesection especially,namely that relating tothe acceptance ofmoney in return fortreatment, has longbeen ignored in modernmedicine although a shortened form of this very oath is requiredof every practising doctor. The ancient Hindu equivalents ofHippocrates, namely Susruta and Caraka formulated similarethical guidelines.The healing of bodies and the healing of minds gonaturally together and for a person who is involved in studyingand applying both of these aspects an inner balance of each isessential. Such balance is achieved through spiritual practicesQi Magazine 27