Quick Links

Needles and Herbs

A Chinese Medicine Class Offers More Than Antidotes

By Patrick L. Kennedy

Things just got a little awkward. On a hot July day in a tiny library with no airconditioning, Professor Livia Kohn has directed every-body in her Chinese Medicine class — including a visiting writer — to pair off and show each other their tongues. There are titters, then a long pause. Finally, College of Arts and Sciences junior Henry Lee's partner slowly turns, opens his maw, and presents the pink taster.

Lee stares stonily at the tongue. Then he glances at an easel with a chart mapping the parts of the human tongue as they correspond to internal organs. Then back to the real tongue. Then the chart again. Aaand the tongue. Nodding, he announces his prognosis: "Looks good."

The moment passes — but if Lee ever becomes a professional acupuncturist (as he plans to), careful tongue inspections will be routine.

Much of East Asian medicine remains mysterious to Westerners: how does coloration on one side of the tongue indicate a problem with the liver? How does sticking needles in someone boost his or her energy flow? And what does "energy flow" mean, anyway? But for many, alternative treatments apparently do a lot of good. And as Americans wade through mainstream medicine's pills and paperwork, which seem to multiply along with the stresses of modern life, more of us may find an antidote (or at least a useful complement) in traditional Chinese medicine, which emphasizes prevention and an overall healthy lifestyle.

"It's becoming more popular as people run into this wall where they have ailments and Western medicine just can't help them," says Kohn, a CAS professor of religion and East Asian studies. The German native, who also teaches yoga, became well-versed in Chinese medicine after years of studying Taoism.

In extensive studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a federal medical research agency, acupuncture has proven effective in treating some conditions, especially pain. The 2,000-year-old practice's "mechanism of action," however, "remains to be elucidated," according to the NCCAM Web site.

The underlying concept, Kohn's students learn, is that illnesses result from disruptions in the body's qi (pronounced "chee" or "key"), its energy field. Acupuncture, massage, and herbs are applied to correct these imbalances.

"Chinese diagnosis takes into account emotions, social setting, family, overall environment," Kohn tells her thirteen attentive students in the top floor library of a Bay State Road brownstone. "It focuses on synchronicity rather than classic causal connections."

The students themselves undergo some practical experience — having an acupuncture treatment, cooking a medical dish with herbs — and then report back. One young woman went to a trainee at the New England School of Acupuncture in Watertown, Massachusetts.

"Did he look at your tongue?" Kohn asks her.

"Yeah, he looked at it five times," she answers. "Then his super-visor came and looked at it a couple of times."

In a later class, professional acupuncturist Janet Lee wheels in a stretcher and a bag of powders, candles, and vials, and demonstrates on Gabriel, who has volunteered. After a ruminative Q&A about the student's lifestyle ("You know you shouldn't be going to bed at two and getting up at seven, don't you?"), she inserts slender single-use needles in his wrists, abdomen — and even one between the eyes. Lee also demonstrates a different kind of massage, suctioning Gabriel's skin up into a cup that she slides up and down his back.

Acupuncture is a tough business to succeed in, Kohn says later. Only 10 percent of graduates of acupuncture colleges make their living as acupuncturists. "It's not easy," she says. "You have to be good at it."

The class usually consists of students interested in Taoism and other Eastern religions, including Americans of Asian descent looking to rediscover their heritage — "students who want to know more about why their families are making them do all these funny things," Kohn says, "why they're scraping spoons around their back and stuff like that." There are also premed students looking for another perspective. Western doctors may generally be skeptical of the field, Kohn says, but she notices more of them are sending patients to classes in yoga and Qigong (posture and breathing exercises).

"You've got a new generation of doctors who've grown up with the idea that some self-practice, self-awareness is really helpful," she says.

Kohn is moving to New Mexico, but will continue to teach the class online, and in person summers. While building their new house, she and her husband are temporarily living in a Mongolian-style yurt. "Yeah," she says with a smile. "I live in a yurt."