Eating donuts
Chinese Medicine, Western medicine
A little moment of fame! I have become the object of some amusement over at the RationalWiki for trying to understand the scientific concept of Falsifiability.
It is the first time I have been attacked for being interested in shiatsu and Chinese medicine and it is an interesting experience. When I discovered the link and saw the comments appearing on my blog I was a little upset. I felt there is something of the bully about how the enlightened community on RationalWiki were going about their argument. But after a little reflection I feel different.
I want to understand shiatsu, complementary therapies, Chinese medicine and how they fit with the Western scientific view of the world. I do not see them as conflicting ideas at all but models of the same truth. Yes, I do understand that science is able to explain much of what goes on in this Universe but I also understand that the concept of Qi is not meant to be an alternative, competing theory.
Qi is a model of the world that includes all phenomena described by science but explains them in a more philosophical, poetic way. It teaches more about our relationship with our environment and other people than the precise detail laid out by mathematics. Qi is not a stuff that can be bottled and proven to be a substance previously unknown to science but it can be felt by opening up the mind beyond formulae and diagrams. For example:
If it looks like a donut, eat it
Says PalMD on RationalWiki. If this means see the truth and consume it then I agree as does Zen shiatsu’s originator, Masunaga. Obtaining Qi is more than ingesting calories and nutrients. To fulfil one’s potential it is necessary consume ideas, concepts. Only then can one absorb what works and excrete the waste.
I will follow the rationalist creed. I will continue to eat those donuts where I find them. Science, shiatsu, Chinese medicine all have much to teach me.
Tony Brown @ October 16, 2007
Sorry for the long silence - quick post for inspiration: Sparks of Genius by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein - I don’t have time to explain but in this book, this scientist and his wife try to map out what makes people creative and assert that “conventional notions of thinking are at best incomplete, for they leave out nonlogical forms of thinking that can’t be verbalized.” (page 3) It’s probably available at the library…anyway, it seems to me that shiatsu is a “nonlogical form” of working with the body that may or may not be able to be verbalized - perhaps it is best experienced.
Hi again,
To finish my thought a little - I think shiatsu uses a mode of cognition that can be learned by anyone but unfortunately is not developed in everyone. Stephen Harrod Buhner refers to it as direct perception or, in the case of its use on living organisms, biognosis. He argues in his book The Secret Teachings of Plants: the Intelligence of the Heart in the Direct Perception of Nature that we can develop direct perception quite deliberately and that, once developed, we can understand the natural world more fully (this includes human pathology). Like you, I too am interested in how shiatsu can be understood in the paradigm of Western science.
Linda,
Nice to hear from you again. Thanks for the insights and I will definitely look out for Sparks of Genius.
Shiatsu has always been taught to me as an experiential art so there is this balance I have to maintain between what I feel and what I want to know and explore with my brain.
I am going through a struggling stage right now but I know that it will be fun again soon.