| Here on the wall you can see one of the first brochures I sent out when I started teaching classes. I began holding classes and I haven’t stopped. The number that have taken my classes is tens of thousands. Those who are now teaching, like Drs. Amaro, Beem, Meyerowitz, Sunderlage and others were all my students. They’re now doing a good job of teaching and spreading the art.
Over the years, I’ve invited many great acupuncturists, the best of China, Japan and Korea, and Taiwan, to teach as guest lecturers in my classes. Here’s a photo of one of them, right next to me. He’s an MD, Nagayama is his name, from Kyoto, Japan. He was a recipient of the Max Planck Institute’s scholarship to study neurology in Germany. He contested with over 300 other MDs in Japan, and he received the top score. I brought him over here dozens of times to be a guest instructor. Others taught Korean hand acupuncture, and now Dr. Larry Beem [who teaches postgraduate courses in acupuncture at Cleveland Chiropractic College – Kansas City] has become a master of hand acupuncture. These guest faculty would put classes together, and combined with what I had learned at the Wasada College in Tokyo, we have taught this to tens of thousands of chiropractors, as well as medical doctors, osteopaths and dentists.
If a chiropractic student today asked you how and why it would be helpful to them to study acupuncture and incorporate it into their work with patients, what would you tell them?
It greatly expands their range of treatable conditions to over 2000 and it is excellent for immediate pain relief. As a result, their incomes will increase, which in turn brings more money into chiropractic institutions. Also, many patients come to us for acupuncture and are then introduced to chiropractic. I always inform patients that part of acupuncture is, and always has included, adjusting the spine. At the time when I do the report of findings, I show them the x-rays and also the graph that we use for acupuncture treatment, showing the need for both.
How much do the underlying worldviews or philosophies of chiropractic and acupuncture overlap?
When chiropractors speak of innate intelligence, we’re really talking about qi. When we say universal intelligence, we’re saying taiji. The philosophy of both is based on natural principles, that there is a healing power of the body that now and again needs a little assistance, to relieve pain and promote healing. There is a two-way flow between the skin and the internal organs, a flow of intelligence and healing, a flow that goes from an organ such as the heart, to the skin. If there’s pain anywhere along the heart channel, it’s diagnostic, indicating that something is wrong. At the same time, there is also a flow that goes from the nine points on the skin [the heart meridian consists of nine points on the arm] back to the organ itself. Those points are therapeutic.
When you stimulate the right acupuncture points, you not only relieve pain but you arrest the progression of disease and even reverse it so the patient comes back to normal functioning. In China, this is the definition of health – all parts of the body functioning normally. That’s the same objective we have in chiropractic, relieving the pressure on the nerve. A chiropractic problem sooner or later will lead to an acupuncture problem, a meridian imbalance. And conversely, a meridian imbalance will create a reflex subluxation. Not all subluxations are primary, many are reflexes. Right there is the nexus between the two in terms of healing objectives.
In acupuncture practice, some practitioners use formulas for named diagnosed conditions and some use various methods of diagnosis to evaluate the individual energetic balance or imbalance of the patient. What’s your sense of the value of the formulas and the individualized approaches?
We teach that acupuncture is practiced on three levels. The first is pain control; it’s so simple a 12-year-old can do it. The second level is “cookbook” recipes, by formula. The Chinese oftentimes are critical of that, saying that when you go by a formula, you’ll get results in maybe six out of ten cases. But they say that two or three more that could have been helped won’t be, because you were stuck with the formula. Now, probably most acupuncture is done by formula, in Europe especially.
So there’s a value to both approaches.
Yes. Now, the third level is the classical level. You palpate the pulse (or analyze by machine, which we use) and find which meridians are too high and which are too low. Then, you proceed to sedate the high ones and tonify the low ones to balance the energy flow. A lot of us, including myself, will use a combination of all three approaches.
What else would you like to share with our readers?
As healers, as long as it’s within our scope (meaning no drugs, no surgery), anything that enhances the practitioner who wants to help people and make a living at the same time, is good. I believe that the core of a chiropractor’s practice should be the subluxation and the adjustment. Adjust the vertebra and then follow up with treating the symptoms and the underlying cause with acupuncture because the two are so closely related.
Thank you, Dr. Yennie.
Daniel Redwood, DC, the interviewer, is Editor-in-Chief of Health Insights Today. |
