Practitioners you admire

[Luke Rickards]

Anyone who keeps asking questions and looks for the answers to them in more than one place.

Oh yeah, and I think the Jet Li thing was cool too.

Luke

[Li]

Well one of my ulterior motives in this thread was to try and highlight the trials and tribulations of many of the older practitioners that experienced the massive changes of modern/New China and turmoil the Cultural Revolution. There are some amazing stories there that are truly inspiring.

For now, I'm just going to rip some quotes out of Volker Scheid's "Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China" (pge135-9) about Professor Zhu (may or may not be his real name), a zhongyi/中医 (ie. in China that generally infers herbalist) that Scheid examines there that I think has many qualities to admire and aspire to:


"Professor Zhu, who describes himself as a practitioner of integrated Chinese and Western medicine, claims to utilise both the most advanced scientific knowledge and a broad range of resources from the Chinese medical tradition. He eschews linkage with any one school or doctrine of Chinese medicine, yet holds that integration is best advanced from a firm foundation within Chinese medicine: zhongyi xuexi xiyi/中医学习西医(practitioners of Chinese medicine studying Western medicine) rather than Mao Zedong's xiyi xuexi zhongyi/西医学习中医 (practitioners of Western medicine studying Chinese medicine) formulation.... Besides examination by the four methods of Chinese diagnosis (sizhen/四诊), he routinely orders ECGs, blood and urine tests, X-rays and CT scans....

...Professor Zhu is a man of many interests, in art and philosophy as well as medicine, who emphasised the need for the wide-ranging perspective and combination of modern and classical thought and practice his profession and hobbies taught him. He is an accomplished painter who never fails to impress on his students (including myself) the close relation between medicine and art. He frequently recounts how his ability to paint helped him (literally) to survive a time when merely being a doctor was not enough [employed his artistic skills as a painter of Mao Zedong portraits in order to survive attacks on his political background]. And he claims that it provided him as well with dexterity and an ability to look at things simultaneously from different perspectives.

In his teaching he emphasised the importance of both modern and classical thought. Elucidating a treatment strategy, Professor Zhu might thus discourse on the crucial importance of balance and the Doctrine of the Mean (zhongyong/中庸), on the principles of action without interference (wu wei/无为), and on the importance of learning by heart, while citing Hegel and Marx in order to emphasise the importance of dialectical contradiction (maodun/矛盾) for medical practice."

________
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

[Tim Cleary]

I forgot to mention that I admire anyone who practices Chinese Medicine well and supports themself doing it. That's a long way off for me...

Li- I guess the idea of Chinese Medicine studying Western Medicine is similar to George Soulie de Morant (Chinese Acupuncture)- he was into researching the phenomenology of needling and relating CM to Western patho/physiology..

His book isn't really that scary- considering that it's four times the size of a normal book- it's worth checking out..

I guess I admire many practitioners (including Kiiko Matsumoto, who I forgot to mention before) for being great at more than one thing.. Kiiko's a fanatic linguist, she's right into the etymology and symbolisim of the characters of the Classics; Manaka was a poet, sculptor, artist (and all round freaky genius); Shudo Denmei is fluent in (I think I remember correctly) French, German, Chinese and speaks English (but doesn't write books in it, they're translated by Stephen Brown); Ikeda practices Doyin, Anma, acupuncture, and Kampo (and needles like a Zen archer).

[Li]

[George Soulie de Morant's] book isn't really that scary- considering that it's four times the size of a normal book- it's worth checking out..

Cool cool, I will! Another one to add to the stack !

Acupunk, re: Nogier, I think I can understand now where you were coming from in this thread. Once more you have shown me my blindspots/presumptions, thanks again .

-Li

[lyndaroxanne]

And of course Bian Que- he came up with the four methods of diagnosis and dressed up as a bird. Now if you could dress up as a bird and still let your patients treat you , then you got to have some mojo baby.

lol!

Without a doubt David Tai is the acupuncturist I most admire.

also...

Damien Ryan has a wonderful presence , I love Chris Zaslawski's enthusiasm and Jiang Man's humour. All 3 are amazing acupuncturists.

[Carole Rogers]

I have been watching this discussion with interest and waiting for one name to pop up. It hasn't. Yet it is the first name that should come to mind for every Australian trained practitioner - especially those on the East coast. If it were not for this person you would not have the career you have today, nor would your profession be in the strong place it enjoys. Who is this gifted teacher and excellent practitioner?

The father of Australian acupuncture, Russell Jewell.

In going through the list of people cited on this discussion the majority of them were trained by Russell either directly, or indirectly through one of the colleges he founded where they were taught by one of the teachers he trained. The list of notable practitioners in whose training he played a major role includes: Chris Zaslawski, Mary Garvey, Peter Meier, Sean Walsh, Kerry Watson, Alan Bensoussen, Kerry Watson, Mark Aird, Damien Ryan, and every past and present student of UTS and VU.

Besides founding the first acupuncture school in Australia: Acupuncture Colleges (Australia) in Sydney in 1969, he also founded colleges in Melbourne. Adelaide. Canberra and Brisbane that subsequently, and with Russell's blessing, became independent colleges in their own right. Some of these closed, others continued and now offer recognised degree programs. In 1982 Russell turned over his private college to the acupuncture profession so that the college could apply and ultimately gain recognition as a government accredited higher educational body that had the right to offer an accredited Diploma, and subsequently a Bachelor of Acupuncture. In 1992, as one of the three Chairmen of the Board of Governors that ran the College, he approved granting the right to Victoria University to offer a degree program based on the ACA degree program when Dr Kerry Watson organised the first undergraduate program in acupuncture to be offered at a university in Australia. In 1994 he approved the dissolution of the Board of the Sydney ACA and the transfer of the degree program to the University of Technology Sydney.

Russell made a number of notable contributions to Australian acupuncture. He founded the Acupuncture Ethics and Standards Organisation (now part of AACHMA), and was the first to gain indemnity insurance for practitioners, recognition by the Health funds for practitioners, and to introduce western medical sciences into the College courses. He also brought major teachers and practitioners to Australia. These include David Tai, Richard Van Buren, and teaching material from Lok Yee Kung. He organised educational tours to Hong Kong and later to China for students and practitioners.

I was fortunate to work with him closely for a number of years. He was one of the most generous men I have ever met, he never spoke ill of anyone - even those who attacked him - and he was never unkind. As you may gather, for me he heads the list of practitioners and teachers that I most admire.

Carole