I have written elsewhere about The Best Way to Use Chinese Medicine and Negotiating Chinese Herbs. This is another related article regarding the relation of the practitioner, patient and Chinese medical system. The very simple point of this article is to offer the suggestion that during the consultation time that precedes treatment, there is an opportunity to learn. Patients will sometimes, left unchecked, provide me with a lecture concerning their beliefs and experiences with other medical systems, meditation, dietary systems, etc. While this is potentially useful if used as a way to distinguish and discuss Chinese medical treatment, it is not so helpful if the point is simply for another person to tell me what they believe. In the end, the patient is paying me for my time, expertise and clinical experience with Chinese medicine. What value is there to use the time to reverse the flow of information? A related dynamic occurs when a patient recounts to me their dreams. I will sometimes suggest to the patient that they consider working with Jen so that they may have more in-depth engagement concerning their dreams and healing. This recommendation isn’t superficial or small talk. It’s like any other medical advice I would offer a patient that involves lifestyle changes or addresses emotional well-being. As practitioners (I am including practitioners of all sorts) we are here to help and guide you. Take advantage of this. Don’t spend your time and money telling us things that you think we ought to know.
My perception is that in the United States, we have come to distrust doctors and figures of authority in general. Sadly, there is good reason for this. But asking questions, not blindly trusting, and using common sense is not the same as hijacking the session. As a student of Asian medicine and practices, I am used to a different dynamic. I have learned to ask questions of my teachers with humility, recognizing that my own mental rant, complete with backstories, side-notes, anecdotal discourse and all the rest of it actually has nothing to do with the topic I am studying. Neither the system nor the teacher needs my chatter. The system is complete, the teacher knows what they are doing, and I benefit most when I align myself to them and not try to make it the other way around.
I am in no way suggesting that people blindly follow my teachings or advice. What I am suggesting is that we try to understand that even our questions reflect our blockages and imbalances. There are many ways to clarify this point. From the point of view of Chinese medicine, we perceive the world and interpret our experiences based on the conditioning of our constitution. That is to say, we experience both the positive and negative emotions associated with our predominant organ system. (Chinese medicine posits that we have natural strengths and weaknesses of our organ systems.) For example, a patient may come to my office and based on their history, symptoms and overall presentation, I determine that they have some imbalance in the Liver/Wood system. The virtue or positive quality of the Liver is benevolence, or compassion. The negative emotion of the Liver is anger. The patient’s questions may be biased towards this emotion, expressed with some irritability or defensiveness, potentially clouding the ability to both ask and listen without the overlay of this experience. Our tendencies are often born out in life through trauma and difficult experiences, and then we wear the lens of that trauma. The deeper aspect of healing in Chinese medicine is to cultivate the capacity to perceive the world clearly, without the conditioning of our wounding. Our questions typically reflect this conditioning, and left unchecked only serve to enforce it.
When you have someone in front of you whom you trust and whom you have hired to help you – let them. Speak less, listen more. Western physicians tend to spend too little time listening. Western patients tend to spend too much time emptying the contents of their minds onto the person in front of them. It is an attempt to self-regulate the imbalance of constitution and conditioning, but beyond a certain point produces the opposite result. This is the therapeutic responsibility of the practitioner, to use interaction and speech and acupuncture and herbs to intervene and temporarily regulate the system that is out of balance. With repetition comes familiarity and stability of this balanced state, that is the basis for health in Chinese medicine and goal of all Chinese medical treatment.
It does not take long for me to understand what I need to do in a given session; the rest is allowing the person to express themselves and feel heard. This is extremely important. But there is a point when such expression is no longer valuable for the interaction. I have a responsibility to help patients reframe their stories and experience into the framework of Chinese medicine, with the goal being movement and regulation of Qi. The interaction itself in this way becomes part of the treatment; otherwise, I am no longer functioning as a Chinese doctor.
This interaction requires trust. If the patient trusts me to guide the interaction, then there is potential for the therapy to be administered as intended, and to produce good results. This then leads to more trust in Chinese medicine and in me as a practitioner. The point is not for me to control the conversation; the point is to allow the process of Chinese medicine to work.
If you are seeking help from Chinese medicine, be a student and a patient of Chinese medicine; you will receive greater benefit from working within the already defined context of an ancient, time-tested system of medicine.