If you’ve studied Traditional East Asian Medicine in English, you no doubt have benefited from the work of today’s guest.
Dan Bensky has translated, written, published and taught for more years than most students entering an acupuncture school now have been alive.
He set off for Taiwan in the early 70’s to follow his interest in learning Chinese. Taiwan was still under martial law and the mainland… the mainland was going through the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Chinese medicine, not even on the radar for him, but something happened in Taiwan.
Listen into this conversation on language, cultural, and learning medicine street smart style.
It is important to check the tongue during an acupuncture treatment. This is true not only of the qi aspects, such as the state of any teeth marks, but also of blood aspects, such as the presence of sublingual veins. Not only should both of these improve during the course of a treatment, but an increase in the severity of teeth-marks (especially if at first they have lessened during the treatment) is a very clear sign of over treatment. When you see the teeth marks increase during the course of an acupuncture treatment you should at the very least stop doing any more needling and probably it is best to remove the last needle or two.
Dan Bensky
I’ve been interested in things East Asian since I was a boy and stumbled into Traditional East Asian Medicine [TEAM] by chance in the early 1970’s. At the time it was not only very hard to find a place to study, it was even hard to know what or how to study.
This sense of wonder has stayed with me for the past 45 years.
My experiences, in Taiwan, Japan, China and the US have shown me that the greatest thing about this medicine is that it has so many tools that aid in being open to paying attention to and helping our patients on a multitude of levels.
Similarly, engagement with the medicine demands that we dive into the traditions without being stuck in them so that we can connect to and be a part of them. I have been helped along this path when, again by chance, I became interested in osteopathic medicine in the late 1970’s and had the good fortune to go to Michigan State University where I was able to work with some amazing teachers. It became quickly obvious to me that TEAM and osteopathy were complementary on many, many levels and I’ve been working on integrating them and attempting to understand how each illuminates the other ever since.
Find out more about Engaging Vitality at www.engagingvitality.com
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