With Chi East Meets West in ‘Energy Medicine’ By Margaret Mason - Special to The Washington Post ore than a dozen years ago David Ejsenberg’s Chinese calligraphy teacher presented him with one bold brush stroke. . “Tt was the most ancient charac- ter for a bird,” says Eisenberg. “He gave it to me as 4 symbol, encourag- ing me to fly and to be free and to try and Jet my mind and my sense of wonder explore like a bird.” Fortunately for the rest of us, Ei- senberg never has forgotten that gift, nor the giver, Wang Jinhuai, under whom Eisenberg studied calligraphy in 1979-80 as the first American med- ical student sent by the National Academy of Sciences to the People’s Republic of China. They continue to be very close friends. “*® teacher for one day,’” Eisen- berg quotes a proverb, “ ‘is like a parent for a lifetime.” ” -“Gle’s a great mentor of mine, about . chi [from the word, Qi, for vital ener- gy, pronounced ‘chee’|, and about bal- ance and about yin and yang and Chinese medicine,” says Eisenberg. “He’s an example of a man who really tries to understand the best from ancient and modern culture.” As does Eisenberg. “I am breathing life into.a bridge that has been there a long time,” he says. . An internist at Beth Israel Hospital . in Boston, Eisenberg is director: of - exchange activities between Harvard © Medical School (where he is on staff), the Peking Union Medical College and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sci- ; ences: He also is a member of the ad. hoc advisory panel for NIH’s Office of Alternative Medicine. You'll meet him in “The Mystery of Chi,” Monday night’s first segment of the five-part PBS documentary, “‘Heal- ing and the Mind With Bill Moyers.” I met Eisenberg in his book, “Encoun- ters With Chi,” and in several tele- phone conversations, which helped me grasp some of the profound, yet sub- tle, diffe in Chinese and West- In the exchange on film between Eisenberg and his calligraphy teacher, for example, I understood for a mo- ment the Chinese culture premise that healing is not separate from the rest of life, that mind, body and spirit are linked in everything, including art. the earlier photo. “I want a job, any job,” said Tyrone Calvert, a Prichard said he didn’t realize un! = ward that hoth stories involved some of Taichi ch’uan teacher Master Shir with a class in Beijing. Thus, the line, “the brush stroke is the man.” But the more I learn, the more I realize that Chinese medicine goes way beyond acupuncture, however dramatic that is. The internal dra- ma—the stuff of “energy medicine” and other ways of tapping into and using our own “chi” for health and healing—is even more compelling. No wonder Eisenberg keeps re- realized something was wrong,” said . week by Roll Call, the Capitol Hill” turning to China, at once “humbled,” a word he uses often, and skeptical. He’d like nothing better than to see more research on the principles of Chinese medicine using Western sci- entific methodologies. “The art of healing is thousands of years old,” he writes in his book. “The science of healing is still in the process of being born.” But now to get to the part of the for me. “In ) oggsceKsEyye 3 Eisenberg, “there’s the idea that the body has to move, and that movement is as impor- tant as eating or sleeping or drinking.” The Chinese believe, he says, that if you don’t move the body every day, it becomes stagnant. Thus, hundreds of millions of people in China come out every morning at dawn—as they have for 24 centuries—to perform their daily exercises, known as “ai chi ch’uan” and “chi gong.” Unlike West- ern aerobics, the movernents are slow and careful, combined with medita- tion. . In northern China, they come at dawn even when there is snow and ice. “In Chinese medicine,” says Ei- senberg, “the body is a microcosm of the universe, a part of nature, so that as the seasons and temperatures change, people also experience these changes.” And as I think about the serenity on the faces of those old men and wom- en, I learn from the Center for Inter- national Research that 15 percent ‘of the world’s population of people 80 and over is in China, and from the looks of the PBS film and from what ve read, all of them must be out there moving about at dawn. And then I think about the second highest per- centage of 80-and-uppers, the 13 per- cent from this country. I don’t picture most of them moving about in the fresh air at dawn. I picture them banging their canes ina nursing home. We have a lot to learn from each other. But to keep things in perspective, consider that 3,000 years before the birth of psychoneuroimmunology— the new interdisciplinary field that is redefining the links between brain and body—Chinese doctors were strug- gling with the same mind-body rela- tions. After reading that in Eisenberg’s book, I tacked up on my wall still another Chinese proverb: “Make small progress day by day.” Everyone who watches the Bill Moyers series. will come away with a different opinion, depending on their own health, state of mind and expo- sure to mind/body concepts. But chances are, particularly if the ideas are new, you'll want to talk about them. Here’s a time and place: 7 p.m. March 7, Washington Ethical Society, 7750 16th St. NW. Elliott S. Dacher, a Reston physi- cian with a long-time personal and professional interest in holistic medi- cine and author of a book on mind/body healing, will speak. The title of his talk, “The Mind Is the Body; The Body Is the Mind,” is borrowed from the Moyers series. he line—which does get your attention—belongs to molecular biologist Can- dace Pert, in a segment on chemical. communicators. (Pert discovered the opiate receptor: and other peptide receptors in the brain and bedy, which led to an under- standing of the chemicals that travel between the mind and body.) The session, says Dacher, “is 2 celebration of the series and a chance to explore and discuss how our own experiences relate to this information, and the implications of this informa- tion in our lives.” After Dacher’s talk, participants will break into small dis- cussion groups, each with a i leader. The event, sponsored by the Shen- andoah Institute, a nonprofit educa- tional organization, is free. To regis- ter, which is required, call 703-558-0833. ust is ees