41
                                   Apr
Body sou@-@
Connecti*ng
With Chi
East Meets West in 'Energy Medicine'
By Margaret Mason
Special to The Washington Post
  ore than a dozen years
ago David Eisenberg's
Chinese calligraphy
teacher presented him
with one bold brush
 e.
     "It was the most ancient charac-
ter for a bird," says Eisenberg. "He
gave it to me as a symbol, encourag-
ing me to fly and to be ft-ee and to try
and let my mind and my sense Of
wonder explore Eke a bird.'
     Fortunately for the rest of us, Ei-
senberg never has forgotten that gift,
nor the giver, Wang JinhuaL under
whom Eisenberg studied calligraphy
in 1.979-80 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.
" 'A teacher for one day,'" Eisen-
berg quotes a proverb, " 'is like a
parent for a lifetime.'
"He's a great melator 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 modem 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 stafl),
the pe g Union Medica College and
kin I
the Chfiiese Academy of Medical Sci-
ences. He also is a member of the ad.

hoc advisory pawl for NIH's Office of
Alternative Medicine.
You'll meet hun in "The Mystery of
Chi - Monday night's first segment of
thef iv PBS documentary, -Heal.
mg 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-
t1e, differences in Chinese and West-
em medicine.
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.
,.(;anff Photo
          the earlier photo. "I want a job, any W
"M
said Tyrone Calvert, a
Prichard said he di&t realize *unM.
-1 fl-t hrA stmieg illivolved some of
rai chi Nuan 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
              dra-
dramatic that is, Ile internal
ma-the stuff of -energy medicine
and other ways of tapping into and
using our own "chi' for health and
healing-is even more compe&g.
No wonder Eisenberg keeps re-
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.
     "Me art of healing is thousands of
years old he writes in his book. "The
science of healing is still in the process
of being bom."
But now to get to the part of the
realized something was wrong;' said
              : CIA-R

week by Roll Call, the.Capitol Hill"
ne irforme."In
nZft
hn Eisenberg,
"there's the idea that the body has to
move, and that movement is as impor@
tant as eating or sleeping or drinking."
     'Me 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 "Vai chi
ch'uan" and "chi gong." Unlike West-
em aerobics, the movements 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 mi'crocosm. 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
I've read, all of them must be out
there moving about at dawn. And then
I dunk about the second lughest per-
centage of 80-and-uppers, the 13 per-
cent from this country I d&t picture
most of them moving about in the
fresh air at dawn. I picture them
banging their canes in a 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 psychoneuroirnmunology-
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 wan still
another Chinese proverb:
          "Make small progress day by day."
     Everyone who watches the Bill
     Moyers series will come away with a
     diflerent opinion, depending on flier
     own heAth, state of mind and expo
     sure to mindfbody concepts. But
     chances are, particularly if the ideas
     are new, you'll want to talk about
     them,
     Here's a time and place: 7 pm.
March 7, Washington Ethical Society,
7750 16th St. NW.
     Elliott $. Dacher, a Reston physi-
cian with a long-tune personal and
professional uiterest in holistic me&-
cine and author of a book on
mindibody healing, will speak. The
tide of his talk, -The Mind Is the
Body; The . Body Is the Mind " is
borrowed from the Moyers seri@;.
          he line-which does get
your attention-belongs to
molecular biologist Can
dace Pert, in a segment on
chen-lical communicators.
     T
(Pert discovered the opiate receptor-
and other peptide receptors in the
brain and body, which led to an under--
standing of the chemicals that travel
between the mind and body.)
     The session, says Dacher, "is a
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 fives." After Dacher's tak
AutiCiPants will break into small dis-
emsion groups, each with a trained
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.
rip