In the 1600’s the social, scientific and philosophical history of western culture experienced a radical shift. The work of Newton and Galileo revised our world. For thousands of years, humans were locked in the stagnation of the Dark Ages, with little advance since fire, the wheel and the sword. Then, in less than the life span of an oak tree, tremendous and sudden evolution occurred with the rapid development of engineering, the automobile and antibiotics.
Western culture is poised at the edge of another profound and dramatic transformation. For the last 400 years we have understood that the world was a dynamic interrelationship of substances, particles and bodies. Now, through the most refined scientific inquiry, it has become clear that there is no substance. What we thought was substance has been revealed as a dynamic interrelationship of energies. Physics is redefining time and space and generating new sciences of resonance and energy fields. There is even emerging agreement on a theory that suggests that there are more than three dimensions of space and one of time.
Asian philosophies and the ancient personal transformation traditions of the pre-colonial, original cultures have always held that the world we experience through our senses is but a fragment of what is. An individual’s energy field is proposed to be the essence of one’s being, rather than a physical body. As western science frees itself from its “seeing is believing” position, what occurs is a validation of ideas and traditions that were called “mysterious,” “savage,” “unscientific,” and “primitive” as little as a decade ago. As we now use science to explain the “why” and the “how” of the mysterious, unusual arts and disciplines are revealed as practical and meaningful.
The medicine of the Asian cultures, which once seemed so unsophisticated by our scientific standards, is now licensed as primary medical care in a number of states and is a solid component in an emerging “new medicine.” Traditional Chinese Medicine is completely consistent with the supposed “new” idea in rational science that a person is more of a resonating field than a substance. The Chinese, however, never demanded the scientific proof that is now emerging; they just followed what they knew, from generations of experience, to be effective and real. Acupuncture has helped to needle science into the exploration and confirmation of important new information on the bioelectrical aspect of the human. It has played a significant role in the exciting and rapidly developing frontier of neurotransmitter biochemistry and is a central aspect of a revolutionary new treatment for addictions.
Doctor uses needles for treatment of the patient. acupuncture needles. alternative healthcare
Acupuncture, however, is really just a modality, a tool used by doctors of Traditional Chinese Medicine to help the patient. Like surgery, though much less invasive or like medication though less likely to cause side effects, acupuncture has startling implications for the future of medicine. The aspect of Traditional Chinese Medicine that has the potential to truly rock the western world is Qigong. Healing patients without touching them and with no medication, causing anesthesia by just pointing a finger and generating acupuncture like response without needles are well documented effects of Qigong. Many observers have seen Qigong masters light fluorescent tubes with their hands, break massive stones and thick steel bars with their hands and feet and start fires by projecting the Qi. (5,6,7,11,16,22) The implications for the transformational impact of Qigong on western science are profound.
Qigong has captured the imagination and the scientific attention of the world. In China there is a multitude of Qigong research institutes. The need for research in the rigorous scientific method of the West, with control groups and ample statistical methodologies has shifted Qigong research out of the traditional empirical model of the Asian sciences. A flurry of research was presented at the historic First World Conference for the Academic Exchange of Medical Qigong, which was attended by representatives from seventeen countries. In the United States Qigong associations and institutes are proliferating rapidly.
The American Foundation of Traditional Chinese Medicine is working with Professor William Tiller of Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California, on a collaborative research project exploring bioluminescence, expression of photons from the Qigong practitioner. The Qigong Institute of the East West Academy of the Healing Arts has a research team and a monthly scientific forum. In southern California Qigong Universal is actively supporting the spread of Qigong teachings and the World Research Foundation is collecting Qigong information on its world wide scientific database and in its library. There is even a Qigong Association in Alabama, Chinese National Chi Kung Association, which has an extensive written and video training course and has begun to publish a magazine in collaboration with China Sports Magazine of China that has a major percentage of its content devoted to Qigong.
by Dr. Roger Jahnke
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