First class on points and channels

First class on basic points and channels of chinese medicine today.

Chinese medicine partially works with treating mai, channels, in the body, and how they are balanced with internal organs, body, and mind. Points are located on the channels (or meridians). These points are seen as links into different meridians and organs, and some points weave the system together in different ways. A skilled acupuncturist can then use needles to stimulate points, stabilize channels, and increase or decrease energy and function in different way in a patient.

Chinese medicine works a lot at diagnosing and treating qi, energy, in a living human being, and how it moves towards balanced health or towards illness. The points on a person is one way to access this.

Today, they started in on the basics of the meridians and the points, beginning with the Lung channel, which is one of the classical ones people begin with.

The Lung channel is one of the easier ones, comprising of a main flow going from the end of the torso near the armpit and out into the thumb. It has nine points on it. Originally it goes from inside the body, in the large intestine, and then up, linking to the lungs, and then out into the arm. But the part of the channel out on the surface is only the last part from the shoulder and down.

The Lung channel is linked to a lot of things, but primarily works with lung function and problems related to this. Everything in chinese medicine is a web of interweaving relationships – listing what one channel is linked to would be a very long list (Lung channel would be linked to Metal Element; more on the Five Elements later in the blog). Points on a channel can also have treatment effects that are very different to that of the channel itself, and I know from talking to chinese doctors that they often don´t care a lot about the channels in China: more focus is on the points themselves, and the innumerable ways these are interwoven for specific treatment effect.

Today, the students were taught the Lung channel basics, then marked the points out on each other with eye-liner (yes, eye-liner).

Many people on the course (quite small this year, only 17 people instead of the usual 30-40; recession) have no background at all in chinese medicine. Some have a little. For those with no previous knowledge, I can see that this will be a tough course. This week, the Lung channel; next Pericardium, after that Heart, etc... If you have no previous training in this, it will be a lot of information to digest. The tests won´t be difficult, really, but the pace is high.

We were also introduced to two new members of staff, Keith and Kenneth.

Keith is a life-size mannequin marked with points and channels; Kenneth is a plastic skeleton happily hanging from his trolley and hook.

More information in different directions. Let´s talk about cabbages, not kings

Yesterday we had the first introduction to clinical skills and to the qigong-part of the course. The information level is still very strangely spread across the board. During this class we were informed that 1) this was a very difficult module, and you really needed to pass it or you would fail the module, and 2) it should be quite easy to do if you attended classes and we will help you as much as we can, so don´t worry too much.

We were also introduced to the ”qigong”-part of the course, which as an introduction consisted of the very basic, most physical qigong with little detail and depth. I am a qigong-specialist, so of course a bit biased, but the information was very basic and lacked a lot of safety features I would have included. The exercises also repeatedly moved your lower back out of alignment, and broke other alignments in your body, moving into the world of stretching rather than qigong. Maybe they will teach it with more precision over time. I hope, for the students´ sake.

Qigong is a very, very big subject, and finding a teacher who knows the real qigong work in depth is difficult, so the quality wasn´t different from what is available on the market if you look up most classes.

Qigong is a crucial facet of classical chinese medicine, and for someone to be really good at CCM, would also include as a matter of course that they have a long-time and solid practice of various qigongs at different levels and with different techniques used, sometimes including deep work in sitting meditation.

The pass grades in most of the modules of course seem to lie at 40%, which feels rather low. What is important to understand, for readers not acquainted with the field, is that training in Chinese medicine in general in the West is extremly short term in the majority of places that train in it. Long trainings, especially full-time ones, are the exception, not the rule. There is also no standardized course schedule, for good and for bad, and no standardizing bodies. Some unions in different countries try to create a more mainstreamed schedule, but since they have no ability to enforce the decision, this ends up more like guidelines rather than have actual effect.

Song

London

wonder

how you are today.

You are this being growing

alongside us

born

with the first ember

going out in a river-bank fire

3000 years ago.

We´ve fed you,

nurtured you

with prayers of voice, offal, step

and song

we´ve mythologized you

(not a good word to say

in cockney)

with Londinium,

the Smoke, LondOn

and

become denizens

instead of citizens

cells

moving within you

singers who are song

singing

London

Daniel Skyle © 2010

When you need to buy communion wafers at the bookstore

I try to have a day off this Sunday, which in my life involves writing anyway, putting up the post about Re-cycle, answering e-mails, thinking about the coming book and trying to go through four un-coordinated schedules of the course to see if I actually can do the course or not, and when I can or can´t go home. Planning and information has, so far, not been a strong point of this Msci (Master of Science, or full name, Master of Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture. In Swedish, Fil. Mag).

I go on a small journey of discovery to try to clear my head. Down to Picadilly Circus where the bus conveniently turns around the right corner to the left and drops me off in front of Waterstones. Waterstones is one of the biggest chains of bookstores in England, but for once Waterstones is not the quarry: I am looking for more genteel prey. For a block beyond Waterstones lies Hatchards, a bookstore of quite different character: Hatchards is By Royal Appointment or whatever it´s called, here shop the Queen and Prince Phillip and other of their kin. I have never been before, but always like finding new bookstores.

Hatchards turns out to have very tasteful interior with wood panelling, but not too much of it, and discreet bookshelves (yes, they can be, trust me). Not many people in here, yet very attentive staff and a feeling of class. And no, repeat no books standing with On Sale-stickers on them, or ”2 for the price of 1”. I walk up all the way to the fourth floor, slowly ambling through the rooms. Delightful place.

In one room I find all the books on theology and religion, with a table of books about the recently beatified (made into a saint) english cardinal Newman, whose home-church I passed on another bus. It had a huge banner of him down the front. It was probably there that the Pope went and held service to present the beatification. The pope left only last week, and if you want to have a strange, very unreal experience, try glancing into a shop window only to find yourself eye to eye with 30 different versions of the pope, done as poster, tablet, statue and 3D in all different sizes. I´m sure I was traumatised by it. I might need medical assistance. Preferably with a pretty nurse.

Anyway. I digress. In this room in Hatchards, on one of the shelves, were two shelves full of boxes. Curious, I walk closer. To my surprise I read that these are boxes full of communion wafers, done by a small manufacturer somewhere in the country-side. Communion wafers. The ”flesh” of christ. On the third shelf up, in a central London bookstore. Well. Yes. Why not. Whenever you need them to give to your flock, you just pop in to Hatchards. How convenient. Will that be with a nice rosé wine to go, vicar? And some dark chocolate? It´s sinfully good, if you pardon my wicked pun, tihi.

A small packet of the normal ones cost 7 pounds. For the health-freak, there were even wholemeal communion wafers, which for some reason were cheaper, at only 5 pounds (Christ on a diet?). The prices on the bigger boxes I didn´t check as I was laughing so hysterically inside I thought I would snort out loud. I walked off instead, up to the next floor.

An hour later I pop into a small café I know where they serve Devon Cream Tea. It´s a bit expensive for my current wallet, at 5 pounds 50 (about 65 Swedish Crowns, 9 bucks) but very nice for a Sunday.

On the bus on my way back, I look out at the rain that covers the tourists and the sidewalks. As the bus goes deeper back towards Oxford Street and the West End, the windows fog up. On the window next to me, I draw with my finger, sudden acts of kindness. When I get off, I see the writing up there on the window, left reinforced with my breath. Bus 10 continues on to King´s Cross station, carrying the message out into the city. My guerilla compassionfare keeps on fighting its war without borders or DMZ´s. We will never quit. Karmic commandos to the fore (and thanks for putting a name to my existence, Neil).

The rain keeps falling in light sheets of drizzle, and suddenly I find anger in the city, like you sometimes do, almost like it hangs around in clouds and you walk into them and out of them, wearing them like a king´s mantle lent to the court jester to gibber and jabber in. Suddenly, everybody seem to walk too slowly, to get in your way by intent. I realize I´m getting tired and hunch down in a Starbucks for some final work before heading back, out, out into the suburbs surrounding the Smoke.

Carrying bicycles upstairs to Africa with Re~cycle, the bicycle charity

Well, I didn´t carry them to Africa. But we sure as hell carried a lot of bicycles up the stairs in that old warehouse.

I spent most of Saturday hanging out at Re~cycle´s Wheelie Big Bike Drop on the outskirts of London. Re~cycle was started by Merlin Matthews, who realized a very simple thing: a lot of people have used bikes standing around doing absolutely nothing. Why not ship them to Africa, where people have to walk for several hours on a daily basis? Wouldn´t they be of more use there?

That was 12 years and 35 145 bicycles ago. Now, british bicycles are used by women, men and children in many countries in Africa. Re~cycle ships them down there on cargo-container ships as ecologically as possible, and they are then handed over to local organisations. These further train mechanics for the bicycles, giving jobs to locals, and the bikes themselves are placed out into villages. In one country, the school authority had already complained that the kids had to walk such long distances to school (2-3 hours one way) that once in place, they just slept in the class-room. Just one bike per village can make a huge difference. In some places they have been rebuilt with the help of Re~cycle to function as ambulances to freight patients on a seat or stretcher behind, and Re~cycle have set up a program using bikes to get nurses out into the more outlying villages for HIV/AIDS-treatment that also includes giving talks about how to prevent the disease.

You can see their website and Africa map here: http://www.re~cycle.org/.

On Saturday, Re~cycle was doing the first collection in London itself. They will now be doing that every month, collecting used bicycles that people want to donate. You can read about it here: http://www.abelandcole.co.uk/the-wheelie-big-bike-drop.

I haven´t got the final count, but it looked like they got about 500 bicycles – a very good turnout. The volunteers from Re~cycle and from Abel&Cole then helped carry them inside and upstairs for storage, which the company has volunteered to keep doing as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Re~cycle is currently looking for both more patrons and more volunteers to help get those used bikes out of the shed and off to transform people´s lives in Africa. They are also looking for more volunteers to go to Africa and run programs on the ground, helping to coordinate the shipments, placement and the training of mechanics. They also train women in this, to empower local women to have their own job and their own income.

Re~cycle is one of those simple but brilliant ideas, and they are making a huge difference on an every-day, practical level in Africa. You can read more about their work and support it here: http://www.re-cycle.org/Donate/Money.

The Wheelie Big Bike Drop was full of volunteers and screaming children. At the barbecue you could buy beef- or soy hamburgers with organic salad (the beef ones were great, says our intrepid reporter) and for the kids there was face-painting and bales of hay to jump around on while people came biking in on bikes that were going from here to away, away to a new life of helping carry children, water, food, or maybe even patients along long stretches of dusty road under endless African sun.

It´s a sunny Sunday in London now. Steady streams of tourists move outside, the first beggar has sat down in his sleeping bag at the end of Millenium Bridge and choppy winds give the Thames a rugged face today, promising more wind, colder days, the smell of damp from the coat of a stranger standing next to you on the bus.

More stuff about the body and things. Oh, right, it´s called Anatomy

We had our introductions to Anatomy and Physiology today. And stuff about how Western science actually works and what in it that doesn´t – ways to program a better clarity into the students when it comes to seeing both systems clearly instead of basing their views on previous programming that bias either one. Chinese medicine and science has its flaws, just like the Western version. Neither system is perfect – but you can not use one as a filter for the other either, something that is sadly visible in all the ”conclusive studies” done about acupuncture in Western medicine over the last ten years. We will talk a lot about on the meeting of Chinese and Western medicine in this blog.

The classes on the Anatomy and Physiology-section will be quite extensive: the course has a total of about a third Western medicine. Further down the line we get into Pathology too, and we will do a research module that goes into how research into acupuncture or chinese medicine along Western models is done, if anybody wants to do that (I´m not interested, but everyone has their stuff).

The anatomy-classes will be geared towards working very actively with the other students. We were treated to a long discussion and some very good information on all the ethics and all the views behind this. The tutor stated quite simply that students learned the material much better if they had living bodies to work on instead of just dissecting dead ones.

The pass-grade for the Anatomy and Physiology-classes are fairly low. An overall grade of 40% is a pass. This reflects that the subject is important, but not the main one of Chinese medicine, like, say, it would be if the course was for Western nurses or doctors. In classical chinese medicine, Western anatomical knowledge basics can be useful to know but has ultimately very little to do with the efficiency of the treatment. In the West, many ”Western” acupuncture schools base all their points-knowledge on anatomy. In actual life, the points move, both horisontally and vertically in small amounts. Putting a needle somewhere and hoping won´t give what the old system can do. The old skill of finding them by feeling the qi (energy) in the point, is still the most effective one for treatment.

Classical chinese medicine has diagnostic skills of feeling the body that bypasses anything in the current Western medicine by lightyears. However, the practitioner has to be trained in them too, and not everybody is. The quality among acupuncturists and chinese medical practitioners vary widely, just like it does in Western medicine. Again, and I will say this over and over again, since it needs repeating, if you want good quality in chinese medicine, ask. You can see the post Some basic stuff about Chinese medicine that I´ll publish soon.

The robots have been taken down: tonight, Trafalgar Square is filled with a tribute to Malaysia: a stage, for dancers, spotlights on the lions and lots of small stalls from a zillion different London restaurants. The delicious smell drifts off the square and stops people on the side-streets with sudden pangs of hunger, and watering mouths.

Horse-tounges, a Gaffer, hidden diamond

There´s a crazy person having an imaginary phone-conversation very loudly by himself four seats behind me on the bus. He discusses things and protests, and talks about people pissing on his life.

Passing by Parliament Square, outside the Houses of Parlament, seeing Big Ben as a pillar of stable time watching over the river Thames. The crowds are out here, going to visit Westminster Cathedral, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and to walk past the Horse Guards into the courtyards that lead to Buckingham Palace.

As my bus passes by, one of the two horses that stand guard outside the entrance is waving its tounge around wildly outside its mouth, while the guard on it sits as still as the statue of George Washington by Parliament Square 500 meters away.

On a plinth of marble stairs sits and old man, resting. He looks just like the Gaffer from the movie version of Lord of the Rings. Not strange, really; the Shire was Tolkien´s own version of his England. The hobbits are very much what he saw the English as being like, and the idealised version he wished them to remain. Old Tolkien, born in 1892. Conservative Catholic, soldier at the Somme in the Great War, father of seven children and writer of books that will echo throughout the time of humans, until the elves shut down the whole shop and head for the Grey Shores.

According to some, this has already begun.

Thin curtains of rain open above the city, then vanish. The light is very clear here today; all the greys and all the colours and all the faces are seen with every detail visible. So many faces, here, so much life. London has a population of 9 million people; the Greater London Area, 15.

It often feels like they are all standing next to you. Here, all trains are full, all buses; free space around you is rare. You learn to find it and treasure it, to stop in it and rest, practice qigong and meditation if you´re into that, and let your system release again. Then again, big cities are a prime training ground if you are into the qigong and meditation-work from Daoism. Nowhere else will you get as much varied external pressure on your system, and a big city is just like a web: move here, and you are part of it. Same goes for towns too, and villages, it´s just the scale that goes down. The smaller, often the harder are the bindings that hold you in place, like a fly in a spider´s web.

The old saying: the most skilled Daoist lives in town.

Note: not the beginner.

But the more skilled practitioners will not only use all the energy and change and pressure to deepen their own practice, he or she will also use it to affect the people and the whole web through balancing it. One clear diamond, moving, hiding its light, but spreading it.

There is a man reading about the Five Elements

 On a London commuter train at 8 in the morning the throng is pressing. Among them, leaning against a partition, stands a tall, black-clad man reading a book about the Five Elements as they head deeper and deeper into the heart of London.

The heat is on, induction and 58 minutes

A heat-wave is hitting London like a hammer on a rusty anvil. Late September is suddenly late August. Warm Londoners crowd buses, open summer wardrobes again, make the mixers in Starbucks echo every five minutes with another frappuccino or cold coffee-drink. Yesterday and today have been part of the three days of induction, when students are introduced to the course, to the tutors, are told about the university and mill about like headless chickens with that vacant look in their eyes that says ”No, I don´t really know who I am, where I am, or whether I need money for my rent or not. But, like, probably.”

Lectures about the courses yesterday. Today, big lecture hall and general stuff and lots of boredom being offered: health and safety, the university´s Green work (they were selected as Greenest in London among three other universities or something, I fear I might not have been great attention at this time), then listening to some heads of department, and a long lecture by someone who has been researching (very basic) things about the bridges between Eastern science and Western science.

Most of the take on it was very basic for someone like me who has trained, studied and taught within the field for twenty years, but almost no-one in the audiance had any background in it, and for that level it was good.

Timed it today. It takes me 58 minutes of commuting to get to the university. On a good day, 45, on a bad one, 1.20. Three changes on the route. Four, if you count taking a left from the bus stop to buy a filter coffee at Pret, a chain of stores that sell ecological and fresh fast-food stuffs.

Oh, by the way, I found out yesterday that the four year part time does indeed exist. One of the course leaders had been misinformed. I know the feeling.

The first semester courses will be offered that covers basic chinese medical concepts, then one on finding and working with acupoints and meridians (”You´ll be needling each other in week four! Isn´t that exciting?”...given that no-one else has experience with needling except me, a little, and they´ll need people to practice on...yes, that sounds rather exciting).

Other courses will be clinical work and training, then one on professional relationships and development, and a focus on how to use yangsheng, ”nourishing life”, a core part of Classical Chinese Medicine. All skilled chinese medical practitioners should know the value of qigong and meditation. The most skilled ones are usually well known for their in-depth research and training in qigong. A skilled practitioner of chinese medicine looks fairly healthy all the time, in great contrast to many practitioners of Western medicine. One interesting fact mentioned today was a survey done on patients in the British NHS (sjukvården). A significant amount of them had thought their doctor looked in such bad health that they hadn´t told them the real problem, "as they didn´t want to worry them more".

Oh, and there´s a robot installation on Trafalgar Square. I´ll see if I can find a video of it. It´s worth seeing: robot arms writing words and dancing under the wide sky and the inscrutable gazes of the lions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WgZ3WrpQ6E&feature=related

On Neijing, the bible of Chinese medicine, part I out of oh, lots

The Neijing – the Huangdi Neijing Suwen, if we´re going to be formal – is the bible of chinese medicine. It was probably written about 200 BC, but the text shows that whoever wrote it down did so from an existing and complex science. The Neijing contains two parts with 81 chapters in each. The first is called the Suwen, the General Questions, where Qin Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor who united China, is having a (made-up) conversation with his trusted advisors. They talk about such things as health, medicine, how illness and the treatment of it works, and how you can keep good health all through your life. Many of the tenets and views are daoist, and it was Daoism who gave birth to chinese medicine. Since then, it has shaped and affected it over the millenia.

The second part of the Neijing is called the Lingshu, often clumsily translated as the Spiritual Pivot. It´s more practical than the Suwen and contains advice on needling, for example, but some chapters also contains information on the treatment of shen disorders: disorders of the mind, emotions, mental states. These are very common among people in the industrialized West, where pressures on the body are often almost gone, but the pressure on the mind, emotions and nervous system is huge.

The copy my friend in LA recommended was translated from a well-known version from the Tang dynasty, (600-900). The author´s name was Wang Bing, a chinese medical doctor and scholar mostly known for the twelve years he put into doing an annotated and restored version of the then existing Neijing from the early 500´s. Wang was finished in 762: a new updated version of the Neijing lay there in front of him, filled with his additions done in red ink around the original text.

The more common version used today is from about 1060. But the text itself has been continously researched, debated, discussed and commented on and its practices upgraded over the past 2200 years, like the rest of the huge medical canon of China. It´s difficult to find good, complete translations of the Neijing. For someone to really understand the old text untranslated and in depth, pretty good skills at reading chinese are necessary, not to mention knowledge of classical chinese medicine – preferably long-time practice of same – Daoist practices and thought, chinese culture, politics, and Chinese history. And if you´re going to look straight at the old text, it´s nice if you can read classical chinese, not just the old characters but translate classical chinese itself, which is something else. There´s not a lot of people in the West who come to the text with those skills in their back pocket.

And in the blink of an eye that Chinese medicine has been in the West (roughly 1960´s and onwards) language has been and still is one of the big bars to deeper knowledge about the complete tradition. I´ll put up a video further on where a discussion on this is done from the medical text called the Shang Han Lun (the Treatise on Cold Disorders – a compendium mainly about how to treat illnesses that arise from cold weather or climates), that will show a little of how much depth has been lost.

I´m going to talk more about the Neijing later, there´s so much to look at when it comes to the core text of classical chinese medicine.

If you want to read one report of how Chinese medical training at the universities work with the Neijing, you can find it in Elisabeth Hsu´s book the Transmission of Chinese Medicine. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Transmission-Chinese-Medicine-Cambridge-Anthropology/dp/0521645425/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1283882239&sr=1-1. Hsu (actually Xu, in pinyin) is an ethnographer, and for a couple of years she simultaneously studied with a qigong healer, an old classical chinese medicine doctor and at the TCM university that trained doctors. In her book, she compares the three and their ways of teaching as well as the different material they had, and their treatments. Can be a bit dry (reads like a thesis; probably was) but very interesting.

Coffee now. Yeah. Coffee.

A lack of information about the small things in life

Right. Minor drawbacks. Nothing a daoist immortal would care about, but since I´m not, I do.

The course has been fairly bad at handing out information. So far I have been given three different views on schedules, course dates, tuition fee, and tuition fee dates. There was another point, something minor...oh, right. I found out today that the part-time course I thought I was doing and applied for doesn´t exist.

The four year is a full-time course, something the admissions-officer didn´t mention when she specifically verified me applying for the part-time for four years. Ho hum.

Also found out that they seem apply what is called long year to their course, which is a UK version where the year is divided into three semesters, not two. This will mean the summer holidays disappear and increases the cost quite a lot for me staying in London and paying for room, board, food and transport.

Why can´t I do this course in Lund in Sweden instead? Or Uppsala? (the Oxford and Cambridge of Sweden). Or even Malmö Högskola? (A polytechnic in Malmoe, the third biggest town in Sweden.)

Oh, right. There are no university degrees in chinese medicine or acupuncture in Scandinvia. That´s the reason. I forgot.

I need more coffee. Or lunch. Or both.

Arriving, death on the tracks

Someone died as I arrived in London.

I was standing at East Croydon train station, the hub where you can change to a lot of places if you travel by train from Gatwick airport, or come from Brighton, or Reading, and I was waiting for the train to the stop I was heading for, when everything stopped. Not all the trains at once, but they slowed, stopped, stayed, then were reined in like sniffer dogs getting pulled back from a scent.

”Due to a train hitting a person in Purley, all traffic is delayed for the moment. We apologise for the inconvenience.”

Autumn sunlight on faces, on sighs, on a flurry of raised mobile phones. The train heading to Brighton stops on the adjacent platform and the doors open. A drunk starts singing about a football-team then starts delightedly bantering with his sudden audience.

The delay turns into all traffic cancelled until further notice; people scurry to the one train that goes into central London, others leave for local buses. There is an oriental platform conductor that gets a polite layer of people around him; no news, no news, only all of us standing around here in the sunlight, alive, while someone died five minutes ago on the tracks in the dreary suburb of Purley.

I arrive in London with the reminder of death, and golden sunlight in the autumn air. The Metal Element, in so many ways.

All the rituals of leave-taking

 It´s like closing down a house for winter. Putting in the rakes, looking at all the gardening that should have been done – ought to have been done – taking in the lawn furniture, saying goodbye to the garden, bye to the trees and wishing them a long, good sleep filled with happy dreams.

 

 

The geese are haunting the skies while I pack for London.

I leave tomorrow. Enrollment and thingies are on Monday; I´m heading to Hogwarts to wander around gawking at the seniors and the halls – look, that´s Peeves, that is, my dad tole me all bout him, watch out, he throws stuff – worry about the Sorting Hat (don´t want Slytherin) and seeing professor Dumbledore stroll down a hallway, deeply lost in thought.

Wouldn´t that be nice...modern day universities in central London probably don´t offer this, but it would´ve been nice.

Still buying textbooks and studying to deepen my previous skills. Watching some good online vids on the old, classical chinese medicine. There is such a big difference between the 1) more classical system, 2) the later TCM that´s a synthesis of Western Medicine and Chinese medicine and taught in Chinese universities, and 3) the ”Western” acupuncture, that leaves almost all previous 2500 years of knowledge behind with the comment that ”we are smarter now than they were” and gladly puts needles anywhere without knowing diagnostics, how to find points without a map, or the system itself. The last version is sort of like claiming that Red Cross volunteers are trained to do vascular surgery. I was one. Trust me, we can´t.

Anyway. More on all that later.

Now it´s time to pack – chosing clothes, coffee, textbooks, notebooks; and while the autumn wind messes the hair of the trees outside, I realize I have to put in the rakes from the garden.

No student loans from Sweden for acupuncture studies. Surprise!

Bit of a surprise but it shouldn´t have been, I just didn´t stop to think. My application for part-time student loans for the studies (won´t cover it or even come near, just help with expenses) is likely to be turned down by the Swedish state. Great.

The university I´m going to is a university in London. The course, a Masters (in Swedish terms, Fil Mag). Everything is fully qualified, and it´s on a level that doesn´t exist anywhere in Scandinavia. But. Phoning the CSN – the department that oversees student loans – I learn that they will have to try the course, as no-one has applied for the Masters before.

They had applied for the Bachelor (in Swedish terms, Fil Kand), though, and been turned down.

The woman in Admissions at the university got pretty miffed when I told her this. ”How can they do that? We are a university, the course is fully recognized. It´s been run for years. It´s fully recognized for English student loans.”
  ”I know.”
  ”But how can they do that? It´s very strange.”
  ”Yes, I know. It´s Sweden. The misunderstandings from Western medicine are much stronger in place here.”

As they are. Sweden is still a backwater when it comes to investing in quality in acupuncture, or understanding what it actually can do for patients who are ill. We will look at this more in depth later, in a blogpost on training-levels for acupuncturists.

The training that qualifies you to be a member of the Swedish Acupuncturist Union isn´t long. They accept standards of 40-80 hours of training with a teacher a year, for three years, with webstudies filling the rest of the ”part-time” course. The more ”quality” trainings have a month in China, at a hospital where many Westerners walk around and think they have the same skill as the acupuncture doctors who had five to seven years full time at university, and then years of practice on top of that.

A new facet to the better is that now you also need to have ”Basic medicine”, a course that usually extends for one or two semester at university or an acupuncture school, and which covers basic anatomy, physiology, and some basic Western medical knowledge. Not much, but a good start.

The course I will attend is one third that material of the four years at university. One third, roughly the same material as nurses would do when it comes to discussing patient contact and care, and one third pure chinese medicine. I will then fill that in with lots of extra studies and lots of clinic time on the side. I hope I can persuade them to give money based on the Western medical part of the course, if nothing else.

There are no acupuncture degrees at university level in Sweden. None.

Should they give out student loans for studies in chinese medicine? Not if it is low quality, no. But one reason I went for this course was that it is a Master at university, something that doesn´t exist where I live. Giving out student loans to the shake-and-bake courses that are common might not be smart. It is very difficult to check their quality and consistency. But to deny it to established university degrees is a bit odd.
So...now they will be doing a check on the course, and I can kinda guess that they will say no. I will appeal, to get more information into the system if nothing else, but it´s unlikely they´ll say yes.

Silly me.

Packing

I have started to pack. You know. Useful things. Notebooks for, well, notes, London A-Z map, books, course reading, adapter, books... A coffee brewer that takes up very little space and is based around air-pressure. All plastic. Only need hot water, no coffee machine. Don´t think I can smuggle a real one into the room I´ll be renting. Well, the room I hope I´ll be renting if everything works out. I hope I hope I hope. Coffee. One of life´s crucial ingredients.

Note to self: must buy some Malabar before going off to London, and have it ground for once. Can´t bring the grinder. A 21st century adventurer, leaving life´s little luxuries behind and heading out into the great unknown, into the country where maps show only white and the text Here be Dragons (but I like dragons, I like them) out into the uncivilised outskirts, the fringes of existence, through the waste lands to, umm, London.

Checked with a friend who has attended an acupuncture college in LA for a full-time course the past five years. Recommended versions of the Neijing, please? I ask. Bought one, ten years ago, but it´s not great. Just bought his recommendation.

http://www.redwingbooks.com/sku/YelEmpCanIntMed

At 831 pages it might not be the greatest thing to yank around London, but hey, it´s a good translation with both original chinese text, english translation and commentaries.

The Neijing is the bible of classical chinese medicine. Big subject. I´ll write more about it later. The first version of it was written 2200 years so I think it can wait.

I discuss needles with my friend by e-mail, him from 2 in the morning in Los Angeles. Two thirty-something Westerners discussing needle-types and their different clinical effects on patients by e-mail across the globe, him in smogfilled Los Angeles, me in quiet Sweden heading for dirty London. Heading for the Smoke, to study acupuncture. Life can be strange sometimes.

18/8. August. 2010. E-mail. Admissions Office.

They said yes.

I´m buying more text-books than I already have on the shelves. Asking advice from friends who are skilled acupuncturists about which books they recommend; hanging out on Amazon looking for new ones, used ones. Cheaper. I start reading through the books I already have, and begin to check through my previous 20 years of training in qigong and daoist meditation from the slightly different viewpoint unique to acupuncture.

Trying to set up accomodation. Not sure if it´s OK yet. Shop around for other ones, worrying that I might have to rent an apartment. In a small store at the end of a London bus-route this spring I found notes about student accomodation; central living, 6-700 pounds a month. No clue what the places look like. Too much money for me and my place back home in Sweden at the same time anyway. Staying in a student dorm is probably not a good solution if you 1) want to sleep, 2) want to sleep, and 3) be rested enough to actually learn anything during the courses. Not 19 anymore. Want to be able to focus on life in London, and on learning stuff. The stuff I´m coming here for for the next four years.

Don´t really feel like fighting over who owns which carton of milk either.

Summer 2010 I´m talking with a friend over what I´m going to do next. He says, ”Hey, why don´t you retrain as an acupuncturist? You have twenty years of training in the field already. Wouldn´t that be good?”
  I try to sidestep on automatic. ”Well, maybe, but I don´t really think that – hang on. Hmmmm.” And I went silent, and thought.
  Then I started asking questions. Another friend who is a very good acupuncturist recommended Westminster. London. Masters-course at university, something that doesn´t exist in Sweden.
  I read up on their website and liked the intent they had. ”Our focus is the education of competent scholar practitioners of the CM tradition, who have the skills of critical thinking combined with mindfulness, and can participate in the current debates on science and tradition that have an impact on the living tradition.” It went on: ”Extensive practice in our on-site training clinic develops the clinical skills to perform as self-reflective, autonomous, inquisitive and caring practitioners who can develop effective professional relationships with patients and colleagues.” Big words. I wondered if they would prove true in reality. But it sounded good for the level of professionalism I was looking for.
  I applied. Late. In for Clearing.
  I got accepted.

Booked my flight on Easyjet. 18th of September. Saturday. 2010. On Monday, the Introduction begins at the university. Then it´s time for the overview of what the courses and program will offer. Part-time, me. Will fill the days with trying to apprentice at other clinics. Have some ideas.

It will cost me a lot of money, not just in the shape of more student loans but also of my own to get this quality. It feels worth it...and slowly there is an excitement in going away for this adventure, to study acupuncture in the early years of the second millenium in one of the most alive and hectic cities of the world: London.

I´m listening to Jeffrey Yuan´s talks on CD. He goes through the different uses of using stainless steel needles, silver needles or gold. The huge difference the right choice might make in effect for the patient. He discusses classical chinese medicine, the really old one, the one that is dying out both in China and in the West, slowly, by small cuts. Wonder how many who still knows it.

Get an e-mail from the course leader today. Hep B vaccination. You don´t have to get one, but you have to be informed that you´re making the choice. Think I might be already. Have to check it out.