So Long for Now, Emperor's College

I dove in. I committed. I paid my tuition and bought a pile of extraordinarily expensive books on Chinese Medicine (on half.com).

I went in with an open mind, ready to do it.

But after my second class I was not impressed. And my Hasidic Jewish Traditional Chinese Medicine teacher haunted my dreams. I got used to the constant Jewish allusions and the Hebrew to describe Chinese concepts. It no longer even rattled me.

What got to me was his direct claims, and constant insinuations about the powers of Chinese Medicine. You have to remember, I did not go in as a skeptic, but a believer. I know that TCM doctors have been fighting for recognition, to work in Integrative Medicine settings, and to overcome a bias, on the part of western doctors, to believe that most doctors of alternative medicine border on quacks and are sloppy with science.

I have fought with editors to take this profession seriously, and I have been impressed with acupuncture in treating nausea during pregnancy, mood swings do to my menstrual cycle, and pain in my knee, which a western doctor said would never ever improve.

But over the course of two classes our teacher either insinuated or claimed that 1) he had helped cure a young man's homosexuality by giving him more yang (his voice dropped, he started to like sports, he was less effeminate) 2) he helped a woman with cancer, with his help it was in remission, when her orthodox jewish husband forbade him to continue his treatments because the treatments were too intimate, three months later the woman died and 3) he treated a mongoloid child and after many treatments the child no longer appeared mongoloid. This is because acupuncture and TCM can change DNA. When pressed on the topic by some of the biochemists and medical school bound students in the class he backed off and it became clear he did not understand the difference between a gene and DNA.

He thanked us for challenging him. But the alarming thing was to hear him make these sloppy claims which stick in your mind, without a real understanding of what he was saying.

So I am withdrawing. Mostly because the time and the distance made the class much more complicated for my family than I anticipated. But if my teacher had been more rigorous and less sloppy I think I would have muscled through.

It is so hard for me to quit, so terribly terribly hard. But I hold in my heart that the reason I was taking this course was to explore the idea of becoming an Alternative Medicine Doc. This class will be required if I formally enter any program. But what I now know is that I need to do much more investigation of any school I might enroll in, of their classes, their professors, and the scientific/medical rigor of their program.

That would serve me better than sitting in on a class.

I loved the material. But I could not get past the rest of it.

For now, I'm done.

Perhaps I will sign up again with a different teacher for a class during the day.

Emotional. And disappointing.

Unexpected. But OK? Or Not OK?

I have christened this six month period the Age of Exploration. So as I continue to freelance I am delving into other areas, like the dilettante I am. Last week I signed up for a class at Emperor's College in Santa Monica: Fundamentals of Oriental Medicine. In this four unit class I will learn the basic tenets of TCM.

So nervously I drove to my class last week and wondered if I was insane. The class was packed, with everyone from recent grads to middle aged people reinventing themselves.

We sat in the class anxiously waiting for our teacher arrrive. Finally he did, and what a shock. Our Chinese Medicine teacher was a Hasidic Jew, dressed in tallis and vest and hat and sporting a huge bushy beard that obscured his lips. I wondered if I was in the wrong place. I was so confused.

But I went with it. This is L.A.--a giant mash-up of cultures. Why shouldn't a devout Hasidic Jew teach Chinese Medicine? He was warm and enthusiastic and told us his religious beliefs would NOT bleed into his teaching, or influence it. Good to hear.

I scanned the materials. There was as much Hebrew as Chinese, but again, I thought, I am cool with this.

He made us all introduce ourselves and say why we were there. The stories were amazing. There was a female pilot, a former military intelligence officer, a middle school teacher, a German corporate type who had moved to Santa Monica to begin again, a dancer, an athlete, a former social worker from Virginia. There was a doctor, a chiropractor, and a lot of women of Asian descent who had grown up around Chinese Medicine--either loving it or hating it.

Scattered through the class were horror stories--tales of western medicine going awry. I wondered if doctors ever see these patients whose lives they ruin. The ones they subscribe a medication to, or do an operation wrong on? Are those people ever followed in statistics? Interviewed? Or are they simply invisible? I was suprised.

Our Hasidic teacher proceeded to teach. I have been blessed with the most extraordinary teachers in my life. I never thought about it, I guess, but every graduate program I have attended the professors were inspiring and top notch. Even the bad ones were good. Our teacher was fine. He was warm and enthusiastic and threw out long strings of New Age platitudes--something I normally devour--but it was a lot to take. I can get this in the Self Help aisles. I was here to learn facts! He did some hands on demonstrations, which I liked. He is open. a good man.

He read aloud to us his ten principals of Traditional Jewish Medicine, and told us how Yin and Yang corresponded with many tenets of Kabbalah. He finished the night with a tale of a patient--a 23 year old "boy" who came to him for help. The boy said he was also receiving counseling. What for, our Hasidic teacher and doctor asked him. (The patient was Hasidic, too). The boy had homosexual tendencies. Our Hasidic teacher said that when he did his diagnosis it turned out the boy had a "yang" deficiency, yang being action, male, sun, power. He gave him a little yang (in the form of herbs and treatments) and he said he heard the boys voice drop from effeminate to masculine. The boy said he had more energy. He felt it surging through his body. When he talked to him a week later, the boy, who had always loved art, now expressed an interest in sports.

He left the story hanging there--with the suggestion that TCM offered a possible "cure" for homosexuality.

The class could not speak. We did not even know how to respond. The middle school teacher finally choked out that he found the story offensive, and his attitude very similar to fundamental christians. The teacher backed off, said he loved homosexuals, respected them, whatever. This is just what he saw.

The class ended and I stumbled out into the rainy night.

I have a week to decide what I want to do. I want to learn about the Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine, but I am wary of an institution that puts someone with such strong religious beliefs in charge of an important intro. class. More importantly, I am trying to decide if I can overcome my feelings about the low level prosletyzing in my class to get to the meat of the material. I can read. I will learn the material.

I just don't know.

Any thoughts, friends?