Bauer Interview

This month the Qi-Unity Report looks at how the public absorbs the cultural underpinnings of acupuncture through an interview with Matt Bauer, LAc, author of The Healing Power of Acupressure and Acupuncture.

QUR: What led you to write a non-academic look at acupuncture?

MB: From the earliest days of beginning my practice in 1986, I felt as though the acupuncture and Oriental medicine (AOM) profession had an obligation to inform the public about the tremendously valuable healing resource these practices represent. I was invited to work with a state AOM professional association, and I assumed that one of that organization’s top priorities would be public education and outreach. After a few frustrating years of trying to get the leadership of that organization to work on public education, I saw this was not going to happen. During this same time, many of my patients would tell me that the explanations I offered to them about acupuncture and Oriental medicine theory really made a lot of sense and that I should write a book about it. I decided I would give it a shot and began a ten year ordeal.

QUR: What does your book do that other acupuncture publications do not?

MB: Well, to the best of my knowledge, my book may be the first in history that attempts to trace not only the practice of acupuncture but the theories behind Oriental medicine to their earliest roots.

QUR: That’s a pretty tall order. What made you think you could do that and why did you think doing so would help the public appreciate AOM today?

MB: I had been pondering what our profession would need to do to help the public better understand what this healing system offered, and it struck me that one of our greatest obstacles was our inability to explain how acupuncture began. Next to being asked if acupuncture hurts and how it works, the most common question acupuncturists are asked is: “How did they ever come up with the idea of sticking needles in people in the first place?” I believed our inability to answer this question left skeptics assuming acupuncture was based on some superstitious notions, and this was hurting acupuncture’s acceptance.

As for why I thought I could address these issues, part of that is my tendency to bite off more than I can chew, but mostly it was because I had a teacher whom I felt had more direct insights into early Chinese culture than any one else I knew – a 36th generation Taoist Master named Ni Hua-Ching. Master Ni never directly taught about the roots of Oriental medicine per se, but he did touch on some very remarkable insights regarding early Chinese culture I felt were critical clues that could help address the mystery about Oriental medicine’s roots. I like to say that the mystery regarding the roots of acupuncture and Oriental medicine is as great as that surrounding the origins of the pyramids or Stonehenge. Remarkably, as I delved deeply into this subject, I also came to believe that the inspiration for all of these ancient mysteries had a common source - that source being ancient astronomy.

QUR: Ancient astronomy? What does astronomy have to do with acupuncture?

MB: That is a very complex subject, too deep to cover here, but in my book I make the case that ancient astronomy was the single greatest inspiration behind the concepts of yin/yang, the Five Elements/Phases, and the jing-lou/meridian system we still follow today. The desire of ancient people to understand the movements of the heavenly spheres pushed the envelope of human thought and inspired formal systems for measuring time and space. It also spawned the idea within the world’s first budding civilizations that human life should be organized to mirror the order of the heavens. It is in the formal systems that these first great civilizations put into place to organize these rapidly growing populations that we find the organizing systems used in Chinese medicine. In other words, it seems most likely that after the early Chinese made the transition from hunter-gatherers into herders-cultivators and then into larger civilizations, they began organizing their society – including their folk healing knowledge - with principals inspired by their astronomy.

I tried to lay out my theories in a step by step manner, but my editor cut four of these six chapters saying they were better suited for something like Harvard University Press rather than a popular press. This bothered me at first because I had taken years to construct these theories, but in the end I had to admit my editor was right. I was trying to write for both the public AND the AOM profession. Doing that would have made the book too complex for the general public. The skeleton of my theories still remain in my book and that’s good, but a lot of the supporting framework is missing. I hope to eventually get this material out if there is an interest in it. As it is now, my book covers some very deep concepts in a scant 90 pages or so. The second half of the book explains what kinds of conditions are treatable with acupuncture, what training acupuncturists receive, and it ends with a section showing some acupressure techniques for common problems.

QUR: Is there a cultural gap that keeps Americans from trying acupuncture?

MB: Yes and no. The cultural differences are less a factor today then they were 20 years ago. Today, many Americans have heard good things about acupuncture and there is a wide interest in it, but it is the fear of not knowing what to expect from the acupuncturist that keeps people from picking up a phone book and locating an acupuncturist. This is why I am convinced that if our professional associations were to help the public understand that acupuncturists are licensed, trained, educated professionals, we would see a tremendous boost in patient load.

Many Americans say they are afraid acupuncture will be painful, but what they are really afraid of is the acupuncturist. The public knows nothing about our training and tends to think that anyone can hang out a shingle and call himself an acupuncturist. Contrast that to the dental profession. People have largely gotten over their fear of dentistry because they have come to trust that their dentist will manage their care without too much discomfort. But because the public does not have a positive image of acupuncturists as trained health professionals, they just don’t pick up the phone. We need to get the message out that acupuncturists are caring, educated, professionals and then the public will start to trust that these professionals have the discomfort of the treatment under control. I tried to get this across in my book, but it is our professional associations who bear the main responsibility to disseminate this message.

QUR: Do you think the integration movement is parting ways with AOM roots?

MB: Are you asking if the movement toward so-called “Integrative Medicine” is a threat to the roots of AOM?

QUR: Yes.

MB: Well, it might be in its present guise, but it shouldn’t. What we all need to understand is that there are two major types of medical approaches. One seeks to take over for the body and heal from the outside in. The other seeks to encourage the self healing ability of the body to heal from the inside out. In my book, I called these two “Action” medicine and “Reaction” medicine, although I now call these “Outside” medicine and “Inside” medicine. Modern medicine is 98% Outside medicine while acupuncture is 100% Inside medicine. Both of these approaches have their strengths and weaknesses – my book contains a chart of these – and both are needed. Outside medicine excels at salvaging life and limb when the body’s ability to heal itself is overmatched. Acupuncture is the most advanced form of Inside medicine, and Inside medicine excels at helping the body to heal itself and prevent or slow decline.

What we should be doing in integrative medicine is triaging patients into one or the other of these two, or a reasoned combination of both, based on the nature of the pathology and the strengths and weaknesses of these two approaches. Unfortunately, these two approaches have not yet been recognized as such, and we keep using useless terms like “conventional” and “alternative” or “modern” and “traditional” or “scientific” and “empiric” medicine. None of those terms helps us understand the differences in the way these two approaches work and thus don’t help us understand how to triage patients appropriately.

If we recognize these two approaches for what they are and that acupuncture is the most advanced form of Inside medicine, we should not have to worry about it being ruined by integrative medicine. We should worry however, about it being ruined from other health care providers who want to control acupuncture as a procedure explainable in Western science terms.

QUR: What advice do you have to practitioners looking to overcome the objections of leery patients?

MB: On the small scale of your own practices, get out there and let the public see you. Speak at public functions like local business networks or schools, etc. Let people know you are not someone to be fearful of. Behave like a professional and that will generate trust. On the larger scale of the profession as a whole, encourage your professional associations to make public education a higher priority. We could accomplish so much if we were to implement a comprehensive public education campaign. The interest is there--we just have to address the fear of the unknown.

QUR: Is the AOM profession doing the right things to tell the story of acupuncture?

MB: I think we are doing the wrong thing by not telling the story of acupuncturists. I hate to beat a dead horse here, but this is the biggest problem we face. We keep talking about acupuncture and not explaining about acupuncturists. The AOM profession needs to step out of the shadows and establish ourselves in the public eye as the leading authority on AOM. We need to establish an identity as educated, health care professionals who have the greatest training and expertise in AOM. This will not only lead to a flood of new patients for our practices but offer the best protection for our future.

QUR: What do you think the AAAOM can do better to bridge the knowledge gap between practitioners and the public?

MB: We need to establish the AAAOM as the top authority on the subject of A/OM in the eyes of the media and public just as the AMA is for modern medicine in the U.S. As it is now, the media does not automatically think of checking with the AAAOM if they are going to do a story on AOM. Frankly, I have seen more stories in the press that have had input from the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture (AAMA) than from the AAOM, Alliance, or now the AAAOM. A lot of people in our profession have tried over the years to stop other professions from practicing acupuncture without a full education and licensing but that has long been a lost cause. We were never strong enough to stop others from practicing. If we would have spent the same time and energy promoting ourselves as the top authorities in AOM instead, we would be in a much stronger position today. There is still time to do this, but every year that passes without us actively promoting ourselves as the cream of the crop, leaves us that much more vulnerable.

QUR: Are you planning to write another book?

MB: I would like to write several books, but people keep pestering me, wanting me to stick needles in them. No, seriously, I want to write more about what I have learned from my Taoist studies regarding our early ancestors’ spiritual insights and how that is relevant today. I also would like to write about specific healing knowledge and techniques, but my first responsibility is to my patients.

QUR: Where should we direct inquiries about The Healing Power of Acupressure and Acupuncture?

MB: I have a website at www.MatthewDBauer.com that has a link to an Amazon.com page for my book and also a link to email me. My site also has pages with some of the articles I have written. I am considering starting a blog for those interested in discussing the roots of Oriental medicine and who knows what else.