Healing in China: A Doctor's Discovery of Chi Gong

By Irv Givot

Healing In China is a record of Irv Givots two journeys(1993,96) to study Chi Gong in China. It is at once a description of a most extraordinary clinical workshop, training, and teacher; a collection of stories of remarkable healings, an essay into the nature of subtle energy; and a snapshot of life in China for a group of Americans in the mid 1990s. The central theme however, is the authors unfolding discovery of Chi Gong with its mysterious power to cure disease, and his evolving ability to integrate it both into his treatment of patients and his own quest for health.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 8, 2004
• ISBN: 9781462822331

Irv Givot

Dr. Givot currently conducts a clinical practice at Squaw Creek Chiropractic and Natural Health Center, which he founded in 1992, in Sisters,Oregon. He has been treating patients for 24 years and has taught and practiced Chi Gong for the past 10 years. Another vital interest of his is the teaching of Gurdjieff, which he has been attempting to apply to his life since 1973, and which led to the publication of his first book, Seven Aspects of Self Observation(1998). Dr. Givot resides with his wife in Central Oregon. Since the writing of the present book, he has returned from a third frip to China.

Book preview

Copyright © 2004 by Irv Givot.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

24869

Contents

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part Ii

Part Iii

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

To all my teachers

To their teachers

And the ones that came before them.

Part I

The First Trip To China (1993)

Introduction

A man must decide once and forever,

That he will be sincere with himself unconditionally,

Will shut his eyes to nothing,

Shun no results wherever they may lead him,

Be afraid of no inferences,

And be limited by no previous self-imposed limits;

G.I.Gurdjieff

All and Everything, p.1210

Long journeys, even when undertaken by the modern method of scheduled airline travel, have a unique life of their own. They are an interval in one’s life, a time for reflection as well as learning, and a time when heightened impressions are taken in. A long journey becomes a spiritual journey because in some small, or even large way the experience can transform a person forever.

On my two journeys to China (1993 and 1996) many remarkable experiences happened to me learning clinical Chi Gong with a Master from Beijing—experiences that have definitely changed me in many ways.

A long journey is generally not undertaken lightly or on a spur-of-the-moment decision, because people instinctively know that the direction of their life might very well change upon their return.

In my case the decision to study Chi Gong in China was many years in gestation, and in one sense started 10 years earlier with a question I formulated then, How to be a more conscious healer?

This question led me to study briefly with Chakdud Tulku Rimpoche, a Tibetan holy man and physician, in 1982. I learned from him some fundamentals of Tibetan medicine—which is similar to traditional Chinese medicine—especially that my spiritual understanding and discipline is inextricably connected to my role as a doctor, a concept that was, at the time, entirely lacking in the west.

A few years later I was moved to ask my question to Bante, a revered healer and Cambodian Buddhist monk, who at the time was 101 years old.

Actually, my question to Bante, at a workshop near Cave Junction, Oregon, was: How can I increase my healing powers? Upon hearing this, he laughed warmly and answered me that I shouldn’t use up all my energy on my patients—that would only lead to my premature demise—because by trying to heal patients with my own force, I would eventually deplete myself, even if I learned to channel the energy through me from above. Bante’s philosophy was to use outside help for the treatment of patients, for example colored lights and oils, herbs, etc. In that way, one could practice healing and still live a long life.

Although his words had a ring of authenticity, especially since he was over 100 years old and still healthy and strong, yet there was something unsatisfying about it.

I had gradually realized by the early 1990’s that one of my aims for this life is to understand the nature of this subtle healing energy, which is also the fine energy that one experiences in inner work practices.

Where does this energy come from? How does it flow through me to a patient? In fact, what is it? How is it related to the healing process itself? And how exactly is it related to my inner spiritual development?

In the teachings of Gurdjieff, which I have been attempting to apply to my life for more than two decades, there are directions to look in, hints, exercises to activate these energies, but nowhere is anything spelled out, nowhere is there any full elucidation. So if the heirs to the teaching don’t remember the exact instructions for the exercises, or can’t agree on some specific point, then they end up groping in the dark. It was left to the pupils to continue the search and work out many details for themselves. Shun no results, wherever they may lead you, Gundjieff had written, and in this case, I was led to China.

By that time, however, I did have some experience of the flow of these subtle energies in myself, but though I had held the questions enumerated above for several years, very little new data appeared until I read The Wandering Taoist by Deng Ming-Dao. This book had an immediate effect upon me, almost comparable to Castenada’s first descriptions of Don Juan 20 years earlier.

Finally someone seemed to understand the process of energy metabolism in great depth and detail. Also, Deng clearly and simply described experiences that were for me then not even remote possibilities. However, the methods used to attain his knowledge and experience were only vaguely and indirectly mentioned in the book. But it was a wonderful and reassuring feeling to know that this knowledge existed and was actually being made available to a few people then in the San Francisco area. However, for many reasons, it would not have been possible for me to seek him out at that time.

A couple of years later, after my family and I had moved from the Willamette Valley to Central Oregon, I returned to Portland for a weekend acupuncture seminar (Mar. 1993) presented by Dr. Amaro, an American Chiropractor who had been to China two or three times studying with acupuncture teachers and others, since the time I had taken his class seven years earlier.

I was struck by the change in Dr. Amaro. He seemed like a different person. He was quieter, much simpler in his presentation, and seemed to have a quality of presence that had been lacking the previous time I saw him. Also, rather than immerse the class in the minutia of acupuncture points and their specific functions, he felt called to share with us his recently distilled understanding of the essence of the healing process that takes place between a patient and a doctor.

Listening to him speak, the thought arose in me, I need to learn what he learned. And a tingle of excitement passed through me when I realized that was something I could do.

One immediate result of the seminar with Dr. Amaro was that, upon his recommendation, I purchased a physical therapy device from a company in Southern California called China Healthways Institute (or C.H.I. for short). This device was originally conceived and manufactured in China and was their first medical device exported to the U.S. Its purpose is to emit an energy that simulates Chi (or Qi, as it is often spelled), which is the Chinese word for the subtle healing energy about which I had so many questions. The Chinese researchers that created this device discovered that low frequency sound waves of a specific range of frequencies (about 9-14 vibrations per second) could be measured emanating from the hands of Chi Gong Masters with an intensity that was more than a hundred times greater than what could be measured from the hands of ordinary people.

Thus this device, called the Infratonic QGM was originally a low frequency sound generator, that would be placed on the skin and would send therapeutic impulses directly into a patient’s body. During that time I had heard many anecdotes from doctors who were getting dramatic results using this device to alleviate a wide variety of disease conditions.

Shortly after I began using this machine, as a complement to the existing methods in my chiropractic practice, I received a notice from Richard Lee, the owner of China Healthways, that he was organizing a trip to China later that year (1993) to bring a group to Beijing to study clinical Chi Gong. The group would consist of him, his wife, an assistant and about 30 doctors, acupuncturists, therapists, and otherwise interested lay people.

When opportunities appear in such a synchronous manner, one doesn’t need to think about it much. I paid my deposit, applied for a new passport and a visa to China, and in mid-September, with my papers in order, I embarked on the journey, flying from Redmond, Oregon to San Francisco, to Tokyo, to Shanghai, and on to Beijing—a trip that lasted over 24 hours, with an eight hour jet lag.

Chapter 1

Finding My Way To Xiang Shan

At the time I left for China I had not yet read the Celestine Prophecy (it was published that same year), but my journey seemed to be full of those strange coincidences that James Redfield referred to by the Jungian term, synchronicities.

Apart from the timing of the trip itself, another synchronicity was that as part of the preparation for the training in Chi Gong, Richard Lee advised us to read Mantak Chia’s book, Awaken Healing Energy Through the Tao, and practice the exercises given. In this book many of my questions about the flow of healing energy (or Chi) were addressed, and some answered. Light was shed upon my long-standing questions weeks before I departed—even in the preparation for the trip.

It was, by the way, a minor revelation to realize that the flow of this subtle energy and the flow of Chi through the acupuncture meridians were, according to the Taoists, one and the same. (Although there are other aspects of the flow of subtle energy through the body that Mantak Chia describes of which I was previously unaware.)

By 1993, I had been studying acupuncture and practicing a non-invasive form of it for almost 15 years and had never made these connections. I had also acquired the belief that only Masters could sense the flow of Chi through the channels of the body. Now I realized that anyone with my background could learn to do it. So a serious misconception: that the mysterious flow of energy experienced during meditation and inner work must forever remain unfathomable, was already shattered.

Another coincidence that comes to mind was perhaps more mundane, but was significant on a personal level. This was my meeting with Ken Franz, a retired teacher from Ashland, which I will describe while mentioning a few memories of the trip itself. I had learned before I departed that he was the only other Oregonian in the group going to China. Most of the others in the group were traveling together from Los Angeles, but a few of us from the Northwest opted to begin our trans-oceanic flight from Seattle or San Francisco, for convenience. We planned to join the rest of the group after arrival at the site of our training—the hotel in Fragrant Hills Park, about 15 miles outside of Beijing.

On the plane across the ocean, a long 14 hour flight to Tokyo, I had plenty of time to think about travel details and remembered that I would be arriving in Beijing after 11 PM, and had been informed that the only way to get to our hotel was to take a cab. Being a worrier by nature, I fretted a little over whether I could communicate to the cab driver where I needed to go, especially if he didn’t speak English. I knew that Fragrant Hills in Chinese was Xiang Shan—although at the time I didn’t know I was pronouncing the X in Xiang the wrong way—which totally changes the meaning. And though I had spent a few weeks half-heartedly perusing a couple of conversational Chinese language books before leaving Oregon, the Chinese language was orders of magnitude more difficult than I had imagined, even though in the past I’ve had a relative facility learning new languages while traveling.

I had a suspicion that Ken Franz was on the flight with me and it occurred to me that it would be good if we could share the cab ride from the Beijing Airport to the hotel together. Somehow between the two of us, we might project our intention better. But I didn’t know what he looked like and didn’t find him on that flight.

After a short, and not altogether pleasant stopover at the old Narita Airport in Tokyo(it has susequently been totally remodeled), I found the gate to board my second flight, and was on my way to Shanghai. Seated next to me was a friendly young Chinese business-man who had spent a lot of time in America. When I told him about the purpose of my trip, he began to reminisce about some strong experiences he had had with Tai Chi and similar forms as a youth, and I recognized that twinge of regret on his face as he related how he grew up, stumbled into a career of business and a path of materialism and lost touch with his spiritual practice. It was quite surprising to me that just the mention of Chi Gong to this total stranger from another culture could evoke such sincerity in such a short time. This was an omen, a premonition of many surprises and of a deep, unexpected connection with many Chinese people that awaited me.

When I told this sympathetic Chinese businessman my imagined plight about getting to my hotel, he wrote the name of the hotel and the nearby village, Hei-Dian, in Chinese characters on the back of his business card, and suggested that I hand it to the cab driver. This put my mind at ease, and also made me wonder about the coincidence of happening to be seated next to this amiable former resident of Beijing, who was able to give me just the help I needed.

Sometime during that conversation, I looked out the window of the plane and noticed the shoreline of mainland China in the distance across the East China Sea, through a haze below us. It hit me somewhere in the solar plexus that this was really the other side of the Pacific Ocean, and that I was a long, long way from home.

Soon after that we landed at the Shanghai Airport—on a frighteningly short runway not really designed for jumbo-jets—went through customs; and those of us passengers going on to Beijing were brought to a drab, isolated waiting area near our gate. At some point I began looking around, observing the 100 or so passengers, wondering if I could somehow recognize Ken Franz from among the American men on the flight. At once my attention was taken by a tall, greying man standing against a post, who looked a little like James Coburn in his later years. I went up to him and asked, Are you Ken? He calmly said, Yes, and didn’t seem too impressed that I was able to pick him out of a crowd on the first try. As it turned out, we were very different types. He was way more laid back and easy-going than me, but on the other hand, he didn’t have a burning desire to study Chi Gong. He learned about the trip from his acupuncturist and was traveling mostly for the opportunity to tour China with the group. But because of the unusual circumstances, he and I, in spite of our differences, were able to be together and enjoy each other’s company, even as roommates in the hotel for almost two weeks.

In any case, we arrived safely but exhausted at the Beijing airport. We were led through all the official stations—having our papers checked and re-checked—eventually found our luggage, and then confronted the noise and chaos of the buses, cabs, cars and people all moving in different directions outside the old airport in the middle of the night (This airport also was totally remodeled and modernized since my 1996 trip}.

As Ken and I stood there in the chill night trying to get our bearings, two young men approached us and, with a vocabulary of about 5 or 6 phrases of English, gestured us toward their car, which was not marked as a cab. I looked at Ken, and he said, Hey, just trust them, they’re all right.

To me they had that over-eager entrepreneurial look that one sees on the faces of certain boys all over the world. Then I noticed several other unmarked cabs all around, with other similar-looking boys hawking their trade at the newly-arrived passengers around us, so I thought, What the hell?! We bartered over the fare, which had to be a lump sum since none of us really knew exactly how far it was to Xiang Shan, and there was no meter in the cab. When I handed the boys the card with the name of the hotel, they nodded and said, No problem. One of the few English phrases they knew. But after we had arranged ourselves in the back seat of their car, they surreptitiously snuck off to talk to their friends and I noticed them all pointing in different directions with quizzical looks on their faces.

For about ten miles it was an interesting, even fascinating ride on the highways, then the streets of Beijing. There was one impression I’ll never forget: It was simply a scene of a neighborhood shopping district; people walking and riding their bikes on the wide sidewalks, storekeepers closing up their shops, buildings with characteristic Chinese architecture, signs with traditional Chinese lettering, etc. However, what I felt inside was the sense of I know this place; I’ve been here before. The city seemed familiar; it didn’t seem strange or unknown, even though I had never in this life been there before. This impression reminded me of what I felt a few seconds after my daughter was born when the doctor held her up for her mother and me to see. It was an experience of recognition, of Oh, it’s you, I know you.

I have heard from therapists who practice past-life regressions that we are drawn to the places and the people we have known before. Of course, there is no way to prove that supposition to the satisfaction of a skeptic, but an experience like the impression I’ve noted above may provide clues to where I may