I think you are blowing this out of proportion, allot of the chinese teachers were also herbal doctors or hit medicine practitioners, ie bone setters and the like, nothing unusual in a teacher knowing how to fix as well as break bones, several hung gar master in hong kong made their living for generations this way and allot of their students carried on the studies, It simply comes along with the traditional chinese matial arts, if that’s not your thing that’s fine, but also understand that allot of the time if you want traditional chinese martial arts (which I am assuming this guy does) then the fact they are also into traditional medicine can be a good sign Only way to know is to go along and try the class, keep an open mind and don’t be fooled by anything As for the teacher maybe taking part in defrauding people, well this also goes hand in hand with traditional chinese arts unfortunately, allot of teachers made up lineages, made up forms, made up allot of things in order to make money of westerners, and even the good ones often held back stuff, again buyer beware
Forget the seminar speaker,evidently you missed the most important part of what I wrote- If you take your animal-dog,horse,whatever there you pay money. As was Prof. Cheng.Very good in his branch,too,as one of my teachers and some of his classmates in Shr Jung would attest to.
Eh, sometimes old, hokey-sounding things turn out to be effective for something. There's a reason why some people believed that these old/odd things worked: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-32117815 If someone told me what was in the treatment mentioned in this link and told me I needed to take it, I'd probably laugh at them, but there's indications that it has medicinal use. If a treatment works for some people, then it works for them and that's great. If it doesn't work for others, well, that happens even in modern western medicine. It's why you have some people die and some people survive during an outbreak sometimes. Most modern medications and treatments have a percentage of success rate.
I guess this just seems like "Yeah, Chinese martial artists will lie to you and take your money and it's just something that goes along with CMA." I'm not sure that that's a ringing endorsement. Would we give the same leeway to a ninjutsu practitioner who claimed that he could heal the sick and had made up forms? Sorry, mea culpa. No, I don't have as much problem paying money to a large institution that has distasteful practices as I do to one person/business. That's very open minded of you, but the scientific literature does not support the use of acupuncture and is often sloppy and terrible. The fact that one ancient remedy works does not endorse all ancient remedies. If you read through the website, the people promulgate bad science - papers written with poor or even absent controls, desperate grasping for statistics, out right disagreements with their own results - one paper could not find a sufficient difference between 'sham' and 'true' acupuncture (nor even a clinically relevant reduction in pain) but still recommends acupuncture as it does better than nothing (note that this is likely a result of a methodological process - if you're told that you're in an acupuncture trial, receive no treatment, then are asked if you are feeling better it turns out that most people answer 'no'). Would anyone feel any reservations about training at a joint that had a ton of creationist literature on its page? Serious question. I don't really see the difference except "Ehh, they all do it!"
He is a VERY heavy Christian, does smudging and will not personally roll with anyone he feels has bad "energy" He has some beliefs that many would consider pretty out there, but is also one of the best teachers and grapplers on the planet - so how much would you be willing to overlook the one thing to obtain the other? Short of actual criminality there is not a lot I cannot set my filter to remove in order to get to the good stuff...hell, in FMA they still have orisons with some teachers!
It's not a ringing endorsement you are right, that's because I hate this side of tcma its why the arts are dying, just saying that it's widespread so if you find a school which is traditional and has links to Chinese medicine that might be a sign you actually have found something half decent, and that a link to Chinese medicine is not the thing that should worry someone when looking at a school lol
I go back to some people swearing by whatever ridiculous sounding treatment they are behind, including acupuncture. It maybe placebo effect, maybe not. If it works for some people then it's a potential option. Western medical doctors can be just as sloppy, at least in the states. Speed is what they go for, and a lot of them over-diagnose, misdiagnose, and over-medicate, which is really scary given how much some medications effect the mind and body. We drive that though, we want relief and we want it now. It took me 20 years to find a doctor that really took time with every patient and whose response to everything wasn't "Oh, you have good insurance, let's see what all we can do to you."
That's a rather broad brush.OK,let us bear in mind that most CMA guys in the previous generations weren't doing acupuncture,but things like bone setting,most of which is pretty straight ahead non "esoteric" stuff.Some others were practitioners of other TCMs,(which have both some pretty good stuff as well as...rhino horn & such sympathetic magic crap) but as far as acupuncture I think you'll find them historically in the minority. What's making up forms have to with the discussion? Did these guys make up acupuncture? Shouldn't it be " Would we give the same leeway to a ninjutsu practitioner who claimed that he could heal the sick based on some "traditional" Japanese medicine/health practices he learned?".? Lie? While you and I don't think some of the "trad" medical practices are worthwhile many do-so I feel that using the word "lie" is deliberately leading to a perception for the reader that such people are con men,which is a bit of character assassination.Perhaps words such as misguided (in your opinion) would be more accurate. Right.A world renowned educational institution with degreed health care professionals is somehow less "smarmy" when administering questionable treatments than some individual. I don't see how.I think it's more heinous for a long recognized and respected institution to utilize such practices,esp as aren't these places supposed to be about the teaching and practice of verifiable medical science rather than what's the latest trendy "alternative" thing? I agree.So what's Cornell's excuse?I wonder ( not bothering to look)- if they put up any studies justifying their use of acupuncture,and if so they must be slanted as all the non-biased ones we've ever seen links to here are not favorable.Or do they just omit any true science papers? Well,either way if it's a large institution you give 'em a pass.Quite logical,Captain.Esp as I'm pretty sure one pays MUCH,MUCH more money to be educated at Cornell's vet school than at Joe's Hung Kwoon acupuncture course.I think they most likely turn out more practitioners than Joe's Kwoon,also.So who's the major real rip-off/liar?
It's not a question if it works it's a question if it works better than doing nothing at all. People regularly take 'airborne' to combat colds, feel better in a few days and ascribe it to their treatment which has been shown to have 0 effects in controlled conditions. Attacking Western medicine does not bolster up acupuncture.
I dunno Icefield brought it up! Sure, or a HEMA practitioner who does bloodletting and humor rebalancing. I have a hard time believing that anyone could read those papers and think "Yes, this uncontrolled study is convincing!" Maybe you're right. If I'm attending a college I am unlikely to encounter such an individual, I'll probably be taking courses that will have either minimal involvement with those guys or none at all. In a martial arts gym I'm likely to have many interactions with this person and form a close relationship with them. It would be uncomfortable for me if this person were also selling snake oil. I don't really understand why this is such a controversial stance. I didn't realize that I had to line up all of the people who have done ill in the world before I discuss why I'd be uncomfortable training here Commodore. Yes, if 1/4th of a business is dedicated to shysterism, say someplace advertising "Xing Yi, Tai Chi, Baiji and Acupuncture" I'd be hesitant.
Not attacking Western medicine, just saying that all traditions of medicine are imperfect, and they are as imperfect as science and human understanding within every generation. Centuries from now, our current methods of treatment will likely seem as archaic and a bunch of new procedures, processes and medications will make the people of that time look foolish to those even farther into the future. Science is still limited by empirical data from arguably limited sample sets of the populace. For every case, albeit rare, that doctors have to admit they don't know what is wrong with someone; it seems just as likely that there are an equivalent number of cases where they also have to admit that they don't know exactly why something worked.
