A good acupuncturist must be a good Chinese medicine doctor who can evaluate a patient’s overall energy status before inserting needles, according to Dr. Jingduan Yang, chief executive officer of Northern Medical Center in Middletown, New York.
A fifth-generation Chinese medicine practitioner and a renowned acupuncturist on the East Coast, Yang took the helm at the center last year with a goal to develop it into a genuine integrative medical center, starting first with acupuncture.
He had authored two books on Chinese medicine, one called “Facing East” in collaboration with fashion icon Norma Kamali, and the other a textbook on clinical acupuncture published by Oxford University Press.
“The best part of acupuncture is not inserting needles on patients, but before that,” Yang told The Epoch Times on Jan. 27.
“First, we need to formulate a diagnosis of not only the medical problem but also the energetic status of a person.”
Most Westerners turn to acupuncture to treat pains, which is covered under most insurance plans.
The diagnosis sounds like a weather report, such as that there is a liver fire, heat in the lungs, dampness in the spleen, or both heat and dampness in the gallbladder, he said.
Based on the result, a Chinese medicine doctor will develop an acupuncture treatment plan, which includes the number of sessions, the selection of body points, and different ways of manipulating needles.
“If you have a deficiency, we want to introduce energy. If you have too much energy, we want to cool it. If you have a blocked energy flow, we want to unblock it,” Yang said.
Oftentimes, when the energy balance is restored, a patient’s pains are gone, too.
Yang said that many acupuncturists in the United States graduated from schools that focus on techniques and not as much on Chinese medicine theories and foundations, which gave rise to those techniques in the first place, whereas all acupuncturists at Northern Medical Center are Chinese medicine doctors.
From Energy to Emotion
Good Chinese medicine doctors also go beyond acupuncture and herbs to restore energy balance in one’s body, he said.
“What has the most powerful impact on energy? One is excessive energy—cold, heat, wind, or dryness—from the environment; the second is emotional distress that comes from inside,” he said.
“If I want to physically attack you, I must touch you. If I want to chemically attack you, I need to poison you. But if I want to energetically attack you, all I need to do is say something mean or give you a dirty look,” he said.
Yang is the founder and medical director of two integrative medicine centers with offices in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York City, where he practices the classical form of Chinese medicine to treat pain, stress, and anxiety.
About 10 years ago, a 76-year-old businessman came to Yang’s office and cried. He was suffering from pain in his lower back and legs, which made it difficult for him to walk for more than a block.
The patient was reluctant to do surgery and didn’t like the idea of taking painkillers either, so he turned to Yang, who not only treated his pain, but also helped him find the emotional cause.
About four months before coming to Yang’s clinic, the patient got very upset at his wife’s request for a new beach house at a time when his insurance company struggled.
“His pain was shooting mostly from the side, on the energy channel of the gallbladder. In Chinese medicine, the gallbladder is a part of the liver, an energetic system that is most sensitive to the emotion of anger,” he said.
Dr. Serene Feng, director of the Chinese Medicine Department at Northern Medical Center, cited a similar case.
Feng is an acupuncturist and herbalist with over 20 years of experience in Australia and the United States. She holds a medical degree from Sun-Yet Sen University in China and a doctorate in acupuncture and oriental medicine from the New York College of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Months ago, she treated a young lady with lower back pain, which happened at a certain time every month.
Through conversations, Feng found out that the pain came up each month when the patient’s boss called in employees to review monthly performance; the patient was always afraid and anxious around those days.
“Lower back relates to kidney, and kidney relates to fear,” Feng told The Epoch Times. “When the patient realized that it was not so much a deal if she lost her job and that she could always look for a new one, her pain was gone.
“That’s why Chinese medicine always emphasizes that the most important thing to achieve balance is to have a peaceful mind,” Yang added.
Four Dimensions of Health
“How do we regulate our emotions and not develop those negative responses? It has a lot to do with how you perceive,” Yang said.
“If something happens and you perceive it as a good thing, you are not going to be angry; if you perceive it as a bad thing, you are going to be upset.”
Thus, emotions are linked to one’s spirituality, or belief system, which accounts for an important dimension of health, he said.
Emotions, combined with the physical body, nutrition, and energy—a dimension where Chinese medicine mostly dwells on—form the four dimensions of health, which must be addressed at the same time for one to achieve long-lasting health, he added.
Aside from Chinese medicine, Yang also received training in Western medicine, including neurology and psychiatry at Fourth Military Medical Unversity in China, a research fellowship in clinical psychopharmacology at Oxford University, and a residency training in psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University.
This health model, which combines the wisdom of Chinese and Western medicine, will guide the development of not only the acupuncture practice, but also other divisions at the Northern Medical Center, he said.
“Our acupuncturists are also herbalists and Chinese medicine doctors who will coach on dieting and lifestyle.
“Our plastic surgeons will not stop at getting your body fixed and say, ‘Bye-bye.’ They are going to say, ‘Take care of your [nutrition,] your energy, and your soul,’” he said.
“We are not building just another medical center, hospital, or medical school. We are building a new model of medicine in clinical practice, in research, and in education.”
Other services available at the center include primary care, sports medicine, physical therapy, and pediatrics.
