Traditional Chinese medicine relies on a number of different techniques and principles to promote healing. And none are more important than a belief in wellness.
According to Yuen, the healing environment is crucial. “Healing has to occur in a supportive environment and the encounter between the clinician and the patient is very important. The doctor must be able to feel their patients’ pain,” he says.
“Fear and urgency shouldn’t be used in the healing encounter because that becomes a tactic which disempowers the patient. As clinicians, we need to give people a sense of hope.
“If a person believes he has an incurable disease, no matter what you do, it will be difficult to heal them. Healing has to come from within. We try to instigate a healing process but if the person doesn’t believe in it, they won’t be cured.”
In his own clinical practice, Yuen uses Chinese herbs and acupuncture but he is also a practitioner and teacher of the Chinese mindful movement practices of t’ai chi and Qi Gong (Ch’i Kung). He believes that Western medicine is coming towards a tipping point, which will impact on its approach in the future.
“Even within Western medicine, people are realising it has to radically change. The technology used for diagnostics – MRI scans, X-rays, etc – are based on quantum physics and when this theory is applied to treatment, it will change the mindset of medicine to give a more individualised approach,” he says.
On a spiritual level, Yuen says that rather than cultivate illness, we should cultivate wellness. “The consciousness of illness is not the same as the consciousness of healing. Rather than question, blame, find fault and guilt, we need to change the perception of our lives to change the meaning of our lives,” he says.
“We have choices we can make about our diet, exercise, emotional and mental wellbeing,” he says. “We need to give ourselves the opportunity to be with ourselves on a daily basis in an intimate dialogue with the body. This can be through conscious eating, conscious walking or meditation.”
