Reflection Nine

During the past 23 years since I wrote Bodymind Energetics, the Complementary and Alternative Medicine professions as a collective phenomenon have evolved greatly, much in the direction I had anticipated. The only problem is that the AOM profession, intently focused as it was on establishing its own professional identity, tended to ignore the fact that to the average CAM practitioner, and to conventional medical providers and patients, AOM, unfortunately referred to in error as TCM, is in fact seen as one part of this larger and more national CAM/IM/CAIHC movement. Luckily the CCAOM has become involved in the most active CAM organizations and AOM is having a voice in how CAM as a whole, and AOM in particular, is being viewed by the larger public. In my first decade and a half of practice as an acupuncturist, I was actively involved, as were several of my colleagues, with key proponents of alternative medicine, holistic medicine and what came to be known as mindbody medicine. Students were exposed through what I termed “Acupuncture Human Service Skills” to classes with practitioners of Feldenkrais and Somatics, Body-Centered Psychotherapy, Rolfing, Visualization, Neurolinguistic Programming, and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy, and these mindbody practices were seen as the western complement to acupuncture as a bodymind therapy. And then. Rather suddenly, many many students and a good number of faculty resisted the intrusion of these courses into the training of AOM practitioners, and they gave way to courses that were closer to AOM I origin, like T’ai Qi, Qi Gong, Sotai, with the mindbody realm recast into our counseling courses where Focusing was the only approach students no longer balked at. In the summer if 2007, recognizing the need to bring the mindbody practices back into the core curriculum of the college, a group of 16 faculty studied the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction approach developed by Jon KabatZinn for a 24 hour, three day intensive. The faculty group vetted, and endorsed the course, which now serves as the first intensive seminar students in the MS/Ac program engage in within the first few weeks of their education with us. What will this return to mindbody practices as a compliment to AOM education bring with it, one might wonder? And more interestingly, why are current students embracing wholeheartedly such practices as MBSR, when these were met with such disdain not even a decade ago? What has changed during this time period?