What we refer to as Eastern or Oriental techniques are those modalities such as Shiatsu and Acupressure  that are based on oriental medical theories. This includes the concepts of yin and yang, the five element theory, and meridian theory. Oriental medicine differs from traditional western medical theory in its view of the body as well. According to Ted Kapchuck, author of The Web That Has No Weaver, a comprehensive guide to Oriental medical theory, Oriental theorists view the body and its systems as a garden, each part interacting with each other; in direct opposition to the western view of the body as a machine, with many different motors. At Rē, we understand that not one single viewpoint holds all of the answers to your body's questions, and we offer bodywork with both eastern and western philosophical roots.

About Oriental Medical Theory

Within each discipline, there is an enormous amount of time tested information that has its own logic and usefulness. Both Western and Chinese systems have their place. Some believe that the greatest strength of Western Medicine is in it's trauma care and therapies for acute problems, while Chinese medicine excels in the areas of chronic problems and preventive medicine.

One concept that is central to Chinese medicine that the scientific world is still struggling to accept is an internal substance that the Chinese call "Qi" (pronounced "chee", sometimes spelled "Chi"). In the West we could describe this as bio-electric energy. You can't look at it under a microscope, you can't detect it with any scientific instruments, you can't isolate it from a substrate. This isn't to say that one cannot feel it, or see it, but these are intuitive human qualities that practitioners of Chinese medicine develop over years of practice. Many westerners can also perceive this Qi energy. Martial artists sometimes feel it as heat in the palms of their hands, or warm liquid moving through the body. It is the invisible substance in mountain air that clears the mind with just one deep breath. A young mother witnesses it in the form of light coming from her baby's eyes.

Another aspect of the difference between Oriental and Western medicine can be described as Oriental treats the Yang and Western treats the Yin.

Everything in the universe can be described in terms of Yin or Yang. This is one of the underlying philosophies of Oriental Medicine. The Chinese characters for Yin and Yang mean, literally, the sunny side of the hill and the shady side of the hill.

What Western medicine tends to diagnose and treat is the effect that the disease state has on the body itself. The Practitioner of Oriental medicine assesses and acts upon the energy that creates the disease state.

In ancient Greece, where Western civilization was born, the medicine of the day mimicked Oriental medicine in that they looked at the body with analogies to nature in much the same way that Oriental medicine still does. However, with the invention of the microscope and the discovery of the cell, Western medicine became very materialistic in its approach to the human body. Materialistic does not necessarily mean an unhealthy attachment to money, but the sense that only the material of the body is real, nothing else. If you can't touch it, see it under a microscope or conceive of it in chemical equations then it doesn't really exist. It is a discipline that is based on the philosophy that only what exists in the physical realm is real. This is materialism. In Oriental terms, this is "Yin."

Oriental medicine acts upon the Yang of the body. It is said that Yin and Yang are always connected. Acting upon the Yin will effect that Yang, and visa-versa. If we look at bodily fluids such as Blood as yin, which is a visible material, and Qi as the Yang, then the ancient statement is true that "Blood is the mother of Qi and Qi rules the Blood."