Reading: A Tooth From the Tiger’s Mouth by Tom Bisio (Handout); The Web That Has No

Weaver by Ted Kaptchuk (Chapters 5, 8, 9, 10)

Writing: Consider what you have read about Chinese Medicine so far. What makes this medical
system different than the others? How do you think these ideas are applied to bring about selfhealing?
How can they be used to benefit others? Come up with five questions each about this
type of medicine in preparation for our talk with Tom Bisio.

“The physician’s gaze inevitably goes to the complete arrangement of signs. If the patient can’t move out of the
basement, the doctor would try to reharmonize him or her so as to eliminate the sensitivity to Dampness. And even
if the patient could change homes, he or she would still need reharmonizing to deal with the pattern carried within
that is susceptible to Dampness. Chinese medicine refuses to see Dampness as an isolatable entity.” CHP 5 Begg.

“If one’s internal pattern is very “swampy,” one can manifest such bodily signs without ever having been exposed to
a drop of external moisture. It is important to note that the Dampness outside the body may precipitate a condition of
Dampness within the body, but exposure in a causal sense is unnecessary. One is more likely to have a Damp illness
in London, but it is still possible in Arizona. Dampness is recognized by what is going on inside, not by knowledge
of external exposure. The condition is not caused by Dampness; the condition is Dampness.” (Ch5 bgg)

“The Nei Jing cites seven basic emotions that particularly affect a person and that are still considered most
important: elation, anger, sadness, grief, worry, fear, and fright. The differences between sadness and grief, fear and
fright, appear to be of degree; sometimes these pairs are combined as one emotion. Of course, emotional qualities
are not in themselves pathological, and all of them appear in healthy individuals. It is only when an emotion is either
excessive or insufficient over a long period of time, or when it arises very suddenly with great force, that it can
generate imbalance and illness. And the reverse is also true: somatic states can generate unbalanced emotional
states.” (CH5 Mid)

“Chinese medical practitioners are always concerned with the maintenance of health. The Nei Jing poetically says:
“To administer medicine after an illness begins is . . . like digging a well after becoming thirsty or casting weapons
after a battle has been engaged.”22 Patients are often taught correct diet, proper attitudes, and healthful lifestyles.
The central concern is always balance, rhythm, and harmony. Food, for instance, should be prepared and eaten in
balance. Leafy green vegetables, a Yin substance, should be cooked with ginger, which is Yang. T’ai Chi exercises
encourage rhythmic and controlled movement. Adolescents are expected to have different emotional attitudes than
the elderly. Frail people should do less demanding work than people with robust constitutions.” (CH 5 End)

“We have already touched on the first level of the dialectic. Chinese medicine is never addition—gathering the parts
(i.e., complaints, signs, and symptoms) to make a whole. The parts never constitute a whole. In fact, the whole
determines the components; context governs. In the clinical landscape, “the reality of things only exists—and thus
only manifests itself—in a totality, through the force of propensity [the inherent Yin-Yang dynamic] that links its
various elements in a whole.”3 No component of the pattern can be isolated; no piece has an ontological significance
independent of the entire environment.” (CH 9 Bgg)

“For both the Chinese artist and the clinician, the landscape is “dedicated to the expression of the inner spirit instead
of the physical verisimilitude [and the] that painting should reflect a . . . spontaneous and instantaneous flow of the
brush.” (CH 9)

“This third level of artistry has to do with an intimate, intuitive, and immediate encounter of humanity. In the
medical tradition, this level of artistry is called the “Penetrating Divine Illumination” (tong shen ming).10 It is the
Chinese medical tradition’s attempt to mimic the artist and “rid the landscape of all the weight of inessentials and
restore it to the simple movement that gives it form and existence.”11 It is the alchemical core of Yin-Yang
medicine.” (mid)
\Arnold Arnez
Professor Picayo
REL 261
November 20th, 2019

Ted Kaptchuk’s The Web that Has No Weaver describes the unique process of health and

healing that occurs in Chinese medicine using its own categories. The process of Chinese

medicine, unlike Western Medicine, gives new avenues for self-healing through the different

ways the body is always related with the world within and without the body.

The idea of Yin/Yang, which is always complementary, sets the foundation for a

dialectical process of seeking balance and harmony. The Western model of medicine continues

with the Manichaeism of the Good always overcoming the Evil. Yet, this model is faulty because

it focuses on the disease and symptoms, which fails to see the bigger picture of how these

diseases coming to be in the first place. Chinese medicine places health within the categories of

Pernicious Influences (dampness, heat, summer heat, etc.), Emotions (anger, over-elation, grief),

and Ways of Life, seeing each as effecting the other. The focus on these categories is not that

they are the cause of disease, but they are the same as causing the disease, because they are

essentially the disease itself.

The model of harmony is unconcerned with the diseases alone, because they are always

ready to return if the imbalance is allowed to continue. One example, dampness, is seen as both

the cause and effect of illness, because it manifests in the same way in the body:

“If one’s internal pattern is very “swampy,” one can manifest such bodily signs without ever

having been exposed to a drop of external moisture. It is important to note that the Dampness

outside the body may precipitate a condition of Dampness within the body, but exposure in a

causal sense is unnecessary” (Kaptchuk 2000, 151)

This is understood through yin/yang, or complementary duality of the universe, where the body

might by separate from the world outside, but the dampness can occur within the body even

when one is in dry desert California since “Yin and Yang transform into each other” (ibid 27),

the dampness inside can manifest outwards and vice versa.

This gives the possibility of self-healing through the ways in which each part of the body

effects the other parts and create the conditions by which disease does not manifest. The hot and

cold of food or the emptions of happiness of grief must be seen as categories that determine the

health of a person, and to focus on one part alone as only part that is in imbalance “For both the

Chinese artist and the clinician, the landscape is “dedicated to the expression of the inner spirit

instead of the physical verisimilitude [and the] that painting should reflect a . . . spontaneous and

instantaneous flow of the brush” (Ibid 287). This means that one must be aware of how one’s

environment, lifestyle, characteristics at each moment, etc., always changes and moves life a

brush creating a canvas of a person, and that these categories are easily visible to a person, unlike

the obscurantist use of Greco-Latin terminology or the near-abstract concept of how germs affect

certain cells, multiply, etc.

 Questions
(1) How does “Penetrating Divine Illumination” (tong shen ming) differ from the regular
analysis a doctor does?

(2) In Chinese medicine, the idea of health as a harmonized net of diet, emotions, environmental
influences, is foundational. Is it possible to change one’s health by effecting one part of that net,
thus making a domino effect?

(3) How is dampness commonly treated?

(4) Is forcefulness ever employed in Chinese medicine?

(5) Is there a hierarchy of what traits are worst for the body, i.e. the most apt influences for
manifesting disease?