Talks on the Malibu Pier

"When you ride the tiger, be sure to hold on tight." Old Chinese saying

The girls were running up and down the wooden planking of the Malibu Pier, already tired of not catching any fish. Dr. Rosenblatt and I were leaning on the wooden railing, watching our bait soaking in the blue/green waves rolling endlessly against the wooden pilings on their way to the beach.

"What's the most important thing about acupuncture?" I asked, taking my role as Scribe seriously. The time had come. We were off and running on the book. This was the first of several million questions that I was prepared to ask.

"The central idea of acupuncture," Dr. Rosenblatt answered without hesitation, "is the study of energy in the human body. If even one-tenth of the people in this country could grasp the concept of Energetics, everything would be different. Everything."

"You mean medicine ...?" I inquired, supposing that's what he meant. "All kinds of things, including health and medicine. We wouldn't buy food with additives and pesticides. Farming and commerce would have to stop using lethal poisons. As we started feeling better, we'd relate to each other differently. It would be a very healthy change.

"For instance, take the idea that the physical body wants to be in a state of perfect health, and is trying all the time to promote this perfect state for itself. Medicine should assist this effort of the body. It's becoming more and more evident to me that the secret of effective medical treatment is through a study of the energy that courses through all of us. Energy, actually, is the life force that animates all living beings."

"That's fairly evident," I said, twiddling my pen in the air.

"Perhaps evident to you," he said, "but not to many people."

"You mean I've been hanging around with you so long that thinking of flowing energy seems normal to me?"

He laughed. "I guess so. All living things are energy beings, formed on an energetic pattern. Bio-electric energy flowing along pathways (acupuncture meridians) in the body creates a bio-magnetic life-force. This energy animates all the functions of the body. Alterations in the energy produce a condition known as disease. Evenly flowing, balanced energy produces health. The Chinese call this energy Chi, the Japanese call it Ki.

"Energetic medicine seeks to understand and manipulate this flow of energy. While Western medicine deals mostly with diseased organisms, energetic medicine focuses on the underlying energy that fills the body with life.

"Let me give you a simple example of energy. Take a magnet, the kind that everybody knows about — the kind stuck on the door of your refrigerator holding the grocery list. Every magnet has an energy field around it. This energy field exerts its force through the air. It doesn't have wires — but held a few inches from an iron object, it will attract the iron."

"Almost like magic," I said.

"This magnetic field can be made visible by using of a handful of iron dust. The magnet attracts the dust and reveals the energy field."

"Magnetism is one kind of energy — and we are discovering that magnetic energy has healing properties. It also is a model for the body's energy.

"In the same way that the magnet has fields of energy, the body has the same kind of energy lines — we call them the acupuncture meridians. However, if we drop our refrigerator magnet on the sidewalk a few times, its energy field gets damaged and the lines become tangled or jumbled."

"This same condition of tangling happens to the energy lines in our bodies due to daily stress, toxins in modern cities and the unhealthy fast food we eat."

"Sounds perfectly reasonable to me," I said. "Sometimes I feel tangled and jangled. Why didn't I learn this stuff about magnets and human energetic in high school?"

"Hopefully our grandchildren will." He smiled, ruefully.

* * *

Dr. Ju's Journal — 1 — Autumn, 1968

For many years I had been doing a daily walking meditation in the large park near my apartment in Chinatown. Suddenly several Anglo boys joined the t'ai chi class in my park — a thing that had never happened before, not ever in recorded history that I knew of. I watched them occasionally from afar, even stopping my walking to watch. It piqued my curiosity — and more than that, an echo formed in my mind — something forgotten was nagging at me — a task still to be accomplished. Many years ago, the old Taoist monks at my monastery in Canton Province had suggested that I should bring acupuncture to America. And I had agreed to follow their suggestion by migrating — but as I observed the t'ai chi practice, a cloudy memory of what they really meant began reemerging.

After riding over on the ocean liner ship with my few belongings, I had set up medical practice in a stucco flat on a side street of Chinatown, Los Angeles, within walking distance of my favorite restaurants, my men's club and this park. I treated many people with traditional Taoist medicine — acupuncture and Chinese herbs. But only Chinese people came for cures, not white barbarians — in such a hurry with their penicillin, pills and surgery.

Four times a week, these young medical fellows from the Brain Research Department at UCLA were practicing t'ai chi chuan with Marshall Ho'o's class. Had the monks meant that I was preordained to disseminate the curing arts using these America boys? It seemed that my friend, Marshall Ho'o had rounded them up for just this purpose. Hmmm. That thought had some teeth in it.

Pursuing cautiously, I got myself invited to the public t'ai chi demonstration that Marshall was presenting as part of the Chinese New Year's celebration. Oddly, it was the American boys that were demonstrating t'ai chi up on stage under the pagoda while the Chinese students performed some type of baton twirling — what a strange mixing of cultures.

I approached cautiously, but boldly, for the signs and portents that I had forgotten were suddenly very present. These UCLA students were somewhat serious. They practiced. I could tell by watching. But were they the ones in my dream vision or not?

Then, on the very first introduction, after the fine demonstration, Marshall somehow garbled my proud family name. The UCLA boys thought he said Kim instead of Gim, so they jubilantly named me Dr. Kim and...