Formosa Neijia

This completes my little trilogy of posts on my encounters with TCM and healing modalities of this sort. This is the first and second post.

Years ago at university, I studied choy lay fut (CLF) pretty intensely and my teacher chose me to help him do a demo at the University of Florida. Every year, the MA clubs would get together on a certain night and do demos of their respective styles. Lots of karate clubs were there, the aikido club, judo, taiji, etc.

For our demo, I did CLF’s dragon form and my teacher then demoed his version of CLF’s drunken fist. Then, in contrast to every other demo that night, he and I free-sparred with no gear right there in front of everyone. This was no big deal to us — my teacher actually taught me CLF through fighting. We fought almost everyday, so fighting in front of the crowd was just natural. But an un-choreographed sparring match was unusual for a demo and I’m proud to say that we brought down the house.

As we left the stage, I noticed a sensation in my right forearm, but I didn’t think much of it. I must have incorrectly blocked some strike my teacher had thrown. We then went to dinner with many of our MA friends including the taiji teacher that demoed before us. He was a friend of my CLF teacher.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t think much of his stuff. He did the CMC 37 and some other stuff and I knew he trained hard, but I wrote him off as a “chi hugger” so I didn’t take him too seriously, even though I had known him for years.

But as we sat there and enjoyed our meal, my right forearm began to throb. It was getting more and more painful, so I mentioned it to my teacher and he asked the taiji teacher about it. The taiji teacher then asked me if I’d like him to do some “reiki”on it. Now, I’m embarrassed to admit that I almost snorted when he said that. I knew that reiki was a type of qi/energy projection thing that is used for healing, but I was a real skeptic at the time (maybe not much has changed, haha). Needless to say, I didn’t for a second believe that anything AT ALL was going to happen. In fact, I was quite sure that this teacher was going to look like a bit of a fool after he did his thing and I didn’t get any benefit from it.

So I naturally told him to proceed.

He told me to partially dangle my arm off the end of the chair arm, I did, and then he placed one hand above my right forearm and another below it. He then told me to go on talking or whatever and pay him no mind. The only stipulation was I couldn’t move my arm.

So I sat there and talked, etc. and only peeked over at him a few times to see what he was doing. He was concentrating very deeply, staring at my arm and slowly moving his hands over the spot that hurt in my forearm. Knowing me, I probably rolled my eyes or something at that point.

Thing is, about five minutes later, I felt really tired. Two minutes after that, I sort of slumped in my chair and the taiji teacher asked me what I was feeling. I said that I could still feel the pain but it’s like it was a thousand miles away. The throbbing was like hearing a drum in the distance. I also felt totally relaxed and calm, like after a total body massage.

He stopped and said that was the power of reike, and I remember feeling a bit sheepish. Not only did the treatment work to alleviate the pain, but it worked DESPITE me thinking that it wouldn’t. That really surprised me. There was no hypnotic suggestion or chalking that experience up to the power of belief, etc.

I didn’t know what to do with that experience for many years, and, to some extent, I still don’t even today. Part of the lesson I draw from it is that I probably shouldn’t be such a skeptic all the time. Sometimes you run into stuff that actually works. Thing is, though, that my skepticism is what made this experience so profound for me. Not only did I not think that his reiki would work, I was actually a little hostile to it. But it worked anyway! If I had been a “true believer” then I would have been open to the power of suggestion. 

My heroes James Randi and Carl Sagan would not have been proud of me that night. Haha.