Shen: Psycho-Emotional Aspects of Chinese Medicine

A great buy. This is such a useful and interesting book, with lots of really clear explanations and examples to illustrate points. I bought it to read a chapter on acupuncture for insomnia to help me with a college project on this topic. I was so fascinated that I read the book from cover to cover and feel I have learned a great deal that will be very helpful for clinical purposes.

I found this book so enlightening , it reveals real emotional aspects of ourselves that can get stuck in a negative pattern by what life throws at us. It really shows the energetics of this as related to acupuncture and especially the five element style of acupuncture. But I feel this book will inspire practitioner's of other styles of acupuncture, to see the other side to their patients and show them as a whole while diagnosing. An amazing book well worth the price.

Dragon Rises Red Phoenix Flys is a direct reference to the effects of mercury poisoning, mercury, copper, lead, cadmium, aluminium all have severe detrimental effects on mental health yet few if any of the western texts on Chinese medicine fail to cover this subject even though their effects were well known by practitioners of Chinese medicine from ancient times in fact mercury was a popular means of poisoning in ancient china, I don't exclude western medicine in this conspiracy of silence on the effects of heavy metals, J Hightower and Dr Andrew Cutler have done extensive research into the effects of mercury in particular which is still widely used in amalgums, mercury preservatives used in vaccines and cinnabar is still used in Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture will do very little to counter the effects of heavy metal poisoning which in the US is regarded as a medical emergency requiring immediate detoxification.

I have bought this book due to a recommendation. The book itself is good, but I cannot understand how the sender can send so EXPENSIVE BOOK WITHOUT PROPER packaging (bubble envelope etc)?? It is not the first time to happen such an incident!

This scholarly work is aimed somewhat more at users with an interest in academically rigorous translation and the longstanding tradition in psychiatry for the author to illustrate therapeutic encounters with case studies and personal analysis of their own role in the therapeutic process. After completing the text I felt I learned quite a variety of ideas which may be helpful on return visits should the need arise. Mostly I wanted to have a more thorough view of the Chinese concept of "shen" -- and this was definitely a meaningful step on the way.Casual readers may sometimes be disappointed, though I don't think it is necessarily out of reach for anyone significantly interested and willing to learn some pre-requisites. The book presumes that one already has general knowledge of acupuncture points, methods of needling, TCM diagnostic concepts and western mental health diagnoses as defined by the DMSIV. Besides the typical meridians and commonly recognized extra points, it also includes a few descriptive fundamentals of Chinese auricular, scalp and wrist-ankle techniques.Three major strengths: 1) are the meticulous care by the co-author in translating the ancient writings with sufficient context to appreciate the thought processes behind them and their evolution over centuries, 2) the compassionate and intuitive voice of the primary author in describing her creative application of chinese medicine to those in her practice suffering the consequences of psycho-emotive disharmonies, 3) the primary author's ability to draws from her knowledge, experiences and grounding in Tradtional Chinese Acupuncture since 1983, beginning in Beijing and Nanjing. Since then the depth of her experience includes helping found a school of TCM in Milan, Italy, leading a children's clinic, performing clinical research, and serving as president of the Italian Federation of Schools of Tuina and Qigong.I realize that in western settings, especially in the US, the use of alternative modalities such as this might not be able to be applied in isolation and in many cases would be integrated with larger pharmacologic and social/clinical structures. Yet for the many persons whose individual physiologic, mental or social needs clash with the side effects of medications, particularly at high doses -- honest dialogue and critique of strategies such as these, combined with the professionalism of the authors, was inspiring and pleasureable to read. Likewise impressive, was the smoothness and ease of language use given that translations have now moved from Chinese to Italian to English. Kudos to the linguistic skills of the authors and publishing staff.

Shen is not an easy subject. Some north-american teachers do not know much about it. They try to explain it like it is something far away from us. Some chinese teachers, specially those too young also know nothing about ir because the political system in power in China after 1948. This book gets closer to what we really need to know about Shen. Sometimes the references are larger then the explanations... So far, it is the best you can find in English.