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Interviewer: What are the lessons you’ve brought from your visits to China regarding Tai Chi and Qi Gong from
an integrative health care and medicine stand-point?
Dr. Jahnke: Exploring the health care system in China was very, very interesting. The first interesting part was
discovering that the Chinese had no apparent debate about whether to integrate Western medicine. It was clear to
me as an observer that Chinese society immediately recognized the benefits of both Western conventional
medicine and Chinese traditional medicine in an integrated context. Here in the Western world, there is, it seems,
a little less enthusiasm. The economics of medicine in China are much less commercial than in the US. However,
it appears that the particularly low cost wellness practices of Qi Gong and Tai Chi will integrate into the Western
world very quickly. In 1997, the National Institutes of Health conducted a consensus meeting on acupuncture.
This was real policy leverage for the integration of Chinese therapeutics with conventional modalities. In 2005
the University of Illinois co-convened with the IIQTC, the National Consensus Meeting on Qigong and Tai Chi.
This has also has had significant policy leverage for Qi Gong and Tai Chi.
In China, it was particularly interesting to find high tech tools such as MRI and CT scanners directly adjacent to
the herbal medicine pharmacy. It was amazing to be touring the high-tech medicine portion of the facility and
smell the fragrance of the Chinese herbs in the same part of the building. In many cases, the doctors of Western
medicine and the doctors of traditional Chinese medicine collaborated to determine clinical strategies that were
both the most cost effective and the most clinically effective in a very collegial and open-minded way.
It was very inspiring to see thousands of people in
the Chinese parks doing their Qi Gong and Tai
Chi practices. More and more now we are seeing
evidence of this in America. It’s especially
amazing to know Harvard and other prominent
medical institutions are advocating Mind-Body
Practice. One of Harvard’s newsletters called Tai
Chi, “Medicine in motion.” Many physicians of
Western conventional medicine are now making
enthusiastic referrals to the traditional Chinese
wellness practices of Qi Gong and Tai Chi.
Interviewer: What are some of the challenges
faced between Western physicians and integrative
practitioners?
Dr. Jahnke: I think that here in the Western world we have somehow confused things terribly. There is the idea
that medical intervention and health care are the same thing, and that wellness is a medical field. In fact, we even
call medicine “healthcare”. As a result, our conventional thinking is focused on populations of people who have
lost their health. Once a person has lost their health, it is a standard of our system to utilize medical treatment as
the sole strategy for resolution. So, until recently there really has been no health care – that is disease prevention
based on personal action.
Fortunately, since the 1990s our society has been realizing that most diseases are preventable (70% or more) and
that medical treatment is not the first resort, it’s the last resort. Personal health action -- wellness -- rather than the
being the last resort, should be and will become the first resort.
The biggest challenge is to support the medical community in becoming as oriented and enthusiastic about
prevention as possible. Another challenge is to support citizens in understanding that preventing disease is much
December, 2011 Yang-Sheng (Nurturing Life) 15