(Source: China Daily)

Sharing the healing touch

By Cao Chen in Shanghai | China Daily | Updated: 2018-03-31 02:44

Chinese TCM doctor talks about his passion for promoting tuina therapy through overseas demonstrations and teaching international students

Over the course of three decades, Li Zhengyu has promoted tuina, a form of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) manipulative therapy, in about 20 countries.

The 59-year-old's most recent destination was Dubai, and he will fly to either Canada or Germany later this year to showcase the effectiveness of the therapy.

"TCM should be the choice of therapy for illnesses all around the world and not just in China," said Li, who works as a tuina doctor at Yueyang Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Based on Chinese medical principles that are more than 2,000 years old, tuina involves using hands to apply pressure in areas between joints to remove blockages along the meridian points and stimulate qi, or the body's natural energy flow, to promote healing.

This form of TCM therapy can be traced back to ancient China when people used such techniques to treat injuries inflicted by natural disasters and animal attacks. It is often used in conjunction with acupuncture, fire cupping, herbalism, tai chi and qigong.

"This therapy is more convenient than acupuncture which requires disinfected needles and medicinal alcohol, and is safer than Western medicine which may have side-effects," said Li.

"Tuina can be done using clean hands anytime and anywhere, and this is why an increasing number of foreigners are becoming interested in it. Foreigners who visit Yueyang Hospital have always been amazed at how tuina could be used to heal different diseases like cervical spondylopathy or frozen shoulders."

Li, who completed his bachelor, master's and doctoral degree in acupuncture and tuina at Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said that his passion for this field was influenced by his mother who was a professor at the Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University.

While Chinese herbalism and acupuncture were the most popular specializations among medical students in the 1980s, Li decided to pick tuina instead because he felt it was a new field of medicine that held much promise. His interest in this discipline has since led him around the world.

During one of his trips to Japan in the 1990s, Li administered a five-minute tuina treatment to a Japanese nurse and immediately relieved her of the pain in the right shoulder. The nurse was so impressed with Li's skills that she visited him in China seven years later. This time around, she requested him to treat her left shoulder.

In 2007, when he visited Mumbai as a member of a Shanghai municipal government delegation, Li performed the same feat, this time on an Indian official who was suffering from pain in the neck.

Apart from his duties at the hospital, Li is also a professor at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine's acupuncture and tuina school. Here, he teaches Chinese herbalism, tuina and acupuncture courses in English to local and international students who major in Chinese medicine. More than 40 overseas students have majored in this topic since 2012.

Besides teaching students tuina treatments for various diseases, Li also imparts tips on how the therapy can improve their everyday lives. For example, rubbing the zhongwan acupressure point on the stomach before lunch would help to reinforce the spleen and promote digestion.

Sheikh F Elahee, a Bangladeshi who is majoring in acupuncture, moxibustion and tuina in the PhD program at Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said he enjoys Li's lessons as "the lecture materials are well-prepared, referenced and exhaustive". He added that Li's practical lessons on tuina are also very informative.

Veerachaz Soottitantawat, a doctoral student from Thailand, shares the same sentiment. In fact, he has been so inspired by Li that he is planning to become a TCM teacher after graduation.

"During his classes, we often get to practice tuina and hone our critical and independent thinking in order to solve problems, and this enhances the learning process," he said.

Li noted that it is good that international students are coming to China to learn about TCM as this would help with the discipline's promotion around the world.

Back home in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, Elahee is spreading awareness of TCM through his acupuncture and tuina clinic which was set up in 2015.

"Many patients have come to my clinic to receive these therapies and they have been grateful of the results. Previously, little was known about TCM in my country, but now it is getting more popular," said the 54-year-old.

Another skill that is key to helping him further promote TCM to the rest of the world, said Li, is the ability to effectively communicate with his international students. The doctor noted that he is still constantly trying to improve his English by listening to songs and interpretations of news conferences.

Li admitted that he once found it difficult to translate TCM terms from Chinese to English but was lucky enough to have the help of his wife Wang Qi, a professor who teaches doctoral students English at Fudan University.

Today, Li is so proficient in his second language that he at times works as an interpreter for the International Conference on Acupuncture and Tuina and for foreign visitors at the Shanghai Chinese Medicine Museum.

In addition, he is also involved in a project by the World Health Organization to develop standardized terminology for Chinese medical practices.

In this role, Li is responsible for the Chinese and English translations of tuina terms.

"Being able to accurately pronounce English words is important, else my foreign students would not be able to understand what I'm teaching. I may be their TCM teacher, but my foreign students are also my English teachers," he quipped.