The Tao of Bioenergetics East and West

241 Pages·1996·12.61 MB·English

by  George A. Katchmer Jr.

THE TAO OF
BIOENERGETICS
EAST-WEST
GEORGE A. KATCHMER, JR.
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DISCLAIMER
The author(s) and publisher of this material are NOT
RESPONSIBLE in any manner whatsoever for any injury which may
occur through reading or following the instructions in this material.
The activities, physical and otherwise, described in this material may
be too strenuous or dangerous for some people, and the reader(s) should
consult a physician before engaging in them.
Publisher's Cataloging in Publications
(Prepared by Quality Books Inc.)
Katchmer, George A., 1948-
The Tao of bioenergetics : East and West / George A. Katchmer,
Jr.
p.cm.
ISBN 0-940871-28-9
1. Science--Philosophy. 2. Bioenergetics. 3. Philosophy,
Chinese. 4. Jung, C.G. (Carl Gustav), 1875-1961. 5. Reich,
Wilhelm, 1897-1957. 6. Lowen, Alexander. I. Title.
Q175.K38 1993 501
QBI92-20058
© YANG'S MARTIAL ARTS ASSOCIATION (YMAA), 1993
FIRST PRINTING 199::'
3,3
All rights reserved
ISBN: Soft Cover 0-940871-28-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-085128
Printed in the USA
YMAA Publication Center .y- j:. ~ ~ J.~ ....
Yang's Martial Arts Association (YMAA) tn ~" ~\, ~\6 l11n J=l
38 Hyde Park Avenue • Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130
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To those who have been the most patient with me; my wife, Holly, my
sons, Peter and Brian, and my parents.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank those who helped in the preparation of this book,
Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming, David Ripianzi, Michael Wiederhold, and the staff
of YMAA Publication Center for allowing me to bring the results of 22
years of my life to print. Chris Bernard, who typed the manuscript and
who, as a result took a crash course in Chinese, Greek, Latin, German,
French, and sometimes, Incoherence. Michael Kass, who endured years of
aimless intellectual ramblings, many times without pastries and beer. A
special thanks to Mr. Klysler Yen for his beautiful calligraphy on page III
of this book. And, finally, Master Hiroshi Tajima whose kindness
permitted me to finally progress in martial arts.
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BIOGRAPHY
GEORGE A. KATCHMER, JR.
George A. Katchmer, Jr., is an attorney, practicing in Dayton, Ohio.
He has spent the last 22 years researching and studying the works of
Wilhelm Reich, Carl Jung and, more recently, oriental medicine and the
martial arts. Mr. Katchmer has a B.A. in Philosophy from Millersville
University and has done graduate work in Philosophy at Villonova
University, and in Divinity at United Theological Seminary. He is
currently a student of Master Hiroshi Tajima at the U.S. Headquarters of
Genwakai Karate in Dayton and a member of Karma Thegsum Choling,
Buddhist Temple in Columbus, Ohio.
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FOREWORD
Thomas G. Gutheil, M.D.
P'rofessor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
It is ironic that - despite the collapse of one of the superpowers whose
opposition threatened the very survival of the planet - we still live in an
increasingly divisive and sectarian age. Among the healing arts the diversity
among theories and practitioners is nearly as great as the acrimony among
them. The divisions I am most familiar with are those between physical
medical fields - internal medicine, surgery and the like - and psychiatry as a
field; but within psychiatry as well, schism and divisiveness flourish. The
behaviorists, the psychoanalysts, and the pharmacologists treat each other
with ill-concealed disdain and have relatively little in common.
From this landscape of schisms let me single out one familiar
contrast. Those individuals incapable of maintaining complexity of
thought draw an unnecessarily sharp distinction between mental and
physical illness. "Either it is of the mind or it is of the body," such
reasoners claim. This viewpoint strikes against the intimate interaction
and mutual influence of mind and body in all realms of illness; for
example the impact of schizophrenia (a mental disorder) on self image
can lead directly to tooth decay (a physical problem) through the inability
to organize the mind to brush adequately. Moreover, stress can cause
ulcers; certain tumors of the lung, by secreting chemicals, can produce an
illness indistinguishable from manic-depressive disorder; and so on.
Rather than foster such fragmentation, we would do far better to look
for ways of building bridges between separate realms of human
experience, knowledge, and conceptualization.
One such bridge is the idea of dealing with the psychic (mental) and
the somatic (bodily) by thinking of these as two languages for the same
event. Thus, one could either say, "I feel anxiety, fear and a sense of
impending doom" or "I am experiencing sweating, fast heart beat and cold
hands with sweaty palms." Although one of these descriptions is entirely
psychological and the other entirely physical, the experience of anxiety is
clearly their common state.
In a similar bridge-building spirit, the author of this book notes (page 72):
Perhaps the problem, as suggested here, is a matter of paradigms. Does a
scientific paradigm necessarily have to be exhaustive and exclusive? Is it
necessary that a scientific practitioner learn and apply only one paradigm?
The writers cited all agree that western medicine is outstandingly effective
against acute life threatening illnesses and trauma. Chinese medicine, on
the other hand, has more successes with the chronic patient. The obvious
question, then, is, why can't these two systems be combined?
Why not, indeed? In the remarkable attempt at synthesis represented
by the book you hold, the author tries to link eastern and western traditions
of science and physiology through their separate yet parallel attempts to
describe the highly abstract concept of energy. Energy in some ways is an
ideal metaphor for this issue, since we can sometimes feel it very keenly -
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the pressure of wind, the thunder after a lightning bolt - yet at other times
it is a true abstraction. An example of the last would be contemplation of an
ordinary rock sitting on a bookshelf. The rock is completely static and gives
no sign of possessing any energy whatsoever. Presumably however, the rock
holds a certain amount of potential energy, totally invisible and not
detectable by direct means, resulting from its having been lifted from the
earth's surface to the bookshelf on which it sits. The realization of this
energy can be demonstrated if the rock were to fall off the bookshelf and
land on someone's head: the potential energy would be converted into
kinetic, to the dismay of the victim.
With energy, too, the issue may be one of paradigms. For example in
describing the different types of energy captured in the five Chinese
"elements" the author notes that these particular types of energy
[a]re classified not according to what they are but what they do. In other
words the classification is functional; not physical or chemical. The
question is not what are they? But how do they act? All of Chinese science,
as will be seen, proceeds according to function and energetics (page 12).
From this very pragmatic position, the author takes us deep into the
thinking of a number of eastern writers on the subtle and difficult-to-
convey manifestations of Qi and then attempts - in a laudably reader-
friendly style, by means of metaphors, analogies, homey examples and
the like - to render his considerable scholarship accessible to the lay
reader, in building the requisite bridge between eastern notions relating
to Qi and its derivatives - Qigong, acupuncture and acupressure, Shiatsu
massage, and varieties of the martial arts - over to western notions such
as libido theory and the collective unconscious.
Although the author's arguments are persuasive, it is unclear
whether the book itself will convince skeptics. Fortunately, the author
and his holistic approach have time on their side. As we come to know
more, disparate elements seem more connected; once we learn that
homing pigeons navigate in part by using the earth's magnetic field, the
idea of a force permeating our whole environment requires far less of a
leap of blind faith. When we discover that acupuncture points represent
sites of altered skin electrical impedance (possibly as a result of loops in
the capillary blood vessels coming nearer to the skin), we find more
acceptable the notion that something about the body's bioelectromagnetic
field may really be relevant to these arcane eastern practices.
To sum up: in his laudable effort of building this bridge between eastern
and western energics, the author advocates principles which are sorely
missed in the increasingly strident and sectarian discourse that is the curse
of our era - principles such as tolerance, humility and open mindedness. His
readiness in this provocative review to shift between models and change
paradigms provides an example well worth emulating for the benefit of all.
Thomas G. Gutheil, M.D.
Professor of Psychiatry
Harvard Medical School
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PREFACE
George A. Katchmer, Jr.
Someone, I believe it was Robin Williams, said that if you
remelllbered the 1960's, you weren't there. I was there and I remember
being a philosophy student in the late 60's. It is hard to describe the
intellectual atmosphere of that time but many strange ideas were in the
air. Things were not only studied but tried out. It was at that time that I
began to read the works of Wilhelm Reich, a follower of Freud who
claimed to have discovered a new form of energy which he called "orgone."
In another era, the 1950's, Reich was labelled a quack and persecuted. To
me, he seemed logical and straightforward. Reich became something
between a hobby and an obsession for me since that time.
In the mid-1970's, I moved to New York. In New York I met my friend,
Michael Kass whose personal obsession was Carl Jung. During my three
years in New York, we had innumerable discussions and arguments about
Reich, Jung and psychotherapy. They usually began at V and T's Italian
Restaurant, segueing to the Hungarian Pastry Shop next door and ended up
at that famous intellectual landmark of the Upper West Side - the West End
Bar. Routine stuffing with pastry and beer brought it home to me that I
wanted to write a book combining the theories of Reich and Jung. However,
the link between the two was not apparent to me at that time.
Seventeen years passed. I continued my studies but moved out of New
York and began a family. Three years ago my son began studying Karate.
After a while, I began classes, too. I also began reading about martial
arts. These readings led me to the study of Chinese medicine, and to
Qigong. As a stroke of good fortune, I came across the works of Dr. Yang
Jwing-Ming and found the link that had been missing for seventeen
years. Chinese medicine, science and alchemy were based upon the
principles that Reich and Jung had independently uncovered in the West.
All books take on a life of their own. After contacting Dr. Yang and
receiving encouragement, I found that the present book began shaping itself
around the principles of the philosophy of science. Chinese science is based
on an entirely different model from that utilized in the West. Nonetheless,
this model has been effective and productive for over 5000 years. This
model was energetics. It is the same starting point from which Reich
progressed. The question then became: if Reich, a Westerner with no
knowledge of Chinese medicine, could independently verify many of the
principles and conclusions of Chinese medicine, how could one claim that
the field of energetics was not based on objective fact, and, further, if a
science based on energetics is both productive and objective, perhaps
Western views concerning the constitution of science are unduly narrow.
The Tao of Bioenergetics thus became an examination of science based
on an alternate paradigm rather than just another "contrast and compare"
exercise. It is, therefon:, obviously more than I had originally anticipated
during those late nights at the West End.
George A. Katchmer, Jr.
Vandalia, Ohio 1992
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