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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Healing in Two Worlds
On a modest 'campus', The University of East-West Medicine teaches from two traditions of health care
By Kelly Wilkinson
On first sight, the University of East-West Medicine bucks the
academic image. No ivy-covered bricks; not even the glass-and-trees of a modern-day campus. East-West is situated in
a strip mall on West
El Camino Real. The storefront next door houses a psychic's office. The school's window fronts are adorned with fiashing neon signs.
Just inside the glass door, it's something else entirely. In the front office, there is the thin smell of dry herbs and the sound of trickling water.
This is the brainchild of Dr. Ying Q. Wang. Wang studied medicine in Beijing for 20 years--but he eschewed tradition and studied Western medicine. Then, after moving to California, he shifted his focus to traditional Eastern medicine, and combined both into a local practice.
Wang expanded his clinic into a university a year ago. The school's new semester begins this week.
"I had one leg in each [kind of medicine] before," he says. "So I started to walk between both and now I am teaching others my walk."
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
East-West University offers a Master of Science degree in traditional Chinese medicine--a three-year course, 60 percent comprising Chinese medicine, and 40 percent Western medicine.
Traditional Chinese medicine primarily involves acupuncture. Wang says one of the primary differences between Eastern and Western medicine is that Eastern practices take an individual as a whole rather than treating isolated parts of the body as they become afflicted. He says another main difference is that acupuncture and other Eastern techniques focus on preventive measures.
"It is the same as a car," he says. "If you tune up a car and fix its circulation through changing the water and oil and keep every part clean, it will keep going. It is the same with people."
"There are a lot of problems people have in their lives," Wang says. "And most of them can be treated before they happen. This is the key to long lives with health and happiness."
Classes include acupuncture, anatomy, tai chi, and herbology. The college also offers classes in Chinese as a second language and English as a second language.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Students who complete the program are qualified to sit for the California State acupuncture exam and then go on to open their own clinics or work as acupuncture practitioners in a medical center.
One of the tenets of Wang's program--which he calls the "vital core system"--is his "three gate" theory: that the body has an upper gate, middle gate and lower gate, which correspond to various conditions. Wang says this is a traditional Chinese belief that goes back thousands of years, but adds that Western medicine has improved upon the theory.
"People didn't know anatomy, physiology, or pathology," he says. "So with those, we can better weave the medicine together and develop healing practices."
The East-West University campus--several rooms off a main courtyard--includes classrooms with human figures marked by Chinese and English characters, and a library of textbooks with Chinese characters running down the spines.
In each room is the school's symbol--a snake coiled around an acupuncture needle with a ying-yang symbol perched atop. Full of fold-up chairs and anatomy posters, it is a humble campus. But Wang is confident it is ushering in "healing for the 21st century."
"Everybody likes natural healing and with more and more people turning to it, there is a need for a lot of doctors who know both traditions," Wang says.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Gabriella Borsay, a second-semester student at the school, came to the program after receiving treatment there.
"I really liked their methodology and talked to Dr. Wang and he told me about the school," she says. Borsay had previously been in an acupuncture program in Los Angeles, and said she was relieved to find out about a program in the South Bay.
"In college, I was in a pre-med program and became very disillusioned with the whole system," she says. "I thought there should be something more, but I wasn't very savvy to Eastern medicine. But when I got my first acupuncture treatment seven years ago, I intuitively knew that was what I wanted to do, and I've been trying to carve out that path ever since."
Borsay describes classes as in-depth and intense. Last semester she took Acupuncture I and Qi Gong--an exercise that claims to aid healing through rhythmic respiration and body movements which recently made its way into the news when it was banned by the Chinese government. The acupuncture class teaches students where the energy meridians are and all the points of the body.
"The whole course of study will evolve around those points," she says. She will also study biochemistry and Western pharmacology.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Mainstream insurance companies are picking up on the Chinese-medicine trend. Providers such as Aetna, New York Life and Prudential all cover acupuncture, after a series of state bills that authorized the practice and declared acupuncturists to be legitimate health-care providers.
Tina Chen, the director of education for the state acupuncture board, said it is definitely becoming more mainstream.
"It has grown so much already," she says. "And it will keep growing. When I was in school, there were three to five people in the classes. Now there are more like 30 to 50 per quarter."
This, Wang says, is why he opened his school.
"This is the key and more people are realizing it," he says. "And I want to give the key to a lot of students so they can help people who want to know more."
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
