Two years ago, while visiting New York City, I was strolling through an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art titled “Venice and the Islamic World: 828-1797”. The exhibition contained magnificent pottery, silver work, weaponry, and textiles, all laid out in glass cases. As I passed by one of these displays, I noticed a very large book opened somewhere in the middle. It was Avicenna’s “Canon of Medicine”, the most authoritative medical text in the Islamic world at the time. And on the opened page was a picture of a man lying face down on a table and another man standing above him with his hands placed on his back, performing what appeared to be a spinal manipulation. I looked at the descriptive caption on the case. It read, “Doctor performing a spinal manipulation on a patient”. Yes, a spinal manipulation, documented and illustrated, in Persia, approximately 1000 AD. Read the rest of this entry »
The small Pugeot, gears grinding, wound its way into the high desert mountains. Leaving Shiraz, the City of Poets, of Sadi and Hafez, we were headed to Yasuj, the half way mark to Isfahan. The scenery had changed dramatically, from dry rolling hills to snow capped peaks and as Ali, my new guide and driver, sped along the narrow roads, sheer vertical drops only inches away, I looked across the landscape and imagined the armies of Alexander and Genghis Khan passing through these narrow valleys, camped along the powerful rivers below, then perched above, on the high ridges, waiting in ambush. I sensed the ancient footsteps of a million men and women.Read the rest of this entry »
The air blew thick and steamy through the mini-van window. As we climbed steep mountain roads veiled in tropical fog, the exhaustion of the long journey from California to Bali weighed heavily upon me, the rice paddies passing before my eyes as distant as San Francisco cable cars. Flying into Denpassar Airport the night before, I had been quickly reminded that I was back in South Asia, in the so called “developing world”, as I waited for two hours to have my passport stamped, part of a chaotic herd moving imperceptively forward, the Indonesian officials as indifferent to the suffering, overheated tourists as those tourists were anxious to begin their beach holidays. So when I finally arrived at my hotel, tired but relieved to have a bed to fall into, I barely noticed the gentle waves brushing the shore just beyond my hotel window. Read the rest of this entry »
Over the last several decades, we have seen the proliferation of many types of therapies, from Chiropractic to Acupuncture to Rolfing to Sports Medicine. Presumably, with this great expansion, we have had the opportunity to become healthier than we have ever been before. All we need to do is avail ourselves of these modalities and we will be well. So it would seem. Read the rest of this entry »
I grew up in an apartment complex on the north side of Queens, in an urban New York City outpost called Bayside. And though given its name, one might imagine a gentle port, lined with restaurants and cafes, of strolling crowds taking in the salty night air, the reality was something else. Clusters of identical buildings, mixed with low rise “garden” apartments and parking lots, a few trees and some flowers. My mother told me to shut the curtains as I gazed out of my bedroom window at the speeding cars on the four lane Expressway only yards away. “If you don’t look out, it sounds like the ocean”, she said.
Berkeley, California. The bastion of free speech, of Bay Area beauty, of progressive thinking, a socialist enclave wrapped warmly in a blanket of greenery, organic nouvelle cuisine, and a world class university. And while all of these descriptions contain some truth, Berkeley is also much more. A place of intense diversity—ethnic, socioeconomic, cultural—of mass media intoxication, hip hop and urban political consciousness, bookstores and bakeries, and a place of sudden violence. Read the rest of this entry »