Customer Reviews

The Chinese Way to Healing: Many Paths to Wholeness

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Develop a deeper understanding of healing and harmony as this book explores anatomy and physiology with an Eastern philosophy. Discover how Chinese medicine practitioners evaluate, diagnose, and treat illness. Feel the fluid motion of Qi Gong and the healing touch of massage. Resources, workshops, and healing centers are also listed. This extensive volume of knowledge is an essential guide to many paths of wholeness.

Are you considering using Chinese Medicine to bring greater healing into your life? Then "The Chinese Way to Healing" will intelligently serve as your guide to understanding what Chinese Medicine involves, how examinations are carried out, treatment methods offered, and how to carefully select your own Chinese Medicine practitioner.

In addition to guiding you to the help you may need, Misha Ruth Cohen offers several chapters on how to benefit from Chinese Medicine right in your own home, using an assortment nutrition, bathing and calming techniques.

This book will make a great addition to your alternative health library; just don't let it collect dust.

The title of this book is highly misleading. The author displays a deep misunderstanding of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) philosophy by combining it with Western medicine and other alternative therapies. For instance, vaccinations and synthetic supplaments are completely at odds with TCM principles, and no true TCM practitioner will ever recommend them. The nutritional advice of diet consisting of more than 70% carbohydrate not only does not reflect the Chinese diet, but will certainly lead to obesity, diabetes and related illnesses. The Chinese prize pork and other animal fats, yet the author seems to pander to the fat-phobic public and advocates low fat in most of the dietary advice. Although there are good explanations of TCM principles at the start of the book, the author is yet another in the string of Western doctors showing lack of faith/knowledge in TCM by combining it with contradictory Western therapies. I do not recommend it.

As a student of Acupuressure massage, I found Dr. Cohens book to be useful, informative, interesting, and easy to read. The book is based on the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine; it seems as if TCM advocate may not have even read the book he/she so strongly criticizes.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in or involved in Acupuncture, Acupressure, Massage, Chinese food therapy, etc. I recommend it to my fellow massage students all the time.

This innovative masterpiece is written to a variety of audiences -- from the most savvy of TCM practitioners to the individual who has but a cursory understanding of Chinese Medicine. Misha Cohen does an exceptional job of explaining the importance and feasibility of attaining overall health and well-being.
Highly esteemed in her field, Cohen provides a particularly useful and valuable guide for healing and the interconnectedness of body, mind and spirit. Her passion, and accordingly her gift, for healing the total person shine through the written word. This is highly comprehensive resource on a complex topic, and as such is an essential book for the library of the student of healing and the mind/body/spirit connection.

I am a TCM student and since I have also worked in the field of HIV clinical care and research for many years, I learned about Misha Cohen's work in San Francisco as long ago as the early 1990s. She seems to be a true pioneer.

I found the original edition of the book helpful enough, if a bit poorly organized, and some information in the Resources section out of date. (I could understand this in the '96 edition, but the same erroneous information appears in the '06 version.)

Much of the book might be a bit too technical for the casual reader (the extensive content dedicated to TCM formulas for Shen calming, treating PMS and menopause symptoms, as well as digestive and addiction problems, for example). The presentation is sometimes maddeningly inconsistent, though (sometimes the Pinyin Chinese is given first, followed by the English name; other times the order is reversed; and every now and again there are mistakes when the English name is incorrect), and it seemed a bit mercenary of Ms. Cohen to feature many of her company's (Health Concerns) patented formulas within these sections--especially when some of them are standard TCM formulas that could be purchased elsewhere for much less.

That said, the page or two on the guided meditation that follows the 12 main meridians, one leading into the other, was nothing short of genius, and I would love to see her or her company (or Perigree Books!) produce a CD for this-- and maybe actually offer 2-3 different versions of it, varying the extent of the detail for different audiences (e.g., casual reader, obsessively curious life-long learner type, and true blue TCM or acupuncture student who wants to use it as a daily exercise to visualize and then also memorize point location).

The index is not nearly as complete as it could be, and I found it unhelpful.

With all this as somewhat of a caveat, the use of Curing/Konning pills to combat jet lag alone was worth the effort it took to wade through the less helpful bits of the book--although I think most people would agree that the touted benefits of melatonin, purportedly to "reset" the body's clock, are vastly over rated.

I was (and am) looking forward to a more up-to-date edition of the book, given that much has happened (and vastly improved!) in the therapeutic areas in which Ms. Cohen specializes (HIV, viral hepatitis). As far as I can tell from what I have seen of the 2006 edition, little to no additional information has been added. That it is pity. Were a new edition to come out that was significantly updated from the '96 edition, I would buy it in a Phlegm misted heartbeat.

Since I'M HIV+ I have used this book a a guide for my Self and also
purchase this book for students at the accupunture school I go to
for treatment. The instructors at the school are well aware of this
book " The Chinese Way to Healing: Many Paths to Wholeness [Both the
paper back and hard cover.] by: Misha Ruth Cohen (Author), Kalia Doner
(Author) an use it as a reference guide.

This book is a very helpful choice for anyone looking into adding Chinese Medicine to their treatment plan for any major illnesses. While Misha Cohen is very well versed in TCM, she also encourages the reader to have it work side by side, complimentary with Western Medicine.
Very informative all around