Subjective Resonance

“Science tests the objective validity of assumptions, but what makes therapy effective is deep, subjective resonance and that deep sense of truth and veracity that lives in the body.” - Tina Packer.

It appears that opposite things are always simultaneously true. The tension between them gives life its momentum. Everything is like this... there’s a negative and positive pole and they create a circuit.

This tensioned balance. We need objective science. We need deep subjective resonance. Measurements matter. Perception matters. You get really good at helping people when you artfully ride the painful tension between these opposite truths.

Just a research person? You probably don’t reach people that well. Just an abstract, feely-weely person? You probably lack the clinical acuity to effectively problem solve.

I’m sorry, but we need it all. Medicine was never promised to be easy. Its practice is unfair and painful, and sometimes we react to the pain of having two opposing truths exist simultaneously by collapsing on one of them and denying the other to make the experience more manageable. But there’s something shrinking and dishonest in that.

Donna Mah first put this idea to me when she graciously walked me through her exhibit on the history of Chinese Medicine in America. She said, “there’s the Western lens of viewing the body and the Eastern lens. It’s painful to hold both at the same time and watch them conflict, but we need both. We need to accept that pain.” She is so right.