The Poetry of Touch - Alchemy, Transformation & Oriental Medicine

The Poetry of Touch by Chris McAlister is a fascinating look into the perspective of a practitioner who has spent most of his life exploring the ins and outs of East Asian Medicine. Given his grounding in shiatsu, he naturally comes from a place of highly valuing the art of touch in the practice of traditional medicine. From this book you really get the sense of how Chris keeps digging for the roots of this medicine, which are embedded in the experience of being embodied and exploring what it means to be fully alive and human – a creature with a rational mind suspended briefly in time between Heaven and Earth. Chris shares anecdotes and wisdom he has picked up along his long and circuitous journey in East Asian Medicine. He references the classics, especially the Yijing the “Book of Changes” the primary source for Chinese philosophy and worldview. Unraveling the symbols and images that are foreign to westerners, but imbedded in the collective unconscious, he lays out