Among the terminally ill
He returned to the US to find there were not a lot of job opportunities available for practitioners of alternative medicine, so Disch once again hopped borders, heading down to Tijuana, Mexico, where he worked for the Gerson Clinic for his first job in the field.
"My job was to give acupuncture to critical patients so they wouldn't have to take pain medication," he says.
"It was very frustrating, I wasn't very mature at that time. I just wanted to cure people of their illnesses. But a lot of the people were in stage-four cancer and I just couldn't do it."
The Gerson Clinic was a sobering start to a career that would later see Disch open his own clinic in San Diego before moving to China in the early 2000s to take up residency at the Beijing United Family Hospital as an integrated medicines expert. But it was a job that cemented his belief in the spiritual side of medicine.
"The body can't be separated from the emotions, they're all the same thing. Any imbalance, any excess emotion can cause physical problems," he says.
"When I treat a patient, I do more than just ask about the physical symptoms. I ask them about their life - are they happy? Are they doing what they want to do? Why do they think they're here this time around?"
It's the emphasis on the spirit that has generated deep interest in places like Disch's home in San Diego.
Since beginning his studies almost 30 years ago, he has seen interest in TCM procedures rise exponentially, transforming from a city with less than a dozen practitioners to one with more than 1,000.
"It may not be as many as in Beijing, but it's a hell of a lot more than it used to be," he says.
Using his understanding of TCM as a foundation, Disch has continued his education in alternative forms of medicine, adding skills such as the Japanese stress-reduction technique Reike, the osteopathic massage method cranialsacral, and Thai massage to a long list of alternative medical techniques.
His most recent pursuit, Bioacoustics, is an experimental form of medicine which examines the properties of using sound waves tuned to certain tissues as a form of muscle therapy.
After nearly a decade working in Beijing, Disch returned to San Diego earlier this year to help provide care for his ill stepfather and further his education in the field of alternative medicine.
While he may no longer be living in the East, Disch says he will continue to push himself further in the field of spiritual healing.
"It's a lifetime study," he says.
You can contact the writer at toddalanbalazovic@chinadaily.com.cn.
(Source: China Daily)
