The Great DBH Rant

You can’t make this stuff up. As though the world is not filled with enough quackery and woo, we now have a “hybrid-woo”. Let’s start with this Fox News report.

(Warning: Contains stupid. DBH will not be responsible for any loss of intelligence caused by watching this clip.)

The website Tong Ren World (no link provided here – I refuse to contribute to it’s google ranking) has this description:

Developed by Tom Tam,   and an integral part of the Tom Tam Healing System,   Tong Ren is a form of energy therapy for restoring health and vitality.   Tong Ren is based on a belief that disease is related to interruptions, or blockages,   in the body’s natural flow of chi, neural bioelectricity, blood, or hormones. Tong Ren seeks to remove these blockages, restoring the body’s natural ability to heal itself, even when illnesses are chronic, debilitating, or otherwise untreatable.

Tong Ren   combines western   knowledge of anatomy and physiology with the ancient principle of “chi,” or life force energy, to create what many consider to be a powerful new healing modality. Drawing on the Jungian theory of the “collective unconscious,”   Tong Ren is believed to access energy from this universal source and direct it to the patient.   Because no physical contact is involved or necessary, Tong Ren is often practiced as distance healing.

So there you have it. Acupuncture points, a doll and a hammer. Bang specific acupuncture points on the doll and healing energy will be emitted which can cure anything from end stage cancer to AIDS. This is a combination of acupuncture and voodoo. The usual canards are there: interruptions and blockages of chi, ancient principles, the ability to treat the untreatable, lack of side effects.

But there’s more. No physical contact necessary and most often done as distance healing. Well the commercial potential of this thing is endless! And the distance healing part has not gone unexploited. Mr Tam has set up a website for conference calls! The site is imaginatively named Tong Ren To Go. Calls are not free, of course. And here is the kicker, it is a modality of healing whereby the more people joins and practices, the bigger it’s healing effect.

The greater number of people who practice Tong Ren, and the frequency with which each person uses it, increases its strength as a tool for healing.

The key point I want to bring up here is not the “the more the better” part, it’s the participation bit. As it turns out, anyone can sign up to “guinea pig” (the name for these Tong Ren classes. Touche!) classes and become a healer. Of course, you need to buy the kit first. There is a dedicated website called Tong Ren Shop. The doll comes at USD 35.00, the hammer at USD 35.00. Then there’s the “TENS machine”, such that an electrical pulse can be applied to specific acupuncture points for more effective healing. That comes in at a whopping USD 85.00. It is not over though, as there is more, and this one takes the cake for me – a laser (USD 30.00). This is what they say the laser does:

We aim the laser at specific points on the Tong Ren to allow the mind to focus on gathering energy into these areas. In general, the laser is used for tonification while the hammer is used to remove physical and energetic blockages.

As I was typing this, Microsoft Word flagged the word “tonification” because it is not in the dictionary. Well I am not surprised. It is a made up word, another characteristic of quackery – the use of jargons which makes no scientific sense. In fact, typing the word “tonification” into google returns a barrage of woo. As it turns out, it is a buzz word in acupuncture.

One last nail in the coffin for classing this as quackery (as if that was ever in any doubt) is the evidence. For the quack experts out there, this is dead simple. It’s success (using this word very loosely) has been measured solely by anecdotes. All Tong Ren websites are littered with “testimonials” of how it has improved, or in many cases, even cured diseases where conventional medicine was stumped. Most of these people have had conventional treatment for, say, cancer. These treatments (chemotherapy, radiotherapy) are not pleasant and takes a while to work. During these times, patients get fed up, upset and seek alternatives. They have woo practiced on them and around the same time, they experience improvements (because of the conventional treatments). The credit then goes to woo.

The woo-practitioners then chalk this anecdote as n+1 data point that the technique works.

And Tom Tam himself actually admits there is no evidence, from his website:

For any healing system, there has to be a supporting theory, no matter where the theory comes from or whether it makes sense. The theory of the collective unconscious is the basis for Tong Ren Therapy. Without proof all theories are merely conjecture. Proof may be found in research or empirical data. Tong Ren has not been proven by any expert research. This type of research involves financial support, political support, development of modern science, and case studies by a qualified practitioner. The proof for all of my theories is only through the experience and results of my patients and myself. Of course I have no doubt that Tong Ren Therapy works. No one can deny the work we have done or the results we have achieved or argue about it.

“Collective unconscious” is continuously being floated as the basis of Tong Ren. What does Mr Tam think it is?

My belief in Tong Ren healing is associated with the philosophy of the collective unconscious and the power of the mind. Many people accept the idea that there is an unconscious and that the mind is powerful. These philosophical views can be found in many books. When a group comes together to form a collective unconscious, as in healing meditation, this collective mind can become healing power. A leader is required for this type of healing power. When we form a group with a collective unconscious mind, we need a, just as a computer needs a font to show a letter on a monitor.

Collective unconscious is a term coined by Carl Jung. It is a metaphysical notion not testable empirically. It is therefore pseudoscience. It is not surprising therefore that a quackery which is based on pseudoscience, is itself too, pseudoscience. The hammering of a doll with a magnetic hammer to emit healing energy is as un-scientific as the statement “amethysts emit high yin energy”, and therefore cannot be taken seriously. It carries the usual danger of woo – It detracts patients from vital diagnosis and treatment from conventional medicine.

In other words, it is wasting the time some patients just simply don’t have.

There is one piece of publication on Tong Ren which concluded:

This first study documenting self-reported effects of TR shows subjective benefits and no adverse effects. Further research on this approach is warranted.

The “investigation” sent out questionnaires to participants of the guinea pig classes. They asked people who already believe in Tong Ren to answer questions about the effectiveness and safety of Tong Ren?

They published a paper by collecting anecdotes!

It begs the question – What is the point of this study?

Nevertheless, I do have a message for Tom Tam, the “creator” of Tong Ren – Two wrongs do not make a right.

And the woo-fusion does not stop there. There is a new one – applying Tong Ren to Astrology! I’ll close with this report in the “Tong Ren International Times”:

Tong Ren and Astrology By Sharon Mullen

I have been an astrologer for 20 years, and I have studied with Tom Tam for about the same length of time. While I have long noted correlations between astrology and Tom’s methods, it is only in the last year, that I have begun to actually combine the two together.

Astrology, basically, is the study of the connections between the objects of the cosmos, especially including human beings and the celestial bodies of our solar system. Nearly every ancient culture, apparently independently, observed the relationships between events on Earth and the movements of the celestial objects.

Perhaps the most obvious example involves the tides of the oceans, which are caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. The tides at the new moon are the highest, followed by those at the full moon. The lowest tides occur at the quarter moons.

As our own Tom Tam has observed, modern physics has proven that all objects in the universe are interconnected. If the position of the sun and moon change, which they, of course, do every day, the earth and all on earth also change.

At a person’s birth, the planetary energies which exist at the time and place of birth connect with the person’s own energy and become part of the person’s mind and body. It is not clear exactly how the energies come into the person. It has been suggested, however, that they enter the body through the acupuncture points.

In the ancient world, astronomy and astrology were linked, and considered parts of the same study. Ancient astronomers, who observed the motions of the heavenly bodies, always included information about the likely affects of planetary positions on human lives. The most refined form of astrology was developed in areas which are all now in modern-day Iraq (Chaldea, Mesopotamia, Babylon).

Astrologers use charts to depict the planetary positions for a particular time and place. The birth, or natal, chart is for the time and place of a person’s birth. Not unlike Chinese writing, glyphs are used to represent the planets and other astrological information.

All the planets revolve in a counterclockwise manner around the sun, within a band of energy called the zodiac. The zodiac is divided into 12 sections, known as signs. The moon revolves around the earth, also traveling through this zodiac. The sun does not actually move around the zodiac, but it appears to do so, because of the motion of the earth itself around the sun.

Because the planets are moving at different rates of speed, their relationships to each other change. (Mars, for example takes about 2 Earth years to go around the sun. Jupiter takes about 12.) As they revolve around the sun, the planets come into different positions relative to each other. These planetary positions are known as ‘aspects’.

Some planetary aspects are stressful, difficult. To me, these aspects are very similar to the blockages we speak of in Tong Ren. Just as bioelectricity is blocked, so can the ‘cosmic energy’ be ‘blocked’. (Most astrologers do not actually use these terms, but they seem to fit, nonetheless.) Generally, when two planets are on opposite sides of the zodiacal band from each other, or at right angles to each other, these aspects are difficult.

Often, there are difficult aspects within the natal chart. Much of astrology concerns itself with aspects in the natal chart, or between the charts of individuals, which may also present difficulties. Astrology also studies ‘transits’, or planetary positions which occur after the birth (or event) being studied. While the planetary positions in the natal chart will remain the same, the physical planets keep moving, or transiting. As transiting planets make difficult aspects with planets in the natal chart, stressful energies result.

I should note that astrology is not deterministic, as is sometimes supposed. Certain outcomes are not pre-determined from planetary aspects. We can predict areas and times of stress quite precisely, but we cannot absolutely predict the outcome. Most people, at least in our society, have some choice as to how to handle their aspects.

Interestingly, the same difficult aspect in a chart may manifest in completely opposite ways. For example, a person with his/her Sun at a ninety degree angle from Saturn at birth may be either a bully or one who is bullied. This is because the Sun represents the self and Saturn represents authority figures. While we may be able to guess from other aspects in the chart which type of behavior is likely to manifest, we cannot really know for sure.

This is like the Tong Ren concept that a blockage along the C-6 and C-7 areas could cause either hypothyroidism, or hyperthyroidism, either over-activity or under- activity.

I began my own ‘guinea pig’-like experiment last year. I have now incorporated astrology with Tong Ren when working with dozens of people. After identifying the astrological difficulty, the planetary blockage, if you will, I tap along the glyphs for the planets involved with the Tong Ren hammer and then tap the doll (usually at least at the Liver 3, Kidney 1 points, to ground the energies).

Everyone I have worked on has reported a deep level of release when the chart is incorporated with the Tong Ren treatment. Sometimes, the results have been very striking, with symptoms resolving more quickly. For instance, in one case, persistent pain levels improved with use of the incorporation of astrology and Tong Ren. In other cases, persistent depression was helped. In an MS case, one symptom which just would not resolve did indeed resolve, when astrology was incorporated.

Astrology is a complicated study, but basic information about the planets and their relationships is not too difficult to learn, especially if a person concentrates only on his own chart to start with. Hopefully, this guinea pig experiment will expand, with more people trying out the combination of Tong Ren and astrology.

An un-holy trinity of woo! My head hurts!