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Practice
Acu. | Issue #31 | Summer 2021
TCM & ayurveda: what’s the difference? Yoga practitioner and newly qualified acupuncturist Vanessa Menendez Covelo shares a little of what her dissertation studies revealed
Vanessa Menendez Covelo Member: London Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and ayurveda are two forms of traditional Asian medicine that are still in practice and have spread through the world, under the umbrella of complementary and alternative medicine in countries where the mainstream practice is allopathic medicine. TCM has a philosophical background of Daoism and ayurveda of Vedic thought. As a long-time yoga practitioner before training in acupuncture, I was interested to find out what the similarities and differences were, so for my dissertation at the City College of Acupuncture (CCA) I set out to explore the topic. My main source was the excellent Tao and Dharma: Chinese Medicine and Ayurveda by Svoboda and Lade – Ayurveda and TCM practitioners respectively. I would recommend this book to any TCM practitioner interested in the topic.
Historical context and cross-pollination
The earliest manuscripts for medical practice in China are found in the Historical Memoirs (Shi Ji), about 500 BC, which discusses pulse study, tongue inspection and patient questioning as diagnostic tools, as well as acupuncture, moxibustion, massage, remedial exercise and plant medicine as therapeutic modalities. For ayurveda, while Vedic healing is recorded in the Atharva Veda as a manual of magic, the first record of empirical medicine is the Charaka Samhita dated between the 8th and 10th centuries BC. Some scholars attribute ayurveda’s initial influence on TCM to Bodhidharma (500-600 AD), a Buddhist monk who is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Chan Buddhism to China and who initiated the physical training of the monks of the Shaolin Temple, which led to the creation of Shaolin kungfu. Part of the warrior training included knowledge of marmas, points on the body that can be used specifically for the diagnosis and treatment of disease or generally for promoting health and longevity.
Ayurveda
Qualities
TCM
Qualities
Vata
Dry, cold, light, unstable, clear, rough, subtle
Qi
Both material and immaterial, can be translated as energy, ether, matter, matter-energy, vital force, life force.
Pitta
Oily, hot, intense, light, fluid, malodorous, mobile
Yang
Active, brightness, sunshine, fire, hardness, male, dryness, hot, restless
Kapha
Oily, cold, heavy, stable, viscid, smooth, soft
Yin
Passive, darkness, earth, water, softness, female, moisture, nighttime, slowness, cold, docile
Yin/yang and the three doshas: comparison and correlation
As Buddhism thrived in China under the Tang dynasty, the number of Buddhist monasteries and temples increased rapidly and many canonical ayurvedic works were translated into Chinese. An example is the Neng qing yijie yanjibing doloni jing – A classic on a spell to cure all eye diseases – by Amoghavajra, which touches upon the standard etiology of eye diseases as defined by the tridosha theory of ayurveda. An area where there was a healthy exchange of ideas in both directions is pharmacology. China imported hemp, sandalwood, cardamom, cinnamon and other herbs from India, while India imported rhubarb, liquorice, ginseng, mugwort and tea from China. All of these were used medicinally in both systems. The blocking of the Silk Road due to Muslim invasions and the decline of Buddhism in India and China meant that from the 10th century AD onward, TCM and ayurveda were essentially isolated from each other. The introduction of European medicine to China and India from the 18th century AD signified the decline of both traditional medicines until their current resurgence. A potential research area would be the evolution of TCM and ayurveda after the 10th century when their usage was contained within their respective countries, and the efforts later made to modernise them. The early years (1950s) of the People’s Republic of China saw a governmental effort to
standardise Chinese medicine (zhongyi, 中醫) into what is currently known as TCM (xueyuanpai, 學院派). Meanwhile, the late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a revival of ayurvedic medicine through the All India Ayurvedic Congress (AIAC) in 1907, a professional interest group of ayurvedic practitioners. It would be interesting to compare how these two different gro ups (government v practitioners) worked towards standardisation of their respective medical systems.
Energetic physiology
Qi and prana: Neither TCM nor ayurveda base their mapping of human physiology on internal anatomical study. This is because both cultures largely avoided dissection. In China, it was believed that it would interfere with the po and its capacity to return to the earth. In India, any damage to the corpse before its cremation was thought to continue onto the soul’s next incarnation. Both systems posit the existence of a life force, called qi in TCM and prana in ayurveda, which travels through TCM’s meridians and ayurveda’s 72,000 nadis. Attempts to find commonality include a ‘Unified System of Medicine’ in which electro photonic imaging is measured in the ten fingers of the hand, and Wilhelm Reich’s orgone, but none of them has got very far in the field of allopathic medicine.
