Acutone: A New System of Healing Based on the Ancient Science
of Sound
Book Review
By
Mary Kay Ryan
Co-Author, Treating AIDS with Chinese Medicine, Pacific View Press,
1992.
For
the practically-minded, AcutoneT: A New System of Healing Based on
the Ancient Science of Sound is a clear, easy-to-use presentation
of a new way to treat the acupuncture points and meridians using musical
tones. It includes concise explications of its theories, and easy-to-follow
step-by-step instructions for applying the musical tones in treatment.
Separate sections are included which are tailored to practitioners
who follow Five-Phase and Eight-principle style acupuncture models.
But it is really
so much more. Combining a very sophisticated expertise in music with
a penetrating understanding of Chinese medicine, the authors have
given us not only a new therapy but also a clearer understanding of
how acupuncture and energetic medicine may work.
Western acupuncturists
seem to be confronted with two widely disparate choices in thinking
about what we do. On the one hand, we can follow the trend out of
modern China in which we are most likely to learn acupuncture theory
and practice in a fairly rote and mechanical way. In this approach
we are unlikely to think about the actual workings of energetics at
all. Or we can embrace a fairly unsatisfying New Age notion about
energy, which often uses shallow metaphors to explain complex ideas
of physics of which the authors have no real knowledge. In this approach
we try to think about energetics but without any real expertise or
system with which to represent it.
Acutone gives
us another option. It uses a real knowledge of the physics and energetics
of music to describe a new therapeutic approach, but ends up giving
us a mathematical and scientific way to visualize how energy or perhaps
more accurately "vibrational healing" works.
Although the authors
have given us something new, they have based their system on sound
reasoning from the Chinese classics and a wide knowledge of Chinese
history and mythology. The solid reasoning which characterizes the
book gives a much sounder basis to extensions of its theories. Using
Acutones to "clear the energy of a treatment space" no longer seems
like a dubious flight of fancy, but like a logical extension of energetic
theory.
If you want to
learn a new, non-invasive way to treat patients, this book will give
you everything you need to do so. But if you only end up reading if
for its insights into the workings of vibrational medicine, you will
certainly also feel that your are a better and more perceptive practitioner
for it.
