“ the experience of possession signaled that an individual had lost the power to negotiate and maintain a sense of control within him- or herself” (p. 86, Breathing Spaces, Nancy Chen).
“Mr. Gao, a male patient in his fifties, described how his practice of Daoist qigong progressed as expected until one day the qi in his right leg became ‘stuck.’ ‘I was walking along Wangfujing Street and suddenly felt as if my right leg had a will of its own. I started walking in a wide circle, because the leg became planted on the ground and my other leg tried to continue going forward. I had to stop and really concentrate before my leg could move again.’” (p.103, Breathing Spaces, Nancy Chen).
These excerpts were part of Langford’s discussion about how the use of qigong caused possession and deviance in some of its practitioners. Initially qigong was a powerful force for people looking to be healed of debilitating diseases, and for people looking for social outlets in a controlling society, but it became an object of study in Chinese psychiatry (p.87) partially because it seemed to create odd actions and emotions in its followers. Langford studied patients in hospitals and psychiatric wards in China in an attempt to discover the forces at work behind deviation associated with qigong. The ‘dis-ease’, as she terms the lack of ease certain people seemed to have after improperly practicing or over-doing the practice of qigong was cause for much anxiety on the part of the relatives and the government. People behaved unnaturally within the context of their culture therefore suggesting that qigong deviation could be a culture-bound disorder, although similar deviations were found outside of China too. The various forms of deviation that she included in her study were interesting, however I found that the form of one body part having a will of its own was strangely connected with the second reading for this week, Twice Dead by Margaret Lock.
I apologize for being morbid, but I could not get the cult movie The Evil Dead out of my mind. As soon as Langford mentioned the man's leg becoming possessed due to qigong, I thought of the following clip from the 2nd Evil Dead movie, where Ash’s, the main character played by Bruce Campbell, hand became possessed by demons released after listening to an audiotape reading of “The Book of the Dead” on a camping trip. The movie involves a darkly humorous spin on possession so I hope this clip doesn’t offend too much. Ash’s hand isn’t possessed by the electrically charged healing forces of qi as were Mr. Gao’s legs, but Mr. Gao’s legs seemed to want to lead him to his death at the guns of the soldiers at Tiananmen Square in a sinister fashion similar to Ash’s hand.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekm871gZ5TM
So qigong possession put me into a morbid state of mind, and then I started to read Twice Dead. While both books have themes regarding healing in common, I also see a connection in regards to the discussion of body parts. Breathing Spaces made brief mention of possessed body parts due to qigong deviation, but Twice Dead discussed the commoditization of body parts. This brings to mind a number of less humorous horror movies than The Evil Dead.
“It is only recently, however, that the body has gained commercial value as a source of spare parts and therapeutic tools” (p. 47, Twice Dead, Margaret Lock).
“The organs of brain-dead donors were, from the outset, a scarce resource, and it was evident that the urgent need for organs might threaten the presumption that every effort should be made to preserve human life” (p. 65, Twice Dead, Margaret Lock).
Prior to reading this book, I did not know that being brain dead while the rest of the body still had living functioning organs was considered legally dead in the U.S. Maybe it is common knowledge, but it is new to me. It is somewhat creepy that the brain is dead but the body is not, and it is called a living cadaver, and organs can be harvested from it. Lock contrasted Japanese resistance to the brain dead description of death with the lack of resistance to it in North America and Europe, but maybe resistance to it here is not noticed because we are not aware of it? An article in The New York Times from July 15 titled“Countries Make Push to Increase Eye Donors” talks about the rising demand for cornea donors for transplant worldwide, and that the U.S. is not exporting as many corneas as it used to. Nowhere in the article is it mentioned that the donors of the corneas may be living cadavers, and it only lightly mentions that people need to die in order to satisfy the increased need for the body part. In fact the cornea is discussed as simply a product that is in short supply, and that other countries have need to increase the supply to meet the demand. Creepy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/health/15corn.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=
eye%20donations&st=cse&oref=slogin
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