3. Chinatown’s Third Eye
If Mr. Jin is something of a mystery to the denizens of Columbus Park, then Dr. Mou – who also teaches a Saturday Tai-Chi class – is a Chinatown legend. The locals rave about the uncanny accuracy and wisdom of Mou’s “third eye,” the ancient Eastern representation of enlightenment and higher consciousness.
So much so that this I soon found myself stretched out in the veteran acupuncturist’s Chatham Square office, with 33 slender needles inserted into my head, torso, arms and legs and then another set of 33 needles in my back. “Reeelax de leever, reeelax de small intestine,” Mou chanted alongside me. “Reeelax de right kid-ehnee, relax the left kid-ehnee…”
And I did. Guiding me through a meditation, Mou enabled me to control parts of my body I never knew a person could. With a flick of his index finger on my heart and kidney meridian, he popped in the silver needles to “cleanse” the “sick” organs. Also, positioned to alleviate my chronic lower-back pain, they entered my flesh with a smooth pinch. On the table, I felt etherized. While I lay face up, Mou placed a hot bottle of herbs on my belly and covered me with an aluminum-foil-like blanket, which was slightly suspended over my body on the needles’ tails. My body disappeared and I felt like I existed only at the needles’ points.
Earlier that day, when I entered Mou’s office, I had no intention of allowing Eastern medicine to penetrate my mind or my skin. The sounds of soft crashing and receding waves emanated from hidden speakers, and the room was filled with the pungent smell of burning herbs. Mou – full name: Chuan Jing Mou, O.M.D. (Doctor of Oriental Medicine) -motioned me to sit. He wore a physician’s white coat, a horseshoe of black hair hugged his temples and his languid eyes barely blinked. Lowering his head, he placed three fingers on my right wrist, and then on the left. His quiet, precise voice had a soothing tone, but some words were hard to understand. Even harder to understand was how he instantly knew everything that ailed a patient – me – without being told.
Mou’s celebrated third eye, apparently, zoomed right in to my insides. “You leetle sick, leetle sick,” he announced. “Your leever, yes, leever and your right kid-ehnee, right kid-ehnee.” I’d started feeling sick just that morning, I admitted. Then he told me how long I’ve been smoking. “You smoke cigarette, for long time. Almost six year. You smoke the pot too.” Bingo. “The cigarette no affect you lung,” he explains, pointing out that people have different physiological effects from smoking. “They affecting your haaart.”
Then he told me about my back which I injured while training for NYU’s wrestling team. “You have bad back injury, very much pain in lower back. You have herniate disc.” My friend who served as a translator (for the more in-depth questions that challenged Dr. Mou’s limited English vocabulary), was also diagnosed, and was surprised by Mou’s accuracy. Mou insists that using a patient’s pulse to find out what’s going on inside his or her body, is the first step to successful treatment. “I take a pulse and know everything that wrong on your inside,” Dr. Mou tells me. “Then I treat you. Then you get balance and you feel bettah, much bettah.”
Mou hails from China’s Sichuan province. He was only five when he began studying under the tutelage of his father, also a master acupuncturist and Tai-Chi teacher. “My training was, follow my father and do what he do,” he says. He has never been back to China since leaving in 1986. When he speaks of his home country, his expression darkens. In the midst of Mao Zedong’s 27-year rule, Mou’s father spoke out against the communist party and was jailed for three years. His father was a fit 80-year-old when he entered prison, says Mou – but upon his release he was severely depleted physically and mentally, and he died three years later.
In 1986, Mou, then studying microbiology, wrote a couple of articles on Eastern medicine that caught the attention of an academic in Illinois who convinced Mou to come work in a Chicago-based regional research center. After working briefly in Illinois, he made his way to New York City. Once in the City he built a reputation in Chinatown, and now he owns his own practice, specializing in acupuncture, Qi-Gong (breathing and movement exercise) and herbal medicine. He practices and teaches Tai-Chi in Columbus Park and on Pier 17 on Saturdays. Mou is also the Director of the American Taoist Qi-Gong Natural Health Center and President of the American Chinese Qi-Gong Society.
Dr. Mou’s patients come from the Upper West Side, Boston and even Europe. He treats babies, young people and the elderly for a long list of ailments including asthma, infertility, addiction, and even cancer. The dim walls of the office are covered with pictures of happy couples and their newborns. “All these parents no able to have child. They go Western doctors but no help. This woman, see here,” he says (tapping a photo of a smiling mother with baby), “ten years no able have child, she come to me and have child.” He smiles proudly, declaring that his patients’ births go smoothly and that the results are exceptional. He barely credits Mother Nature, but says the successful outcome is due to the mystical power of acupuncture. One baby, he says, knew “two plus two is four, at age two!” Pointing to another picture, he muses: “You can see that the child has very nice features, although the father has a big mouth and the mother wasn’t pretty.”
Mou credits his success partly to caring rigorously for his own health. He practices Tai-Chi to “channel energy from the universe to myself”; when his body is filled with positive energy, he says, he has the power to displace negative energy from within his patients. And then there’s that third eye – a skill that is honed, he says, by frequent travel. He recently returned from Japan and Korea, and next month, he says, “I go to Mexico country. In three month I go to Greece country.” Mou says that engaging with communities and individuals throughout the world helps him to treat his patients. “Everyone around world have the same eye,” he says, placing a finger on the space between his eyebrows, where the mystical eye is said to reside. “Seeing the world regenerates my third eye and it helps me see people’s sickness.” Mou believes that his third eye will soon be powerful enough for him to be able to diagnose patients without even laying a hand on them. “I will be able to look at them before I take their pulse,” he declares, “and say, ‘your leever is sick.’”
Mou’s acupuncture did not work miracles on me per se, but it did make me feel much more relaxed. And as one who suffers from a severe back injury, the few pain-free hours he gave me I am forever indebted. He assured me that with a couple of more treatments the effects would be more long-lasting and that with a couple of more visits he could finish cleansing my kidney, and possibly my heart.
Lulled by his soft voice, his gentle touch, and the slender needles under my skin, words a patient named Martha Keith said while we were waiting invaded my thoughts: “Acupuncture works, and Western medicine cannot explain it… but it works.”
Amidst the rushing ocean sounds, he launched back into the meditation, chanting, “Welcome to Hawaii beach, reeelax the eye, reeelax the head, reeelax the haaart…”
