<!-- PICTURE --><!-- END PICTURE -->Having flirted with the West, Russia is now turning eastward. Not only are Chinese and Japanese restaurants fashionable in the capital - oriental medical centers have been opening up here, too.
The most famous form of traditional Chinese medicine abroad is acupuncture using needles, but it tends not to travel alone and is commonly practiced in combination with moxibustion, manual therapy and medicinal herbs. Britain's Acupuncture Society describes moxibustion as "a gentle warming of the acupuncture points by burning moxa (Chinese mugwort) onto the skin or by heating the inserted needles."
Their Web site goes on to describe another acupuncture method - cupping - which is "is sometimes used to clear away stagnation and congestion in soft tissues ... by placing a vacuumed jar on the body surface." Cupping is not for the faint-hearted - yours truly had to take a seat to halt a dizzy spell on a recent field trip to the Kanty Health Center. The center was opened by the Chinese government this May at the Friendship Mall.

The cause of my nausea was blood filling up jars on the back of a patient with 15-year-old psoriasis.
I am, though, exceptionally squeamish; in contrast to me, after a decade and a half of suffering, the patient seemed very positive about the results of his new course of treatment, and acupuncturist Dr. Wu Ping also reassured me everything was going according to plan. The center has three Chinese medical specialists who work with interpreters.

Another oriental medical center to open up in recent years is the Naran Tibetan Medical Center. The medical practitioners here are Russians from Lake Baikal. Svetlana Choijinimayeva, director of the center, claims that acupuncture came to Russia via Mongolia and that it settled by Lake Baikal along with Buddhist communities in the 17th century. Acupuncture took off formerly in western Russia in the 1950s, when 26 Russian medical professors, lecturers and students went to China to study it and brought their new knowledge back with them to Russia. One of those students - Nina Osipova, now in her 90s - is still practicing and has worked at the Federal Center of Traditional Methods of Diagnostics and Treatment since 1976, when it was founded.

Professor Lev Agasarev, a colleague of Osipova's from the Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy, says that acupuncture is actively practiced at several Moscow polyclinics and at hospital Nos. 11 and 23. He says that Russian acupuncture is above all, a "reflexive method." For acupuncturists, medicine is holistic; if a certain part of your body is sick, you should never look just at that part, but at the whole body to find the cause. For the Chinese, acupuncture has a 5,000-year history and has its origins in Taoist philosophy. Such traditional acupuncture seeks to rebalance the ch'i (flow of energy) that is supposed to run along a series of pathways called meridians in our bodies.
Stimulating acupuncture points regulates energy flow in the meridians. We have hundreds of acupuncture points all over our bodies and, according to Wu Ping, the highest concentration is in our ears. Perhaps that's why the ear is such a sensitive erogenous zone.

Importantly, Chinese acupuncturists also believe in the importance of balancing our yin, which is passive, weak, female and dark, and yang, which is strong, active, male and light. Yin and yang are constantly interacting, and the predominance of either is thought to cause certain illnesses.
Safety warning: Please check that your acupuncturist is qualified and has a license to practice!