Engaging Vitality
Episode 20 mit Dr. Anne Hardy und Dan Bensky
The podcast features Dan Bensky discussing Engaging Vitality, a blend of osteopathy and East Asian medicine. He explains core concepts like Wuwei—sensing without searching—and the importance of unbiased palpation to identify key dysfunctions before interpretation.
Engaging Vitality is a combination of East Asian Medicine with mostly palpatory tools from osteopathy. Dan Bensky who has degrees in both disciplines, began to develop this kind of embodied medicine in the 1980s and in the 1990’s. He started to work on it with Chip Chace. Joined by Marguerite Dinkins in the 2000’s it has been taught as “Engaging Vitality” since 2010.
In the podcast, Dan Bensky explains some of the core concepts of Engaging Vitality. One important attitude is to be in a Wuwei state of mind. This means: paying attention in a loosely focused way instead of looking for things. Separating sensation from interpretation. “You want to feel what’s there. Not what’s there in response to you”, says Dan.
To get the most out of Engaging Vitality, Dan recommends to do the palpatory exam before knowing anything about the patient. His aim is to find the area of the body that is not working well and has the biggest impact on the rest of the body. Thinking and trying to make sense of what you have noticed is the second step. Dan has experienced that even if in some cases he didn’t understand what was going on, he did his treatment and could later see why it had worked.
Dan says: “When I palpate or talk to people and find that my original idea was wrong, I’m very happy because it means I’m paying attention. Then I can correct myself.”
At the TCM Kongress Rothenburg, Dan Bensky and his team will give a hands-on class on Engaging Vitality on Saturday, May 31st 2025.
https://www.tcm-kongress.de/de/programm/engaging-vitality.htm
Dan Bensky will also give a workshop on the Shang Han Lun on Wednesday, May 28th 2025.
Dr. Dan Bensky
Dan Bensky has studied Chinese Medicine as well as Osteopathy. He has earned a doctoral degree in both disciplines. He has a Masters in Classical Chinese and earned a Doctorate in the Discussion of Cold Damage.
In addition to teaching for both professions, Dan has been working on utilizing the connections between osteopathy and East Asian medicine for over thirty years. He is the founder of the Seattle Institute of Oriental Medicine and a medical editor at Eastland Press.
His books on Chinese Herbal Medicine are among the best-known works of traditional Chinese medicine worldwide.
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