This month's featured practitioner
- Bok H. Chen
Tonume's newest feature online is a fun Question and Answer with one of our practitioners/staff.
This month we feature our Acupuncturis, Bok Chen.
Q: What outdoor activities does your family enjoy?
A: My family loves swimming and fishing. There are lots of therapeutic benefits to swimming, while
fishing brings us a different kind of fun in nature while calming our minds. In summer, we can enjoy
outdoor sunshine swimming in pubic pools such as the one in South Arm Outdoor Pool of Richmond and the
Central Park Swimming Pool of Burnaby. Year round we can swim in the pools located in our community
centers.
Q: What are your favorite family activities?
A: During our family time I enjoy cooking, especially making Chinese soup with my kids.
We start with purchasing fresh ingredients from the market, cleaning, organizing and
preparing the soup. All steps are full of learning and joy. For my kids through
this process, they are having fun while learning about the food we eat and gaining
knowledge...more thanb which can be obtained from any cook book.
Q: What is your favorite restaurant on The Drive?
A: On Commercial Drive, eating is a real multicultural event. It shows with a picture of East meets West. There are Chinese Szechuan style, Japanese,
Mediterranean, Mexican etc. For me, the are two favorite options (East and West): Bandidas - Mexican. Cozy environment, fruitful & healthy foods while being affordable. Located half block south of Tonume. And Kishimoto - Japanese. Fusion style of Sushi foods, good for Sushi fans. Located 6 blocks north
from Tonume.
Q: What got you interested in becoming a TCM/Acupuncturist?
A. When I studied Medicine in China, I used to suffer from Chronic Bronchitis with wheezing during the night for more than 4 months while being prescribed western medications for a long term without much symptomatic relief. After recieving a second opinion from my Traditional Chinese Medicine teachers followed by a course of Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture treatments for 2 months, amazingly all the symptoms subsided without any
recurrence!
Q: What is the most fascinating results you've had in a treatment?
A: In my clinical experience, a headache is not merely pain in the head... Catching a cold,or neck and shoulder myofascial injury or even allergic sinusitis may all be the cause. By differentiating various descriptions of the pain and location of the pain in the head, acupuncture treatment regimes can
be generated and 3 clinical cases of headaches were relieved immediately after the acupuncture treatments.
Q: Is there an embarrassing picture/story that you would like to share with us?
A: On one occasion when I enjoyed making soup with my family, and both kids kept on drinking the broth when sipping their soup. One of the them
expressed, ‘Daddy, it’s too salty!’ I guessed I may have added too much salt... From then on we paid more attention to seasoning the soup to perfection
and my family now always think that it is "yummy")
