Kunphen Tibetan Medical Center
During my early years in Nepal in the 1980s, while teaching English to young Tibetan monks and living in their monastery, I often heard remarkable stories of a Tibetan Medicine doctor named Dr. Amchi Kunsang Pendok who was renowned for his miraculous pulse reading and ability to correctly diagnose illnesses and thereby successfully prescribe herbs for their cure. I often tagged along with sick monks, some seriously ill, and had the good fortune to witness first hand his great compassion and skill as a physician. Indeed he surely was blessed by Medicine Buddha himself.
I had good health at the time and never needed treatment from the renowned Dr. Amchi Kunsang Pendok. But, as we grow old, our parts wear out, and I developed a serious arrhythmia around the year 2005, when I was fifty-nine years old. I hadn’t lived in Nepal for over a decade, but visited every other year. Western medicine wasn’t helping my arrhythmia, and I decided to seek out a Tibetan Medicine doctor. I regretted when I heard the renowned Dr. Amchi Kunsang Pendok I had known was no longer alive, But, upon inquiry I found out that the clinic he established was still run by the family and decided to visit.
I was treated by the Master’s daughter, Dr. Tashi Pedon in 2008. I was not having my periodic arrhythmic episode when I visited her, and decided not to tell her about my arrhythmia to see whether or not she would detect a problem through her pulse diagnosis, something Western doctors were unable to do even with an echocardiogram. Dr. Tashi Pedon detected the problem immediately, however. I was pleased, though not surprised, given her heritage.
Dr. Tashi Pedon told me that it would be a slow process of several years to reverse the condition. She prescribed herbs for me to take thee times a day. Four Western cardiologists told me my condition would never get better and that I would eventually slip into a permanent arrhythmia, rather than the bi-weekly, twenty to thirty hour episodes I was accustomed to. Intuitively, however, I felt I could heal myself with herbs and was determined to do so.
Now, five years have passed and my arrhythmia is ninety-percent better. My episodes are extremely mild and less frequent. I can thank two people for that: One: Dr. Tashi Pedon for her skill and compassion and sympathy for her patients, and two: myself, for taking the herbs prescribed in an extremely disciplined way, three times a day, for several years, never missing a day. Consistency is essential for herbal medicine, as it is for most medicine. This is especially true for herbs which tend to rebuild our organs gradually over a long period of time.
My story is not an unusual one, I could go on with many first hand examples, my daughter Rachel’s included, but I hope I have said enough to encourage those of you who are suffering from illness to go to the Kunphen Clinic in Kathmadu, and seek treatment in this ancient traditional way of Tibetan Herbal Medicine and pulse diagnosis.
Good Health to All, Richard Josephson
Maui, Hawaii, USA
