Health Care-Dr. Bee Lo-January 29, 2002

BLO103, Introduction, Dr. Bee Lo, January 29, 2002, Transcribed by Matt
 
BL: How you apply the knowledge that we will share today will be important to you in different levels. Some of you might want to go more and study more about it. Some of you might become physician or health care providers in the future you might want to learn about Hmong culture. If you want to serve the Hmong culture, some of you might not want to know anything more after this section.
One thing I want to get out in front to all of you before you we start this journey together about learning about one another or you learn about my culture is that in life there is many different perspectives. We can look at a situation in a positive or negative way and how we look at what change or view at life and what we talk about about today is about the Hmong people and the Hmong culture. It's very important what I'm going to teach you today or what we are going to learn from one on other its very important that its going to be use in a positive way including the viewers students that are look from other schools that the info I give today will be used in a positive way can you all promise me that. The reason I say that is because some kids are harder than others and sometimes we can use we get in a positive way and turn it and stab people into the back in a negative way and I wont want that to happen.
BL:To be part of your education I'm to believe in education. I believe that you can never stop learning every day every minute of life. We're always learning and learning about other people and other cultures. It's very important living in America knowing that America is made from many many different nationality and cultures and people which you will learn thou through your life time. If not in Longfellow, at Central and university and so on community so I'm really glad to be a part of and to be here to speak to you now.
I use to go to this school back in '82 Longfellow and I was the only Hmong here and so I know what it its like to be in a different culture and all of the rest were caucasian students and so I had to do lot of adjustments and learn lot our cultures and your people. If you have any question we could just talk about that to.
BL:What I want you to know is when you learn about a new subject or new people or a new culture you almost have to step out of your comfort zone which is for most of you America culture America tradition and put yourself into another person's zone or an other cultures just liken going to McDonald's. It's very easy for all of because you know just what to order and what to get but if Chinese restaurant, you get a little bit nervous. You don't know what to order or what's good whether you're going to like the food or not. That's what I mean if you can understand that so I'm asking you to step out of the comfort zone into a new zone about the Hmong people.
The Hmong culture today and by doing that you'll get some stress and you get discomfort. I may be angry, happy, mad depends on what we talk about and what I'm going to tell you about some of these things. Some of these things my songs are weird scary things you might not have heard of, however when you are in the position of learning you learn everything bad or good then you decide which one you like to take. I'm going to ask you to be open minded to that. I had to do that when I learned about your culture in America. There are good of things about American culture. There are bad things about it. There are good kids, bad kids that I had to deal through out my growing time in middle school and high school, too. And you're doing that too.

BLO203,Herbalism and Spiritualism,Dr. Bee Lo,January 29, 2002, Transcribed by Ryan and Jake
 
BL:When we talk about health; many cultures have their own way of looking at disease and illness and how to treat them. If you look back in your own answers, there's culture way back in the 15, 17, 18 hundreds. You don't go to the hospital like you do today when you get sick you don't get antibiotics and do surgery. It was very different at that time.

BL:Many of the healing systems at that time for your culture and your background ancestors are very similar to the Hmong. They use herbs, they use massage, they use food, diet, exercise and even spiritual medicine. Palm reading all kinds of other spiritual medicine. It's just that we have gotten so sophisticated with scientific research and science in general that we are moving more towards things that we can see can identify can reproduce. So we're moving to drugs, antibiotics and lab tests and so on that we started dropping some other old tradition healing away. Many many Americans are into that. However, there's always a small group of American people that are still using all this natural, old remedies and methods. Many of you don't know that. As a physician, I am trained in both ways western medicine and eastern medicine and I study herbs, massage, chiropractic, drugs, antibiotics, surgery all of that. So I know, that they do exist in this country in this very town LaCrosse. All across United States.
 
BL:And so today we have to talk about the Hmong healing methods. The Hmong people have many many healing methods. The Hmong people are very diversified in their own healing ways. They use other people and other cultures healing methods. The Hmong people use antibiotics, just like you do, they use drugs just like you do, they us surgery when necessary, just like you do. However these are methods that the Hmong people would do as a last recourse. They are more common with spiritual medicine, such as should calling, herbal medicine, which we will be talking about today, food medicine, body medicine or physical medicine like massage and chiropractic, acupuncture and even as deep as faith believing and words like counseling and even bad thinking. That if you think bad thought eventually those thoughts will invade you and make you sick or will come true and so the Hmong people have many many ways of diagnosing understanding look at health and illness and disease. And so for me to go into those in detail would be very difficult at this level with you but we'll talk as much as we can on the surface basic understanding I won't know anything in detail anyway their want to complicate for, for me I know enough to talk about it and to use.
 
BL:Today some of the herbal medicines are brought to show you. This is a bark or branch of from trees these herbal medicine and these are from Laos. To the Hmong herbalist the herbal medicine in this country are different from the one in Laos. Because they know the one in Laos well and they have experience of using them from year they still use a lot of the natural medicine from Laos. And these are information, treatments, methods that are being passed to them from generation to generation. So this is a bark of trees. They're another form and this one here they can just cook it, boil it in water like tea and they drink the tea they do that with this. For ashes and pains and so on.
 
BL:This one here its another type of tree, different type of tree and it's almost like a bush. And they crush them; they cut them and dry them. They put them in bags and they sell them like this and they also use them very similar in the way they boil them in water and they drink the herb or they soak them in alcohol in the medicinal way or they cook them in food and they eat them. This is raw medicine not like drugs in the nice tiny pill.
 
BL:Another form of herbal medicine again would be roots of bamboo sticks branches from other trees all mixed together. This is a compound formula with different kinds of trees coming together different kinds of herbs. They even have a rock in here. This formula is used for epilepsy disorder and is they do combine them there very knowledgeable in what they do. This different form what I have here is knives. They have been colored in red and black. These are used mainly for spiritual burrier block way spiritual evil that cause illness.
 
BL:Now let me elaborate a little bit for you. Because to many of you this is very foreign. The Hmong people, most of them, a lot of them live in the jungle. You probably have read about it. In the mountain among animals, wild animals, and spirits. In every culture vary nationality including yours there are stories about ghosts stories, spirits, devils, Saturn, god. Well the Hmong have that too. And I want you to know hat in your culture spirits are mainly just talking, like telling Halloween things like that that you don't really have actual experience with that. You don't really know what spirits are all about. Besides just talking and stories and so on and scary movies but to the Hmong people spirits are very real. Very, very real.
 
BL:Spirits are living amongst us. All around us you cant see them but they can see us. And low do they know that they have many many many thousands of experience with spirets. They can see them, they can talk to them, special language, special positions you are to the spirits. We are going to talk about shamanism today. The shaman are the one to talk to the spirits. And they are very real, they are not joking around.

BL:It's almost like if I could bring you to a level it's like playing beetle game. Where you wear one of those helmets and your right in thebeetle game. You play along with them if you understand it and you tone it itÆs almost like your right there. And beetle game is very real to all of you. It's real games. But to adults or other older folks that have never played beetle game is like nothing. Because we don't know anything about beetle games we can have never played them before we don't care we just think. It's all a game.
 
BL:Spiritual medicine is just like that for you young people and we too. Cause we are not in the game, playing the spiritual game we don't know what it's like but the Shaman and the people that do spiritual healing they're right in the game with the video game and they're playing with that. The difference is that of course more in the video game it is very real and it involve life and death and it involve healing and changing things where video game it only a game, you turn it off its over so you get beat but you didn't beat the game. Things like that but spiritual life, it's alive it's very different.