Kaz Tateishi

During my formative years of becoming a physical education teacher, I always had a strong desire to promote health preservation and illness prevention. During and after completing my studies at the UBC, I worked in many educational, institutional and community settings with under-privileged and often troubled teenagers and that was when I recognized an increasing need to reach out to them by addressing their social and emotional needs through multi-dimensional approaches. Later on, when I was going through my own emotionally difficult times, I sought an unconventional medical treatment to help me to cope with stress. This was when I met Gerard Tan, a local acupuncturist who specializes in caring for people with cancer. His Japanese style of acupuncture treatment with Traditional Chinese Medicine principles had a profound effect on my sense of well-being by improving my sleep quality and my energy levels within a very short time. Spurred on by this experience and fuelled by my desire to assist people with various health problems, I decided to study Traditional Chinese Medicine, an ancient scientific and philosophical system that is continuously developing and growing. Here, I learned to embrace holistic ways of understanding the relationship between the human body and all the potential environmental factors. I realized that concepts of proactive and preventative treatment of disease, with an emphasis on health preservation, have become more valued and implemented than ever before. I believe, as TCM maintains, that the human body, like the world, is an integral whole, in that its constituent parts are inseparable in structure and connected with, and conditioned by one another, as well as by nature and our surrounding environment. In the same way that our world is affected by various environmental and socio-political issues, our bodies are constantly subjected to hardships. Life is not an easy journey, and it can become particularly overwhelming for us when we also have to deal with pain and illness. I strongly believe in the human body’s natural ability to prevail against any odds and I am dedicated to supporting and strengthening it ​ ​ ​