Acupuncture is one of the oldest treatment principles in the world. It developed separately in different cultures (shiatsu was the Japanese version) and modifications of it have been introduced in modern times — acupressure, reflexology, zone therapy, metamorphic technique. It takes many years of study and practice to become proficient and safe in traditional acupuncture but its younger modifications have produced safe, simple self-help tricks.
Whereas the system of medicine now familiar in Europe and America emphasises the material substance and structure of the body, in China the emphasis was always on the flow of life energy through and within it (Pamphlet C1). This produces a completely different understanding of how your body works without in any way denying the validity of Western knowledge — each system simply sets the other in a new perspective.
A Western doctor is quite content to diagnose what is materially wrong in your body and correct it with chemical medicines or surgery but he seldom asks himself why you became ill or how to prevent a relapse. Faced with the same patient, a traditional Chinese doctor will be much more concerned with these questions and will look for a weakness or distortion of the flow of your vital energy which has allowed the disease process to develop. His treatment is then directed at strengthening and balancing the energy flow to invigorate your recovery effort and repair the original weakness.
The Chinese doctor is working on your blueprint, at the level of the causes of things (Pamphlet C1). The Western doctor confines his attention to the physical effects of these causes. It will be marvellous when we finally succeed in integrating these approaches fully, as we obviously should.
The obstacle to this is that acupuncture, like any other medical system that deals in blueprints, is hard to research scientifically. The same diseases in different individuals may call for different treatments and the objectives of treatment may be different too. There is no way to design a trial based on objective physical findings that can cope with this, however obvious and impressive the results of treatment may seem to the participants in the trial.
However, some problems such as anaesthesia and pain relief are sufficiently unambiguous for trials to be possible, and these have demonstrated an impressive benefit from acupuncture. These scientific obstacles melt away if you are prepared to judge the medical tradition from which acupuncture comes entirely on its merits in your own experience. The best way to do this is to find a practitioner and consult him. It does not matter if you have nothing wrong with you because the entire system of Chinese medicine is based on keeping you healthy. The practitioner will want to know a lot about you as a person. He will make direct observations of you such as your manner, mood and bodily physique, in the way any good doctor would and employ a series of examinations based on pulse readings, your responses to diagnostic acupuncture and moxibustion (assessing the effect on you of warmth from a smouldering pellet of the herb moxa).
His findings help him to identify your basic nature within a wonderfully interlocking and comprehensive system of natural rhythms and cycles that are the basis of Chinese medical thinking - and they make good common sense too! Your therapist can then set about re-balancing your energy flow, soothing away distortions and tensions so that you are free to live a full life.
The custom in China is to visit the doctor at the beginning of each season, to be rebalanced for the new conditions it brings. That is the service for which you pay him. In the old tradition your doctor would then take responsibility for putting you right if you became ill meanwhile. In the West we are a long way from achieving anything remotely comparable.
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