Acupuncture Is Practical Medicine

Healing the body is both a noble aim, and for many people, a practical necessity. Caring for the body over the course of a lifetime is a responsibility, and indeed it is a noble aim to try to carry out this responsibility to the best of one’s ability. Each of us has the task, beginning in childhood and continuing through to the end of our life, of coming to our own understanding of just how much attention needs to be devoted to caring for the body so that it functions well in life. 

Some people invest a great deal of time and energy to the maintenance of their physical health - rigidly keeping to a perfect diet, exercising for hours a day, undergoing purifying cleanses, taking many kinds of supplements - and perhaps for such people the body is like a jewel that that needs to be polished regularly. Other people seem to attend to the body just enough to get by, and perhaps for them the body is more like a servant or slave who should require as little of one’s attention as possible.

The approach to physical health within the Acupuncture and Chinese medical tradition is  a kind of ‘middle way’ between these two extremes. While Westerners who hear talk of Qi, Yin and Yang might have the impression that acupuncturists relate to the body in an esoteric or other worldly manner, the fact is that this approach to medicine is grounded in the practical considerations and Earthly demands of ordinary life. It is neither interested in creating super-humans nor in promoting ideological extremes about the body and physical health. 

From a Chinese medical point of view, physical health could be boiled down to just a few simple and practical considerations:

● Do I have enough energy to fulfill my daily work and family responsibilities? 

● Is the food I eat being absorbed and eliminated properly? 

● Is sleep restorative? 

● Is there anything in the body - pain, discomfort, illness or injury - that is interfering with my ability to appreciate and take pleasure in ordinary life?

While physical health alone is of course not sufficient to leading a happy and fulfilled life, a healthy and stable body can serve as a support for maintaining emotional and psychological health. A chronically unhealthy body can destabilize a person’s mental health, and recovery from a physical illness can bring hope and new energy to one struggling with emotional and psychological difficulties. 

Acupuncture: Medicine Without All The Answers

The Intention of this Blog is to explore questions and topics that should be of interest to most of us about healing and living in this world with a physical body. My feeling is that acupuncture can serve as a great bridge between the practical and the esoteric, being both a most useful and versatile physical therapy, as well as a storehouse of ancient knowledge about the subtle workings of the body and its relation to the larger cosmos. 

Acupuncture works despite the fact that we don't have a full understanding of its mechanism. Of course, it's not acupuncture but the body itself that is a great mystery. And being a great mystery, the body should be approached - even by doctors - with deference and wonder. One way in which we often show disregard for this great mystery is by imposing our ideas and answers upon it. We demand things of the body based on a limited knowledge of its workings, without really understanding its needs or its limits. We have difficulty seeing and understanding things from the body's point of view, and this can lead to illness and injury. 

My feeing is that acupuncture is so effective - and safe - because it doesn't make demands or impose ideas on the body. The needles do not in themselves heal, but rather indicate to the body's healing control center that some action needs to be taken. The needles provoke a healing response from the brain, like a request coming from outside for the body's own intelligence to awaken and respond to a need it somehow did not recognize. The needles, and the particular form of stimulation they give, seem to speak in a language that the body understands. 

My hope is that these writings will  provoke thought and inspire people who have not yet explored the vast world of acupuncture as a healing therapy to give it a try. I see acupuncture as a hidden gem in these dark medical times - a low cost and versatile therapy without side effects. Much is to be learned about the body from delving deeper into the healing mechanism of acupuncture, and the purpose of this blog is to serve as a forum for such a study.