Page 6 RAIN May/June 1984 The lung channel, as depicted in the Lei Ching of 1624, has 11 points on each side of ^ the body. FROM; Celestial Lancets % £? A.-it Acupuncture: Balancing the Patterns by Tanya Kucak The concept of health, the value of traditional wisdom, and the theme of the interrelationships between things and ideas are three perspectives that surface again and again in RAIN. These three perspectives are also central to Chinese medicine. This article presents an overview of acupuncture, a system of medicine that is ofparticular interest because it is applicable to two pressing concerns in our increasingly polluted and stressful world: It serves as preventive medicine, and it can successfully treat chronic illnesses. There are correlations between the way we treat our bodies and the way we treat our planet. A system of medical treatment that was already 2000 years old when modern science was born, acupuncture consists of inserting fine needles at specific points on the body to treat various illnesses and malfunctions. Moxibustion, or moxa, a closely related therapy, uses the radiant heat from burning the herb Artemisia vulgaris (common mugwort), rather than needles, at the points. Moxa is often used in conjunction with needles on the same point at the same time. The oldest references to acupuncture occur around 600-700 B.C. By 100 B.C., acupuncture and moxibustion were in universal use throughout China. The development of the entire system was essentially complete by 300 A.D., according to Lu and Needham in Celestial Lancets (see access). Nevertheless, Chinese medicine is part of a living tradition; indeed, acupuncture analgesia was discovered just two decades ago, and doctors have used it in place of drug-induced anaesthesia for major surgery. Additionally, hundreds of new points have been discovered in the past 50 years, particularly on the ear. Acupuncture is part of a holistic tradition, and its philosophy is "medieval, albeit subtle and sophisticated": Its practitioners "never lost sight of the psychospiritual organism as a whole, and its grand design was the restoration of natural harmony," write Lu and Needham. In this sense, acupuncture takes a sort of ecological approach to health, wherein everything is in balance—dynamic equilibrium—and a break in the pattern has repercussions for the entire system. Disease is the pattern that disconnects. In ancient China the work of the physician was to maintain health rather than to treat sickness. Since signs of imbalance preceded any onset of symptoms, the physician could find, and correct, disharmonies and imbalances in the patient before they became manifest as disease. The practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine can detect potential problems with far more precision, and far sooner, than modern instruments can. In a similar vein, Felix Mann (see access) writes, "Many patients who have been treated by acupuncture notice a considerable improvement in their general health. This is because acupuncture can correct those minor disturbances in health which are undetected by other methods of diagnosis, and which if they remained untreated could in later years easily turn into a serious overt and easily recognized disease. The sensitivity of Chinese pulse diagnosis ... makes it possible to detect minor disturbances, enabling immediate treatment to be given
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