A Life So Far Away

Some patients regard acupuncture needle pricks as pain. In China, a doctor would be thought of as incompetent if the needles did not cause a certain degree of discomfort. The fact that this discipline has survived thousand of years, through so much change and so many upheavals is regarded by many as proof of its efficacy. The Chinese method of healing is more than 2,000 years old, and, like the rest of China’s history, meticulously recorded; its discoveries, methodology and application being handed from generation, making Chinese medicine today the sum total of the accumulated experiences of past masters of the art. The earliest medical classic in China, now extant, is the Huangdi Neijing, or Canon of Medicine, dating back to 500 – 300 B.C. It states the Chinese belief that imbalances in the body’s circulatory system are the cause of all diseases. The body says Chinese tradition, is mapped by meridian lines (or channels) which carry energy and are connected to 1000 pressure p...

Chinese doctors have a set of diagnostic rules to detect the various types of pain. An ache at the back of the head is usually characteristic of stagnation in the channels governing the urinary bladder and top of the liver. Chinese techniques, acupuncture in particular, is especially suitable for most kinds of sharp or acute pain. Relief is often instantaneous and permanent. Chronic pain usually takes some time to respond to treatment. To understand the principles of Chinese medicine, it is essential to grasp the essence of Chinese philosophy and its central concepts of yin and yang forces in nature, at once opposing yet independent – male and female, negative and positive, call them what you like. Every object or phenomenon in the universe is compounded of these two aspects. The Chinese masters describe a complex law of the unity of opposites that operates between yin and yang. If the masculine force, yang, embodies fire and all that is bright, hot, upwardly mobile, and a...

Massage plays an important role in treatment for maladies as varied as fractures and arthritis. Massage seems to have been commonly used even in the Sui and Tang dynasties (158 – 907 BC). During the Ming dynasty, it was considered one of the 13 major branches of Chinese medicine, and its numerous therapeutic qualities were widely enumerated in many texts. According to Chinese records, massage was introduced to the West as a method of healing only about 1,000 years ago. Cupping and bleeding are other widely-used procedures. Cupping uses vacuum suction to activate the functions of the organs, while those with excess yang are made to bleed with a seven-star needle to restore balance. The doctor also may suggest changes in the food the patient eats and even the place he lives in. Summer diseases are treated in winter and vice versa. Once the balance is restored the patient is fully cured, but future imbalances may call for a fresh round of treatment. How much of a scientific b...