Energetic Healing featuring writings and courses available from Arnie Lade Somatoenergetics Articles Publications Workshops Contact Bio Today I'm going to talk a little bit about some material from my new book, Energetic Healing: Embracing the Life Force by Lotus press. Specifically I would like to address the issue of how acupuncture arose and the uniqueness of the system that was developed in China. Acupuncture is an ancient system of healing that probably most of you identify with Chinese medicine or culture. Indeed it's been around for a long time in Asia, and China in particular. As far as we know acupuncture has existed for about three-and-a-half thousand years, in China. However, independent systems of acupuncture have arisen outside of China. For example in South Asia on the island nation of Sri Lanka there is a unique form of acupuncture which has been in use for more than two-and-a-half thousand years. According to the ancient Chinese text, The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, written around 500 BC, acupuncture first appeared in the East, which scholars assume refers to the region of the Korean peninsula. Historical records tell us that the first types of needle were probably made out of stone or splinters of wood or perhaps sharp thorns of trees. The Yellow Emperor's Classic also describes moxibustion, which is a method of cauterization or burning the skin, that first began to be used in the North, what is present day Mongolia. In the ancient times there were in Mongolia many types of cauterization techniques, such as burning the skin with hot irons or with various types of herbs for the purpose of healing. Eventually these two streams, acupuncture and moxibustion, came together as one medical art sometime before The Yellow Emperor's Classic was written. I don't have any precise dates, but we know from writings and artifacts found in ancient tombs in China that there was indeed a system of moxibustion which described meridians, lines of energy that flow through the body, but no acupuncture points. Furthermore, the acupuncture that was practised back then utilized different points upon the body that could be pierced but no mention of the meridians or lines of energy is made. The acupuncture texts referred exclusively to points that appear on the body here and there. The ancient scrolls and illustrations refer to the usage of those individual points without necessarily describing flows of energy within the acupuncture meridians, as we know them today. Nevertheless, somehow these two systems, acupuncture and moxibustion, came together before The Yellow Emperor's Classic was written. As previously mentioned, we also find acupuncture being used in other parts of the world. For example, in Sri Lanka there are written accounts of acupuncture with diagrams that show acupuncture being performed on humans and on animals such as elephants and water buffalo. Indeed to this day you can find people, Mahouts, who work with and train elephants using acupressure points to control the elephant's behaviour. Apparently, elephants can at times become quite temperamental and dangerous when they're upset or angry. Acupuncture and acupressure are both used by the mahouts to calm and control the elephant's behaviour! Acupuncture can also be found in other parts of the world. A while back I lived in South America, in Chile for a couple of years. Down there an indigenous people, the Mapuches, had their own system of acupuncture. The women healers, called Machis, used long and thin thorns of a certain tree that could pierce the skin and treat different diseases. They clearly understood the uses of the individual points to treat illness. Interestingly, this healing art was a female tradition that was passed orally down through a family line. Unfortunately, this tradition has all but been lost as far as I know. They didn't have a written language to preserve this knowledge and like so many other traditions it has disappeared. In Peru, however, there are still some living traditions that use stones to massage the energy points of the body. The origin of the use of stones in healing is very old and you can see evidence of acupuncture in pre-Incan cultures. For example, there are some amazing rock carvings found near and preserved in a museum in the town of Ica, Peru. It is called the Stone Library of Ica, where 20,000 stones are now housed that were uncovered a few decades back in a river bed near the village. These stones reveal a lot of fantastic things. They clearly show acupuncture for cesarean delivery and other forms of surgery such as cranial and heart surgery. Perhaps these ancients used acupuncture for the same reason as we use acupuncture in surgery today, as an analgesic for pain. A Brazilian friend of mine, who has done a lot of work with Amazonian Indians, insists that he has seen acupuncture, using sharp thorns, being applied by healers in remote parts of the forest. So the idea of piercing or rubbing specific points on the body is something that is not unique to one culture. People, perhaps intuitively, have known that there is a relationship or connection between the body's surface and what is inside of us. Healers have found links between points and the alleviation of disease and imbalance. I truly believe humanity has always known this wisdom. Today modern science agrees that acupuncture has sound medical abilities despite our lack of ability to explain how it works. It works and works amazingly well in many cases. There have been many theories put forth to try to explain the mechanism of acupuncture, but nobody has really explained it in a convincing and foolproof manner. For example, a number of neurological explanations have been put forth, but such explanations fail to explain how very small stimulation on, let's say, a point in a foot, can create all sorts of systemic effects from changes in the blood circulation, endocrine functions and so forth. Not long ago, Discover Magazine featured some interesting research that showed the effects on vision by acupuncture stimulation to points in the foot. The researcher used real-time fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging), which is an imaging system where you can watch the energy uptake in the brain (thus brain activity). First, the researcher shone a bright light into the subject's eyes and then he measured the response of the visual cortex in the occipital lobe or back of the brain. Naturally, he found that if you shine bright light in somebody's eye the visual cortex lights up and when you turn off the light that part of the brain becomes quiet again. No surprise there. Then he got a colleague, an acupuncturist, to stimulate an acupuncture point in the foot with a needle. According to Chinese Medicine this point was related to the eyes, it treated all types of eye disorders, and once again the same thing occurred, the visual cortex was stimulated. Then other points were used on the foot that had no direct or known effect on the eyes and nothing happened. Only the points classically linked to the eyes and vision had this effect. We currently do not have a scientific model to explain what is occurring. Neurologically, we know very little about the nervous system and how such a stimulation can create such a precise effect within such a diffuse system. Like I said just a few moments ago acupuncture not only stimulates the nervous system, but it stimulates other mechanisms and structures. Scientists have done research on rabbits, for example, needling the poor rabbit's leg and finding that you can create a vaso-dilation or vaso-constriction of the blood vessels simply by changing the quality and amount of stimulus. These changes were measured in the rabbit's ears by enhanced optic magnification. Thus the same point manipulated in differing ways can produce opposite effects, vaso-constriction, a closing down of the blood vessels in the ear or vaso-dilation, an opening up of the blood vessels. Marvellous, isn't it? This brings me back to what the ancient Chinese discovered. Before the Yellow Emperor's Classic was written the ancient sages and healers had melded together two fundamental ideas; that there exist individual points that can be stimulated by needle or pressure, and there is a system of energy lines or meridians which connect one part of the body with another. These lines are not nerves or blood vessels or any other structure. Rather, they referred to a biological energy, called Qi, that utilizes certain tissues for conduction just as electricity uses wires. Thus long ago in ancient China two separate methods of healing were brought together and made into one. They spoke of precise points with unique therapeutic applications that are found on lines of energy flow which connects the surface with the inside. These meridians also act like antennas to connect us with our environment. They link us inside and outside, a kind of interface. I think this is the brilliance of Chinese acupuncture. No other people developed such a sophisticated system and through its written language developed such a rich body of knowledge and recorded experience. No doubt acupuncture is evolving for it is no longer tied to its primary culture, China, and modern science and medicine will invariably add new dimensions to the way we understand and use it in healing. Nevertheless, I believe that the meridian theory is an important and vital legacy in humanity's search for health and treatment of disease, a legacy that we need to explore in the years to come. From a talk presented at the 1999 Healthy Living Expo ~ Victoria, BC