Are you familiar with acupuncture treatment in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)? Acupuncture have known and accepted more to Canadians as one of the effective therapeutic modalities people can choose for treating certain symptoms and diseases. People now recognize that acupuncture is good for pain, insomnia, emotional disturbances, headaches and migraines, tinnitus and etc. Generally speaking acupuncture improves the body’s functions and promotes the natural self-healing process by stimulating specific points called acu-points. The most common method used to stimulate acu-points is the insertion of fine, sterile needles into the skin with pressure, heat, or electrical stimulation to enhance the effects. Oh, it’s easy to say. But do you really know why it should work by putting needles into our body?
Here in this article, I would like to bring up the concept of <Meridian Qi> to give you a clue of how acupuncture treatment can make a difference. To do that I have to start with the general energy, called Qi. Qi and blood in TCM are the substances that constantly flow, store, are created and destroyed inside of our body, and if one of the substances is depleted, a person eventually die. Under the TCM prospective, Qi exists in many different forms in our body; Yuan Qi, pectoral Qi, food Qi, air Qi, defensive Qi, meridian Qi, etc., depending on their functions and locations where they are in charge of. Meridian Qi, in particular, flows along the 14 regular meridians (pathways) that run throughout the whole body for 24/7 and keep our body balanced of Yin and Yang and prevent our body from having illness or dysfunction. Acupuncture is one of the ways to regulate, alternate, promote and reduce the meridian Qi, and that’s why it can have its own effectiveness in treating certain symptoms and diseases. You may have heard about a line saying, “Where there is blockage, there is pain”. This exactly refers to meridian Qi. For example, the headaches can be differentiated by their locations of pain – YangMing (frontal) headache, JueYin (Vertex) headache, ShaoYang (temporal) headache and TaiYang (occipital) headache. These names are in accordance with the location of meridians, and headache can occur when there is blockage or imbalance of Qi in the affected meridian. So, by putting needles on the affected meridians, they open the stuck energy and regulate the free flow of Qi through the meridians. Also, one would be wondering why an acupuncturist puts needles at the end of extremities (hands and feet), where it’s nothing to do with the problem itself. Our extremities have 5 important points at the end of each meridian which are used together with local and adjacent points to open, regulate and boost the energy of affected meridians.
Meridian Qi is a very important concept in acupuncture treatment. If you can research on the pathways of meridians on Google, you would have better understanding how an acupuncturist selects the points and how they set a goal of each treatment. I personally try to explain on each point more often to the patients. That’s because I believe if a patient has a better understanding about the treatment, it would give positive effects on the treatment itself because the patient can unconsciously increase the volume of Meridian Qi into the targeted area from their understanding.