About Oriental Medicine
Traditional Oriental Medicine is a comprehensive system of health care, of which Acupuncture is a part. It has a continuous clinical tradition over 5,000 years old.
Oriental medicine and acupuncture, works with your natural vital energy, Qi, to help promote health and healing. Viewing people as an extension of nature, and as such we mirror nature’s seasonal cycles. Allowing the seasons to be wonderful examples because their ceaseless cycle reminds us that there is no beginning and no end to Qi energy, only change and transformation.
In turn, the body is regarded as a “landscape,” with all aspects of our being, being mutually dependent on one another and the world around us. This is exemplified by the foundation of the medicine’s philosophy—the relationship between the interdependent energies of yin and yang. As Huang Di, author of the Nei Jing, the original Chinese medical text, explained it:
The law of yin and yang is the natural order of the universe, the foundation of all things, mother of all changes, the root of life and death. In healing, one must grasp the root of the disharmony, which is always subject to the law of yin and yang.
Classical Acupuncture treats the mind, body and spirit, not just the disease by using the body’s natural healing processes to effect relief.
How does it work?
Oriental medicine is based on an energetic model rather than the biochemical model of Western medicine. The ancient Chinese recognized the vital energy behind all life forms and life processes. They called this energy Qi (pronounced “chee”).
In developing an understanding of the prevention and cure of disease, the ancient physicians discovered a system of cyclic energy flowing in the human body along specific pathways called meridians. Each pathway or meridian is associated with a particular physiological system and internal organ.
Illness and disease are considered to arise because of deficiency or imbalance of vital energy in the energetic pathways and their associated physiological systems.
The pathways or meridians of energy communicate with the surface of the body at specific locations called acupuncture points. Each point has a predictable effect upon the vital energy passing through it. Modern science has been able to measure the electrical charge at these points, thus corroborating the locations of the meridians mapped by the ancients.
