Health, Vitality and Balance
Traditional acupuncture works to help maintain your body's equilibrium. Very fine needles are inserted into specific points on the body to regulate the flow of vital energy (known as Qi in Chinese). Qi can become disturbed, depleted or blocked, leading to pain and illness. Traditional acupuncture aims to restore balance and promote physical and emotional harmony.How does it work?
Traditional acupuncture does not treat illness by applying a standardised treatment protocol. The famous Chinese description of methodology statesYi bing tong zhi
Tong bing yi zhi
Different disease, same treatment
Same disease, different treatment
This means that two patients with the same illness will receive two different treatments if their patterns are different. Conversely, two patients with different diseases will receive the same treatment if their patterns are the same. Pattern discrimination is the fundamental basis of traditional acupuncture. This means that treatment is based not just on symptoms, but on the patient's constitution, the relationship between the patient's qi and the illness, and any unusual responses to illness.
In the West, we are used to identifying ourselves by the name of our condition, eg IBS, anxiety, sinusitis. If we only consider the condition, without considering the person who has the condition, this is like failing to see the forest for the trees. This is also why traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture practitioners who have a lot of experience with a particular condition, such as infertility, cancer, sports injuries, do not call themselves specialists, as the word specialist implies a focus on one area to the exclusion of others. Although I have additional training in my particular area of interest which is infertility, the fundamental approach is the same; to look at the whole person and identify patterns of imbalance.
