What is Chinese Medicine?

Chinese Medicine is the oldest known health care system in practice, having been practiced continuously in China for 5000 years. Today one quarter of the world’s population utilizes this medicine. Chinese Medicine seems new to this country because it only arrived here in the 1970’s. It is a completely refined, coherent, understandable and usable science with procedures and protocols based on centuries of observation of how the body functions. The goal of Chinese Medicine is simply to restore balance. Chinese Medicine treats an individual’s own imbalances that manifest into certain dysfunctions. Illness is seen as an imbalance between internal influences such as diet, exercise, rest, and emotions: and external factors such as weather, trauma, microbes or poisons. Health is a state of being in balance in body, mind and spirit. Chinese Medicine in its entirety encompasses acupuncture, moxibustion, herbs, cupping, dietary therapy, tui-na, the Chinese exercise arts, tai chi and qigong and the martial art of kung fu.

What is Acupuncture?

There are Energetic pathways, or channels, or “meridians” that permeate the entire body. These pathways have been identified and utilized for centuries. Recent studies in France by Drs. Darras and De Vernejoul have revealed the existence of these pathways using irrefutable techniques of modern western science. These pathways are separate from and independent of the nerves, blood vessels or lymphatic channels. There is a direct communication between these pathways and the associated internal organs and structures. Acupuncture is the insertion of sterile, fine gauge needles that stimulate the body’s intrinsic healing abilities by activating or influencing specific points on these energetic channels, along the pathway of its circulation. Each acupuncture point is like a tunnel, or access route, to the deeper circulatory channels within. It is a point on the body that influences the energetics back towards health.

How does Acupuncture Work?

The points and procedures of the acupuncture prescription (treatment) are chosen to re-balance the body and give it the momentum to maintain balance. An easier concept to grasp is that Chinese Medicine likens the human body to a highly complex electrical circuit. Electricity is energy that we can’t see, but we know it exists. Like an electrical circuit that must be kept in good working order to function effectively, our energetic circuit must not break down or the result is illness. Chinese Medicine assumes that health is achieved by maintaining the body in a “balanced state” and that pathology is due to an internal imbalance called Yin and Yang. This imbalance leads to blockage in the flow of Qi (pronounced “Chee”, meaning vital Energy). Chinese Medicine theorizes that it is essential for Qi, as well as blood to circulate in a continuous and unobstructed manner for good health of the mind and body.

• NCCAOM National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine
• NCALB North Carolina Acupuncture Licensing Board
• NADA National Acupuncture Detoxification Association
• Acupuncturists Without Borders
• CCAOM Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine
• Jung Tao School of Classical Chinese Medicine