In my last article,1 I introduced the Taoist concept of the "Gate of All Wonders," the mystical connection between differing realities that might have been the inspiration for China's ancient namesake ("The Middle Land") and is directly related to Chinese medicine's concept of a holistically interconnected universe. Holistic philosophy stresses that all creation is interconnected, comprising one great whole. This concept has become popular in the West, both with the general public and, to a surprising degree, within modern science.
The fact that modern science is now supplementing, if not replacing, the mechanical view of nature with a holistic view is really quite revolutionary. The concept of a mechanistic universe gained prominence with the theories put forth by such great scientists as Newton and Descartes in the 17th and 18th centuries. From that time on, it had been the dominant view of scientists and the general public. Beginning in the early 20th century, however, a new generation of scientists began promoting ideas that seemed closer to Taoist or Zen Buddhist philosophy than the clockwork determinism of Newton. The great pioneer of quantum physics, Niels Bohr, even incorporated the taiji (yin/yang) symbol into his family crest.
"A human being is part of the whole, called by us as the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself,his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical illusion in his consciousness."
- Albert Einstein
If you stop to think about it, one could say that the concept of special interconnecting gates is central to the theory of acupuncture. Qi circulates throughout every cell of the body, and thus has the potential to get stuck at any point; yet the most common or pivotal "stuck" spots have been singled out and termed "acupuncture points." While the human body has several thousand acupuncture points, only about 360 were designated as "regular" points (those most pivotal), with a few hundred others categorized as "extra" and "extraordinary." To carry out treatment, acupuncturists must select a limited number of points, and will sometimes choose the less common extra points over regular ones. Point selection, therefore, is based on the skill of being able to recognize the most pivotal of the pivotal points at any given time within a dynamic, fluctuating system. By finding and properly stimulating these special spots, an acupuncturist helps his or her patient to pass through the gate, connecting a state of imbalance to one of balance.
| Look at it, but you cannot see it. |
| Confront this Oneness and you do not see its face. |
| If you hope to meet it, it has no part you can call front. |
References
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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