Happy New Year on January 1,2016, and Gong Hay Fat Choi on February 8, 2016. This coming year is the monkey's year to shine. This year, the American Acupuncture Council has been fortunate to be able too feature an outstanding crystal glass piece by the world famous Chinese artist Loretta H. Yang.
Her piece showcases three monkeys and is titled, "The Mindfulness of Three." These three monkeys have their hands in various places. One is covering their ears, one is covering his mouth and one is covering its eyes. Many years ago, these three monkeys were accompanied by the saying see no evil, speak no evil and hear no evil. Today, this artist has captured the senses of the eyes, ears and mouth to help us realize that we are part of each other and we must work in harmony with our earth.
Monkeys are playful, mischievous, curious, clever, smart, very quick in their movements and sometimes naughty. This art piece suggests that we might view life as a series of quick events not just moving from one experience to another, but that it is about the thoughts, feelings emotions and actions that are evoked by the experience.
Loretta Yang has had a journey from performing as a famous and well recognized movie star to an incredibly insightful and talented crystal artist whose work is being exhibited worldwide. In the artists work, it is not just the finished piece, but it is the process. Her qi is in every step of the creative e process.
In Western culture, art can be generalized as a language that focuses on form, while Eastern art differs mainly in it focuses on introspection of the spirit. As the acupuncture professional progresses from alternative to integrative, let us look at our mission of healing with companionate understanding and hope toward our community, our profession, our patients and ourselves. Let us light the world with the power of Asian medicine.
International Classification Codes
Your time to be a stakeholder is now. The ICD code sets are used for counting the number of mortalities, morbidities and co-morbidities. When the WHO conducted a survey in 2012 with countries around the world, they found 82% of the world's population used some form of integrated medicine and acupuncture was the leading method. Acupuncture will be the first complementary medicine outside of Western medicine to have a set of diagnostic codes. You are someone who will be impacted by and one who cares about how things and events are happening in the acupuncture world. You and your practice will be affected by the additional of the ICTM-11 codes.
Together, we have raised $300,000 toward the establishment of a set of diagnostic codes. These codes have moved into the field trials and peer review phase. The acupuncturists in the United States have been invited and selected to participate in these processes.
Our challenge is to contribute and raise another $300,000 to complete the project. I have figured out that if every acupuncturist, student and school contributed just $10, we could complete this project and have a majora role in the final outcome of the codes that will be shared around the world. Of course, you can contribute more if you can and want to.
You will receive a letter that can be displayed to educate your patients that this is an important project and that you are an invested stakeholder in the progress of acupuncture around the world. We will be using Facebook and Twitter to further spread our message. Contributions can be made through the Consortium for Oriental Medicine Research and Education Foundation. It is a non-profit 501c3 and your gift is a tax-deductible contribution.
Please join me in reaching our goal for the support of the acupuncture profession.
May the Year of the Monkey be filled win peace, joy, hope and the full net of dreams and love.
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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