Increase Your Clinical Effectiveness With the Complement Channels

If you’ve ever wondered why there’s a cap on your patients’ healing, you’ll want to read this. The answer is so simple – and beautiful – that you’ll seriously wonder why you never learned this in school. If you’ve been looking to literally achieve 10 times your current clinical effectiveness, you can do it with the complement channels. For example:

• It’s the patient who’s crippled by anxiety and fear from a long trauma history who reports feeling like a drastically different person after only one treatment - a treatment that used zero needles and only moxa. (eight extraordinary)
• It’s the post-op hip replacement patient who’s been taking narcotics multiple times per day who has one treatment and never needs the meds again. (divergent channel)
• It’s the patient who has had a solid, black line through her vision for a year and a half, has been to multiple doctors, has had all of the exams to no avail, and who gets 99% better in one treatment. (luo channel)
• It’s the 94-year-old patient with back pain from an old surgery who walks in using a cane and in tears, and walks out without pain an hour later. (sinew channel)

These results are not only possible, but a regular occurrence when practicing the complement channels. (Of course, it must be said that results always vary from patient to patient and practitioner to practitioner, and most people need more than one treatment.) Powerful results are not only possible, but probable when using the complement channels because, as I will get into later, the vast majority of patients’ issues no longer reside in the primary channels; they are being held in the complement channels.

Using primary channels to treat problems of the complement channels is like taking backroads when major highways exist: you may get there, but it’s going to be much slower, and there will likely be downed trees in the way.

While many people feel these channels are too esoteric or that their use is out of reach, I’m telling you they are not. As an avid student of Ann Cecil-Sterman, author of the landmark text Advanced Acupuncture: A Clinical Manual, I’m on a mission to be part of the revival of the complete system of acupuncture, which is the use of both the primary channels and the complement channels. This is of grave importance not only because the population needs this healing capacity, but also because the rate of burnout in our field is significant.

Some of us have never heard of the complement channels, and some of us were introduced to the complement channels via a class in school (often somewhat incorrectly called secondary vessels), but walked away more confused than enlightened.

Perhaps we were taught by a well-intentioned clinical supervisor that all that was necessary for an eight extraordinary treatment was to simply needle the master point and its couple. Similarly, in many schools, bleeding treatments have all but been eliminated from the curriculum, so luo channel treatments are not even part of our professional vernacular.

Divergent channel treatments are skimmed over, as are sinew channel treatments, but as demonstrated above, these are profoundly powerful modes of treatment that will revolutionize your practice and the health of your patients.

What Are the Complement Channels and How Do They Work?

The complement channels are the 44 channels that step in to preserve life when the 12 primary channels fail. Failure happens all the time, especially in a modern world where there is an excess of environmental pollutants, food preservatives, and heavily processed food products, medications, vaccinations, plastics, pesticides, trauma, and unhealthy emotional environments and coping mechanisms.

We know that the primary channels govern the 24/7 operation of the body, but something we tend to forget is that primary channels are also responsible for expressing emotion. Any of these things pose a threat to the body, which is why the complement channels spring into action.

The reason we aren’t getting the slam-dunk results we want for our patients is because we’re treating their issue(s) with the primary channels, but the problem is no longer in the primary channels. It’s being held in a complement channel.

How Do We Know Which Complement Channel to Use?

The sinew channels are diagnosed using six-stage movement assessment to determine which channel to use. Often, the pathogen has moved from its original location, and the current location is determined by assessing which six-stage movement creates pain. If there is constant pain or numbness, the jueyin channels are indicated. Example: constant shoulder pain = hand jueyin channel (pericardium).

The luo channels are diagnosed by “looking.” The presence of visible vessels, veins, capillaries, or darkened areas on the skin indicates a luo channel. Luo channels only exist in the presence of pathology, as they form to hold pathology away from the heart. The luo point, opposite the pulse, must be bled to be released. Example: angry patient = bleed LV 5 on the right.

Both the divergent and the eight extraordinary channels are diagnosed by dynamic pulse diagnosis, as brilliantly and clearly outlined in Advanced Acupuncture. Dynamic pulse taking is a tremendous gift in the clinic, as it allows transference of information from patient to practitioner that often could not be communicated via conversation.

Both of these classes of channels have a specific needling technique that is critical for communicating to the body what channels are being used. For example, SP 4 could be a primary channel point, a luo point or the opening point of the chong mai.

The details of how to use these channels are beyond the word limits of this article, but with so many online and in-person learning opportunities, as well as a growing community of complement channel practitioners, if you’re looking to level up your practice, learning these channels is a phenomenal way to do it.

The complement channels really can deliver profound results from musculoskeletal and orthopedic issues, autoimmune diseases, mental health, and everything in between. Happy healing.