Traditional Acupuncture:
Healing the Whole Person

    by David N. Bole, Ph.D., A.P.

In ancient China, where the complex and delicate art of acupuncture was first practiced 5000 years ago, you paid your doctor to keep you well. If you became sick, the doctor was responsible for your care at his expense. From this, we see that the acupuncture physician's first obligation was to prevent disease. In this article, we look at acupuncture as a preventive medicine. When I speak of acupuncture, I mean traditional acupuncture. A brief explanation of the three different types of acupuncture available in mis country will make the distinction clearer.

There are many people without special training who have knowledge about acupuncture. Particular treatments have been found to relieve pain or to help migraines, and so on. From these came the practice of treating one's family or those in the local community for minor illness. Those practicing like this were called "local doctor" or "barefoot doctor". Although this was valuable in China's vast territory', it was designed more as first aid and temporary symptomatic relief and did not seel to remove the cause of the illness.

Although acupuncture is useful for the symptomatic relief of headaches and other aches and pains, that is not its primary purpose. The experience of pain is a distress signal; if we merely get rid of pain, we are treating only the symptom of the disease and ignoring the underlying causative factor.

Relieving symptoms is not the same as restoring balance within the person. This type of "local doctor" acupuncture is still practiced frequently in the West.

This work, of course, has its value, but must not be confused with the wider aims of the more highly trained acupuncture physician.

There is a second type of acupuncture especially used for anesthesia. This method has gained much attention in the West. Most of us have seen or heard about surgery performed with acupuncture used as anesthesia. There are well publicized films of patients remaining fully conscious eating oranges, sipping tea, or reading during a major operation This is a powerful demonstration of the use of acupuncture anesthesia. However, this is something distinctly different and not really part of the work of the traditional doctors. This brings us to the third type of acupuncture, called traditional acupuncture. This traditional doctor has three aims in mind: (1) treat the whole patient - body, mind, emotion, and spirit; (2) seek the cause of the disease and be concerned not only with the symptoms, but also with the reason for the disease; (3) after identifying the causative factor, provide the proper treatment to renew, vitalize, and bring the patient to full potential.

It may be helpful to know the factors to which we attribute ill health. First, a person may suffer mechanical or chemical injury. Second, a person may become ill in body and/or mind through internal or externa! factors. Internally, a person may be affected by constitutional or hereditary factors, as well as excesses in emotions such as grief, fear, anxiety, worry, anger, or joy. Externally, one may be subjected to environmental changes such as cold, heat, dryness, humidity, dampness, wind, and fire. For example, we may lose a close friend and experience grief, or be exposed to excessive heat or cold, but after a period of time, our bodies naturally readjust, and we suffer no long term effect. However, if the body subjected to excessive and prolonged periods of any of the aforementioned factors, the energy may become affected, causing symptoms to appear.

Our susceptibility to becoming ill varies greatly. A healthy person may be unaffected by a factor that would cause severe sickness in one who is less resistant. The greater the individual's imbalance, the less the life force is able to prevent disease.

Using four basic methods - to see, to hear, to ask, and to feel - the acupuncturist gathers information about the patient The acupuncturist relies on information such as color of the face, sound of the voice, odor, predominant emotions, and quality of the pulses, which are palpated on the wrists.

Of particular interest is the diagnostic use of the pulses. The traditional acupuncturist observed that any disease, whether physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual, produces physiological effects which are revealed in the pulses, often before the symptoms manifest outwardly.

Thus, we have seen three ways in which acupuncture can make a positive contribution to the prevention of illness in our society:

1. By traditional diagnosis -assessing the imbalance early. before it is manifest pathologically,
2. By treatment - correcting the imbalance at the cause and preventing the disease from going deeper; and
3. By teaching - presenting guidelines for proper living to aid the patients in taking responsibility for their own health and well-being.

For preventive medicine of this type to be effective, the patient must sec the doctor at regular intervals. We suggest a check at each change of season to maintain a high level of general health.

Acupuncture sees health as more than the absence of disease - it sees health as a feeling of well being and abundant physical and mental energy.

To the acupuncture physician disease is a manifestation of a disturbance in the body's balance of lift energy {called "Chi") The goal of acupuncture is to bring this energy back into balance by acting upon the flow of energy within the body by using specific acupuncture points to restore equilibrium (homeostasis) to the system.

The concept of preventive medicine has recently become more popular in the West. However, the prevention of disease in China has always been of the greatest importance. In fact, the Chinese people considered their doctors poor ones if they failed to keep the people well. The doctor of acupuncture can play a significant role in the prevention of disease.

When we get out of balance, warning signals are always present From reading the pulses and from other diagnostic evaluating, the acupuncturist can detect the imbalance in its early stages and correct it before it can manifest as physical illness.

We have been speaking of acupuncture as preventive medicine. Unless the patient, however, takes responsibility for his or her own health, all healing systems will fail. The patient must understand how tlie illness came about and take necessary steps to prevent its return. Each of us must realize that we actively participate in creating health or illness. In recent years, people readily go to their doctors expecting the doctors to make them well. A better direction is to work in cooperation with the doctors and seek their guidance on how to keep yourself well!

Back to Acupuncture Page

DAVID N. BOLE, Ph.D., A.P. is director of the Traditional Acupuncture Center, a holistic health care facility offering a multi-dimensional approach to health and healing. Read more about Dr. Bole...