What is Chinese medicine?
Chinese medicine is a unique comprehensive system of health care with a continuous clinical tradition of over 3,000 years still used today for treatment of disease, preventative care, and health maintenance. It emerged from a holistic understanding of balance and flow within the natural world. It identifies complex theories of how the body functions as well as guiding principles and practices to optimize healthy functioning. Just as in nature there are continual processes of growth, transformation, and decline, there are also these processes within the human body, mind, and emotions. When there is balance, there is a sense of health and thriving; when there is imbalance due to stress, poor diet, hereditary conditions, or environmental conditions, there can be discomfort, and sometimes illness and disease. Careful consideration is taken to understand the whole person and treat accordingly. The goal of treatment is to bring back balance in order to restore good health to the entire system and person and then to maintain that.
“If we give a treatment without addressing the cause of disease, it would be like pouring water into a container with a leak at the bottom.” -G. Maciocia
How is it practiced?
A person trained in Chinese medicine earns the title of licensed acupuncturist, L.Ac. The scope of practice includes the modalities of acupuncture as well as herbal medicine, therapeutic massage, dietary advice, and Qigong meditation and exercises. An acupuncturist may also use moxibustion (heat therapy), cupping (suction of the skin with glass or silicone), and gua sha (smooth scraping of the skin.) Any one or more of these may be used within a session or course of treatments tailored to each individual. All of these tools an acupuncturist can use work to promote the body’s own ability to heal itself.
About acupuncture
Acupuncture is the use of sterile, single use, disposable needles that are very fine, about the thickness of a human hair. There are at least 400 designated acupuncture points connected by pathways called channels or meridians. The points communicate between the surface of the body and the internal structures and organs. Each point, and combinations of points, affects the body, mind, emotions and energy differently. Our bodies are constantly working to maintain balance and health—to digest our food, to fight a cold, to heal a wound, to regulate blood pressure, to get good sleep, to focus on our work, to not get so angry, etc., but sometimes we need more guidance and redirection when something isn’t functioning optimally.
Several health and medical bodies including the National Institute of Health and the World Health Organization have come to integrate and promote acupuncture as a safe, effective, and low-cost method of treatment for a wide variety of disorders including
- Allergies
- Headaches
- Muscle and joint pain
- Anxiety & depression
- Addictions
- Irritable bowels
- Chronic fatigue
- Colds/flu
- Skin problems
- Insomnia
- And many more