The mysterious Qi

At the center of the theory of acupuncture is the ancient Chinese idea of Qi, which is pronounced "chee" (sometimes spelled "chi"). Definitions of this term vary, but all have something to do with "energy" or "life force" or "flow." It's an elusive concept, one that I'm just beginning to make sense of. Here's a stab at it:

According to ACM (ancient Chinese medicine), Qi, this force, flows through the body through a series of channels that are called "meridians." The image I included on the last post has some of these meridian lines drawn in. These lines run all throughout the body, connecting part to part, in ways that sort of resemble the nervous system to me. The meridians ARE a system--a system of channels that carry the Qi through the body.

But this metaphor isn't really exact. The meridians are really tunnel-like tubes. Instead, as I understand it, they are pathways, sort of like a roadmap, of how the Qi flows.

When the body is healthy, the Qi flows along the meridian lines at a nice, even pace; when the body is suffering in some way, this is due to the fact that the Qi is obstructed or not flowing at the correct pace. Does the obstructed Qi cause the body's problems or does the body's problems cause the obstruction of Qi? I'm not totally sure. However, restoring the correct flow of Qi is the goal and focus of acupuncture.

[There's a lot more to Qi. I'll come back to this.]

At the beginning of an acupuncture session, the doctor takes several pulses--pulses in several places. She's checking how the Qi is flowing (I think) along various meridians, just as someone might check how the blood is flowing--the traditional pulse--at the beginning of a check up.

Modern medical science has long debated the validity of Qi, and the results are fairly inconclusive. It's a spiritual concept, so I'm not sure that science could measure it, though some scientists connect it to certain electro-magnetic pulses that CAN be tracked by instrumentation. This, too, I will explore further.

What, in fact, IS acupuncture

To be honest, before I started acupuncture, I didn't have much of a clue what acupuncture was. I knew that it involved needles, but, beyond that, I was pretty clueless. I told the doctor at first that I was very nervous because I was sort of needle-phobic. She told me that "it wasn't about the needles" and that I wouldn't feel them very much.

Well, that wasn't true. I can certainly feel them! (But I quickly got used to that.)

Acupuncture centers around the idea that inside all of us is a flowing force called "chi," which I'll write about more soon. Ideally, this chi should flow through the body easily and freely. When it doesn't--when it goes "stuck"--it needs to be made un-stuck so that health can be restored. In other words, illness (or any sort) is due to the chi not flowing correctly. The application of needles to key pressure points in the body helps to free the stuck chi so that it can be returned to it's free-flowing ways and thus return the body to health.

Because the body's chi system is complicated, it requires careful application of pressure at various parts of the body to get the desired effect. For example, needles in the foot can influence the flow of chi in the shoulder as the two (I think) are connected by a chi passageway. An expert acupuncturist knows how to manipulate the body's passageways to enable the free-flow of chi.

I'll stop here. It's a lot to chew over.

Turning to acupuncture

Several years ago, I began to lose faith in Western medicine. Not complete faith, of course, but I developed enough doubt in the miracles of modern science to be motivated to try something else.

For several months, I had suffered with dizzy spells, back and neck pains, and insomnia that my doctor was not able to explain. In typical fashion, she sent me for a lengthy battery of tests--everything from Lyme disease to rare, tropical illnesses--but nothing came up on the tests. She tried again: more tests. More negative results. She sent me for a CAT scan and then sent me to several other specialists including one who took very cool (and, I suspect, very expensive) ultrasound images of my neck and throat. Nothing. I'd done 12 blood tests in 6 months. I was still feeling dizzy, feeling pain, and losing sleep.

One year prior to that, I had invited a friend of a friend to come speak to my public speaking class. He claimed to have one of the hardest public speaking jobs imaginable: convincing people to allow him to stick them with needles. I figured, "what the heck. Let's see how convincing he can be." He came to my class, spoke for a few minutes, and then--to my total shock--walked around the room and put a needle in the arm of every student who was willing. I was sure Dr. Weintraub would find out and yell at me. There's no way this was legal for a public school teacher to subject his students to this. But no one fainted, no parents called the next day, and Dr. W never came up to give me a pink slip.

When this acupunturist spoke to the class, he explained acupuncture's philosophy of "chi," and most of us in the room were incredibly skeptical. It sounded like some pre-scientific, religious mysticism, something left over from the days before we understood viruses and symptoms and modern biology. At the end of his visit, he and I sat down together and talked. Eventually, I had to tell him that his explanation--while very interesting--just seemed way to weird and simplistic for my to buy. He asked me a great question:

"Do you believe in modern medical explanations of illness because you understand the science or because it seems so complex that the complexity makes you think it must be valid?"

He was right.

When my doctors used fancy words to explain what might be going on inside of me and fancy terms to explain how medical tests might determine a diagnosis, I really had no clue about what they were talking about...but they sounded so convincing. "Medicine is complicated," I figured. I don't understand it because it's advanced science and the fact that I don't understand it simply indicates that it's very advanced--and thus it must be right.

The explanations the acupuncturist offered (on the other hand) were incredibly simple. (more on that in a later post) How could it be this simple? How could something so simply really be valid? How could a simple explanation (one that even I could understand) really be more valid (or as valid) as a fancy scientific explanation that used the language of experts and highly trained professionals?

But...

When Western, scientific medicine failed me one year later and the dizziness (etc.) could not be diagnosed or treated, I remembered what this visitor to my class has said and, with great fear and trepidation, decided to give it a try.

The purpose of this blog is to help me (and perhaps others) better understand this form of treatment that I've been undergoing now for the past two years, a treatment that I've grown to have great faith in. The world of acupuncture is incredibly rich: mystical, magical, logical, primitive (in some respects), spiritual, and fascinating. Now that it's been two years, I figure it's time for me to find out what it is that I've actually been doing. What's behind acupuncture? What up with Chi? and yin and yang? and the techniques that seem (at times) one step removed from the leeches that were used on my Russian grandparents back in the old country?

I've got a lot to figure out.