Acupuncture
Acupuncture, first recorded over 3,000 years ago, is a system of medicine that uses the insertion of very fine, sterile, single-use needles at specific points on the body to activate the body’s own healing energy. This energy, known as “qi” (pronounced “chee”), flows along pathways, or meridians, through the whole body. It is through a disruption of qi flow that physical or emotional conditions arise.
How It Works
Healing may be practiced as a means of dispelling illness, an approach common to Western medicine. Or it may be practiced as a means of fostering health, or cultivating virtue, an approach common to Eastern medicine that goes back 2,000 years to the Chinese Daoists. The Eastern traditions hold as their central focus the client’s essential wholeness. Because there is a direct relationship between the nature of a person’s illness and the nature of that person’s wellness, in the Eastern traditions, therapeutic actions are chosen specifically to resonate simultaneously with both the client’s highest potential, and with his/her current manifestation of distress. It is through the cultivation of virtue that illness is dispelled and health is restored.
Health that has been restored due to the cultivation of virtue is not the same as health that has been restored simply due to the dispelling of illness. The physical manifestations of health may appear to be the same, but on the level of the spirit, the difference is incalculable. When we focus solely on dispelling illness in order to restore health, a priceless opportunity for the spirit is lost. When our healing strategy has as its aim the evocation of the client’s own original nature as its catalyst for the transformation of body, mind and spirit, the results are profound. The client experiences healing as a transformation that occurs from within.