Wait—TCM Can Do That? A Deeper Look Into Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture

When I started to study Traditional Chinese Medicine, Giovanni Maciocia, the leading authority in TCM studies in the West, warned: if you have studied Western Medicine, forget all you’ve learnt.

I still remember my first day at acupuncture school, when they started to teach us all about Yin and Yang, Hot, Cold, Full, Empty…

My brain was overheating and my body was nudging me to run for my life! What on EARTH is he talking about… that’s all I could think!

Then, slowly, things started to make sense, as I allowed what I feel is the Spirit of Chinese Medicine in. Or maybe… as the Great Spirit of TCM allowed me in.

I was already familiar with the idea (and practice) of looking at how traumatic experiences affect us and our health. I used to work with the body’s energy field to release trapped emotions, understand where they originate, etc.

However, TCM added another layer—one that completely threw all the cards off the decks.

A few days ago, I started to receive several questions along the lines of: 

• What can acupuncture treat? 

• How does it work? 

• Can it help with neck pain? 

• What about headaches? Insomnia? Sciatica?

So, as I open my practice, I decided to write this—to share a bit more about how TCM actually works, as well as how I intend to use it to help.

The beauty of TCM is not only in its ability to understand and treat the root cause of disease, but most importantly, in the way it looks at it.

We have been trained by Western medicine to look at symptoms individually and to prescribe accordingly. Chinese wisdom disrupts this… pattern (no puns—I’ll explain later!) and considers the presenting symptoms as a whole, looking to understand the pattern.

Once this has been established, the TCM practitioner will work to treat the root cause (the pattern), but also trace its aetiology—i.e. where it comes from.

In the example above, we may experience a traumatic event in our lives. It could be the death of a loved one, an accident, a life-threatening illness, or something else. The emotion resulting from such events begins to disrupt the flow of Qi (our life force or  energy).

Every emotion is understood to affect specific organs and their function.

In the example above, the traumatic event and resulting emotions in question have affected the Liver’s ability to hold Blood. When Blood is deficient—(not about anemia, but an energetic lack of nourishment in the body’s system)—this usually starts with Liver-Blood deficiency.

As the Heart governs Blood, Heart-Blood becomes deficient too. Secondly, as the Liver is the Mother of the Heart in the Five-Element scheme, a Liver pathology is easily transferred to the Heart.

What’s most interesting is that seemingly unrelated symptoms become important clues.

Systems are no longer considered individually—i.e. the heart, the brain, the eyes—but rather in their relationship to one another, as well as their function, position, and place within the meridian system.

So we end up with the above symptoms: 

• Insomnia 

• Anxiety 

• Palpitations 

• Floaters in the eyes 

• Poor memory

So what can I do to help?

The TCM answer is: Nourish Blood, tonify Heart and Liver, calm the Mind, and settle the Ethereal Soul. 

But the beauty of this work is that not only can we help with what’s materially causing the symptoms—in this case, Liver & Heart Blood deficiency—but also address the emotions that sit at the core.

How? Through targeted energy work and profound acupuncture that addresses emotional trauma using, for example, the Eight Extraordinary Vessels (an ancient system of meridians that help us access the body’s deeper layers).

These allow us to go below the surface... and speak directly to the Soul.

An acupuncture session can certainly help with reducing or even eliminating the symptom, but it can do so much more than that; it can reach the core of the issue and support us in moving forward and beyond. 

Want to find out more about Acupuncture and my approach to it? Click here.