Super treatment today. I felt in confident and competent hands - Aoife, Dun Laoghaire Co Dublin

A brief history and explanation
of Acupuncture

In existence for over 2,000 years, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is the world’s oldest and most comprehensive system of medical care and comprises Acupuncture, Tui Na massage, herbs, exercise and nutrition. The primary form of healthcare throughout the Eastern world, it is based on the principle of balance; the principle of life’s opposing energies of yin and yang.

In Chinese medicine a patient is seen in terms of balance. Yang, in general, is active high energy while yin is cooling and calming; to be healthy the two need to be in balance. If a person’s yin and yang are out of balance they will become ill.

The essential difference between Western and Chinese Medicine is that the medical doctors of today are trained to look for symptoms to enable them to diagnose and treat a patient’s disease while the Traditional Chinese Medical system looks at a patient as a whole - body, mind and spirit.

Although practised in the East for centuries, TCM was virtually unknown in the West until 1971. That year U.S. President Richard Nixon visited China and the New York Times reporter, James Reston, who was covering the event underwent an emergency appendix operation. Afterwards he received acupuncture for pain and his stories of the experience fascinated the public.

A gentle treatment that uses the body’s own energy to heal itself, Acupuncture enhances the flow of internal energy and restores balance. Involving the insertion of very fine needles into specific points to stimulate the body’s system, it was first discovered on the battlefields of ancient China when soldiers wounded by arrows reported that other long-standing ailments had suddenly disappeared.

Before long Chinese physicians found that the body has a complex network of invisible energy channels or 'Jing Luo' through which qi, the vital energy of life and blood, travels. There are 14 major and dozens of minor channels, each related to specific organs and glands and although invisible to the eye, these channels have been mapped by Kirilian photography in the Soviet Union.

In China, the key to health is qi or energy. The function of the body’s organs are maintained by the free-flow of qi, blood, body fluids and essence otherwise known in a collectively simple and broad sense as yin and yang – all of which interact with each other.

As we go about our lives the qi or energy gets disturbed. This can be due to emotional upset, physical trauma, poor diet or overwork to name a few. If the energy remains blocked dis-ease will begin to develop in the body.

Symptoms or problems experienced are seldom isolated. The practitioner by tongue and pulse observation in addition to questioning, can best assess in what areas that individual is most compromised. TCM diagnosis is based on the principle that ‘a part reflects the whole’ in that symptoms on the exterior reflect the condition of the internal organs. A treatment tailored to address the correction of imbalances found will then be given.

As a technique that deals directly with moving energy, it facilitates the readjustment of the excesses and deficiencies in the body thus promoting health and a feeling of well-being.

In China, they know good health comes from within. Treating the physical can affect the emotional and psychological states and vice versa. In this way acupuncture is more than physical healing as it treats the body and mind hand-in-hand. Living in harmony and balance is their accepted and practised way of preventing disease and sustaining optimal health. They call it living in 'The Middle Way'. A principle yet to be embraced for the most part in the West, acupuncture gives us a helping hand when we need to assist our body to heal itself.

Western medicine and technology has had difficulty explaining why and how acupuncture works. The art of this medicine is that it does. A fact that is not disputed.

Tried and tested over thousands of years, Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese healing system for the 21st Century.