How Acupuncture Works

Acupuncture is a powerful healing art

Acupuncture is essentially a method of healing through the system of meridians that run throughout the body. Meridians are a series of channels that monitor the organs and their functions with energy communications similar to radio waves. The Chinese call the energy that flows through your meridians “Qi.” You won’t find them described in your biology books because conventional medicine is just beginning to understand their existence and function. Why have our advanced Western scientists been unable to detect meridians? The answer is debatable, but perhaps a main reason is that they are neither visible nor tangible.

The meridians are one of three major communication systems in your body; its sisters are the nervous and endocrine systems. An easy way to understand meridians is to compare them to things that are familiar to us. Each system in your body is like a communication system in our society. Your endocrine is like the postal service, your nerves like the phone, and your meridians like the radio.

Let’s first take a look at the endocrine system. The pituitary gland is the endocrine system’s brain, and when the pituitary wants something done it secretes a chemical, which is carried by the bloodstream to another gland, such as the thyroid.

The pituitary keeps secreting the chemical until the thyroid starts to do too much; then the pituitary will send out a different chemical messenger telling the thyroid to slow down.

The endocrine system is like the postal system because it communicates by sending messages on materials.

The nervous system is like the phone system. Your body’s nerve networks are like telephone wires, through which the brain and body communicate with each other through electronic impulses. Your nerves translate every sensory function, including your vision, taste, smell, and touch, into electrical impulses that are sent to the brain. The phone similarly translates your voice into electrical impulses that can travel great distances to reach another person.

Finally, your acupuncture meridian system is like the radio. Although there is no physical connection between your radio and the station, there is precise communication between the two parties, isn’t there?

And though we cannot see or touch radio waves, they are sophisticated communicators of information. Like radio waves, your meridians communicate with each other in a non-tangible, but specific, manner. And while you cannot see or touch the meridians, they are sending and receiving messages as often as your car stereo.

But unlike radio waves, which travel out in all directions, Qi energy travels in directional lines along the meridian channels. Acupuncture points are like stations that lie along these meridians.

Acupuncture points are where the acupuncturist will insert needles or apply pressure to achieve a desired effect. Most acupuncture points correspond to organs that are not geographically close to them, a fact that initially confuses many patients. But rest assured that these points have been confirmed by thousands of years’ worth of doctors and patients.

Modern scientists looking for more concrete proof of acupuncture points have since discovered a correlation between the points and stronger electromagnetic fields.

The communications between the acupuncture points and meridians are your body’s way of monitoring its functions. If something goes wrong with one part of your body, your meridians will send a message to the right place, either for healing to begin or pain to be felt.

Problems in the meridians will cause disease, just as problems in the endocrine and nervous system do. This is where the role of the acupuncturist comes in. Only a skilled acupuncturist can properly identify and correct meridian disorders. If a health problem stems from the meridians, you must go to the source to heal it.