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The Spark and Evidence of Acupuncture


Hello, everybody. My name is Yair Maimon. I want, first of all, to thank the American Acupuncture Council to be kind to put up this show. It’s the first show for me on this platform, so it’s great to be here. I’ve called the show the Spark and Evidence of Acupuncture. Later, you will see why. I think I want to focus the show a lot on the evidence and on the confidence we should have in this medicine, but even more on the spark, I think on the uniqueness of Chinese medicine.

I’ve been a student and an inspirer of Chinese medicine for over 30 years. So it’s quite a while. I’m doing different things. My interest in is on two extremes. One is cancer, where I’m a head of a cancer research institute in the biggest hospital in Israel, in Sheba Medical Center, when I researched the effect of herbal medicine even to the molecular level, both on cancer and the immune system. I’ve published more than 20 peer-reviewed medical journals, so papers. So you can read them up. Although this show, and especially today, will be focused more on acupuncture, but also on the clinical thing.

I’ve been teaching also worldwide, I think, in the last more than 20 years. I have also my own clinical center in Israel, I’m from Israel, where we are about a group of 20 practitioners working together. I must say that, still, the practice is my passion, although teaching and researching all building up the full approach and understanding of Chinese medicine.

So I’m glad to be on this special show and share with you some of my experience, which I hope you will find useful for yourself, for your own clinic today or tomorrow. The idea is really to do a practical and in the same time I hope a little bit magical show. So I’ll put some slides. So please can you put this first slide on? That will be great.

This lecture is called What Do You Do When You Don’t Know What To Do? I chose this topic for a reason. I’ve been practicing, as I said, for 30 years, and I think it’s almost a daily phenomenon, not just for acupuncturist but for any healthcare provider. There is a lot of situation when you don’t know what to do.

So I set up on this small mission of asking colleagues who are at least 15 years in practice. I’ve asked 25 colleagues what they do when they don’t know what to do, and try to conclude something from my experience and other people’s experience. I’ve put it eventually all into one presentation and divided it a bit, I hope, in a special way. I took, I can say, the essence of what my colleagues are practicing Chinese medicine for many years, have kind of were willing to share.

I think, as we know, it is a great clinical dilemma. One of our problems is to move from uncertainty to certainty. We wish sometimes in the clinic we’ll have this kind of crystal ball that can look into the future. If we’ll do this point, this will happen. If we’ll do another point, this will happen. Therefore, let’s choose this one.

But that’s not the clinical reality. We have to take the pulse, check the patients, and then decide upon the diagnosis. What will be the best treatment and the best way to do it? We’d love to be certain. As I say, I put a dice, yes, no, maybe, on each dilemma, but this seems not seems to work.

In western medicine, it’s much easier. As I said, I’ve been all my life also in western medical setups. The thinking is linear, so there’s a much more comfortable solution, like in oncology, one of the fields that I’m excelling in in Chinese medicine and working in Chinese medicine.

In western medicine, eventually there is a diagnosis, there is a protocol, and there is some comfortability about it, which is very different to the way in Chinese medicine, because in western medicine, once you have a diagnosis, you have a protocol, and you proceed in what seems the linear way, which makes the physician comfortable and more feeling certain.

In Chinese medicine, the situation is very different. We’ll look at system, we’ll look at a much wider picture. So for us, there is much more options to make a clinical decision. This is really what the lecture is focusing on. In this kind of what seems to be very open space, how do we make the best clinical decision for patients, especially when we feel that I would say not uncertain, but we feel we don’t really know. We don’t have a final decision of what is the best to do.

I divided this lecture on purpose to three levels, to heaven, man, and earth kind of approach, because in the science of Chinese medicine, we divide things to a number, to one, two. When we reach three, we are really on the place of men on earth and we are on the real dilemma of human life. So in a man situation, we are between heaven and earth making our decisions.

As you will see, when I looked at the three layers of approaching this uncertainty, there will be a different answer. On a heavenly level, there’ll be an answer which more relates to the dao into a path. On a man level, more to the movement, into the qi. And on the earth level, more in material solution. Sometimes we need all of them together. Sometimes we choose one solution to the situation in the clinic. Therefore, we can look at the shen affecting the shen or affecting the qi or affecting the jing.

Each one has a different play in the clinic, and usually we are trying to affect this model, the three layers model, and get the best benefit to the patient. That’s why the shen, qi, and jing are called the three treasures.

When we manage to put them all together, we have a three-dimensional picture of the patient. I always say when you look at the past, then we see all the problems and pains that the patient bring. When we look at the present, we look at their symptoms. But when we look at the future, we look at their healing. So when we can put past, present, and future together in the clinic at one point, we are reaching the depth of treatments and the depths of human experience.

So let’s start with the solution of what do we do when we don’t know what to do in a heavenly level, on the shen level. That means that on that level, we’re allowing a presence of the shen, because for us, shen is one of the five substances in Chinese medicine.

So the spirit to us is not something strange or unreal. It’s a real essence of the body. It’s the most young, the most strong, the most effective, the one that connects us to oneness into the strongest abilities. Therefore, it’s present in the clinic and it’s present in creating healing. It’s definitely one of the key things.

When we are reaching the level of the shen and we don’t know what to do, we listen and we wait. We allow something which we understand is the dao, or the dao or the path of the patient to be present. We do, I think, the most interesting waiting. To me, the Chinese science present I think one of the most mind-blowing idea, is you do nothing. Wu wei means doing a non-doing.

So in a way, when we want to look deeper, we allow this moment of just not being involved, of just being present. In the clinic, it happens many time when I tell … And every practitioner is always … Have this experience. You decide on a certain point, you get to the patient, and you do something else. You realize that this change was exactly what the patient was needed.

So this doing a non-doing, it’s a new concept for us as western people, but it’s embedded in the core of Chinese medicine and Chinese medicine thinking. So on that level, we listen and wait. We allow something of the presence, the presence of the patient, his own path to be there. We’re just waiting.

Waiting is not just a Chinese medical idea because to me wu wei’s the source and essence of Chinese medicine. I took this slide and put also Bion [inaudible 00:10:23], who was a psychologist talking about nonverbal communication, and very much focused on this aspect of just seeing and listening and being present in a nonverbal way, which is strongly affecting the clinical situation. He called this book A Beam of Intense Darkness, because we always talk about light, but actually darkness allows everything to come out and appear in it.

So to me this idea is very strong in the clinic because when I don’t know what to do, I must say my own first thing is just to sit and wait, to put this beam of darkness or to put this endless space and to see what is coming up, and always something will come up.

But this practice, I think it’s one of the best way to start when you don’t know what to do. Instead of convincing yourself, “Oh, there is dampness, there is cold,” or something that you see in the patient and immediately jumping on a diagnosis when, in reality, there is a lot of option at that moment, and we don’t know which one to choose from.

So on the shen level, I think getting this inspiration also from the nonverbal communication, just waiting there, is perfect. I teach a lot what I call one minute diagnosis, because there’s so much we see in one minute. This is the one minute that we allow the whole complexity of the patient just to be present there and us being totally empty and trying to understand and connect and seeing the whole full layers of the patient.

A lot of time in this space, we move from uncertainty to certainty. We move from this deep darkness. Everything is possible into light and into something very specific. This space is a very healing space because in the silent, something comes up. This thing that comes out in the spur of the moment is probably a key for the healing and for the treatment.

A healing environment is very sacred and special. If it allows something happens there, sometimes we know what to do. It’s like almost obvious that this lecture focuses on this space, which is always important to hear, but definitely important when we want to see what’s the most core to the patient at this point when we treat him.

So to summarize this level and the way we can approach it is we start from darkness. We still remain uncertain, and we are fine with it. That’s not always easy to remain fine with uncertainty. We don’t move to certainty. We will use wu wei. We are not doing anything and we are not expecting anything. We’re not putting any pressure.

Then the second step usually comes. There is some movement to light. There is some kind of something that is emerging and coming up. I call it an insight and, a new word in English, enlight. Suddenly something emerging and suddenly we have some certainty in the direction of what to do.

This is really a place when we stay in stillness and something emerge and we approach it or we allow it. To me this level is one of the core levels when we don’t know what to do, and to allow this level in a kind of very, oh, we say almost scientific or didactic or diagnostic way, because we live in the western world. Everything needs to be certain, and uncertainty leaves us a kind of suddenly uncomfortable. I think that allowing this uncomfortable feeling and emerging from it with healing is the key for the level of the shen.

Now we’ll move to the second level, to the level of man. So to the level of man, we move to qi and we move to the movement of qi. In a basic way, when we move to this movement, I got a lot of response from the people I interviewed, and then they realize that a lot of great masters actually created different formulas to what to do and they don’t know what to do, or create different formulas of points that are moving the qi, harmonizing the qi in a very wide way that allows healing.

So when we move to the second level, I actually look upon different masters along the history of Chinese medicine, and I will present some kind of idea from us to tung and maybe even stop with the four command points.

The four command points are very simple and very easy. We can easily understand them. They are each directed to an area. Like we do stomach 36, if there’s something in the abdomen, if there’s something in the head and neck, you do lung seven. If there is a back, especially lower back, bladder 40. If there is something in the face and mouth, you do large intestine four. So you don’t know what to do, but you know these points will guide you to an area or will move qi in an area.

Therefore, it’s a good place to start when you don’t know what to do, because sometimes it’s like peeling an onion. We just move the qi, we peel this first layer, and then something deeper emerges or better clarity comes.

There’s two additional points usually for the four command points. For the chest and the heart, pericardium six. For fainting and collapse, actually also for lower back pain, DU-26. So this will be like a set of point. When you don’t know what to do and you want to move a qi in a certain area in a larger way, this is a good resource to start with in just generally moving the qi.

I looked very deeply at the five points, the 10 needles that Professor Tung suggested, and Miriam Lee, who was one of the first practitioners actually in the States, who was a very, very active practitioner, she saw about hundred patients a day and mainly treating just with this formula. This is the formula that she was using. Very known point, but if we go deeper, very clever point.

I think with acupuncture, we can be very elaborated with points. I’m doing a project, learning the points in depth, but sometimes using a simple point when we know why we are using them is extremely powerful. When we use them all the time, I think we are losing the sense of acupuncture and the fine-tuning of needling. But this lecture more focuses, you don’t know what to do, so this is a very interesting prescription.

It’s not superficial. It allows harmonizing the qi on that level in many ways. So stomach that is six, spleen six, large intestine for large intestine 11, and lung seven are the points of the five points and there’s 10 needles that can be used.

I’ll go very quickly point-by-point to explain how they are combined together. Sometimes we can use the whole five or inner combination, obviously with additional point, a bit like what we do in herbal medicine.

I’ll start with spleen six. Obviously, everybody know and use this points. It’s the meeting of the three yin of the leg. This point, if you look at the combination of them, we’ll see that the sum of the combination will be lung and spleen. We have stomach 36, spleen six. We have large intestine and stomach. So we have TaiYin and we have YangMing. So we have large intestine for large intestine 11 and lung seven. So we have this TaiYin, YangMing combination. We have a specific earth yin and yang combination and metal yin and yang combination. So we have both the qi, the yin qi and the wei qi presented in this combination.

I’ll briefly introduce my two colleagues there, Rani Ayal and Bartosz Chmielnicki. Together, we formed the group called the CAM team. We are producing the special book called The Gate of Life. The Gate of Life book goes deeper into the understanding of acupuncture points with a painter from Poland, Martina [Yankee 00:18:54]. She is painting these points.

Actually, here you can see the whole picture. This is a meridian, so all the meridians are painted. This is the spleen meridian. As you can see, it will start with spleen one and slowly, slowly we go through different points to the point that we are talking now, spleen six, when we have the three yin meeting.

Here you can see them. You can see the three yin women meeting and all the interaction with other meridians, et cetera, and turtle because it’s to do with the deep aspects of yin. I won’t go into all the symbolization, but just to give you this general sense of this book and the points. Probably in future shows, I’ll show some more pictures and going into different less known points and try to explain the dynamic of qi there.

So as we know, spleen six has a very strong dynamic. It both works on postnatal qi, working on the blood and damp. It’s connected with the liver and the kidney. So it will move blood. It will work on yin and jing. So we get a wide variety of effects on the body just using this point, when we don’t know what to do and we … Or we want to affect an area rather than a specific diagnosis. So we are moving from working on a specific diagnosis into affecting a whole area.

It will work on the lower jiao and the energy and everything that’s on the lower part of the body and, specifically this point and especially when combined with the stomach, will also affect especially the dampness in the lower jiao.

So this tung combination, when we look at this point, will be stomach 36 and spleen six working on earth. But not just working on the earth element, but also stabilizing, vitalizing the earth, affecting digestion in a big way, affecting the metabolism of fluids and dampness.

So you can see there’s already inherent combination that works on earth, and another combination that works … So it works on earth and digestion and another combination that works on breathing. Obviously, when we come to life, the first thing we do is we breathe and we need to eat.

So this combination affects this two fundamental aspect of postnatal life, of digestive system, and of the lung system. The combination of spleen six and lung seven will affect breathing and will affect the wei qi. We work also on the RenMai meridian in this respect. So from the tung combination, you can see how wide it is. The same with large intestine four.

I won’t go into each point in too many details because I think some of the points are more familiar, but it’s yuan point, so it’s a command point that affect, as we see, the face and mouth. It’s also a LU point, so it works closely with large intestine four, lung seven. Again, a great combination.

So we’re slowly moving into this tung combination system, and understanding this inner combination of large intestine four and lung seven, like this two command point, releasing also exterior, working on wind, working on the sweat. Our large intestine four and large intestine 11 working on the head, face, also affecting all the orifices and also releasing heat.

So you see how this tung combination, the deeper we go into it, the more and more we see how clever it is and how it affects so many aspects when we don’t know what to do, or sometimes just because there’s a lot of things present, and we want to affect all of them.

So large intestine 11, being in earth and he, uniting point, and taking also heat and affecting deeply the metal and the large intestine. Large intestine 11 and stomach 36 tonifies the qi and blood. It’s the Yang Ming meridian, which is so rich in qi and blood and, with large intestine four, also taking heat out. Again, you can add another points like Du-14 if there is extreme heat. Lung seven, one of the almost last points that I want to present here, again a luo point, opening of the RenMai. In a way, we are even tapping an extra meridian system.

Lastly, we are moving with stomach 36 into this kind of final part of this combination, looking at stomach 36, which is an earth point. But it’s not the normal earth point. It’s an earth point of the earth. I think this is the key of understanding this point.

By the way, this is the picture from our book. It always remind me because when I look at a picture, when I was taught stomach 36, suddenly everybody was saying it’s a three li. If somebody is tired, you puncture this point, and there’s the story. People can walk another three miles, three li. But in reality, the three li have different meanings. One of the li is like a small village that can sustain itself. So three lis is actually three villages that can sustain themselves. It talks about the vitality in this point.

Also, it talks about the three parts, as we can see here, of the abdomen, which are the avenues of the yuan qi that goes to the triple warmer. The three li can also refer to this very deep vitality in the body. But obviously being the earth of earth is the reason why this point is doing so much and it has so many indication, clinical indication.

So we looked at these points, and now I would like to move to the last part. We look at the shen part. We look at moving the qi in a general way, like in one combination, I think, which summarize it nicely and, the last one, through stomach 36, we move to the earth level.

Tapping into the yuan qi, tapping into the earth and the fundamental part of living on earth, because all the elements are surrounding the earth. So whenever we use points of the earth element, especially the yuan source points, we are really helping to stabilize human on earth and we are able to tap on some deep authenticity. We are able to tap on the resource of both qi, blood, and jing to help the patient to recover and regain health.

Stomach 36, that’s the reason why this point is so effective. As I said, it’s the earth of earth. Otherwise, there’s no other explanation why the use of this point is so strong and so critical. Then if you look at all the yin points on the yuan points on the yin meridians, the zang meridian, all of them are earth points and all of them are soul-balancing points.

Again, when we don’t know what to do, yuan points will be the first one we will consider affecting directly the element itself, but also deeply the qi and the yuan qi. Here I’m just showing a simple combination. Liver three, stomach 36, lung nine, all earth point. So we work on this axis. The same way can be heart seven and kidney three with stomach 36, working on the creation axis. So both we can work on the formation or creation axis, just using yuan points, and achieving something very deep.

So to finalize, when we don’t know what to do in the clinic, we can relax. Nothing is under control. It’s a normal situation. But I think if we follow this kind of deep logic of looking at shen, qi, and jing, something unfolds. Then we move from uncertainty to certainty.

So I would like to thank you for watching this. I hope you enjoyed it. Be well. Thank you very much. All the best to you. I want to add maybe some … I can stop the slideshow and maybe just add some final note.

First of all, I want to mention that next week on this show, there’ll be a good friend of mine, Moshe Heller. Also, you can follow the next shows that I will do on the American Acupuncture Council. I hope you enjoyed it. Do write comments. I promise I’ll try to answer. All the very best to you and be well. Thank you very much.

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