Kidney 1, named “Bubbling Spring”, is the first acupuncture point on the Kidney meridian. It is the only meridian point on the sole of the foot. Kidney 1 is a major energy vortex that has the ability to revitalize body, mind and spirit. This point can be activated with acupuncture, acupressure, herbal plasters, exercise and even floral essences.
Recently, I had an awe-inspiring personal experience with this point that I would like to share with you. A patient of mine is in the final stages of lung cancer, finding it difficult to breathe, talk or swallow. She was just hospitalized to remove fluid from her chest. And if all of that wasn’t bad enough, her husband called me to tell me that she suffered a stroke when she arrived home. The stroke left the whole left side of her body paralyzed. He asked if I would consider trying acupuncture to restore movement on her left side. His thinking was that if she had this functionality, she might be able to get out of bed and sit in a chair. This would at least improve her quality of life for the time she had left.
I have to admit that I was skeptical that I could help a person who was this debilitated, but I agreed to come to their home. I inserted just two needles in her right hand – Master Tung’s ling gu and da bai. These points have a long list of indications and hemiplegia is one of them. Then, instinctively, I started to do some gentle acupressure on her left leg starting with Kidney 1 which is also indicated for lower limb paralysis. It seemed a natural place to start to address her breathing difficulty and the fear and anxiety I knew she was experiencing from her cancer.
Life is full of stressful situations. To varying degrees, we all have some level of fear and anxiety. Maybe it’s a stressful job or maybe a more specific deep seated fear like fear of flying, fear of the dentist or even fear of failure. For me, it is definitely a fear of public speaking that will fray my nerves. I was first introduced to a product called Rescue Remedy when I was in acupuncture school. Several students were putting a few drops under their tongue right before final exams. They said that it was an amazing way to calm yourself if you were a person who suffered from test anxiety.
As an acupuncture student, you spend the better part of three to four years memorizing exact anatomical locations of hundreds of acupuncture points and a recipe list of common indications for their use. It is a necessary task to get a basic understanding of Chinese medicine. And it is required to have this knowledge under your belt to be able to pass the NCCAOM national board exam in order to get licensed in most states.
In upstate NY, we are finally in the throes of heat and humidity or what we call the dog days of summer. This is the time when thousands of people in mainland China are lining up at special clinics in their local hospitals to start herbal plaster therapy, or fu tie, for chronic asthma and other respiratory diseases.
Millions of women suffer from painful periods. Often the pain occurs the day before the period starts. Some women experience menstrual cramps during the period. And some feel exhausted and achy when the period is over. Chinese Medicine explains menstrual period cramps in terms of the proper flow and quantity of Qi (energy) and Blood. By asking very detailed and specific questions about the menstrual cycle a practitioner can determine the underlying cause of menstrual cramping. Both acupuncture and Chinese herbal formulas are very effective to resolve the vast majority of painful period cramps.
Last year I was asked to speak at a monthly meeting of the local Dental Society. I decided to talk about TMJ because it is a condition that our two professions can co-treat very effectively. I had been told that very few of the members knew much about acupuncture, so I wanted to give some background on Chinese Medicine that would hopefully give some credibility to my explanation of using acupuncture points on the foot to treat jaw pain. I wanted to talk about the many micro-systems of acupuncture that are based on the knowledge that the body can be viewed as a hologram. That is, one part of the body represents the whole body.
Whether you have occasional trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep or severe insomnia, acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine may have help for you. Recently, I have had a few patients with severe insomnia come to me hoping for relief. Often anxiety and depression accompany sleeplessness. It becomes a vicious cycle – the more you can’t sleep, the more anxious and depressed you become. And the more anxious and depressed you are, the more difficult it is to sleep peacefully. Insomnia starts to affect every aspect of your life – job, health and relationships.
I love the following article by Dr. Amaro because it illustrates the relationship of the acupuncture meridians and shows how a blockage in one part of the body can cause pain in another seemingly unrelated part of the body. Scars can cause the blockage of energy in the acupuncture meridians. This article also shows how treating that blockage without ever touching the painful part of the body can give immediate and lasting relief. I see this everyday in my acupuncture practice. I almost never use an acupuncture needle in the part of the body that has pain. By using the logic of correspondent needling technique that I learned from Master Tung’s work, there are many choices of acupuncture points that can be used to relieve pain without ever doing local acupuncture needles.
In Chinese medicine, mouth sores (whether they are sores on the lips, sores on the tongue, or sores inside the mouth) are trying to warn you that the environment in your body is out of balance. The location of these sores, the frequency that they occur and what triggers them are all clues to the nature of that imbalance. A practitioner of Chinese medicine takes all of this information, along with other signs and symptoms in the body, to correctly diagnose and treat not only the mouth sores, but also address the general constitution of the patient so that the cause of the problem is eliminated.
