What is acupuncture exactly? This is a complex question that I’ve heard answered and personally answered many different ways. I could talk about the technical details of how acupuncture helps to heal soft tissue damage for all types of injuries; how by creating a small micro trauma at the site of the injury the body is alerted and instructed to increase the immune response in order to speed healing in the area. I could talk about the mechanisms by which acupuncture helps to block pain signals to the brain by disrupting the nerve pathways, thereby helping to ease suffering in cases of acute and chronic pain. I could discuss how acupuncture helps to combat all types of degenerative diseases by improving the body’s overall immune function or how it can help ease mental and emotional disorders by its double directional effects on the nervous system. But I won’t. Let’s just keep it simple for now.
First and foremost, you could just say acupuncture is a healing modality. Modality is fairly straight forward as a word, but then we have to talk about the idea of healing.So what is healing? I’d say that healing is a process of becoming whole and complete; a process of transcending illness and other limitations to abide in our true nature: our natural completeness. So acupuncture then, is a modality utilized for fostering wholeness and completion by helping to transcend illness and limitation, whether physical, mental or emotional.
It is a simple concept. It is based on the idea that people have an innate intelligence or being-awareness that is constantly moving toward wholeness and completion, but that sometimes – perhaps – just gets stuck and needs a nudge. An acupuncturist then, is one who helps foster wholeness and completion by helping people transcend illness and other limitations by giving their innate intelligence a little energetic nudge.
Terry M. Chen, L.Ac. – Open Sky Acupuncture – Eugene, OR
541-343-4343
Acupuncture Eugene Oregon
Open Sky Acupuncture
