acupuncture as an effective energy medicine
So the first thought in my mind is, what do we mean by "energy medicine"? There were a few articles in our packet on Energy Fields that described this as a field of electromagnetic energy, or as Qi, something that is beyond what we can physically measure, or as an "aura" - even as something that transcends matter and flows as an intelligence across members of a species.
I can speak to my own personal connection with energy medicine, a sense of my own energetic flow and that of other people, that is not acquired through understanding anything mentally - such as anatomy - or seeing anything physically, such as a cut on my skin, or a flush on the cheeks. Yet it is a *felt* sense, feeling the energy at a point, or running through my body... and I notice that as I practice giving and receiving acupuncture over time - just as I practice yoga over time - I get more acquainted with that feeling, more able to hone in on the sources of the deepest sensation and vibrancy - i.e. the acupuncture points - a sense of fullness and activity, of life, as opposed to a sense of absence, quiet, non-activity, when I am more and more certain that I have missed the mark - or a sense of dullness, lack of feeling, which is paradoxically often accompanied by physical pains - when I can tell that my own channels have stagnated.
When I read studies about acupuncture I am often curious about the practitioner, and how little attention is paid to them in these studies. If the studies wasn't speaking to "evidence-minded" Western scientific types who are so much in their logical black vs. white, colonial minds... if we were having the conversation within a collection of people who have a cultivation and mastery of their own Qi, and sensing it in others, I would imagine the studies would be designed differently. I would imagine that lots of care was taken to select a cross-section of very masterful practitioners that have reputations for very powerfully effective treatments, who have a Qi Gong or other kind of pratcie of Qi / Prana cultivation. Then, I imagine, all the "mircales" and incredible transformation witnessed by those of us very exposed to acupuncture in the day to day, would start to hold up in the research.
I can speak to my own personal connection with energy medicine, a sense of my own energetic flow and that of other people, that is not acquired through understanding anything mentally - such as anatomy - or seeing anything physically, such as a cut on my skin, or a flush on the cheeks. Yet it is a *felt* sense, feeling the energy at a point, or running through my body... and I notice that as I practice giving and receiving acupuncture over time - just as I practice yoga over time - I get more acquainted with that feeling, more able to hone in on the sources of the deepest sensation and vibrancy - i.e. the acupuncture points - a sense of fullness and activity, of life, as opposed to a sense of absence, quiet, non-activity, when I am more and more certain that I have missed the mark - or a sense of dullness, lack of feeling, which is paradoxically often accompanied by physical pains - when I can tell that my own channels have stagnated.
When I read studies about acupuncture I am often curious about the practitioner, and how little attention is paid to them in these studies. If the studies wasn't speaking to "evidence-minded" Western scientific types who are so much in their logical black vs. white, colonial minds... if we were having the conversation within a collection of people who have a cultivation and mastery of their own Qi, and sensing it in others, I would imagine the studies would be designed differently. I would imagine that lots of care was taken to select a cross-section of very masterful practitioners that have reputations for very powerfully effective treatments, who have a Qi Gong or other kind of pratcie of Qi / Prana cultivation. Then, I imagine, all the "mircales" and incredible transformation witnessed by those of us very exposed to acupuncture in the day to day, would start to hold up in the research.
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