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* ARTICLES
* A LIVING SYSTEMS HEALTHCARE
________________________  --Joan of Arc, on trial in 1431
--Susan O'Connell, zen priest Social factors, social structures, communication patterns between people, cannot be weighed, seen or quantified. Yet they do exist and have a very real bearing on our experience and physical health. A healthcare that ministers to conditions produced by social factors - a person's experience of their social context - has to be of a different order from the biomedical construct inherited from the 20th century. Evaluation by comparison with the familiar corporate medical infrastructures results in mystification and misapprehension. To say that this kind of acupuncture healing arts is a new model of healthcare would not be exactly true, since in its origins at another culture, and another time, it was even then concerned with these very same perspectives. The structure of this model of healthcare, both the past and present versions, is in inter-relationships and interconnections -- which are also the basis of ecosystemic sciences. These interconnected lines of communication are the very fabric of ecology. Herbalists and acupuncturists of ancient times based their art on careful and devoted observation of nature. Their understanding of the channels and points, and how to treat them to help people, evolved directly from observation of inter-relationships of Sun, Moon, stars, weather, plant communities and the villages of people. Where one could say corporate healthcare of the 20th century was patterned on the concept of the body as a machine, and that its infrastructures developed out of that pattern and reflect that basic concept, a "new" form of healthcare in the 21st century could be described as patterned after living systems, rather than a machine. The infrastructures and practices of this form of "new" healthcare can be best comprehended--and trusted--when they are understood as taking their shape from that basic concept.
_________________________ The life sciences have evolved in their understanding of what a living system is and how it functions. Instead of a mechanistic model, a communications and relationship model has been found more applicable, in working with the phenomena in nature and in ourselves. This involves concepts of feedback, behavior and growth of mind as a social system (which requires a minimum of two people for 'mind' to exist). Where the mechanistic model has viewed a person in isolation, living systems view an individual's functioning in terms of its mutual communication with others. This concept changes the nature of the patient-therapist dynamic in ways that cannot be well comprehended when viewed through the lenses of the mechanistic model of care, which predominated through the 20th century. Although it might appear easier for acupuncture to succeed by becoming integrated into the infrastructure of corporate biomedicine, this may prove to be a superficial solution. The living systems model of care and the mechanistic model are incompatible, and it may be more accurate to say that living systems healthcare is the evolution of industrial biomedicine into something new. To attempt to meld them together as integrative medicine may be an effort to gain quick and easy acceptance from a public deeply conditioned to view life in terms of mechanistic principles.
_________________________  ...ovenbird nest, new salem... "a small, inconspicuous bird of the forest floor"
*internal reproductive rights* It is familiar for people to seek healthcare only when they have some illness, with the idea that the care would combat and vanquish the illness. This can lead to a social merry-go-round of syndromes, diseases and remedies. But the perspective of living systems healthcare shifts from conquering illnesses to nurturing the body's regenerative capacities. As renewal engages, many illnesses resolve of themselves and are forgotten. For example, we are accustomed to speak of reproductive rights as the ability to have children or not as we choose. Yet there may be an even more essential reproductive right which might be termed as internal reproductive rights. Every body has processes in which its cells and organs renew themselves. As old cells die new ones are created to replace them. Gradually over time whole organs in the body are, in every cell, regenerated in what is essentially a new organ. This is as much a reproductive capability as the formation of a new body in the womb, and it may even be more primary, since it makes it possible for people to continue through life and time. It is crucial to know that certain social factors and social experiences support this internal capacity to reproduce in ones own cells, and other factors discourage this normal internal rejuvenation. Part of a living systems healthcare would be to focus more on nurturing this life-giving function in the body, and attend less to 'seek and destroy' missions focussed on disease. This clinic is one of those that does not ask for a person's chronological age as a way to determine treatment (unless a birthdate is needed for medical astrology). To find oneself predetermined or defined in terms of chronology is to be pressured into social agendas which may be convenient for a corporation's profits, but seldom if ever good for humanity. A person's perception of time has a direct influence on physical processes. Every effort is made to release a person seeking treatment from the vise of chronology, by not defining identity in terms of 'age' no matter in what stage of life they may be.
_________________________  ..when Qi is quiet the body reflects Light..
*the observer effect* One of the guidelines of Living Systems Healthcare is interpersonal perception. How people perceive each others' communications has a lot to do with how they respond to them. If a body perceives something as unwelcome, this evokes a defensive response in their body. This naturally defensive reflex, somewhat similar to the concept of the immune response, protects the body from experiences that may subtly injure, do harm, or with which a person may be reactive or incompatible. In acupuncture it is called the Wei Qi or protective Qi. There are many social experiences available to a person today. They have many free-will choices to make, whether to participate in this or that social context. Some of these social interactions may support their unique immunity, others may undermine it. It is essential every individual body discern what is constructive in social involvements, for them, and what is to avoid, and then freely choose. In this respect people may run afoul of "social pressure," which can convince a person to distrust what their own senses and perceptions show is not for them. This can be the beginning of severe and life-threatening illness for many a person. What's good for one woman may be harmful to the next. Social pressure and political correctness programming, often with good intentions, can wreak untold harm which may not be noticed until decades have passed by.
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*the sense of relationship and choice* One of the most problematic contrasts between corporate biomedical care, and a living systems healthcare is the ethical value that care must be provided to anyone and everyone irrespective, and this is portrayed in biomedicine as the highest ethical and moral value. In contrast living systems healthcare is based on mutual compatibility between practitioner and those seeking care; the discovery of a living and mutual sense of relationship between the two individuals is the essence of successful treatment. This mutual rapport will not be there with anyone. Treatment on demand may produce inappropriate and unsuccessful pairings, resulting in unsatisfactory experiences for patient and caregiver alike. Certainly, this one of the most unfamiliar and "new" aspects of a living systems healthcare. Yet, to return a sense of relationship to our social world even in this humble way, is to make a crucial contribution to a social fabric that has become deranged through its loss of this very sense of relationship.
___________________________  * ...clinic sign, summer season... *
*decentralized authority, dependency and reclaiming the body* Many physical conditions develop through a process of more and more dependency on some external authority to make decisions for someone about their own body and health. The more there is external dependency, the more certain inner muscles atrophy. Part of reclaiming the body means to shift the focus of authority from outside to some source from within oneself, within one's own body. Then a process of healing begins through persistent efforts to attune one's own cells to ones unique internal authority or conscience. This is self-determination as applied to one's own physical and moral being. This self-determination happens naturally in social systems where authority is decentralized, such as in the original concept of democracy (government of the people, by the people, for the people). In acupuncture the web of channels has no central authority such as the brain or heart in biomedicine anatomy. Instead acupuncture anatomy is decentralized, and any one point on the channel systems can become the 'central authority'. This is another way in which acupuncture healing arts may help foster a 'new' civilization based more on the ethics of relationship and less on dominance and control - through propagation of community based acupuncture practices not patterned after or merged with industrial healthcare economies.
 Perceptual boundaries between people arise from trust based on spirit within each individual. Through perceptual boundaries it is possible to communicate normally, real agreements can be forged, and it becomes possible to be kind, gentle and naturally just with others, since there is a sense of relationship with them. This sense of relationship is a line of life, which ensures a healthful and peaceful society. In childrens' development perceptual boundaries begin to appear around age 7, when they first become aware of themselves as an entity separate from their emotions. They begin to choose what to express, and begin to develop relationship to their own inner feelings instead of either venting the emotion, or repressing it. As they choose how to respond to their perception of others they are also evolving conscious relationship toward other people. In Asian Healing Arts many conditions are believed to take hold on a body only because that person becomes susceptible to them-- external cold may exist all the time, but only foster disease when a person's boundary of protective Qi, which surrounds them like a bubble, is weakened. There are social pathogens one can catch--group anger at school, socialized habits of perception--these can take hold on a susceptible body and become a habit, a physical disease process. This can be prevented by promoting clear and strong perceptual boundaries, what acupuncturists call the life-gate of perception (ming-men of the eye). Asthma is one condition that can result when a child's perceptual boundaries are ignored or not perceived by their social context.
One of the paradoxes of acupuncture is that by apparently penetrating physical boundaries at the skin the bubble of protective Qi is strengthened. This happens because acupuncture activates the spirit-self at the center of each person, that point from which the protective bubble emanates. In this way acupuncture particularly between ages of 7 and 12 can nurture the moral stamina and physical wellbeing that flows from lively perceptual boundaries.
 "It is a notorious fact that the morality of a society as a whole is in inverse ratio to its size; the greater the aggregation of individuals, the more the individual factors are blotted out and with them morality, which depends entirely on the moral sense of the individual and on the freedom necessary for this." --Jung 1929
Confusion over rapid changes in our world find our culture drenched in anger. This anger is everywhere evident in a combative lifestyle. Anger and all the seven emotions are normal, yet when they overwhelm and dominate experience they become pathogens, injuring health and poisoning society. Emotions in themselves can become self-indulgent. But as spirit purposes act upon them, emotions lose their selfish qualities and become more related to other people, feelings which carry healing qualities and connect people with each other. Peace is usually portrayed as a passive state. But action can be dynamically peaceful -- an action neither confrontative nor non-violent. This is possible through the seven spiritual qualities which in asian healing arts are viewed as the guiding stars of the seven emotions. These spiritual feelings are as rooted in the physical self as are the seven emotions. Yet as they are awakened, they act upon the seven emotions the way sunrise acts on the mists and fogs in the valleys of night - the emotions gradually lighten up and yield their life-giving qualities. Anger is based on the flawed perception that people cause each other to do things, so that someone is always to blame. (Tibetan medicine, for example, speaks of the 84,000 diseases of the disturbed and unsubdued mind and its karmic actions). It is one result of subscribing, collectively, to a mechanistic paradigm as a behavioral guide.
But when experience is viewed very carefully it is possible to see - no one ever causes another person to do anything, and no one is ever to blame. Where group anger has locked up society into dysfunctional repetition - this one perception can free people to immense resources of creativity. When the source of strength comes from within, external controls and external stressors lose their disease-causing grip on a person. Many illnesses develop as a kind of external dependency. Acupuncture is a method which works by helping people slip free from external damage, and draw on sources of health that spring from within. A better world begins from within each person. From this starting point, love and happiness can flow out into the world as a forceful, life-giving activity.  ...treatments have a cumulative effect... * A NEW CIVILISATION....of Love and Beauty It is believed there is a new civilisation appearing and becoming established in the world, across barriers of nation and culture. It is a peaceful civilisation, founded on spiritual values expressed through beauty and the fine arts. Some leaders have consciously initiated this trend, such as Mokichi Okada, a 20th century visionary who founded the Johrei teaching. One of the principles of art in the Johrei teaching is to not dominate over nature, but work cooperatively, as in certain types of gardens or landscaping where the natural trend is cultivated in ways that express even more beauty, but without suppression of the characteristic quality of nature in itself. Spiritual ideals can be expressed through the physical body--not as beauty which is exploitable or a marketable commodity--but through principles of harmony, rhythm, timbre of voice. These things often find expression in the fine arts such as in dance. But, they are qualities which cannot ever be turned into a marketable commodity, then they vanish and are replaced by something that is like a counterfeit, since the shining-outward of the inner spiritual principles is no longer active. There is a branch of asian healing arts concerned with beauty such as facial rejuvenation treatments. The asian saying about 'losing face' can denote the social circumstance where a person is induced by necessity to forgo ways of relating to others which are for that person are authentic, which flow from their true spiritual nature. The result is engaging in interactions that do not confirm a person in their soul-self, but sort of steal their soul. This can result in physical changes in appearance, 'loss of face.' The interest in protecting and keeping the grace and loveliness of the body is not just superficial, vanity or exploitive, but true loveliness is identical with a state of health, and with keeping to one's inner voice or conscience in the choices made during life in relation to the people one meets. Acupuncture can work with these concerns since the physiology of acupuncture includes the functions of soul and spirit and their role in health. These insights are a healthcare tradition not just new age for today, but from origins in very ancient times where acupuncturists studied spiritual influences and cultivated them in the fine arts of dance, music, literature, astrology, calligraphy, painting, to find better ways to understand and help people through their treatments. In Pediatric Patients Using 7 EXTERNAL DRAGONS AND DEVILS ACUPUNCTURE by Anna Kelly, MD
(this article has been edited for this website)
INTRODUCTION Traditional pain management focuses on interrupting sympathetic nervous system activity with pharmacologic agents, nerve blocks, and surgical or chemical sympathectomy. Physical therapy and psychological counseling are useful adjuncts. Acupuncture has been utilized successfully in the adult patient with RSD. Electroacupuncture is frequently the method used. Acupuncture has also been used successfully in the pediatric pain patient. CASE REPORTS
Case Report 1 METHODS/TREATMENT Case Report 2 METHODS/TREATMENT During visits 2 and 3, the patient's chief complaints were consistent with a viral upper respiratory tract infection with fever, nausea, and body aches; points were chosen to clear heat, move Qi and blood, and an extraction to Tai Yang was performed. After resolution of these symptoms at week 4, the right foot pain was again addressed with 7 Internal Dragons and Devils. After this 2nd treatment to address the right foot and ankle pain, the patient reported an 80% reduction in pain. DISCUSSION The treatments are useful clinically when patients have experienced life-changing events, frequently traumatic in nature, followed by complaints of pain or suffering. Either internal emotional factors resulting from the initiating event, or exogenous factors, have "invaded" the patient's energetic makeup to such an extent that they exert an overriding control. 7 Internal or External Dragons and Devils Acupuncture may release the "dragons," which are felt to be benign, protective forces, in order to "chase away the devils" that manifest as the patient's chief complaint. In these cases of pediatric RSD, all patients reported severe pain following a traumatic initiating event, with minimal or temporary relief after conventional medical techniques. None of the 3 had internalized emotional factors related to the traumatic event, so that the 7 External Dragons and Devils treatment was administered. Patient 3 also had 7 Internal Dragons and Devils Acupuncture because of incomplete relief after the External treatment, and probable internalization of the initial traumatic event. CONCLUSION AUTHOR INFORMATION  * MYTH OF CLIMACTERIC Anyone who has wakened, heart pounding and sweat pouring off, or endured sudden redness and heat flushing up while talking with a friend would never say climacteric was a myth. Yet one researcher at UMass Amherst discovered indigenous Mayan women experience cessation of the cycle uneventfully. Her study did not extend on to causes, but an acupuncturist might see a difference between the herbal-based, slow, easy pace of life in the hills of the Yucatan, and the 'type A' perpetual panic of American culture. Acupuncture and herbology correlate the rush and push lifestyle with yin depletion--'running on empty' in common language, and yin depletion characteristically results in bothersome syndromes at climacteric time. Could they be prevented through changes in lifestyle and through judicious use of herbs over time? One of the medical issues is thought to be absence of estrogen. A millenially-used Asian herbal formula has been found to nourish the body to both produce estrogen and to generate more estrogen receptors, so utilization of any available estrogen increases. Ovulation and periods cease permanently, and significant hormonal changes occur--yet why does this have to reduce viability? There was a time before when there were no periods and no ovulation; why does this particular life-gate have to be conceived of as a loss anymore than adolescence was considered a lessening of the benefits of childhood? In many indigenous cultures such as the Maya a woman is seen as reaching adulthood not at menarche but at climacteric, often then to undertake some spiritual leadership. The more public form of Asian traditional medicines portray a person's life like the skyline of Mount Fuji--a peak or 'climax' of activity followed by an inevitable decline. Yet the esoteric, or closely held form of traditional medicine emphasizes the continuity of a body's functioning, and its capacity at any chronological point to renew itself, even physically. How people interpret their experience can influence what happens in the physical/emotional self. Though periods and ovulation leave off, why does this have to be construed as a decrease in functioning, and why could it not be seen instead as a shift in emphasis in the body's physiology? If climacteric were viewed and anticipated in a new way, it might lead to a lessening of physical liabilities currently seen as necessary and appropriate fate.
There is a subjective experience in the body--a feeling of pure vital forces coursing through body channels, that is somewhat independent of the physical self. This may be another name for the 'wise blood,'--that when menstruation ceases, it goes inside to become a kind of spiritual substance. Sensation of this wise blood can be developed long before climacteric; a part of acupuncture and its physical medicines--(the peaceful exercise of Qi Gong and T'ai Chi)--are to nurture this inner 'liquid light' which is like an 'elixir of life,' because of the sense of vitality and viability associated with it. Many illnesses of later life develop because they're expected as inevitable and almost planned-for over many years. If life were lived in a consciously different way perhaps much of 'climacteric' would remain myth.  * LIGHT on BOG MYRTLE
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru' narrow chinks of his cavern." Myrica, known in America as Bog Myrtle and by many other names as it grows all across the world, is an interesting plant for those concerned with spiritual consciousness. Algonquin indigenous peoples use this herb as tea to promote clear dream recall, lucid and spiritual dreaming. Bog myrtle has also been used to enhance memory and to relieve depression. In Asian Herbology these functions are described as clearing away 'phlegm that mists the Portals of the Heart.' The five senses are described as the portals or openings of the Heart (Mind/Psyche). These can be misted over by phlegm the way fog can cloud a window pane. Phlegm in herbology is understood not only as a productive cough, but as tough and sticky substances that clog the normal workings of the body. A protein named lipofuscin has been found to coat neurons obstructing their electrical function, corresponding with memory loss, depression and conditions such as Alzheimers. This may be a biological instance of "Phlegm misting the Heart Openings." Some herbs have this property of being able to clear away this misting or clouding of the senses. This is equivalent to the experience of loss of contact with one's own spirit, so the demeanor loses its brilliance and sparkle, and a person feels dull. Herbs which can clear away the clouding of the sense-openings can restore clear perception. Other herbs have a similar function. Pine oil has been used in baths to help restore the spirit. An american herb called Field Balsam or Sweet Everlasting has been used in a similar way by stuffing a small pillow with the herb, so it's healing scent surrounds a sleeping body. Sweet Everlasting or Life Everlasting herb has also been associated with communication from spirit beings -- when the plant is seen in the wild it is pale and white in contrast to surrounding brush, making it appear almost spectral. It is interesting all these herbs bear the form of a cone. And, all these cones show the mathematical pattern of the golden section (fibonacci series), which is an infinite number.
 life everlasting (left), bog myrtle (right) Bog Myrtle, even though it is not a kind of evergreen but a shrub, bears small clusters of tiny nutlets along the stems which look like tiny pinecones. Life Everlasting's flowers start out as conical buds, with the petals arranged like a pinecone, before they fully open as a blossom. Like pinecones-- Bog Myrtle and Life Everlasting are not just fragrant plants, but sticky with an essential sap. In the human body the equivalent is a 'sap' or hormone exuded by tiny glands such as the pineal gland (named after pine cones, since it is shaped like a pine cone), deep inside the brain at the top of the spine. the Pineal Gland is active in modulating wakefulness and rest through the effects of light on the sleep cycle, and it has many other functions as well. * PINE CONES at the THRESHOLD When I was about 8 or 9, I began to notice feeling a physical tension in my body, almost a very difficult, sick kind of feeling. During this period I had a recurrent dream: * I am walking in the forest beside a small stream. I look into the clear water and see the bottom is covered with soft dark mud and silt. As I look more carefully I notice something like pine cones buried in this silt. Then I see they are a kind of turtle, whose shell scales look like pine cones. They have the ability to flex these scales.* Only after the change-time was over, I understood these pine cones I had been seeing in dreams referred to a tiny structure at the top of the spine--the pineal gland, named because it is shaped like a pine cone. In these dreams the pine cones were needing cleansing and purification. The dreams were offering me insight and an opportunity to prevent what became a difficult and stressful time. The moving from late childhood over the threshold into the teens brings increased activity of all the endocrine glands, of which the pineal is one (and probably one of the chief ones). These glands begin pouring new hormones into the bloodstream, washing out some substances that can be toxic to the body--resulting in rashes, physical pain, floods of emotion, anxiety and excruciating menstrual symptoms. It is a time of drastic evolution for the body and the whole person. Acupuncture's preventive strategies can be greatly helpful at this threshold of life. Strategies include to open the 8 extraordinary vessels, relieve qi stagnation, to clear heat and drain damp, remove obstruction, harmonize the Qi and Blood. Acupuncture can support the evolving identity of the child during this time, so they do not lose the pure and direct character attained in late childhood, and preserve them so they do not founder under the onslaught of hormonal activity.
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articles Copyright © 2010 Acupuncture Womencare. Laughing Woman artwork by Abigail Burns. |
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