Acupuncture points – if you want to use them for full effect, you have to be able

to feel them, and how you make friends with acupuncture points in your practice
First of all, let´s look again at one of my favorite quotes from one of my
teachers, Dr Wang Juyi:

”When I first began studying, I believed that points were just measured places
on the body that might be located on a cadaver or in an anatomy text. Also, I
believed that all points on the body were roughly the same: that they are all
openings between the various structures of the body. Later, I began to
appreciate subtle differences among the points. Some have more qi or more
blood, some have less. In some places the type of qi is different than in others.
Importantly, the exact nature of qi sensation that should be generated from
each point varies, and should be varied depending on the desired effect. Each
point actually has its own nature or personality. Once I began to truly note these
differences among the points on my patientes, I became more and more
interested in the classical point categorizations. It is from here that I began my
explaration of the source, collateral and five transport points.

In fact, after many years, I now think of many of the points on the body as old
friends. I know what they are like, what their strengths and weaknesses are,
and when to call on them for help. When you get to know the points in this way,
treating in the clinic is kind of like waking good friends from a slumber – gently
prodding the points to wake them up and send them on their way. Also, as I´ve
said before, some of the points are like jacks-of-all-trades, friends that you
might call on to help with a wide variety of projects. Other points have very
specific strengths and should be used in more specific cases. The points, to me,
really do seem to have these different personalities.”
- Applied Channel Theory in Chinese Medicine, Robertson and Wang,
Eastland Press 2008

Touch. For many who work with acupuncture it is quite easy to miss. So much
focus ends up at putting needles into the patient, or even putting manyneedles
into the patient, in some strange idea that if they get many needles they will feel
that the treatment works better (often it is the other way around, the fewer
needles, the higher effect). The skill and care of touch is often lost on the way,
without realizing that losing it actually decreases the effect of the treatment too.

The way a practitioner of acupuncture uses touch will have big influence on
their treatment. There are so many ways to touch someone. Part of the power
of something seemingly as simple as touch is that when someone touches you,
they affirm your existence. When you touch someone, you both affirm the link
between two beings and help the person feel seen: someone touches me,
therefore I exist. So many people in our day and time don´t feel seen at all, so
even something so simple can have a huge effect.
Good bodywork courses should include techniques for different intents for touch
as this is part of the basic work in the field. In China, the skills of touch within
Chinese medicine seems to have had a bit of a dip over the past century. Much
more of the tactile diagnostic skills have remained within Japanese
acupuncture. Dr Wang, quoted at the beginning of this post, is one of the
innovators of tactile diagnostics in his system of channel palpation, something
he consciously researched and deepened over 45 years as acupuncture doctor
in chinese hospitals.

There is the purely technical aspect of skill in this, and then there are emotional
and mental techniques, the intent, that will increase treatment effects and be
able to change the mood of the patient before a needle is even inserted. Both
these will also clearly affect the needling skills a practitioner has and the effect
of the treatments they give.
As an aside, there is a frequent problem in Chinese acupuncture doctors
coming to the West and needling Westerners in the same way as they would
treat patients in China; most Chinese are used to acupuncture, and treatments
can be quite powerful and hard. In the West, people aren´t used to acupuncture,
and the level of power that can be done in treatments has to be downscaled to
for a patient here. The more they work in the West they more they adapt, but
doctors who just have come over often use treatments that are much too strong
for Westerners in general.

If we now look at this old post from my blog:

A saying by Zhang Zhongjing:
"The skilful doctor knows by observation, the mediocre doctor by interrogation,
the ordinary doctor by palpation."

Zhang Zhongjing wrote the Shang Han Lun, the Treatise on Cold Disorders
during the Han dynasty, 200 AD. The book is one of the Chinese medical
classics. Zhang himself is known for his virtous life and his passion for
becoming ever more skilled at Chinese medicine so that he could serve his
patients better. In the Preface to the Shang Han Lun, he exhorts his
contemporary doctors to work harder, saying that many of them are criminally
lazy in their work 1800 years ago.

Observing (wang zhen) is the highly trained and precise method of looking at a
patient to see their health. The more skilled a doctor becomes over the years,
the more he or she sees within seconds of meeting a patient, or seeing a shift in
a patient since last time. This is trained (like I talked about in a previous post
about airports) and trained and trained. This blends with the skill called Tingjin,
or Listening Energy, of the Internal Martial Arts of Baguazhang, Taiji, and
Xingyi, but in chinese medical practice it inhabits the middle ground between
martial skills and the tingjin that a Daoist adept would use to read much more in
a person than that which is visible.

Interrogation is usually a little more mildly called Asking (wen zhen) when
translated. Here, the doctor asks questions that elicit specific views into the
patients health. There is a youtube clip of Peter Deadman, a well-known
acupuncturist, talking about seeing one of his teachers, a laoyisheng, a senior
doctor, diagnose patients. He would usually ask them one, maybe two
questions while taking their pulse, then treat with a very small number of
needles and get an incredible effect. But that doctor had been actively training
and practicing his skills for 40 years.
Palpation, or touching, (qie zhen), covers both taking the pulse and sometimes
touching and diagnosing a patient´s body, organs and skin. The pulse is a tool
that the doctor uses to verify information already gained through looking and
asking. This later transfers into the ability to feel points through touch, a skill
that is getting more and more lost in acupuncture today, as it depends on the
doctor or practitioner having good, stable qigong-skills, and these are rarely
taught nor emphasized today. Acupoints move, both sideways and in depth, so
knowing only a physical placement - ”In the center of the flesh between the
1st and 2nd metacarpal bones, slightly closer to the 2nd metacarpal bone. If the
transverse crease of the interphalangeal joint of the thumb of one hand is lined
up with the margin of the web between the thumb and the index fingers of the
other hand, the point is where the tip of the thumb touches” - for Large Intestine
4, Hegu, placed in the middle of what is called Hukou or the Tiger´s Mouth in
qigong and the Internal Martial Arts, is not enough. Hegu is a point that has
been quite popularized and misunderstood in the West. Knowing the language
for where it is in physiological terms doesn´t mean the practitioner will feel
where the point actually is and truly activate it with a needle.

With years of training and clinical practice, a skilled doctor picks up most of the
information with the trained skill of a actively looking at the patient. Then this is
verified by specific questions, tounge, and verified yet again in depth by
carefully taking the pulse. All are techniques aimed at getting a diagnostic view
of the organic system and organic change that is a living, breathing, human
being.
Human beings are alive. Both our bodies and minds live. Points in our living
body move, ever so slightly, but they move. The watered down versions of
acupuncture that have been spread in the West often base their needling on
charts with ”x marks the spot”. In actual fact, to really give acupuncture its full
treatment ability, 1) the practitioner needs to be able to both diagnose, then 2)
feel where the point is, 3) feel the area, the point, points around it, sometimes
feel along one or several meridians to see different diagnostic signs, 4) wake
the point up through some light pressure and massage (and sometimes the
meridian too) and then 5) have good needle skills on top of that. Then, 6) the
intent used when needling also increases the effect – a practitioner who puts a
needle into a patient like they´re a piece of meat will often shock them and
make their nervous system tense as well as create pain. Good acupuncture
very rarely creates any pain at all.

On top of this is 7) the qigong- and meditation-skills of the practitioner. Stable,

long-term qigong- and/or meditation-practice will again increase the effect of
treatments. In Western medicine the individual skill of a doctor can affect the
outcome a bit, but not all that much; in Chinese medicine, the individual skill of a
practitioner or doctor can have a huge effect on the treatment and on the
patient´s health. An interesting thing to remember is that most of the legendary
doctors in Chinese history have also been Daoist masters or adepts.

2, 3, and 4 all increase diagnostics and treatment effect. One reason for this is
that they wake up the qi in the point, the area and the meridian - the entire
patient. If this already is done, the needling will be much more effective. The
skills in touch is used in 1 as well, but that depends a lot on which school of
Chinese medicine is used – some teachers use palpation skills, some don´t at
all, and the level at which they do it vary over a wide scale. Japanese
acupuncture is more at home with it and has a good system in place for most
practitioners.

Dr Wang´s quote, which we started this post with, gives a sense of what a
skilled and very long-time practitioner of acupuncture gets: a friendly
relationship with the points. By this stage, the diagnostic ability of the
practitioner is often at such a high level that just one, two, three or four points
can treat the very core problems of a patient, yet work with that person in such
a way that the entire system gently opens and gets balanced instead of forcing
it to do so – very much in the concept of ziran, following the natural flow, one of
the principles of Daoism. It´s at that level we get close to – or reach – the
legendary one-needle doctors in Chinese medical history.

”In fact, after many years, I now think of many of the points on the body as old
friends. I know what they are like, what their strengths and weaknesses are,
and when to call on them for help. When you get to know the points in this way,
treating in the clinic is kind of like waking good friends from a slumber – gently
prodding the points to wake them up and send them on their way. Also, as I´ve
said before, some of the points are like jacks-of-all-trades, friends that you
might call on to help with a wide variety of projects. Other points have very
specific strengths and should be used in more specific cases. The points, to me,
really do seem to have these different personalities.”
”The acupuncture points have become my friends over the years”
Quoted from my teacher in Beijing, a doctor with 40 years experience in
Chinese hospitals. Wow. I want to be as good as this...

”When I first began studying, I believed that points were just measured places
on the body that might be located on a cadaver or in an anatomy text. Also, I
believed that all points on the body were roughly the same: that they are all
openings between the various structures of the body. Later, I began to
appreciate subtle differences among the points. Some have more qi or more
blood, some have less. In some places the type of qi is different than in others.
Importantly, the exact nature of qi sensation that should be generated from
each point varies, and should be varied depending on the desired effect. Each
point actually has its own nature or personality. Once I began to truly note these
differences among the points on my patientes, I became more and more
interested in the classical point categorizations. It is from here that I began my
explaration of the source, collateral and five transport points.

In fact, after many years, I now think of many of the points on the body as old
friends. I know what they are like, what their strengths and weaknesses are,
and when to call on them for help. When you get to know the points in this way,
treating in the clinic is kind of like waking good friends from a slumber – gently
prodding the points to wake them up and send them on their way. Also, as I´ve
said before, some of the points are like jacks-of-all-trades, friends that you
might call on to help with a wide variety of projects. Other points have very
specific strengths and should be used in more specific cases. The points, to me,
really do seem to have these different personalities.”
Channel palpation and channel theory with Dr Wang Juyi: an overview of the
course in Dublin 2012
This year´s course with Dr Wang Juyi on channel palpation in Chinese medicine
just finished in Dublin. It was hosted and arranged by Cyrille Bonnard, along
with a small group of helpers, and pulled in a good group of enthusiastic
practitioners who spent four days learning Dr Wang´s system and drinking
deeply of the knowledge in Chinese medicine that he has gathered over the last
56 years. We were helped greatly by Mei Li, one of Dr Wang´s disciples, who
with her translation and further explanations made the course even better.

In this BlogSpot, you will get an overview of his course and Dr Wang´s views on
Chinese medicine. I did and interview with Dr Wang while in Dublin, this will be
published both in print and later here on the Web. We all hope to give
everybody a better chance to see more of his unique knowledge. If you want a
deeper view of his system – channel palpation, point-pairs, clinical skills – I
would really recommend his book, Applied Channel Palpation in Chinese
Medicine.

The channels determine life and death, play a role in all disease and regulate
deficiency and excess; they must be free of obstruction.
– Neijing Lingshu, chapter 10, Jingmai, On Channels

First Dr Wang started off with an introduction to channel theory and his views on
why it has been lost. He asked how long time everybody had practiced.
After a chorus of answers, he said, ”If you have that training and experience,
why do you need to be here studying with me today? Your knowelege in
channel theory is probably either incomplete or not detailed enough. This lack of
understanding of channel theory exists in China too. I had the same problem
when I started out.”
He had a lot of information and skills from his university studies, but found it
very difficult to get good results without channel theory. When he started out he
didn´t believe in channels. Then slowly he began to understand the importance
of them in Chinese medicine, and over time, went deeply into researching them.
”It is not your fault if you lack information on this subject. In this point in time,
channel theory has either been ignored or forgotten. There are two ways for
most acupuncturists to understand points – experiential points, where a function
has been tried and tested in clinic in a specific tradition or style. Then there is
looking the point functions up in books. But when they don´t work, the doctors
who taught the experiential points can´t be asked – they´re dead, like my father
and grandfather are.”
In clinic, he found that with these two versions, sometimes it worked,
sometimes it didn´t. The failure of those two methods plagued him for many
years. But channel theory explained them and gave a deeper understanding of
how points actually worked. It also increased the effect of his treatments,
suddenly making most of them work all the time, and with much better effect.
And it was through his studies of that from the Classics and in clinic, that he
realized that Chinese medicine had a very strong theoretical foundation in
channel theory.

Dr Wang is 75 now, but with his full head of hair and strong gravelly voice, his
energy seems like that of a younger man. During the course, he was originally
only to do the mornings with his disciple Mei Li doing the afternoons, but he
turned up on three afternoons anyway, doing impromptu demonstrations and
helping the students through palpating on them so they could feel the technique
directly.

”Don´t make the mistake that using more acupuncture points is better. It is quite
harmful to the body.”
– Dr Wang Juyi in lecture

Dr Wang then went on to a longer discussion about what the channels are. ”The
channels run between the tissues in the body.” Blood vessels are part of the
spaces in between. Over the course, Dr Wang used quotes from the Classics to
underpin his teaching. ”Palpation was a classical diagnostic method, and at the
time the Neijing was written it was used extensively.” Over the millenia,
however, the practice came and went. Chinese doctor and Daoist priest Jeffrey
Yuan said the same thing during his lecture in Dublin in May – how the culture
of each time affected the use of palpation. Some eras it was approved and
used, in others it vanished because of bans on touching others. It was also
more difficult when treating royalty in China, as they were often not to be
touched (if not because of reverence, then because of the more practical fear of
assassination or poisoning).

”I would like you to remember these next phrases,” Dr Wang said,

1) The channels exist,
2) They are important for our practice,
3) Have faith in the Classics, they are not deceiving us.”

Channel theory,” he added, ”is in my view the basis for all Chinese medicine.”
We will take a brief look at the Classics here in a while, that shows they seem to
be of the same view.
”It is important do channel differentiation, not just pattern differentiation.
Always integrate channel transformation in your enquiries.”

”If you only rely on experiential points handed down to you, or tricks of the
trade, you don´t understand why something works or not.”
– Dr Wang Juyi in lecture

Over the course his teaching wove through several topics, with different asides
and tangents. Main topics were channel theory, channel palpation, channel
diagnostics – going through each channe,l and its different diagnostic signs –
Chinese medicine, clinical experience and his use of point pairs in clinic.

Part of his channel palpation was five stages:

1) Observation

2) Palpation of blood vessels (including taking the pulse)

3) Palpation along channel pathways

4) Pressing

5) Light touching with palm

These in turn would reveal which channels were affected, and which was the
most affected, either towards yin or yang.
Dr Wang also went through some palpation methods rarely used today, such
as several other vessels used classically but now often lost.

He likes to use point pairs were the points have synergistic effects together, and
has researched point pair functions deeply over his past 50+ years in clinic. The
smaller amount of points makes it much easier for the acupuncturist to make
sure what treatment had what effect. If a large amount of points are used, the
patient might get better, but in the long run the practitioner won´t be sure what
points and combinations of them had what treatment effect. Dr Wang advises
that the fewer channels used, the better, a view echoed in the Neijing.
”Don´t make the mistake that the more points is better,” he emphasized. ”It is
quite harmful to the body.”
”Let´s say there´s an orchestra of 100 people playing all at once – can you call
that good music?”
”Some in chinese medicine who don´t get effect, they just needle deeper...” Dr
Wang said he has seen this uncountable times in China in the hospitals where
he worked, and he thinks it is a sign that the practitioner doesn´t understand
Chinese medicine.
”You must research theory deeply to understand how things work and how it
can be applied for your patient. Otherwise your mind will also become slow and
not awake.”

Part of his palpation system is how to open the point before needling, and how
to help open the channel to make sure the treatment effect is even more
precise. Jeffrey Yuan has a great phrase to remember: ”Don´t traumatize the
point.”

”Everything in the Classics is there for a reason, but sometimes we don´t know
how to interpret it.”
– Dr Wang Juyi in lecture

"Leigong asked the Yellow Emperor: ”It was stated in the Jing Mai, ”In
acupncture, channel is most important, one must estimate the condition of the
beginning and the end of its operation, know its length, its relation with the five
solid organs inside and different relations with the six hollow organs outside. I
hope to hear the reasons about it.”
– Neijing Lingshu, chapter 10, Jingmai, On Channels.
Wang Bing version, 762 AD during the Tang Dynasty, Yellow Emperor´s Canon
of Internal Medicine, translated by Wu and Wu, China Science and Technology
Press, 2005

Chapter 10 is quite long and very detailed about how the channels move and
work in the body. In the Jia Yi Jing (The Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and
Moxibustion by Huang Fumi) most of Book Two is about the channels, their
trajectories, their diagnostics and treatments.
”The Yellow Emperor answered: The state of the channels and vessels
determines life or death. Hundreds of diseases are managed (according to their
condition), and emptiness and fullness are regulated through them. Therefore
one cannot be unfamiliar with them.”
– Jia Yi Jing, the Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, Chace
and Yang, Blue Poppy Press 1993

Dr Wang himself rates the Jia Yi Jing highly, and was glad to know there was
an English translation available.

In Japanese acupuncture, palpation has remained much more vibrant over the
centuries, with an especially strong focus on abdominal palpation and
diagnostics.

Jeffrey Yuan, previously mentioned, teaches a Daoist system where the

channel system is used for personal development, training and enlightenment
as well as treatment. This is done both by the practitioner and then used for
helping the patient.

”Needling is like playing the violin.”

– Dr Wang Juyi in lecture

”Life is like a good instrument," he said one afternoon. "You have to play it well.
Needling is like playing the violin. A gentle, very refined movement. You are not
needling any tissue, you are needling the areas between tissues. If you have
the right technique when playing the violin, you can produce the best sounds.”
Over the course Dr Wang used the simile of playing an instrument several
times. He encouraged the students to think deeply about it, and make their skills
gentle with patients. Needling, he repeated, should not be painful or hard. ”Life
is a very gentle instrument.”

Just as he taught this, he also taught how to use other point pairs to ”strum” the
patients system: ”If strings are loose, you have to tighten the strings on the
violin before you can play it.”
During the palpation lessons his phrase was, ”You want to iceskate, not
tapdance”. Each point location should be based on palpation skills, and each
location will be guided by several of the five different tissues:

1) Skin

2) Sinew

3) Muscle

4) Blood (vessels)

5) Bone
When Dr Wang started out fresh from university, he also followed what he had
been taught – anatomical landmarks and images – but over time he realized
that they often didn´t match the actual location. Many points were in slightly
different places, and each person had their own size that he had to learn to
adapt to, then find the point, open it, and finally needle. During the course he
briefly went into his experience of needle skills, but it was not a main topic –
perhaps in courses to come here in Europe. There is a separate section for it in
the book he did with one of his disciples,
Interview with Dr Wang Juyi on channel theory in Chinese medicine, part 1
This article and interview is the first instalment of three about Dr Wang Juyi.
They will focus on his experiences from fifty years in Chinese medicine, his
long-time research and work – especially his system of channel palpation – his
point-pairs and his views on how needling and Chinese medicine should be
practiced. The second article coming in 2013 will include further interview with
Dr Wang, a deeper look at his channel palpation-system and point-pairs, and a
discussion about how the Six Levels of Chinese medicine are activated in
qigong- and internal martial arts practice. The third instalment will be an
interview with one of Dr Wang´s most long-term foreign students, US-based
acupuncturist and Chinese medicine-teacher Yefim Gamgoneishvili, who after
fifteen years of study with Dr Wang recently closed his New York clinic and
moved to Beijing to do a further intensive two years of study at Dr Wang´s clinic,
and at the hospital where he still works.

This year, Dr Wang Juyi has worked as a doctor in Chinese medicine for fifty ye
ars. Hebecame known in the West through the book Applied Channel Theory in
ChineseMedicine, written with his apprentice Jason Robertson. Dr Wang is fam
ous for hisresearch into the clinical application of Chinese medicine, his appreci
ation of the Chinesemedical Classics, his system of channel theory and palpatio
n, and his constant wish thathis students surpass him in skill through applying th
ese principles. This is the first articleand interview where we begin looking at Dr
Wang´s system and his own history –
whichspans half of the 20th century of Chinese medicine into the 21st.

Dr Wang Juyi graduated with the first university class in Chinese medicine in
1962. His teachers were all trained in older styles of Chinese medicine, among
them names that later became famous in the West too, like master herbalist Qin
Bowei and ”Golden Needle” Wang Leting. Dr Wang´s working life has been in
the state hospitals in China; he has seen TCM be created out of the Classical
Chinese Medicine (CCM), been head of the hospital he worked, editor
of Chinese Acupuncture (Chinese version of the Lancet for Chinese medicine)
and finally gone into privat practice in Beijing, which he still maintains. Today,
he is 75, tall, with good energy and a strong, gravelly voice. He takes obvious
joy in transmitting his research and knowledge to younger generations, and
really wants to help us deepen his research into both the Chinese medical
Classics and into other clinical applications of Chinese medicine.

”How come you went into Chinese medicine to begin with?

Dr Wang laughs. ”I didn´t know anything about it. My maternal grandmothergot
sick and died, which affected me and my mother a lot. I found out laterthat the
doctor had misdiagnosed her, because his skill was low, and he
had given her a bad treatment. It seemed an important skill to me to have good
doctors. So, first I had the desire to become a doctor. I then thought about itfor
a few years. At the time, I didn´t even know the difference between xiyi(Western
medicine) and zhongyi (Chinese medicine), I just thought it wouldbe great to be
a good doctor and be able to extend the lives of people whowere ill.

When I saw Western medicine, I didn´t like it that much. Chinese medicine,thou
gh, inspired me. I didn´t understand much of it at the beginning, but Ikept readin
g anyway.” He studied for three years, then a further three into sixyears. They r
ead philosophy, history, the Neijing and other medical
classics,different schools, and the huge bank
of clinical knowledge that builds upChinese medicine.

Personal experiences with Chinese medicine

There were four choices, and all his classmates were surprised when DrWang c
hose Chinese medicine. ”Later on I thought about this,” he says, ”andrealized th
at one reason was that back in 1946-
47, my mother was treatedfor problems during menopause, and treated with her
bs by a doctor called LiGuohua. Dr
Li came home to us by rickshaw, carrying herbs. Then sherecovered in April, bu
t later started wheezing a bit, windy, with bad hives andswollen cheeks, and Li
Guohua again came and treated her for 2-
3 days withherbs, and she had no relapse after that.

Li Gonghua later came to treat myself

too. When I was at boarding school, I got a high fever in a late stage of an illnes
s. I went home and literallyexpected to die. They called Dr Li to our house. He s
aid it was a very gravecondition, very serious, and that it might help or might not
, but we could tryfor 2-3 days. I slowly got better, and finally had a month-
course of Li´s herbs.I think
both these events gave me a subconscious focus on Chinesemedicine later on.
His grandfather knew a bit of Chinese medicine, but he didn´t treat muchwith it
. Back before the Cultural Revolution, many educated had a bit ofChinese medi
cal knowledge. His grandfather was self-
taught from books. Hehad a lot of notebooks, pills, herbal medicines and herbal
plasters. Dr Wangstill has some of them left.
And that background was probably what made him gravitate towardsChinese
medicine. But this turned out to only be the start of a long andexciting journey.
Channel palpation and channel theory

In 2012, Dr Wang held a longer course on his system of channel palpationand c

hannel theory in Dublin. It was hosted and arranged by Cyrille Bonnard,along wi
th a small group of helpers, and pulled in a good group ofenthusiastic practition
ers who spent four days learning Dr Wang´s systemand drinking deeply of the k
nowledge in Chinese medicine he has gatheredover the last 56 years. We were
helped greatly by Mei Li, one of Dr Wang´sapprentices, who with her translation
and further explanations made thecourse even better.
The channels determine life and death, play a role in all disease and regulatede
ficiency and excess; they must be free of obstruction.
–
Neijing Lingshu, chapter 10, Jingmai, On Channels. WangBing version, 762 AD
, Tang Dynasty. From Yellow Emperor´s Canon ofInternal Medicine, transl. by
Wu and Wu, China Science and TechnologyPress, 2005

Channels or meridians are two ways of translating the Chinese term jingluo.
Jingluo covers both the so called Primary Channels (jing) and the smaller
networks, the Collateral Channels (luo). ”Meridian” comes from the french
translation méridienne with the idea of the mercator meridians surrounding the
globe, but jing actually has the connotation of the warp and weft in fabric and
cloth. Jingmi, for example, is ”warp density, ends per inch”, jinglun ”to comb and
arrange silk threads”. In most Chinese medical Classics, the channels are often
likened to canals and drainage ditches in a farming landscape.

There are then also deeper channels than these – the next deeper level
the jingbie, the Divergent Channels, and at the deepest levels, the qijing ba mai,
the Eight Extraordinary Channels. Daoist spiritual work and some qigong add
deeper ones still after these.
The qi and connections of information that are the channels go through our
physical tissue. Changes in health in an organ will show as a change on its
associated channel; it is a system for mapping and palpating these changes
that Dr Wang has made part of his life´s work.

What happened to channel theory?

During the
course, Dr Wang started off with an introduction to channel theoryand his views
on why it has been lost. He asked how long time everybodyhad practiced.
After a chorus of answers, he said, ”If you have that training andexperience, w
hy do you need to be here studying with me today? It means
your knowledge in channel theory is probably either incomplete or notdetailed e
nough. This lack of understanding of channel theory exists in Chinatoo. I had th
e same problem when I started out.”

In Japanese acupuncture, palpation has remained much more vibrant over the
centuries, with an especially strong focus on abdominal palpation and
diagnostics. The Chinese version of channel theory and palpation was deeply
studied in older chinese medicine and seen as crucial there, but then came and
went depending on what dynasty it was. The 20th century became a weak era
for it in China.

Dr Wang got a lot of information and skills from his university studies, butfound i
t very difficult to get good results without channel theory. When hestarted out he
didn´t believe in channels. Then slowly he began tounderstand the importance
of them in Chinese medicine, and over time, wentdeeply into researching them.
”It´s not your fault”

”It is not your fault if you lack information on this subject. In this point in time,cha
nnel theory has either been ignored or forgotten. There are two ways formost ac
upuncturists to understand points –
experiential points, where afunction has been tried and tested in clinic in a spec
ific tradition or style.Then there is looking the point functions up in books. But w
hen they don´twork, the doctors who taught the experiential points can´t be ask
ed – they´redead, like my father and grandfather are.”

In clinic, he found that with these two versions, sometimes it worked,sometimes

it didn´t. The failure of those two methods plagued him for manyyears. But chan
nel theory explained them and gave a deeper understandingof how points actua
lly worked. It also increased the effect of his treatments,suddenly making most o
f them work all the time and with much better effect.It was through his studies of
that from the Classics and the huge amount of patients that often is standard in
Chinese
hospitals, that he realized thatChinese medicine had a very strong theoretical fo
undation in channel theory.During his decades in the hospitals he also saw man
y acupuncture doctorswho quite quickly went on to do herbal medicine instead o
f deeplyresearching the acupuncture system, often because they misunderstoo
d it astoo simple, and because
they lacked a cohesive whole through which tounderstand the treatments.

”Don´t make the mistake that using more acupuncture points is better. It is
quite harmful to the body.”
– Dr Wang Juyi in lecture

”Don´t traumatize the point”

”Life is like a good instrument," Dr

Wang said one afternoon. "You have toplay it well. Needling is like playing the vi
olin. A gentle, very refinedmovement. You are not needling any tissue, you are
needling the areasbetween tissues. If you have the right technique when playin
g the violin, youcan produce the best sounds.”

Over the course Dr Wang used the simile of playing an instrument severaltimes.
He encouraged the students to think deeply about it, and make theirskills gentl
e with patients. Needling, he repeated, should not be painful orhard. ”Life is a ve
ry gentle instrument.”

”Needling is like playing the violin.”

– Dr Wang Juyi in lecture

Just as he taught this, he also taught how to use other point pairs to ”strum”the
patients system: ”If strings are loose, you have to tighten the strings onthe violin
before you can play it.”
During the palpation lessons his phrase was, ”You want to ice-skate, nottap-
dance”. Each point location should be based on palpation skills, andeach locatio
n will be guided by several of the five different tissues. We willlook at
these in the next instalment in this series, in the next issue.

”Some in chinese medicine who don´t get effect, they just needle deeper...”Dr
Wang said he has seen this uncountable times in China in the hospitalswhere h
e worked, and he thinks it is a sign that the practitioner doesn´tunderstand Chin
ese medicine.

Part of his palpation system is how to open the point (kaixue) beforeneedling, a
nd how to help open the channel to make sure the treatmenteffect is even more
precise. Classical Chinese Medicine-practitioner and Daoist
priest Jeffrey Yuen has a great phrase to remember: ”Don´ttraumatize the point.
”
Here are some words of wisdom from Dr. Wang....(this is from an interview with
an old student who studied with him in the 1970s. The interview was conducted
in 2010).
"We hear some people assert that acupuncture treatments have no side-effects.
I strongly disagree with such claims. The most commonly seen side-effect from
improper acupuncture treatment is what I call ‘exhaustion’ or ‘confusion’ in the
channels. The reasons for improper acupuncture are varied.
Most often, improper treatments come from incorrect syndrome differentiation,
an excess of acupoints used in a given treatment or over-stimulation. Many
have noticed that patients who have never had acupuncture have a tendency to
get quicker results. Of course, these patients are being compared with patients
who have been previously treated with acupuncture on a regular basis. Some
have also found that patients who come often may get decreasing levels of
improvement as they get more and more treatments. Some have even claimed
that non-Chinese patients tend to react more favourably to acupuncture
treatment. This may very well be due to the fact that these types of patients
have never had interference in their acupuncture channels and are thus less
likely to have ‘exhausted’ channel systems.
In the 1980s, while I was lecturing in Mexico, I treated a female patient who
presented with sciatica. She had previously received more than ten
acupuncture treatments from other practitioners who used common sciatica
acupoints such as GB-30 (huan tiao), GB-34 (yang ling quan) and KI-3 (tai xi).
The outcome had not been successful.
Initially, I thought it was due to inexact acupoint location and poor technique.
After completing my intake and examining her channels, I concluded that the
patient’s constitution (both qi and blood) were relatively weak due to the chronic
disorder. It seemed that previous acupuncture treatments had been carried out
too strongly and harshly, thus further weakening the patient’s constitution. In
other words, the patient’s channel system was exhausted and confused.
Because of this, I decided that, prior to addressing the pain, it was essential to
first tonify and sooth the flow of qi and blood in order to balance and nourish.
The initial three to four acupuncture treatments utilised LI-4 (he gu) and LR-3
(tai chong) as primary acupoints to restore and invigorate qi and blood flow.
During subsequent clinical visits, I noticed a gradual increase in sensitivity
(deqi) at the acupuncture points which had previously been used for treating
sciatica. For instance, while needling GB-30 in later treatments, the deqi
sensation came comparatively quicker, while also radiating down to the toes.
Most importantly, her response to treatment became gradually more positive.
This case taught me a lesson. Namely, when treating difficult diseases,
particularly those with a lingering and chronic nature, we should investigate not
only the symptom pattern, but also the status of the channel system itself. In
particular, we should pay attention to any possible signs of exhaustion or
depletion before delivering treatment. If there is a state of exhaustion or
confusion, we should first regulate the entire channel system and only then
address the original problem."