Mixing Acupuncture Styles and The Kitchen Sink

Recently the office received an email from a practitioner who had been told by an advisor to go ahead and combine in a single session divergent treatments and treatments of a very different (modern) practice. He was justifiably concerned.

Imagine you’re in a restaurant overhearing someone at the next table making an order:
Yes, I’m ready, thank you, I’d a slice of apple pie, please, with ketchup, agave syrup, miso, hoisin sauce, peanut butter, garlic paste, and molé.  Oh, and also tartare and marmalade.  All on top, not on the side.  And can you add blue cheese and give it a quick zap in the microwave? Thanks!

The acupuncture version of that order could be any of these:

1. “…now I’ll just add a jing-well point to the eight extra treatment, to help with a release in case there was one.”

2. “…now I’ll just add extra points from my previous training to this divergent channel treatment to speed up the results, because I want to be sure this really works.”

3. “…now, just to make sure, I’ll add the sports injury style from my previous training to this classical sinew channel treatment.”

4. “…I’m not sure I trust those divergent channels because their trajectory doesn’t make perfect sense to me, so I’ll just add lots of needles in different places according to my old training to achieve the idea of latency.  It must work if you needle DSD because intention is everything, right!  Combining these practices is wild— the results are definitely enhanced, even multiplied and I just can’t believe the results I’m getting.”

5. “…I really don’t like bleeding.  I’ll just needle the luo points instead.  I seem to get pretty good results with Shen doing that anyway.”

This is understandable.  We want to make sure that we have all bases covered and that the patient gets the best treatment we can possibly give them. But the premise of such thinking is materialist, as if more is better.

The purpose of acupuncture is to create an environment in which a channel of energy can experience the least possible amount of interference and return to its natural state of free flow.  If all channels are free, health becomes a beautiful inner dance, and there is no disease.  When points are added that do not resonate with the frequency of the channel of focus, the body is distracted saying “Wait please, do you want me to do this or something else, because it’s not clear to me and I can’t do either effectively at the same time.”

The practice of acupuncture must be direct, clear, and unequivocal.  If we take each of the five examples above and stack them up against acupuncture theory, it becomes apparent that this way of thinking clashes with foundational principles.

A jing-well point can destroy an eight extra treatment because it invites upward and outward movement of wei qi, the precise opposite of the very deep consolidating nature of the eight extra channels and their yuan qi.  The body will be confused and reject the treatment and you might not even know it.  The patient might even have a purge, and if the practitioner is not familiar with the eight extras, she might think that’s a good thing.  Meanwhile, toxins have unknowingly been called from the jing. The body may have been sequestering toxins successfully and safely in the jing in a situation where there was insufficient mediumship to expel them.  If they are beckoned out by the practitioner while the patient remains deficient in the resources to move and expel them, autointoxication will arise.  The ramifications can be enormous. Working with the eight extraordinary channels is a profoundly sophisticated process, commanding reverence for yuan qi.

In the second case, adding points to a divergent treatment that are not on the channel muddies your treatment.  It might not become evident until weeks or months later, but the divergent channel—busily and very quietly doing its miraculous job maintaining latency—will sense a contrary instruction or a multitude of instructions in the ying level and think that it’s being asked to release pathology into that more interior middle level of qi, thereby opening a straight shot to the organs. The divergents are performing a complex array of functions in a unified action and must not be distracted.

In the third case, the sinews can only function well if they are used as a stand alone class of channel. They only conduct wei qi—nothing else, and they bring the musculoskeletal and smooth muscle region pathology up through the wei level to the surface for release.  Sinew treatments have no needle retention except, if one wishes, at the sinew meeting points and the jing-well point with strong intention—the meeting points as pivots for maintaining the direction of pathology towards the exterior, and the jing-well as a constant vector to the exterior for the outgoing pathology.  If the practitioner is tonifying resources to finance the treatment, he must conclude that process prior to commencing a sinew treatment; that is, he must finish that process of nourishing fluids, or tonifying yang, or releasing the liver, or dispersing the lungs, then remove the needles, take a breath, and begin a sinew treatment with no needle retention.  The addition of retained needles can feel as though it assists a treatment, but again, pathology may actually be directed to the interior.  The practitioner might not know he directed pathology to the interior; even if there is a serious diagnosis much later, he is unlikely to link that simple, well-intentioned action to the “new” disease.

For case four, the divergent channels are very precise. They are not field-like, as are the luos and sinews, for example.  They connect the two polarized depths of the superficial anatomy—the sinews and the joints.  Their trajectories behave like lightning along very precise trajectories. Needling points that do not belong to their very specific non-ying level trajectories will invite pathology inward to the ying level where it has access to the organs.  This will stimulate a yang qi lead defensive response in the body that can appear as a miraculous result since yang qi is also enlivening.  Long term, this is a serious misuse of yang qi and can be very damaging.

In the fifth case, it’s important to remember that the emotions are held in the blood.  If a practitioner seeks to release emotional holdings, at least a tiny speck of blood must show at the point, or the intention to release actual blood must be present. The pathology released in that action is of a magnitude beyond comprehension.  But needling a luo point rather than bleeding it creates a connection between the ying and wei levels in order to create a balance in the two. It has many applications, but does not match the profound emotional change attainable with a small lancet.

To have a successful practice with no lurking liabilities, with no iatrogenic events—evident or unnoticed, immediate or decades hence—a practitioner sticks firmly to the principles, to the channel trajectories, to knowledge of the three levels of qi.

Leave the sink in the kitchen. The medicine is complete, beautiful, and unspeakably powerful just as it is.

Ann Cecil-Sterman
Flatiron, New York City
December 2nd, 2024