What is an Acupuncture Point?

As I understand it, how acupuncture works is that each point is like a well, or a note, a sound, or a bell that holds a deep truth about the nature of life. Then, by resonance, life experiences that are relevant to that deep truth about life tend to fall into that well, like leaves—like misunderstandings, like things that muffle and shadow and distort and keep us from accessing that deep truth. What we are doing when we place a needle in the point is one of two things, or both.

One is dispersing. When we turn the needle in a dispersing way, we are clearing the debris out of the bell, so that it can ring true. We are clearing all those life experiences that have piled up in there that make it hard for us to access the truth, which may be different than what happens to us.

If we had certain things happen to us, we begin to think, about life, “That’s the way it is.” But that’s not the way it is. That’s what happened to us. It’s not all of life; it’s just what happened. But what happened can block us from feeling the full nature of life.

So when we disperse, we are clearing the debris out of that well, so that we can drink the water; or we are clearing the debris out of the bell so that it can sound the true note.

When we tonify, we are going through the debris down to the true note, and strengthening the resonance, the sounding of the note, so that that note can sound through the client, and they can say, “What was I thinking? This is the reality of myself and the life that I’m living.

When we can all be in the same place again, we can do actual needle coaching. It’s really amazing how you can feel, “Am I flinging the bullshit out of here? Or am I sounding the note of the truth?

Many Five Element practitioners have a needle technique in which they do both—where they go in, they tonify, and with that tonification, something goes “Bing,” and all kinds of shit goes flying and disperses out. It’s like they are tonifying and dispersing at the same time. They go in, they go “Shazam, baby,” and they take the needle out.

So when I speak of a point, I’m speaking about a well or a bell that has a true note, that contains the deep waters of the truth. It’s there. No exceptions. Even if your life has never ever, ever given you the opportunity to experience an experience that resonates with that truth. You have ancestors, and they made you. Your heritage is the heritage of what it means to be human, which is so much more vast than your personal, teeny, weeny little life experience.

Now, much illness is us taking on the perspective of our teeny weeny little personal life experience, and generalizing from that to the nature of life. Talk about Gallbladder 1! That a very narrow, narrow, blindered vision, to think that what has happened to us or for us is “how life is…” but the misunderstanding of that generalization happens very easily and very naturally, starting very early in life.

What we are doing with acupuncture is helping a person contact truth and a reality about the nature of being human and the nature of being alive that is part of their heritage, and that has not been lived out yet. We do this so that they can contact that reality and live from that reality–a reality that is so much bigger than their life experience so far.

We put our finger on the point, and the first thing I like to see the practitioner do is just listen to the stories, just listen to the stories in that point. You may not even know what you’re hearing through your finger until you go to the other side and feel the contrast—it’s a little different.

When it feels like the stories are satisfied that they have been heard enough—which means not to completion, because they’ll go on and on and on and on if you let them—but heard enough to really be acknowledged—then you listen deeper: What is the truth in that point, even deeper?

For me, this is totally inarticulate; I’m just feeling it in my body, like a reverb back and forth between me and the client. I learn a lot, and I’ve received tremendous healing while listening to life through other people’s acupuncture points. It’s incredible.

To learn more, check out my new self-guided CEU, “Whole Heart Acupuncture Bladder: Like a Lighthouse in a Storm”.

To join the discussion, find us on my Perennial Medicine discussion listserv (all are welcome).