Energy meridians and acupuncture points
Each meridian controls one function and/or one organ. The meridians were named according to these:
- liver meridian
- lung meridian
- spleen-pancreas meridian
- heart meridian
- kidney meridian
- stomach meridian
- small intestine meridian
- large intestine meridian
- gallbladder meridian
- bladder meridian
- triple burner meridian – upper, middle and lower
- vase-sex meridian
The two unpaired meridians are the governor meridian and the conception meridian, and they are responsible for maintaining and transporting information at the level of DNA and RNA.
At skin level, along the meridians, lie the acupuncture points, or acupoints. One point may act on several organs or functions in the organism. Stimulating them controls and directs the circulation of energy in the organism. The great majority of them lie along the meridians, but a few acupoints lie outside them. They are called extra-meridian points and their importance is much greater because they are linked to the internal meridians and act directly on the organism’s energetic matrix. For each condition there is a specific pattern of blocked acupoints, and a few points become active only when the organism falls ill. Traditional Chinese acupuncture identified 365 acupoints, while some Tibetan treatises mention a number of about 4,000 acupoints. Their surface is 2 square millimetres at skin level and they have the shape of a truncated cone with the large base in the depth of the skin. They can be stimulated by mechanical pressure, electric current, a light wave, heat or sound waves.
Inserting the needles into the skin is not painful because the needle tip is spherical and there are no nerve endings in the acupuncture point. During the puncture the point begins to transmit a bidirectional flow of information: energetically toward the affected organ and, through the nervous system circuit, toward the brain, which “commands” the affected organ to begin the healing process. On average an acupuncture session lasts 11 minutes.
The transmission of the information flow takes place throughout the acupuncture session and continues until the next session. That is why it is important not to interrupt the treatment, the brain coordinating the healing processes according to the latest indications given by the acupuncture physician.
There is no bleeding when the needles are removed, unless stagnant blood that must be eliminated is present in the organ corresponding to the point or on the meridian to which that point belongs. In that case a few drops of blood appear when the needle is withdrawn.
Acupuncture needles are made of copper, silver, gold and platinum. In Romania the most used are those of silver and stainless steel. The nobler the metal, the clearer the information transmitted.