Ancient Medicine Modern World

People in Seattle are savvy about acupuncture.

There is a buzz about Japanese acupuncture, and how it is gentle to the point of no feeling. Five Element with its focus on the psychology. Regular old common yard-dog Chinese styled acupuncture with its flying needles style. And the protocols for Ear acupuncture, that are often used for breaking addictions and helping people put their lives back together after a disaster.

What most people don’t know, is that the Japanese acupuncture practiced in the USA, is just an offshoot or two from what you would find in Japan. That 5 Element “classic” acupuncture, was popularized by a British fellow. And that the common American version of “Chinese” acupuncture, with its private room, bamboo green walls, and a practitioner that speaks in hushed tones, would be hard to find in Asia, where it is a more like a riot in slow motion. And this ear acupuncture? It came from France!

There are uncountable conversations about which method is more effective, more comfortable, more traditional, truer and refined. Practitioners have the ways they like to treat, patients have the ways they like to be treated.

It is not only in this century that acupuncture is a crazy mixed up alphabet soup. Look through any of the books written about the art through time. Chinese doctors have been discussing and disagreeing over the centuries how medicine works, or should work.

I suspect it has much less to do with which tradition a practitioner follows, and much much to do with what that tradition has awakened in the practitioner.

Following blindly without engaging the meaning behind words of those who have gone before is like breathing tomb dust. Having those words from the past ring true in our living unfolding experience. Now, there is a possible path to really being able to use this medicine to help people.