Understanding Acupuncture

Explore Yin and Yang as balancing forces in health, describing Yin as substance—cool, moist, slow—and Yang as energy, heat, and action that continually transform day into night.

Explore qi, blood, and jing in Chinese medicine, with qi as the active force transforming, transporting, and defending the body. Learn how jing governs growth and aging.

Identify acupuncture points as confluences guiding qi flow along channels linking organs and regulating yin and yang. Locate them by landmarks and cun, e.g., Stomach 3 and Large Intestine 5.

Explore sterile, single-use acupuncture needles from Sensei, Kand San, Red Coral and Carbo, and see how gauge, length, and guide tubes enable clean, deeper or shallower insertions.

Explore acupuncture equipment, including a treatment table, needles with a 20 minute timer, cupping cups, gua sha spoons, moxa stick, alcohol wipes, clean needle technique supplies, and a sharps box.

Explore how electroacupuncture uses current patterns and adjustable wires to relieve muscular tension and musculoskeletal conditions, including cosmetic applications for facial wrinkles.

Cupping and gua sha relieve muscular tension and local qi stagnation by drawing out stagnation or pathogens, using a blunt gua sha spoon and cups, with moving cupping.

Demonstrates moxibustion using mugwort, Artemisia vulgaris, to heat acupuncture points for warming and tonifying, via sticks, cones, moxa box, sprays, and warm-air techniques.

Examine how external winds and other pathogens invade the body, producing wind-heat, wind-cold, dampness, dryness, and heat-fire patterns, and how internal wind affects neurological symptoms.

Explore how internal emotions influence qi and organ balance in five element acupuncture, including grief, fear, anger, joy, worry, and their effects on lungs, kidneys, heart, liver, and spleen.

Explores miscellaneous disease causes in acupuncture, from constitution and lifestyle to diet, exercise, sex, trauma, and childbirth, and explains secondary factors like blood stagnation and phlegm.

Acupuncture diagnosis blends questioning of symptoms, sleep, emotions with tongue and pulse analysis and signs to identify blood deficiency and liver qi, tailoring tonify spleen yang and harmonise liver qi.

Explore how the eight principles guide acupuncture diagnosis, using yin–yang, full–empty, interior–exterior, and hot–cold to distinguish patterns such as liver blood deficiency.

Assess the tongue’s coating, color, thickness, and body to diagnose heat, damp, phlegm, and deficiency, and feel pulses for rate, rhythm, and organ correlations to reveal qi and blood stagnation.

Five element constitutional diagnosis in acupuncture identifies a patient’s core constitution through color, sound, odor, and emotion to guide holistic treatment beyond current symptoms.

Explore how Chinese medicine views organs as interconnected patterns, with liver, spleen, and kidneys encompassing broader functions. Embrace a gardener approach that maintains harmony and addresses subclinical imbalances.

Explore the wood element's liver and gallbladder roles, detailing how liver qi flows to prevent stagnation linked to migraines and menstrual problems, and how gallbladder decision making affects sleep.

Investigate the fire organs, the heart, small intestine, pericardium, and triple burner, and how they govern blood, relationships, and body temperature through Shen and the fire element.

Explore the earth organs—the stomach and spleen—and their roles in digestion, downward qi, and the origin of fluids, including how spleen imbalance affects blood and energy.

Understand how the metal organs—the lungs and large intestine—support breathing, receive heavenly qi, and release waste, while guiding inspiration, gratitude, and letting go of dregs.

Discover the water organs: kidneys and bladder, with kidney jing governing aging, bone marrow, and qi reception from the lungs, while the bladder transforms and removes water.

Trace the long history of acupuncture from the Han dynasty and the Nei Jing to modern TCM, highlighting Qi, yin and yang, stone needles, and its worldwide evolution.

Explore the diverse styles of acupuncture—from Traditional Chinese Medicine and Five Element approaches to Japanese Meridian Therapy—rooted in ancient foundations.

Trace a traditional diagnosis of digestion issues, revealing spleen qi deficiency, liver blood deficiency, and liver stagnation, then treat via wood-prioritized harmonizing and calming strategies.

Acupuncture varies in sensation, sometimes with Deqi, and rarely painful. A typical course of four to six weekly or biweekly sessions yields progressive, sustained benefits.

Meet Jessica Kennedy, a UK-qualified acupuncturist in Western Australia, who shares integrated chinese medicine and five element acupuncture and invites feedback for future diagnosis and five element course topics.

Discover the five element reference cards for wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, outlining strengths, virtues, nourishment ideas, and a Chinese body clock to optimize energy; available as an e-book.