[quote=“joey0825”]Hi Dr Jellyfish,
Thanks for your reply. The whole theory of meridian and collateral came from ancient times, when Chinese ancestors accidentally found that when they feel some sort of muscle pain or discomfort, they use rocks or stones to press on some part of the body, and the pain/symptoms relieved. This is just the beginning. And then they begin to do that again and again to treat some pain or diseases. Through hundreds of years, they found that some point is connected with others, that’s when the meridian in formed. Later they found that they can do more than just using stone to massage, they develop needles. Here’s nine different kinds of needles used in ancient times: 202.204.41.207/UploadFiles/Artic … 292451.jpg Althought I don’t know the detail of how they think of this idea, it must be very interesting. And in ancient times, they’re in a farmer society, they don’t have so many things (cell phone, lap top, video game, radio, TV, movies,etc.) that disturb them from observing their own body. They can feel some qi floating in their body (People who never concentrate on observing their own body might not feel the qi, sometimes average people can feel some imbalance qi distribution in their body.) and they can train themselves to manage the qi. A very simple example: when we get angry, our face turns red, which means the qi goes up to your face. It’s always qi before blood. Without qi, the blood will not be able to flow, without blood, the qi has no objective to push. (You could briefly regard qi as an energy) Get angry is an apparent example, there’s some qi flow that’s not so apparent that can cause some diseases.
It’s not practical for me to type all the theories of Traditional Chinese medicine in this forum, that would take too much time and I might not be able to write it clearer then some English TCM textbook. However, if you’re interested in TCM, you could google them and discuss with me, I’d be glad to do some discussion when I get off work.
I believe the intelligence of ancient people is no less then us. Although they don’t have high technology, they do create some marvelous things such as calendar system, astronomy, traditional medicine and so on. Although some are proven wrong or out of time in nowadays, the essence of these creation is still amazing. I hope my reply answer your questions. Thanks again for your reply!
Hi joey0825,
Thanks for taking the time to fill me in with some of the theory as to how acupuncture and the concepts of qi and meridians got started. I know I mentioned “science-fiction”, but I wasn’t being disrespectful, I’m just in awe that something so seemingly advanced could have come from such an ancient time. If someone told me that little green men (or women) crashed in China a few thousand years ago and some how passed on this knowledge, I might half believe them. But I’d also agree that there were people as intelligent as modern day humans a long time ago, and that your explanation is a lot more plausible.
It’s funny you mention the rubbing of rocks on parts of the body. I traveled to Peru about 12 years ago and at Cuzco I saw that they used rocks with chiseled points for alleviating pain. You could even buy them in souvenir stalls. The idea is that you just massage them into wherever aches (which at 3000 m above sea-level is pretty much your whole body).
Again, thanks for your expert knowledge on this. It’s not often that you get the chance to chat with someone who can describe the mysterious and ancient ways of TCM in English. When I did my MA in translating, the lecturers would often throw us difficult texts at us just to demonstrate the fact that being fluent/proficient in two languages isn’t enough to be able to translate anything - and that we should never attempt in the real world. Nothing quite demonstrated this as well as TCM texts.
