The Background of Integrative Acupuncture

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The purpose of this site is to foster positive critical thinking toward development of post traditional acupuncture. My article, Toward a Post Traditional Revision of Acupuncture, is meant to inspire thinking, particularly amongst traditionally trained acupuncturists like myself, along these lines. As is evident in the booklist several good starts have already been made in outlining contemporary approaches to acupuncture, though I suspect the awareness and significance of this is minimal amongst most colleagues.

A truly contemporary acupuncture would not arise from the work of one or two experienced practitioners or researchers but like the empirical facts of acupuncture handed down to us, would comprise the collective work of a great many.

I have long wondered at the seeming lack of free independent thinking amongst traditionally trained acupuncturists in the West, thinking, willing to ask tough questions that shake the foundations of accepted belief inculcated through the training programs of most acupuncture and Chinese Medicine colleges.

There is now more than enough evidence to shift the theoretical foundations of acupuncture from archaic (often mistranslated) concepts to at least, in broad terms, a simple method of altering information in the body via the brain and nervous system – in essence a neurologically mediated treatment.

Also recent fMRI evidence suggests an extensive generalized stimulation effect of acupuncture needling – provoking the body's systems (including emotional mediation) toward homeostasis and self-healing. This provides at least the possibility that much of the diversity of acupuncture approaches is an illusion. Indeed, though as practitioners and patients know so well that acupuncture works, this may not be for the reasons outlined in most traditional or contemporary “New Age” theory.

Much of the theoretical basis of contemporary traditional acupuncture may simply comprise a type of ritual enactment of prevailing cultural expectations, perceptions and reactions (to scientific reductionism and modern medicine for example)

Are then contemporary acupuncturists, though sincere, misinforming their patients when they tell them they are “adjusting their Qi” or “balancing the meridians” or telling them their “spleen is weak”? And are acupuncture colleges exploiting students when charging tens of thousands of dollars to learn complex Traditional Chinese Medicine systems and dogma with little basis in scientific fact as well as being highly distorted though mistranslation? This especially when greatly simplified approaches, consistent with the cultural world view of patients and fellow health practitioners, could be taught in a reduced time and at lower cost.

Thomas Martin, LAc.

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