Classic Acupuncture Articles

Having moved to a new country a few months ago, I met one of my new neighbours.  He was walking down the street with his old dog.  The poor dog could hardly walk. He had to stop every two or three steps. We know this as meaning that. generally, the dog will not live much longer. I offered to try and help the poor dog with acupuncture. Large dogs often die from lower limb paralysis. Most often it is a condition that is considered irremediable. This  type of paralysis occurs in old dogs, so it is a process related to ageing and therefore to ancestral energy. This dog is not the only one that I have successfully treated to date. Here is the treatment that I carried out. I apply it both to dogs already affected and to animals showing signs of premature ageing of the hindquarters. Treatment for males and females is slightly different: - For females: DM4, DM3, BL23, BL24, BL62 - For males: DM4, DM3, BL23, BL22, BL62 Finding these points on a dog should not be too compli...

The whole Classic Acupuncture Acatdemy team is very excited to have the course starting on the 7th of February this year. The beginning of our degree-level professional acupuncture course coincides with the Chinese new year and we've been asked why we chose to do it that way. As our masters taught us and we in turn transmit to our students, there is an immense value in living by what we practice. The Chinese new year happens when the five element cycle begins anew with the wood phase. Wood embodies the concept of rebirth and is the best time for fresh starts and the beginning of new cycles. The start of the new year also happens when the six energies are at Tsiue Yin (light wind/the Universal Spirit giving its orders). From an energetic point of view this is the best time to start a new project, get into a new habit, or make a significant change. Getting a fresh start when nature is going into a new cycle makes sense: you are truly going with the flow on a planetary scale. A...

Acupuncture training should be costly. Or should it? If you've ever considered becoming an acupuncturist, you may have been put off by the prohibitive fees that local schools charge. You may even have wondered why training should cost so much. There are a few reasons why local, campus-based schools charge such high fees. The first being the simple issue of overheads: rents or mortgages as well as utilities and furniture can significantly add to a school's expenses. There is also the matter of the time the teachers have to spend teaching and need to be remunerated for. Another important factor for high education costs is a bit less concrete. Simply put, there is now a widely spread belief that professional training should be not just costly but almost unattainably expensive. The fact that, nowadays, most students come out of school with life-long debts is considered normal. It wasn't always the case. Has education always cost an arm and a leg? Not so long ago, th...

Discovery of a new Organ: the Interstitium In the first part of this article , we explored what Chinese medicine had taught us about the mysterious Triple Burner (or San Jiao). In this second part, we consider the possible relation between the TB and the recently discovered Interstitium. Officialised in 2018, the interstitium is a brand new scientific and medical discovery. Its identification was made by accident and made possible only by the development of new technologies that allowed live visualisation of tissues. Before that, tissues had to be drained of their fluid in order to be observed on the slide of a microscope. Thus the interstitium, which is defined by it fluid holding and circulating function, could not be seen. According the the scientists themselves : « There is no picture of the interstitium and of possible illustration of its structure. It's just there. » This is strangely reminiscent of the Chinese definition of the Triple Burner : « an immaterial entrai...

Part 1 - Understanding the Triple Burner The Triple Burner (or Triple Warmer or Triple Heater) is known in Chinese as San Jiao. It is a mysterious organ, described in Chinese Medicine as having a function but no shape and doesn't seem to correspond to any organ in the body as described by western Medicine. Or does it? What do we know about the San Jiao? First of all, here is a list of reference: Su Wen Chapters 5, 8, 18, 19, 20, 60, 62, 81 Lingshu Chapters 1, 2,10, 11, 16, 22, 31, 32, 35, 36, 47, 62, 63, 65, 71 Nan Jing: The Classic of Difficult Issues Chapters 8, 11, 31, 35, 38, 39, 45, 66 Mai Jing Book 3, Chapter 25 What we learn from these: 1) The TB is an « immaterial entrails » which is linked to no organ 2) The TB is the Tao in Man According to our mentor Thierry Bollet, the same attributes and functions are given to the TB as to the Tao. These are : « Regulator »   The TB organises and distributes the functional activities in e...

Two thousand and four hundred years before the Hippocrates came up with his famous oath, Chinese aspiring acupuncturists already swore an oath before they could be initiated. We find a description of that oath in the 48th chapter of the Ling Tchrou chapter 48 - "The secret gloss" (translated by A. Duron) As in many cultures at that time, the swearing in of the new acupuncturist consisted in a blood oath. Nowadays, Classic Acupuncturists Masters no longer require blood shedding to initiate their students, but the spirit of the oath remains. Here it is, with a few explanations: "  The Emperor Hoang Ti - my former Master - has repeatedly forbidden me to pass on the gloss to anyone who does not want to deepen it and wishes to obtain it without having worked, or to the one who makes a profit for himself; his rigorous attitude towards apprentices requires them to swear an oath by squeezing their arms and then putting blood on their lips.  " Here we see that th...