The practice of acupuncture is seen by some people as a silly pseudo medicine, since the West has not yet found a test which can confirm precisely what it does or why it works. However, Asian concepts are becoming increasingly respected with each passing year, so the explanation that Asian practitioners give is worth mentioning and at least attempting to understand. To start with, in traditional Chinese medicine, the life force is said to move along a large number of paths throughout the body, which are known as meridians. As long as a person has the life energy flowing through their meridians, they are alive. However, an illness is said to happen any time that the life energy is somehow blocked inside of the body. So when acupuncture is used, the needles are applied all along the meridians, so as to break up the blockages and open up the energy pathways.
The notion that the movement of energy is related to good health relates rather well to the Western understanding that blood travels throughout the body, nourishing the cells and carrying off waste products. In a sense, these two beliefs could combine together into an even more effective form of medicine, in which both metaphysical properties (which have been shown through heat resonance imaging to actually exist) and Western properties of the body are treated as having equal merits to one another. When we respect both of these different ways of thinking, we do a lot to bridge the gaps between cultures.
For the people who believe in and make use of acupuncture, the notion of opening up the pathways of their energy is as real and as effective as taking an antibiotic or having a splint put on a broken bone. For many people, this form of medicine is very real, and it can be a prime contributor to a longer and healthier life. However, for too many people, the notion of energy, meridians and being blocked or opened up just seems like a bunch of primitive mumbo jumbo. Sometimes the biggest blockages are all inside of people’s heads.
