THE INHERENCY THEORY

The human body has a miraculous power to regenerate and repair itself. For instance: scraped skin will grow back in a few days without any conscious effort on the part of an individual; if a morsel of food or some water accidentally goes into the trachea, the person will automatically cough to expel the foreign substance; if a small particle of dust gets in the eyes, tears immediately begin to wash the particles away. These are only a few of the many ways in which the body works to restore the equilibrium once it has been disturbed. Inherent within the life force is the tendency to sustain itself and maintain a perfect balance within the body under all circumstances.

Chinese medicine encourages people to become aware of the miraculous powers inherent within their bodies and to take advantage of these powers before they rely on outside aid. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said that nature is medicine and that medicine is the servant of nature. The people who coined the proverb, “Nature cures the illness, but the doctor gets the fee,” were thinking along the same lines.

Acupuncture is a therapy that has been used by the Chinese people to stimulate or awaken the natural power within the body. In the course of time people have lost confidence in, and even the awareness of, their self-healing powers. As their awareness of their own healing potentials has become dimmed, they have become dependant upon chemical drugs and injections.         

THE ENERGY THEORY

According to the Chinese hypothesis, the body is endowed with a definite energy quotient at birth. While this energy is being dissipated through the vicissitudes of daily living, it is simultaneously being replenished by energy obtained from food and air (included within air is the all-pervading electro-magnetic energy). Energy imbalance-either an excess or an insufficiently-is the root of all illness; total absence of energy is death.

Energy is believed to circulate throughout the body in well defined cycles; moving in a prescribed sequence from organ to bowel via the meridians, it flows partly at the periphery and partly in the interior of the body. Energy within the body is considered to be a dynamic force in a constant flux; this is a leading principle in Chinese medicine, an important hypothesis within the framework of which the empirical theory of acupuncture was developed.