This Is What I Write at the End of Revisiting Acupuncture Volume I

THE HOLLOW OF TRADITION.

This is what I write at the end of Revisiting Acupuncture Volume I.

“Here we are at the end of the long road about the different approaches to the

acupuncture points and the different ways to find them on the body. Take a few steps

back now, because the information that I have given you will become useful to you

little by little, as you continue with your courses. Skim the different concepts of the

points, take in what they are made up of, get used to approaching one point according

to one method or another or according to a combination of several. What may now

seem disjointed will take on a structure and what now seems arbitrary will become real

with experience. Don’t let this apparent complexity set you back! The point is there, at

your reach and all you have to do is to look for it and find it, then lose it and find it

again, until it is solidly and definitively printed in your memory.

But at the end of this volume there are still two reflections that I would like to share

with you, that are particularly important to me.

1. In most of the Chinese treatises, especially in the oldest ones, after the

instructions on how to locate the points, the text invariably ends with the

phrase:

陷者中Xian zhe zhong, “In the middle of a hollow”.

As I read in the Jia Yi Jing, the ABCs of Acupuncture:

“Yi shi, is on the eleventh dorsal vertebra, 3 cun on each side, in the middle of a

hollow”. We are talking about the 44th point of the Bladder meridian, located on the

lateral dorsal branch, along the medial border of the shoulder blade, at a level that

corresponds to the middle of the distance between the spinous processes of the

eleventh and twelfth dorsal vertebra. Yes, I know, you don’t understand. Don’t worry;

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I am only using it as an example because of the little sentence at the end. The rest will

come in time.

This is why the first Western acupuncturists concluded that all of the points are

located in

- a hollow.

- a hole.

- a depression.

- a cupule.

depending on the vocabulary of their preference.

And as they proceeded to teach their colleagues they continued to repeat this phrase,

“in the middle of a hollow”, which sounds so good, without really checking the

importance of this affirmation or its anatomical reality. Without really thinking about

what they were saying.

They affirm, faithfully in line with Chinese tradition that the point is in a hollow! What

a wonder the human body is, with all of these miniscule zones of energy on its surface

on which we can work!

But this is why a problem and a question appeared before me. Is this expression “in

the middle of a hollow” alluding to a volumetric change that is particular and limited

to the acupuncture point? Is there really a cupule, a modification in the consistency on

a couple of square millimeters of skin as opposed to the surrounding areas? In natural

or artificial light, whether it is sharp or dim, to the naked eye or with the use of a

magnifying glass, I have never been able to systematically confirm this observation. If

this were really the case, the human body would be so covered with little depressions

shaped like mini cups that it would look like the surface of the moon!

On the other hand, if we go along the path that the Chinese have taken towards the

location of a point, we see that new light is shed on this “hollow”.

The Chinese acupuncturist uses the measurement, the CUN, the hollows and the

bumps, the irregularities on the surface of the skin, the openings that he has sensed

with his sight or touch. His look is insistent and piercing, his touch is at the same time

light and concentrated. Age-old observations weigh on the information recorded, and

they are fed by past experiences. Very quickly the notion of the hollow was brought to

light, which is only defined in three dimensions. Frequently neglected, it nonetheless

allows us to define the imprecision about a location and regularly becomes an

indispensable complementary tool for anatomical referencing. Often seen as

information’s younger sibling, I think we should promote the hollow to the position

of Big Sister.

This feeling of a hollow, whether it is visible or tactile, is not a product of the Chinese

imagination. It is a place, fairly small and delimited by well-known and easily spotted

anatomical formations. Some of these places are visible to the naked eye and a trained

practitioner can find them quickly. To find others it is necessary to move a limb, put

them in a certain position, in order for the point to appear. But sometimes the

fingertip slides over the skin, digging in lightly, searching in different directions,

stumbling over a bone, separating tendons, perceiving the fascia divisions between

two muscles, running over the curve of a muscle and digging into it, settling itself in

those anatomical depressions that, like a beast sniffing at the walls of its lair, it will

define and use to check its limits. The finger searches, feels, touches, defines and

declares. Lightly or with pressure, after having run for a while across the skin, it stops

with the almost certainty that the point has been found.

Where does this certitude come from? What allows the acupuncturist to affirm that

this is where the point is? A cup, a depression, a hole? We estimate that this sensation

corresponds more to the accumulation of information integrated into the conscience

by experience and practice, by repetition and reflection. It is the glow of the memory

of certain movements while looking for the points. The finger ran along a bone, over

a muscle, along a tendon and found a joint. Stopped, deep-set, surrounded by

references, it found the point! It is a virtual hollow, a hollow created by sensation.

2. It is also possible to explain why, in the Chinese texts, the expression “in the

middle of a hollow” appears at the end of the location of

points that are not in a hollow, whichever way you want to interpret it. This

can be understood in terms of two factors:

a. The oral tradition that governed the transmission of the first acupuncture

concepts relied on mnemonic techniques to facilitate assimilation and

recollection. These included chant, rhythm, verse, repetition and rhyme. It is

surely this way that the expression 陷者中xian zhe zhong “in the middle

of a hollow”, was originally added well-advisedly at the end of a sentence and

was only added later for the rhyme and according to rhythm, which is amistake as far as the referencing of the points is concerned.

b. The use of the hollow, the feeling of having so well referenced a point that we

find it in a real and particular depression apparently allowed these errors to

become psychological realities.

So, this is how the anatomic touch and the psychological dimension of the experience

lucidly came together in the “breath-taking hollow of Tradition”.

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