Accessing

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Accessing the Subconscious (Spirit?)
with Acupuncture
Clive Powell B.Ac.,N.D., Dip.App.Sc.(Homeopathy)
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Traditional TCM?

• Not a practice based on nor validated by
  Newtonian Science in laboratories.
• Acknowledges that we access Mind, Body and
  Spirit.
• If we only concentrate on researching and
  treating the Body are we utilising all that TCM
  has to offer?
• What about the Spirit?

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The New Age Factor

• In 1980s Shirley MacLaine talked of using
  Acupuncture for past life regression.
• Not really talked of in TCM other than Chasing
  the Ghost practice.
• What are the Chinese speaking of with the term
  Spirit?

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Spirit/Subconscious Mind?

• Freud
• The mind is like an iceberg, one seventh of its
  bulk floats above water.

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Jungs Collective Unconscious

• 2 layers of subconscious mind Personal and
  Collective
• CU is the repository of religious,spiritual
  and mythological experiences and symbols, ie the
  basis of our thought process
• common to us all.
• We cannot separate from the effects of this
  universal soul.

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TCM concepts of Spirit

• No dichotomy between body/spirit as in the West,
  just a division of Yin/Yang which embraces all
  phenomena.
• Modern psychological explanations can only
  approximate the more subtle TCM view and exhibit
  a cultural difference.
• The person and the organs are all seen to have a
  physical, mental and spiritual function/purpose.
  (eg Organ recipients.)

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Spirit

• When the spirit is calm and peaceful there will
  be a long life, but if we neglect the spirit the
  body becomes injured. Eating and drinking without
  moderation, irregular hours, grief and calamity
  wound the soul and the body sickens. Su Wen
• Good physical health is thus essential for
  spiritual life and practice.

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Where does the Spirit reside?

• Su Wen chapter 8
• "The Heart holds the office of Lord and
  Sovereign. The radiance of the spirit stems from
  it. The heart holds the office of monarch whence
  the spirit light (shen ming) originates.
• Different emotions can gravitate to different
  organs and damage them, but all emotions
  originate in the heart and ultimately cause some
  damage to it.

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Emotions and Organs

• Ling Shu, The liver often works with the heart
  to generate emotions because "that which goes
  hither and thither with the spirit is called the
  soul (hun)."
• "When the liver qi is deficient, fear will occur
  when excess, one will become angry. When the
  heart qi is deficient, sorrow will occur when
  excess, unceasing laughter will occur."
• This is the only reference in the entire Nei Jing
  to emotions "coming from" organs.

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Accessing the Spirit in Practice

• For the purposes of treating a patient we have to
  assume that despite cultural differences in what
  we consider the deepest emotional levels to be,
  and how they arise, it is both the Spirit and the
  Subconscious Mind being affected.

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Treatment Strategies

• All treatments that access emotional disturbances
  have to include Heart points as it is the
  Monarch of the Spirit.
• Along with Heart points (Fire) the other elements
  access specific areas of the patients pathology

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Tapping into Spirit

• Large reservoirs of spirit can be accessed via
  the chest points of Ki 23 (Spirit Seal), Ki 24
  (Spirit Burial Ground), Ki 25 (Spirit Shelter).
  These alleviate the fears (a feature of Water)
  which may be blocking energy needed for any
  healing.
• CV 14 is the Heart Mu and is perhaps the most
  powerful emotional point to connect to Spirit.

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Tapping into Spirit (2)

• The outer points of the Bladder meridian access
  the emotional/spirit realm esp. Bl 44 (Spirit
  Palace).
• Points on the Heart meridian Ht 7 Ht 1 calm
  Spirit energy. Heart Shenmen I have found to be
  more powerful than Ear Shenmen for deep emotional
  therapy.
• TH 7 (Reunion of Ancestors) activates ancestral
  energy, is this miasmatic or karmic influence?

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Conclusions

• The closest approximation of what TCM calls
  Spirit appears to be the Jungian concepts of
  Personal and Universal Unconscious as this is
  inclusive of the Chinese ancestral influences.
• No analogy can be precise due to different ways
  of seeing ourselves in relation to integrating
  with the Cosmos.
• Most importantly, accessing Spirit in the
  treatment of emotional issues is a powerful
  therapeutic tool.

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