PAIN TREATMENT: WHOLE-PERSON THERAPIES
Classical acupunctureAccording to ancient Chinese medicine, health is created and preserved by the flow of yin and yang, which are conflicting energies distributed to all parts of the body in defined channels, the meridians, which peak at points. The flow of energy can, it is claimed, be adjusted by inserting needles into the channels at these points. Chinese acupuncture investigators were unable to find the channels and now state that the effect is caused by the stimulation of special sensory nerve fibres. Most people think that acupuncture arrived in the West in recent times once China was opened up after the Nixon agreements. In fact, acupuncture was well known in the West in Elizabethan times, beginning with a text book by Ten Rhijne in 1683. The European enthusiasm for acupuncture faded until it was reintroduced in the eighteenth century by the French from Indochina. It again faded until mid nineteenth century, when Admiral Perry returned from Japan with a Japanese government delegation. Acupuncture arrived and faded four times in four centuries. Its use is fading again both here and in China. A therapy whose popularity fluctuates depends on social belief. Double-blind testing of which point to needle has shown no specificity.However, there is a variation of acupuncture that ignores the classical points and needles only painful spots of the type described in fibromyalgia. Janet Travell, who was White House physician to President Kennedy and treated his painful back, had been following the established practice of injecting local anaesthetics into these painful spots. She discovered that it was not necessary to inject the local anaesthetic as the penetrating needle was enough by itself. The needling produces a stab of pain followed by relaxation of the taut muscle band, followed in turn by some general soreness and then by relief, which may last for days. We see here again, as was suspected in some of the reactions to surgery, that generalized damage in a painful area may be followed by relief.YogaYoga was overtly intended to change the subjects’ attitude to themselves and to the world, and yet puts muscles, tendons and joints in highly unusual positions. The Alexander technique has similar aims and effects.*58\219\2*
