Traditional Japanese Acupuncture — What is the Difference?

If you believe that qual­ity is a vital aspect of life as is your health and well­ness, please read this article.

The situ­ation regard­ing Medical prac­ti­tion­ers, Physiotherapists, Massage prac­ti­tion­ers, in fact all shapes and kinds of health prac­ti­tion­ers and the prac­tice of Acupuncture in Australia is ambigu­ous to say the least.

The use of dry need­ling amongst a vari­ety of mod­al­it­ies, espe­cially physio­ther­apy in recent years is per­ceived by many folk as the prac­tice of Acupuncture.

Dry need­ling, as wise prac­ti­tion­ers of the above mod­al­it­ies will tell you, is not Acupuncture.

Medical Acupuncture and the many sim­pli­fied ver­sions of need­ling used by many prac­ti­tion­ers of Allied Modalities DO NOT apply the 3,000 years of clin­ical wis­dom encap­su­lated within the prac­tice of Traditional Acupuncture.

The vast dif­fer­ence between the thera­peutic applic­a­tion of acu­punc­ture needles in Dry Needling, Medical Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Acupuncture and the more refined Traditional Japanese Acupuncture is exem­pli­fied by the use of thick gauge needles in the former versus the use of extremely thin gauge needles in Traditional Japanese Acupuncture.

A very mech­an­ical manip­u­la­tion of thick gauge needles versus the subtle ener­getic applic­a­tion of very fine needles are the polar oppos­ites from which these mod­al­it­ies oper­ate using sim­ilar instruments.

Practitioners of the point-based TCM Acupuncture with its depend­ence upon thicker gauge needles and mech­an­ical stim­u­la­tion might have a much tougher time con­vin­cing other mod­al­it­ies and the con­sumer that there are major dis­crep­an­cies in the thera­peutic applic­a­tion of Medical Acupuncture, dry need­ling and Traditional Chinese Acupuncture.

My profession’s inab­il­ity or unwill­ing­ness to stand up and be coun­ted in the pub­lic eye as a bene­fi­cial and legit­im­ate heal­ing mod­al­ity has left the door wide open for every man and his dog to lay claim to the prac­tice of Acupuncture merely because they have a needle in hand, and if you’re lucky, have com­pleted a couple of week­end courses.

In Australia the gen­eral pub­lic has pre­cious little know­ledge regard­ing the clin­ical effic­acy and flex­ib­il­ity of Traditional Acupuncture, believ­ing that Acupuncture might be effect­ive in some cases for the relief of mus­cu­lo­skeletal pain, head­aches or per­haps a less invas­ive way of indu­cing childbirth.

The full poten­tial of Traditional Acupuncture is not recog­nized within our own pro­fes­sion let alone by prac­ti­tion­ers of Allied mod­al­it­ies and the gen­eral public.

As a prac­ti­tioner of 25 years stand­ing I believe that Traditional Japanese Acupuncture is at the fore­front of dis­cov­er­ing the vital secrets of the ancient acu­punc­ture clas­sics and imple­ment­ing the myriad of subtle prac­tical skills that con­trib­ute to the potency of your treatment.

A physio­ther­ap­ist, med­ical prac­ti­tioner, mas­sage ther­ap­ist etc, will trans­late dia­gnostic inform­a­tion in a very dif­fer­ent man­ner to a prac­ti­tioner of Traditional Japanese Acupuncture; the dia­gnostic con­clu­sions they come to and all thera­peutic action that they might take will be sig­ni­fic­antly dif­fer­ent to that of a prac­ti­tioner of Traditional Japanese Acupuncture.

Even a prac­ti­tioner of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture will trans­late dia­gnostic inform­a­tion dif­fer­ently and treat very dif­fer­ently to a prac­ti­tioner of Traditional Japanese Acupuncture!

A prac­ti­tioner of Traditional Japanese Acupuncture will always inter­pret your dia­gnostic inform­a­tion based on an intim­ate know­ledge of meridian path­ways and the intric­ate ener­getic inter­ac­tions between each of these path­ways, their asso­ci­ated organ and the inter­de­pend­ence between each of these meridian/organ complexes.

Your inher­ited con­sti­tu­tion or genetic health tend­en­cies and unique present­a­tion of symp­toms are inter­preted on an indi­vidual basis.

This is a very dif­fer­ent clin­ical pic­ture to the one that a prac­ti­tioner of another mod­al­ity might have.

The dia­gnostic and need­ling skills required in deliv­er­ing a thera­peut­ic­ally potent Traditional Acupuncture treat­ment take years of prac­tice to refine and develop, it is not pos­sible for this to be achieved without much study and com­mit­ted prac­tice, only a ded­ic­ated few choose to walk down this road less travelled.

Fewer still actu­ally tackle the moun­tains, for that takes great effort.

Virtually no one reaches the end of the road.

It is up to senior prac­ti­tion­ers such as myself to demon­strate and assist our val­ued patients, col­leagues in Allied mod­al­it­ies and fel­low Acupuncturists to under­stand more about the clin­ical effic­acy of meridian based Traditional Japanese Acupuncture.

I strive to do this through the web­sites http://www.worldacupuncture.com and http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com, my in-clinic ment­or­ing pro­gram, reg­u­lar monthly work­shops for students/colleagues and most import­antly by deliv­er­ing the best pos­sible treat­ment I am cap­able of.

A vast philo­soph­ical and thera­peutic chasm exists between physio­ther­apy and Traditional Japanese Acupuncture, a chasm that is bridged in some way by our mutual reli­ance upon tact­ile sensitivity.

The dia­gnostic and thera­peutic approaches used in Traditional Japanese Acupuncture and dry need­ling are very, very different.

‘One is exclus­ively mus­cu­lo­skeletal in approach and mech­an­ical in exe­cu­tion, the other, com­bines both mus­cu­lo­skeletal and ener­getic per­cep­tions and is primar­ily ener­getic in its execution.’

Both can achieve bene­fi­cial clin­ical out­comes, how­ever, Traditional Acupuncture, espe­cially Traditional Japanese Acupuncture has far more diverse thera­peutic and dia­gnostic applic­a­tions than purely mus­cu­lar skeletal.

Here are some links to a num­ber of art­icles and videos that may be of interest and rel­ev­ance to you.

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/chronic-fatigue-syndrome

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/infant-acupuncture

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/infection-and-congestion

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/musculoskeletal-disorders

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/musculoskeletal-disorders/lower-back-pain

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/pmt

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/post-surgery

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/pre-and-post-natal

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/pregnancy

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/preventative-treatment

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/sleep

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/sports-performance-enhancement

http://www.worldacupunctureblog.com/category/specialities/stress-and-anxiety

Last month, I had the pleas­ure of con­duct­ing a one hour prac­tic­ally based present­a­tion where I did my best to demon­strate the clin­ical effic­acy and diverse thera­peutic skills of Traditional Japanese Acupuncture to my physio­ther­apy colleagues

Three cour­ageous physio­ther­ap­ists volun­teered for treat­ment, none suf­fer­ing from any spe­cific prob­lem, all highly stressed!

Watched by sev­eral intrigued col­leagues, each of my three volun­teers was treated dif­fer­ently as deman­ded by their indi­vidu­al­ity and I did my best to explain the dif­fer­ence between the treatments.

All sur­vived all and repor­ted feel­ing much more relaxed and sig­ni­fic­antly energized.

For over 20 years my ever evolving ver­sion of Traditional Acupuncture has been my sole form of treat­ment in clinic.

This has abso­lutely noth­ing to do with my opin­ion on the effic­acy of other allied heal­ing mod­al­it­ies such as herbal medi­cine, chiro­practic, osteo­pathy, physio­ther­apy, vit­amin and min­eral sup­ple­ment­a­tion, mas­sage, homeo­pathy etc, etc.

This sin­gu­lar­ity of clin­ical approach has much to do with an innate affin­ity with the under­ly­ing philo­sophy and tact­ile inclin­a­tion of Traditional Japanese Acupuncture.

The depth of clin­ical expert­ise and know­ledge avail­able to me as a prac­ti­tioner of this extraordin­ary heal­ing art/science is vir­tu­ally inex­haust­ible; I doubt there will ever come a time where I will feel I have com­pleted my stud­ies or fully evolved as a practitioner.

I believe that apply­ing this approach to the prac­tice of Acupuncture is abso­lutely vital in provid­ing optimum treat­ment and the best pos­sible res­ults for YOU, the most import­ant ingredi­ent of the clin­ical equation!

Traditional Japanese Acupuncture is my pas­sion, using that pas­sion to bene­fit my patients is my purpose!