Towards the end of last year I was struggling more than a little with stress related symptoms in life. Yoga was helping. Therapy was helping. Fresh air, exercise and self care was helping. But I needed a little more, and felt it time to explore acupuncture.
I knew a little about meridians and chi – the building blocks of the Chinese medical system – from my studies in Yin Yoga which fuses Indian and Chinese thinking with one foot each side of the Himalayas, but I had, and still have a lot to learn.
It was against the background, my Yin Yoga training, and exploring acupuncture treatment that this book came to the top of the my reading list.
The author is a doctor of both Western and Chinese medicine, and his very informal, sometimes irreverent style, is peppered with how he introduced elements of acupuncture and acupressure to the emergency room in British A&E clinics where he worked.
The mainstay of the book is an explanation of the Chinese medical system approach to health and how it can be aligned with Western approaches – the authors stance being very much that the two are complimentary and explain and illuminate each other. Modern science doesn’t contradict the wisdom of old.
There is much interesting content and thought in this book, and it’s difficult to pick one part out. I think it’s a book I will return to in a few years to refresh my understanding and read more.
However, picking one thing, I particularly like the explanation of the heart as an organ of electricity as much as blood pumping. Literally a “broken heart” is when the electric stops, my “heart melted” when there was an electromagnetic entanglement between one person and another.
I’d recommend this book to anyone looking to go a little deeper both into Chinese medicine per se and the integration of the Chinese and Western ways of thinking.
It can be purchased on Amazon, and if you use this link, Yinspire earns a small commission.
