The Art of Chinese Medicine: It’s So Much More Than Just Acupuncture Points and Needles

This week I listened to an episode of the Qiological podcast, hosted by the inspiring Michael Max, about the Art of Medicine, featuring Bonnie Wright, a Western medicine anaesthesiologist and acupuncturist who specialises in veterinary acupuncture.

It made me reflect on the medicine I practise and how difficult it can be to explain what actually happens in the treatment room. From the outside, acupuncture can look deceptively simple.

You have a symptom. I choose some acupuncture points. I insert the needles. You rest.

But there is so much more going on.

You Are More Than Your Symptoms

When you come for acupuncture, I am interested in why you have come, but I am equally interested in how you are today.

How do you walk into the room? What is the quality of your voice? How have you been sleeping? What has changed since I last saw you? What are you telling me and, perhaps, what aren't you telling me?

I look at your tongue, feel your pulse and notice how you respond as we talk.

Together, these things begin to create a picture.

As an acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practitioner, I don't look at your symptoms in isolation. I look for the relationships between them and try to understand the pattern beneath what you are experiencing.

And that pattern can change.

You may come to see me for the same problem three weeks in a row, but that doesn't necessarily mean I will give you the same treatment each time because you are not the same person you were last week.

You are a dynamic being, constantly changing, evolving and adapting.

The Points Are Only Part of the Treatment

My training in Chinese medicine has given me a foundation in acupuncture points, channels, theory and technique.

But this framework isn't the medicine itself.

Another practitioner could sit with the same patient and choose completely different acupuncture points. Equally, we could choose exactly the same points and still give very different treatments.

I often think of music here, perhaps because I studied classical piano for several years.

When I was learning piano, I spent hours practising scales, improving my technique and labouring over individual pieces. The notes on the page mattered, of course. I had to learn them accurately, but simply playing the correct notes was never quite the same as actually feeling, interpreting and expressing the music in my own way.

Two pianists can play the same piece, note for note, and yet it can sound and feel completely different. Timing, touch, sensitivity and interpretation all shape what emerges.

Chinese medicine feels remarkably similar to me.

The acupuncture points are a little like the notes on the page. I need to know them and I need the theory and technique behind them. But the treatment isn't created by the points alone.

It is also shaped by my interpretation and understanding of the person sitting in front of me and that brings with it an almost endless number of subtleties, complexities and variables.

When Your Qi Meets Mine

Chinese medicine has the concept of Qi. It is a word that doesn't translate neatly into English, but I think of it as the movement and dynamic activity of life…your vital energy.

In a treatment, your Qi meets mine.

That may sound a little intimate or even mysterious, but perhaps it is simply another way of describing the subtle interaction that takes place between practitioner and patient.

Whenever two people sit together and give each other their full attention, something happens between them. We respond to and influence one another.

I might begin a consultation thinking the treatment will go in one direction and then something you say, something I notice in your pulse or simply the way you are presenting in that particular moment changes my understanding.

So I adjust.

I listen again.

Sometimes I do less.

Sometimes the treatment becomes something quite different from what I imagined when you first walked through the door.

Every patient influences my approach in a unique but meaningful way.

That is one of the most beautiful things about this medicine.

Where Medicine Becomes Art

Listening to that Qiological conversation made me reflect on what the art of medicine means to me as an acupuncturist and Chinese medicine practitioner.

For me, art doesn't mean ignoring knowledge or simply following intuition. It begins with a foundation, but from there comes interpretation, expression and the freedom to develop a uniquely personal dynamic.

My training has given me those foundations…the points, channels, theory and various techniques, but clinical practice is teaching me that knowing these things is only part of the medicine.

There is also learning to observe. To listen. To feel (both emotionally and physically). To recognise patterns. Perhaps most importantly, I’m learning to respond to the person who is actually sitting in front of me rather than simply treating a symptom.

The more I practise Chinese medicine, the more I realise just how much depth there is to it and how much more there is for me to learn. I hope I never reach a point where I feel as if I have stopped learning from this medicine, from my patients or from the practice itself. If that day ever comes, perhaps that will be when it is time for me to put down my needles.

More Than Just the Needles

There are thousands of years of theory behind what I do, but when the treatment-room door closes, there are simply two people meeting in a particular moment.

Perhaps, the true art of Chinese medicine lies in everything that comes together in that moment: the needles, the practitioner, the patient, the Qi, our past and present experiences, what is said, what is left unsaid and all those subtle things that can be felt but are difficult to put into words.

For me, that is what makes this medicine feel so alive.

It is never static. It continues to unfold and evolve through every patient, every encounter and every treatment.

And perhaps that is why no two treatments can ever truly be the same.

Nickila x