Acupuncture For Men’s Health – 503 705 5771
WHAT IS QI?
Dr Sharyn Allyson Lac DAOM
We have made understanding qi easy!
QI and Electricity – an easy way to understand what qi is and how it can effect your body.
Acupuncturists talk is terms of “qi,” pronounced “chee”. We can think of qi the same way we think of electricity— we can’t really see qi, but it is flowing through our body just like electricity is flowing through our homes. Just as all the wires in our home are tucked nicely in the walls so you don’t see them, all of our “qi wires,” are tucked nicely in our body. In acupuncture, these qi wires are called meridians, just like the “wires” our blood flows through are called blood vessels.
Electrical current, or the flow of electrons, is measured in amps, while the force behind the current is its voltage. We know that blood flows through our heart and blood vessels, however, blood alone cannot make a heart pump– there must be an electrical voltage that is stimulating it to create every beat.
Acupuncturists call that invisible force QI.
So, just as electrons move through electrical wires, the nature of the wire can offer resistance. The smaller the wire, the greater the resistance, just like your blood vessels can offer resistance to the blood moving through them.
If there is high resistance, then you have high blood pressure against the walls of the vessel. Likewise, if there is a resistance to qi flowing through meridians, acupuncturists will call this “qi stagnation”, or if there is a low voltage or pressure in the meridians we term this “qi deficiency”
Like a modern Thomas Edison, many people are using devices to try to determine qi voltage and amps at acupuncture points. We can even do thermal imaging of what happens in the body when acupuncture needles are placed at certain locations!
In our home, when you turn on a light switch on the wall, a light goes on in a distant place on your ceiling. This is the same concept as using an acupuncture point on your wrist to make your sore throat feel better. Your throat is wired to your hand …. How? Why?
- Well, just as our homes is wired for convenience, our meridian system is a wonderfully designed structure of electrical pathways. You would much prefer us to turn on the light switch at your wrist to activate the energy in your throat than have us treat your throat directly, I imagine.
Acupuncturists can activate the throat with more local points also, much like you could turn a light on by screwing in the bulb at the direct, local source. How do we choose between the wrist switch and the throat switch? We choose the most comfortable, convenient and effective points for the condition. Now you know how acupuncture can treat many areas of the body, even just by treating points on the hands and feet!