I have noticed some patterns about how people have been arriving in my practice lately: what kind of care they are used to receiving and how my approach may differ from their other medical experiences. I want to share a little bit about this process with you.
Arriving
By the time patients reach out to me for integrative holistic care, often they have exhausted many other medical avenues. They arrive with lab tests, specialist workups, and sometimes second and third opinions. In some cases, they have had distressing experiences navigating a fractured and encumbered conventional medical system. Typically, they have learned a lot about their symptoms, but nothing quite seems to be resolving their symptoms yet.
I’ve grown more accustomed to hearing these narratives in my intake process — reviewing lab and imaging results, records from past visit, lists of therapies or medications tried. Clinically, I notice these situations are ripe for a different approach.
A Different Way Forward
One of the principles that makes my approach different is that it is founded in a connective anatomy approach.
Mainstream medical care approaches symptoms via isolating their specific causes and suppressing them. Reductionism is the rule. It’s important to recognize that this view of the body has been shaped by the perspective of surgery and the time pressures of conventional care: the ability to separate structures from one another and extract the problematic issue determines the success or failure of a procedure.
However, during daily life and in chronic conditions, this approach isn’t as helpful. Our bodies are deeply interconnected, have their own pace for integrating treatments, and extraction isn’t necessarily the goal.
Sometimes I hear people quip “it’s all connected, isn’t it?”. Yes, it is. But how? How is it connected?
Taking a connective anatomy approach means studying the sophisticated ways symptoms arise within interconnected relationships in the body. It means observing the ways that seemingly disparate or stubborn symptoms may be related to other patterns.
Acupuncture Channels Offer A Potent Way of Understanding the Connectivity of the Body
In East Asian medicine, the acupuncture channels are a complex anatomical system communicating the body’s wholeness. The channels are accessed on the surface of the body at specific points but connect to deeper processes in the internal organs – the way that an above-ground spring might interconnect with a nearby river valley or to deeper groundwater reservoirs.
Each channel (stream) expresses a simultaneity of physical, emotional, and spiritual qualities.
The acupuncture channels are functional. They know that allowing imbalance and disease to persist deeper inside the body is a severe problem and therefore, they may manifest pain, tension, tightness, constraint, or other forms of imbalance on the surface in ways that protect and guard our bodies from developing deeper, organ-level issues. (If we were to extend our metaphor, it would be that above-ground water levels run low before groundwater sources are tapped out. Not always the case in either scenario.)
Making Sense of Our Symptoms, Making Sense of Ourselves
Following the anatomical maps of the acupuncture channels can clarify complex cases. Treatment may not always be as “quick and easy” as a surgery or a medication, but the therapeutic direction can become clear and straightforward.
In addition, instead of a laundry list of seemingly random issues and problems, we can see symptoms as arising from one or two channel imbalances in the body.
We can make sense to ourselves; integrating information from each symptom as one part of a coherent story that the entire body is trying to tell. From here, we can determine how to re-establish balance.
“The energetic channel system which we think is for the purpose of acupuncture alone, is not solely for acupuncture or Chinese Medicine. It’s a grand and infinitely complex circuitry, that runs the human system of body and mind, by connecting to spirit.”
What Does a Connective Anatomy Approach Look Like In Practice?
Let’s explore a case example* to see how this approach comes together in the clinic.
Recently, a 44-yo woman came to clinic distressed by worsening anxiety. What was most frustrating was that she had been doing her best to resolve it through various means (visiting her primary care doctor, trying yoga, practicing meditation, experimenting with dietary changes and cleanses, and working on lifestyle habits), but her efforts seemed to be making her experience worse. Symptoms included:
Anxiety with a shaky sensation. Episodes of panic in social situations causing more anxiety. Severity increasingly debilitating.
Difficulty concentrating. Difficulty making decisions.
Body tightness. Constant neck and shoulder tension. Right-sided hip and knee pain managed with physical therapy and daily foam rolling.
Frequent sore throat and headaches, coming and going multiple times a day.
Digestive issues. Indigestion, burping, and a feeling of fullness in the evenings.
Insomnia. Difficulty falling asleep and frequent reawakening.
Inability to tolerate alcohol. Skin rashes.
Anxiety worse the days before menses.
Normal lab results.
From a western medicine perspective, it may sound like there are host of different body systems and symptoms involved in this case, but from a holistic channel-based perspective, all of the symptoms above are related to one pattern.
When in harmony and balance, the gallbladder and its related acupuncture channel can:
Respond to stressful situations with ease then return to a calm state.
Coordinate action from a grounded place – take prompt, smooth action when necessary then dissipate unnecessary excess nervous activity (e.g., without fretting, loss of energy, indecision, or worry).
Soften the sinews, joints, and muscle tissues.
Direct energy downward in the body allowing relaxation, coordinated movement, and sleep.
Promote smooth digestion and ease after meals, including regular bowel movements.
Metabolize alcohol, dietary fats, hormones, and complete daily detoxification processes.
*Example case side note: If this constellation of symptoms feels very familiar to you, that’s because it’s a very common presentation. The case above is both quite real and also a conflation of many different case presentations over recent years. We can talk more about why these symptoms have a tendency to arise in another post soon.
A Connective Anatomy Approach
Being able to map various symptoms and complaints onto one meridian is a complex process, but once complete it helps organize the treatment of a case. After a clear assessment, treatments can be selected to suit each patient’s needs and preferences.
Acupuncture may be helpful to relieve symptoms (in-person visits); or individually selected nutrients, botanicals, and guidance on mind-body or lifestyle practices can be recommended for more thorough healing over time (virtual visits).
In this case, treatments centered upon reducing burden on the gallbladder and its related channel. So, I prescribed a combination of nutrients, an herbal formula, supplements, and guidance around certain foods to help the gallbladder qi (energy) descend, calm and smooth digestion, ease sleep, and allow the body tension to relax.
Of course, many forms of anxiety can have complex causes, however in many cases, a relaxed and more comfortable body is better able to perceive its environment as less stressful and less worrisome, allowing physical aspects of the anxiety to melt away. In this case, symptoms improved by 50-75% within two weeks and continued to resolve in the following weeks.
Our Body Systems Are Inter-Related
In the case above, symptoms coalesced around treating the gallbladder channel. East Asian medicine and the meridian system are a potent and complete form of medicine and way of seeing the body. There are 20 different channels (12 organ based channels, and 8 extraordinary vessels), each associated with a different dynamic process, and each with different layers or levels.
And yet, this is just one way of perceiving inter-relationship in the body. In practice, there are many ways to practice medicine from a place that respects the inter-connectedness of our physiology (e.g. nervous system fluency, functional medicine approaches, fascial connectivity and osteopathic approaches).
From my perspective, our bodies grow weary of medicines that isolate one set of symptoms while ignoring (or creating) others. This form of compartmentalization can be lifesaving during emergencies, but incongruent with how our bodies function and heal in daily life.
On a personal level, I find learning about the ways our bodies are interconnected empowering. It helps me to better understand myself and learn how to take better care of it. I hope patients find some of these tools nourishing too.
REFERENCES
❍ Baker K, Deadman P, Al-Khafaji M. A Manual of Acupuncture, 2nd Edition. Journal of Chinese Medicine Publications, 2007.