Why I Practice Acupuncture: Henry Claflin

Acupuncture is a fantastic career choice, but it is not a typical one (or at least it hasn’t been until recently). When I was in high school, seniors didn’t go to job fairs and hang out at the Chinese medicine table. For this reason, acupuncturists are often asked:

“How did you get into acupuncture?”

In the beginning, I gave the kind of answer I had heard other practitioners answer. I had migraines. I was working as a copywriter, long days sitting hunched over a laptop, not particularly fulfilled, not particularly engaged. Every Friday afternoon, I got a headache that put me out until Saturday morning. My Taiji teacher offered to treat me in his clinic. I had never heard of acupuncture, but I trusted him. After a year of seeing him and becoming increasingly fascinated by what was happening there, I wanted to learn how to treat myself, and thought that maybe I could help others as well.

Many years later, as I started to understand it better, I saw how incomplete this story was. It is the obvious answer. It is the series of events that happened. But the truth of it is that my coming to this work was more like a string being tuned. A string makes an excellent sound within a narrow range. Too low and the string gets slack. Too high and it snaps. It has a range within which it will make some kind of sound, but there is a sweet spot where it sings. Human beings are like this too. Each person is capable of doing a lot of different things with their life, but there are a few pursuits that will really help a specific person thrive.

The way you tune a string to that sweet spot is by holding it close to another thing that is vibrating at the pitch are you tuning to. The practice of acupuncture is that other thing for me. From one perspective, it was luck that I stumbled across it. But I think it is more accurate to say that as I tuned myself in other ways, acupuncture and I came closer together until we finally met.

Medicine has tools, but a medical practice is shaped by the way the practitioner thinks.

In the modern Euroamerican medical tradition, the tools are pharmaceuticals, surgery, physiotherapy, massage therapy, psychotherapy, diet and nutritional supplements (and perhaps osteopathy and a handful of other similar practices). In the East Asian medical tradition, there are acupuncture needles and moxibustion, massage therapy, herbs, diet, movement and breath exercises, and mental disposition. (We could of course debate the details of these lists, but that’s not really the point here.)

All of these tools are fantastically useful, for the right person, in the right time and place. The practice of medicine is about using the tools skilfully, and skilful practice has two aspects. First is the technical aspect: picking up a tool and using it safely and with accuracy to achieve the full extent of what is possible with that tool. Second is the way the practitioner thinks: how they approach a problem, their value system, the diagnostic information they are able to gather, and the the ultimate objective of their medical practice.

Two thousand years ago, a few generations of physicians in China developed a new approach to medicine. Their work was captured in the 黃帝內經 Huángdì Nèijīng, which became a foundation for all the East Asian medical traditions that followed.

Neijing medicine taught that health care is ecology. When they looked at the human body, they saw ecosystems. Its practitioners adopted needles and moxibustion as their preferred tools to do this ecological work.

The goal of Neijing medicine is to support healthy ecosystems within the human body and mind. Its practice is one of ecological restoration. Underlying this perspective is the fact that human beings are living things, like all other living things, and are governed by the same dynamics that govern birth, growth, aging and death in any other ecosystem.

The dynamics that govern life and death have distinct patterns and rules. These patterns and rules are the foundation of Neijing medicine. Understand the rules. Follow that which nurtures life. Accept change and death to allow for new life.

My professional focus is on medicine and health care, but I spend a lot of time thinking about the philosophy behind East Asian medicine, so I’ve given some thought to the implications for other fields.

The central principle of the Neijing is not just that humans thrive when connected with nature – it is that and more. Western culture has caught on to this principle already and is doing interesting things through interaction with nature based on respect and reverence. Examples are biophilic design, biomimicry, renewable energy and smart grids, green roofs and pollinator gardens in cities, earthship architecture, permaculture. These practices and many others integrate nature with the man-made world, creating positive results that are crucial as climate change shows us how badly we need a healthier relationship with our planet.

The Neijing extends its analysis to see that the cycles of life are as important as the life itself. It is not enough to be in relationship with nature, we need a dynamic relationship. To be connected and integrated with the natural world, we have to be responsive to it, individually and collectively.

In the medical context, this means that a physician takes into consideration not only the patient’s condition, but also their context in both space and time. Treatment in summer is different from treatment in winter.

Life does not grow in the same way at all times. It flourishes at one moment, it slows at others. Life expands and contracts according to the environmental conditions surrounding it.

Respecting these rhythms might suggest that certain seasons or days lead to better outcomes for surgical intervention or cycling of medications. (There is some research on seasonality and surgical outcomes that found higher risk of infection in summer and generally worse outcomes in winter, which maps exactly with what Neijing teachings would predict.) Timing definitely affects acupuncture treatment. It does not apply to every intervention. For example, a burst appendix is a burst appendix at any time of year, and the solution is always the same – but the recovery, which is a complex multisystem process, may have seasonality. Seasonal variation is an important lesson especially for how medicine supports a person’s underlying matrix of physiology, such as when treating chronic and recurrent illnesses.

Outside of medicine, this kind of thinking suggests buildings that change in response to weather conditions and seasonal cycles, perhaps even walls that behave more like skin with pores that open and close. Energy systems might involve patterns of use and storage that shift seasonally, which is required for solar anyway (a fact that to me suggests we should listen up and get on board with the rest of the universe). In business there are many examples, such as cycles of production quieting in winter and booming in summer, or sourcing materials locally. All life thrives on the same dynamics, unfortunately, many people in the past few generations have been confused about what thriving actually looks and feels like.

Beyond structural and systemic applications, a lot of the lessons from the Neijing play out in the thinking of individuals. How we dress, how we eat, how we exercise, how we think and feel. We can be attuned to and responsive to the larger natural dynamics on any given day, letting go of the fixed behaviors that create the sense of self: “I have sugar cravings”, “I do intermittent fasting”, “I eat these foods and not those foods”, “I go to the gym every day”, “I do not like exercise”, “I am in pain”, “I am anxious”.

All of these are features of a moment in time and in space. In the next moment, nature may change, providing you with the invitation to change with it. But it is not “choice” in the way we usually think about choice. I do not believe you can choose to not have sugar cravings any more than you can choose to not have pain. Dealing with these things requires work on the mind and the body that realigns it with the conditions that support life. Some of that work is medicine (external intervention) and some of that work is cultivation (internal direction).

Medicine at the highest level, according to the Neijing, is an intervention that allows you freedom to do inner work. It serves to relieve pain, heal physical and emotional scars, remove toxicities, and undo the many kinds of injury that the world does to us. In this way, it creates the space within you to cultivate an ability to feel changes in the natural world around you, and then to cultivate the ability to allow nature to resonate in yourself.

Henry Claflin, R.Ac is the Director of Autumn Institute of Health and an acupuncturist, martial artist, husband and father. He runs a private practice in downtown Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.