山村訓長但知覓

※ The Sanchon Hunjang is going to be spreading his ignorance abroad this week with questionable access to the Internet. I'm pre-dating a couple of posts that I originally intended to put up during the week.

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According to oriental medicine, the body has this vital energy^*) that flows through it along lines, kinda like blood. And when something is not right, you can tweak the energy spigot along these meridians by using such stimulus as pushing on certain spots, poking the right spot...




...with needles,...



...or applying suction using some cups that have been heated so they suck the skin in through vacuum action as they cool...



...or some mechanized cup to achieve the same vacuum effect...



...(these leave the biggest hickeys you could ever imagine),...



...or burning some dried herbs over the site.



There's also this reduction aspect to the human body. The whole body is reflected in the hand, the feet and the ear (and probably other places).



This means that you can treat the whole body by just needling somebody's hand. Or massaging their ear. Or foot. It works because the process stimulates all the pressure points on there that represent the whole body.

This is why they make "massaging sandals" with specially placed studs of plastic or wood to stimulate those points. Sometimes the power is even kicked up a notch by adding magnets or jade to the studs. This idea also underpins a school of acupuncture: 고려수지침, where they jam mini-needles only into your hand to treat the whole body.

I was once sick with some flu-like symptoms and was talked into visiting some "doctor" to get acupuncture. He had a little piston-like machine that drove the needles home. After he had stuck me with about 20 or so (and, by the way, DON'T believe those morons who tell you that it doesn't even hurt) I feigned nonchalance and asked, "You're getting about done there, right?" Just as casually he responded, "Oh no. I'll need to put in 200 or so more." I couldn't contain myself any more. "TWO HUNDRED?!? Get these stupid things out of me!" I said as I removed the inserted ones and left for home. That saying about the cure sometimes being worse than the disease was certainly true in this case.

So, there's a mini-body reflected in your hand, ear and foot which can be used as a proxy to treat the whole body. And in the part of the ear that corresponds to the actual ear, there must be another microcosm of the whole body. By this kind of reduction, it stands to reason that a real expert should be able to find the ear of the ear of the ear of the ear of the ear of the ear point and solve any problem with just one needle.

Amazingly enough, there is a saying "one needle, two weed-burnings, three medicinal herbs 一鍼二灸三藥." I choose to interpret this to mean that a true practitioner of Chinese medicine only needs one needle, two weed burnings or three medicinal herbs to cure any ailment. Irrefutable evidence that anyone who is trying to insert 200 needles into my hand is a 돌파리. Maybe I should put together a new graphic dictionary for Korean.

Here's the first entry:

돌파리 의사 (이름씨)

NOTE: My conscience compels me to note that most people interpret 一鍼二灸三藥 to mean that, as techniques for the treatment of illness, the most effective is acupuncture, second is moxibustion and last is materia medica.

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^*) The famous 氣 (lit. "breath"), that the Chinese call "chee," but spell qi⁴ due to the wonders of pinyin transformation. The Koreans call this "ki," and the Japanese probably have a name for it too, but who cares.