Points as sites of access to the deep within us

We must not think of points as they can appear on our charts, as something stuck on to the body like pins in a pin-cushion. They must be seen as sites of access to the energy along a meridian, which in turn creates the pathway which eventually passes deep inside us or comes up from deep inside from the organ in question. A point is therefore part of the structure which creates the body (and soul) over which it lies. It provides a point of entry to it and thus allows us, through the needle, to alter the structure of the body (and soul) in some way. Since all is interconnected, we must remember that no point has an intrinsic value all its own, isolated from that of the meridian from which it emerges. The power of a meridian does not therefore lie in its individual points, but in the energy relating to that meridian to which these points form different kinds of access.

Any place on our body, when pressed, stimulated or manipulated in some way, in the case of acupuncture with a needle, will produce some local effect, akin to that of our scratching an itch or rubbing a painful area, but such an effect will remain restricted to that one small site, unless it somehow taps into the larger area to which a meridian has access. Each meridian reaches down into the innermost workings of an organ and from there spreads up and out back to the surface, where we meet it at the acupuncture point we decide to needle. Each time we needle the surface in this way, then, we must remember what lies beneath, and remain aware of how deeply we can influence these depths by this action on the surface, and how the energies lying hidden in the depths can propel themselves to the surface through stimulation by the needle.