Huangdi Neijing said: "Pain is the only point", which means that when people are sick, there will always be some tender points on the body surface, and the illness of internal organs or a certain tissue and organ can cause tenderness or abnormal feeling at a certain point on the corresponding body surface. Pressing or needling these tender points can diagnose and treat diseases related to organs. Sun Simiao, a great doctor in the Tang Dynasty, said in Volume XXIX of his book "A Thousand Daughters' Prescriptions": "Wu Shu's multi-line moxibustion method has the method of" yes ",that is, if a person has pain, he should pinch it, regardless of the acupoints, and get the quick or painful point, that is, the cloud is, and the acupoints are tested, so it is called" yes ".
According to legend, ancient doctors treated patients and have been exploring ways to treat them. Occasionally, if you accidentally press it somewhere, the pain of the patient will be alleviated. Later, when the doctor met the patient again, he pressed a part of his body until the patient shouted "Ah! That's it, that's it. " Therefore, pressing or acupuncture at the part where the patient has tenderness or abnormal sensation can really improve the condition. So Sun Simiao named these acupoints "Ashi Acupoint" and Ashi Acupoint is also called "Tianying Acupoint". Traditional Chinese medicine believes that "there is something inside, and there is a shape outside", which means that diseases inside the human body will inevitably be reflected on the body surface. The diagnosis and treatment of traditional Chinese medicine are determined according to this principle.
At first, the ancients found that the therapeutic effect of acupuncture points on diseases can only be one-to-one, that is, a certain acupuncture point can treat a certain disease, but with the accumulation of this experience, people gradually found that there is some connection between acupuncture points. Tell you a story, maybe you can understand that once upon a time there was a man with a terrible stomachache.
Somehow, the pain suddenly stopped. So he told others,
? I found some people in the same situation as him. So everyone desperately recalled and found a coincidence.
Many people accidentally touch hard objects with their feet. So it is concluded that touching the toes can relieve the stomachache, thus connecting the acupoints of the abdomen and toes. Connecting some acupuncture points with similar therapeutic effects into lines forms a preliminary concept of meridians.
In addition, the traditional concept of China in ancient times was "the unity of heaven and man", which believed that the human body itself was a small universe, just as Huangdi Neijing said: "The sky is round and the head is round enough to meet it. The sky has the sun and the moon, and people have two eyes; There are Kyushu in the land, and people have nine tricks; There are storms in the sky and people have emotions; There is lightning and thunder in the sky, and people have voices; There are four seasons in the sky and people have limbs; There are five tones in heaven, and people have five internal organs; There are six laws in heaven, and people have six internal organs ... "Then there are rivers on the earth, and there should be flowing ditches in the human body. Although the initial anatomy was rough, it was also found that there were indeed many meridians in the human body, which further confirmed the speculation of the ancients and the concept of meridians was formed.
However, due to the scientific level at that time, the ancients did not really understand the direction of various meridians in the human body, and they could only use these meridians as an intuitive reference. The description of the structure and trend of meridians is based on the therapeutic effect of acupoints and the understanding of needle sensation conduction after acupuncture. Therefore, although the discovery of meridians has anatomical basis, it is more of a feeling.
This is a way of "learning from the Tao", that is, seeking from the inside out and achieving it through a unique cultivation method of the orientals. We can call the method of "listening to the Tao" or seeking from the inside an irrational method or an intuitive method. This is the most obvious difference in cognitive styles between China (the East) and the West.