Back when I was learning acupuncture, my teacher mentioned “Family Acupuncture” and I, being the inquisitive person I am, googled “Family Acupuncture”. The results were not helpful.
The results I got talked about acupuncture for families, young children, and fertility support. This wasn’t what was meant, so I thought I’d write this article, giving you the information that I got when I was learning.
Back in the days before the TCM manuals were written, the feuding family clans of China used to have their own Chinese Medicine Doctors who looked after the whole clan. These were esteemed professionals, charging from very little, for maintenance treatments to great sums for treating disease. The best of these doctors were able to treat the heads of the families, and were forbidden to share their secret techniques, needling methods, treatment protocols and acupuncture points with other practitioners, that might leak information to benefit other family clans.
At this time, the families were in great competition for power, so every benefit they could get for health was important.
These families, in the main, got their points and treatments from “Ancient Acupuncture” methods, which were around from many, many years previously, and even may have come from before the days when acupuncture reached China, but some of them found new points and recorded them in their own manuals.
Coming forward, to nearer the present, around 2000 years ago, the Tung family started pulling together other families’ points and methods. Master Tung Ching Ch’ang, born in 1916 was the last real member of this family and was credited with much of the “Family Acupuncture” which is often now known as “Tung Acupuncture”, however a lot of his points are actually from other families and not from the Tung family. But much in the way that the word “Hoover” is used for vacuum cleaners, the word “Tung” is generally now used for Family Acupuncture.
There are other points that are not in the “Tung” manuals, and some of these can be found in small, rarely used, books such as “The Non-Meridial Points of Acupuncture” (Royston Law) which is a book that has now gone out of print but has many points in it which are powerful and are not in the modern “Acupuncture Bible”, “A Manual of Acupuncture” which, is the book that is most commonly used in the UK today for teaching acupuncture points from.
Many of the family points made it into “A Manual of Acupuncture” as originally the authors went to many practitioners and record holders, and asked them for their records, so that they could bring everything together, however, as was common back then, families still jealously guarded their secrets and didn’t give them everything they had. In fact, we believe that many of the family points may have been lost, through destroyed records, or just people dying without passing on their secrets.
As an example, the Huatuo Jiaji points were very nearly lost. Dr Huatuo, who needled the spine area as a microsystem, was so successful in his time, that he was targeted by rivals from other families and was killed, the murderers also destroyed as much of his written work as possible, however some of his students had their own notes and eventually Dr Huatuo’s work was spread to practitioners of the present day, through teachers who have diligently kept the records and taught them as written. However, there are at least 2 versions of these points in circulation, luckily both of them seem to work just fine as they, as revealed by modern science, match where the nerves come out of the spine! As the nerves cross over other nerves and have larger areas than an acupuncture point to exit the spinal column, the points used still work. There is debate over which set is best, but those aware of the existence of more than one version can try both and use the best for them.
There is also some point numbering confusion, even in “A Manual of Acupuncture” there is a difference in numbering to some of the old texts, this is because of the family systems. This modern manual was created for this reason so that everyone is talking from the “same textbook” and using the same language and point names, which, in the modern day is very useful as people can move home over large distances and go to another acupuncturist, or go on holiday and another practitioner can “fill in” and they can understand other’s notes, so there is a continuity of treatment. It also makes teaching much easier as CPD courses can build on existing knowledge without having to re-train point numbers and when we go on international forums and talk about acupuncture, we all know exactly what is meant by each point name.
Another issue can be point locations. Some families had the points in different areas to other families. For instance, SP9 (Yin Mound Spring) locations in different families can be up to 1.5 cun apart. This was not an issue when each family had its own practice theory, but now, in the modern day, standardisation has us all talking the same language (mostly).
Some of these issues with point location standards, and even needling techniques, are still around in the present day. For instance, some practitioners will use 20 or more needles in one treatment, some say that the fewer needles you can use in one go the better, some practitioners just use superficial needles, and some needle only deeply. The teachings from various “Family” teachers are still being passed down and are now viewed as acupuncture styles rather than family methods.
I hope this shines a light on the term “Family Acupuncture” for you, and you can understand why some people put needles in one way, and some in another way.
by Michelle Bebbington Lic.Ac.TCM MAA RBAF – Acupuncturist – Blue Sage Clinic – www.bluesage.co.uk (Acupuncture Association Board Member and BAF Representative)
