“Twelve years ago I realised in order to be an acupuncturist I don’t have to believe in magic. It was a lightbulb moment that literally changed my life.”
Vivien Shaw, Acupuncturist and Anatomist
These are Vivien’s words from a podcast on Acu-Track that is so worth a listen, if you are interested in better understanding the science behind acupuncture.
Vivien is an acupuncturist and researcher who became an anatomist 10-years ago in order to follow up on a lead she’d discovered when reading the original acupuncture texts from the Han Dynasty. These books were written over 2,000 years ago by anatomists in the Han Court who described their dissections (Vivien’s lightbulb moment!) and how they used their anatomical findings to map acupuncture channels and points. This absolutely is a eureka moment, because we currently understand acupuncture channels or meridians in energetic terms, as metaphysical constructs outside of human perception.
What Vivien’s thesis does is describe with astonishing clarity, through her own copy-cat dissections, how the Han anatomists built up a picture of the body and the acupuncture channels. She shows us how our acupuncture colleagues 2,000 years ago were literally mapping anatomical structures like arteries, nerves and veins, that mostly travel together, and the way in which they circle a joint, head off to an organ, or rise up between bones and deep muscle towards the surface of the body. These notable landmarks were considered the places where acupuncture would be best able to regulate blood flow to organs, joints and muscle to improve health. This was then tested by practitioners all over China, generating new theories that were explored by the dedicated team of Han Court anatomists at the next dissections and described in their next book.
This development of theory and practice, based on careful observation over millennia, has given us a beautifully nuanced acupuncture therapy that can be used safely and effectively for complex healthcare needs like migraine, fertility, or the side-effects from cancer medications.
I am so grateful to Vivien for her determination to confirm the role of dissection in channel theory. It is deeply inspiring to recognise the exceptional science that underpins the acupuncture we practice today.
If you’re feeling curious and inspired, follow this link to Vivien’s PhD thesis, where you will find diagrams of all the channels with descriptions from the classics, alongside pictures from Vivien’s own dissections.