Peter
I have treated Peter for many years. He tends to come at irregular intervals, but he always comes in March because he reliably falls into a depression then. He started and runs a small charity employing 23 people. January and February are his busiest and most stressful times because it is then that he needs to raise the money to allow the charity to survive another year. Once funding has been secured, usually in early March, he collapses, losing all interest in his work, in his family and in life. Before he had acupuncture the depression would last until early June – the next change of season, of course.
The diagnosis is that his energy in March is out of synch with the energy of nature. He can’t respond to what is happening all around him – not least to his children wanting to play outdoors with him in the lighter evenings when he gets home from work – so he feels helpless, inadequate, joyless. As the spirits of those around him lift at the signs of new life, and his do not, he falls into a depression.
The remedy, in principle, is to give strength and sustenance to his wood energy. What I found difficult was choosing between a range of possible treatments.
I didn’t get much help from his pulses and tongue. The pulses were, as you would expect, weak and sinking. The tongue was perhaps a little more red than normal, and a little peeled at the sides, but it didn’t really show me what to do.
Most obviously, I tried tonifying the source points of wood, LIV 3 tai chong and GB 40 qiu xu; but it didn’t make much difference. I think it is because, not just with Peter, I have never had much response from GB 40 – I suspect I don’t really understand it. My next idea was to tonify the back-shu points, BL 18 gan shu and 19 dan shu, but there was no real response from him or his pulses.
I thought of tonifying wood with LIV 8 qu quan and GB 43 xia xi, but I was nervous of the idea. For one thing, his water energy was pretty depleted, so could it really nourish wood? And would I just be creating a problem for his bladder and kidneys? With some misgivings I did try it once, but although it didn’t make him noticeably worse it didn’t help him either.
Next I tried stimulating his wood energy with the wood points on both wood channels, LIV 1 da dun and GB 41 zu lin qi. That was much better.
As is often the case for me, it is only after seeing the effects of points I have needled that I fully understand why I should have chosen them in the first place. For one thing, depression is a kind of stagnation and GB 41 has a powerful effect on spreading liver qi. More specifically, stagnation of liver qi often inhibits the movement of the diaphragm and the expansion of the rib cage. Hence, on a physical level there is not enough oxygen being taken in, and on an emotional level there is not enough inspiration. All this made me reflect that in the west we see depression as a psychological problem, but it is at least as useful to see it as an energetic one.
Many point names are simply descriptive of their anatomical location but there are alternative translations of their names, and some of these translations point to the effect of a point on the spirit. LIV 1 is a good example. ‘Big Mound’ is indeed the biggest joint at the end of the toes, but I have also read the translation ‘Great Esteem’. Certainly, when Peter is depressed he loses all self-esteem, so this point might well help to revive it.
The other combination that has helped him is LIV 3 tai chong and DU 20 bai hui. According to the old saying, human beings stand between heaven and earth, connecting both. Perhaps Peter’s depression comes, in part, from losing that interconnection, so needling points at either end of the body at the same time – points which are themselves connected, as DU 20 is at the end of the liver channel – felt right.
