Neijing Nature-Based Medicine

acupuncture

Episode 3: The Natural Ecology of the Acupuncture Points

2024-07-07T16:11:45-07:00July 1st, 2024|Podcast|

Join us this week as we delve once again into the rich waters of Neijing Nature-Based Medicine.

Your hosts, Dr. Edward Neal and Mel Hopper Koppelman, explore the importance that stories play in our understanding of the world and how telling better stories may improve the outcomes of our patients. Acupuncture points are more than poetic descriptions, and in this episode, we begin to unearth how the Neijing describes a complete physiological understanding of the human body, with the points being anatomical descriptions and not just numbers on a line.

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Episode 2: Blood Rivers and Channels (podcast)

2024-07-02T21:56:39-07:00June 17th, 2024|Podcast|

Join us as we delve into the story behind acupuncture channels.

Discover how the Neijing describes these channels, potentially as blood vessels, and the implications for modern practice. How does the restoration of blood flow impact health? How do we begin to see the body as nature? What does cancer treatment look like through the lens of ‘ecological restoration’? Tune in to explore the body’s ‘Blood Rivers and Channels’.

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Twenty Years of Nèijīng Research: What Has Been Learned? Part 3. Nèijīng Nature-Based Medicine — The Clinical Method

2021-11-22T20:51:50-08:00October 25th, 2021|Articles, Featured, Published Resources|

By Dr. Edward Neal, MD
First published in Journal of Chinese Medicine
Issue 125 (February 2021)

By the 1980s, a majority of early Chinese texts had been placed on computer databases. This undertaking allowed new, potentially paradigm-shifting, approaches to classical text research. While the full potential of this research has yet to be realised, information discovered to date significantly alters our picture of the early practices and theories of Chinese medicine and presents a wide-ranging collection of new research and clinical opportunities to be explored. This information has the potential to change the way Chinese medicine is understood, taught and practised in significant ways. As such, it affirms the profession by providing new challenges and opportunities and at the same time presents unique challenges by requiring the reevaluation of core concepts. Part one of this article reviews work done over the past 20 years on the Huángdì nèijīng and presents some of the findings discovered using these research approaches. Part two will review the clinical methods that have been developed from this research.

Twenty Years of Nèijīng Research: What Has Been Learned? Part 2. Nèijīng Nature-Based Medicine — Theoretical Principles

2021-11-22T20:51:38-08:00June 25th, 2021|Articles, Featured, Published Resources|

By Dr. Edward Neal, MD
First published in Journal of Chinese Medicine
Issue 126 (June 2021)

The Huángdì nèijīng is the primary source text for the entire profession of Chinese medicine. Despite this central importance, fully implementing a comprehensive clinical method based on its principles and theories has remained elusive. Because of this, the full potential of these principles and theories has remained underutilised in clinical practice, particularly in the West. Over the past twenty years, new approaches to classical text-based research have been developed using the techniques of classical text-based archaeology (see part 1 of this series of articles in issue 125 of the Journal of Chinese Medicine). This research methodology has led to the development of Nèijīng nature-based medicine, a comprehensive clinical practice based on the writings, principles and theories of the Huángdì nèijīng. In this article, I introduce basic principles of Nèijīng nature-based medicine. In a subsequent article in this series, I will introduce technical aspects of this practice.

Twenty Years of Nèijīng Research: What Has Been Learned? Part 1. Background and Principles

2021-11-22T21:12:35-08:00February 25th, 2021|Articles, Featured, Published Resources|

By Dr. Edward Neal, MD
First published in Journal of Chinese Medicine
Issue 125 (February 2021)

By the 1980s, a majority of early Chinese texts had been placed on computer databases. This undertaking allowed new, potentially paradigm-shifting, approaches to classical text research. While the full potential of this research has yet to be realised, information discovered to date significantly alters our picture of the early practices and theories of Chinese medicine and presents a wide-ranging collection of new research and clinical opportunities to be explored. This information has the potential to change the way Chinese medicine is understood, taught and practised in significant ways. As such, it affirms the profession by providing new challenges and opportunities and at the same time presents unique challenges by requiring the reevaluation of core concepts. Part one of this article reviews work done over the past 20 years on the Huángdì nèijīng and presents some of the findings discovered using these research approaches. Part two will review the clinical methods that have been developed from this research.

Nei Jing Perspective on Life, the Universe and Acupuncture

2022-11-22T12:18:49-08:00October 20th, 2018|Audio, Published Resources|

PODCAST

WITH DR. EDWARD NEAL
INTERVIEWED BY MICHAEL MAX (QIOLOGICAL)

We trace our medicine back to the Neijing, but most of our actual practices come from a more modern perspective.

Going back to those roots is not easy. Even for native speakers of Chinese, reading the 文言文 wen yan wen, the classic Chinese is difficult. For those of us in the modern West, these ancient texts are challenging. They require not just language, but a minset that views the world from through a completely different set of lenses and prisms than Cartesian and materialistic science offers to us.

Immersion in this ancient material changes us if we allow it. Gives us hints at seeing how matter and energy interact in ways toward which modern medical science is blind.

In this conversation we listen into how the Neijing gives another way of approaching acupuncture, the 脈 mai, channels, and helps us to understand our bodies as fluid based ecosystems.

Introduction to Neijing Classical Acupuncture Part I: History and Basic Principles

2023-05-01T14:46:49-07:00May 12th, 2016|Articles, Published Resources|

ARTICLE

First published in Journal of Chinese Medicine
Number 100 (October 2012)

Classical Chinese medical texts represent the foundation for all traditional Chinese medical theories and practices. Written over two thousand years ago, these documents set forth and define the basic principles of Chinese medicine and the clinical practice of acupuncture. They represent a critical and comprehensive resource for the modern practitioner. Despite their importance, the fundamental principles contained within these texts remain poorly understood and rarely used in modern clinical practice.

An Interview with Edward Neal

2022-11-22T12:14:19-08:00May 12th, 2016|Articles, Published Resources|

ARTICLE

First published in Journal of Chinese Medicine
Number 105 (June 2014)

Following the paradigm-shaking series of three articles recently written by Edward Neal for The Journal of Chinese Medicine (issues 100, 102 and 104), the JCM wanted to follow up with an interview with Dr. Neal in order to tease out some of the arising threads. Dr. Neal has been practising and teaching Chinese medicine for over 20 years. Originally trained as a Western allopathic physician, he first studied traditional acupuncture with Dr. Anita Cignolini of Milan, Italy.

Classical Chinese Medicine and Contemporary Science: The Vascular Model of Disease Pathogenesis. A Common-Path Theory of Human Illness

2023-05-01T14:47:04-07:00May 12th, 2016|Articles, Published Resources|

ARTICLE

First published in Medical Acupuncture
Volume 27, Number 2, 2015

The practice of physician acupuncture faces unique challenges in its development and inclusion as a recognized medical specialty. Information contained in early Chinese medical texts offers solutions to some of the divides that separate Chinese Medicine from contemporary biomedicine. Recent advances in classical text research—made possible by the establishment of Chinese language databases—provide new hypotheses of disease pathogenesis and new strategies for treating various acute and chronic illnesses.

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