In this episode we take on the question of Is “Chinese Medicine The Same As Acupuncture?”
Today’s Everyday Acupuncture Podcast question is answered by Heidi Lovie, DACM, of Lovie Acupuncture and Healing located in New York City
My name is Dr. Heidi Lovie. I am a Chinese medicine practitioner in New York city Manhattan. And I’ve been in private practice since 2009. One of the questions I often get asked by medical doctors or other healthcare practitioners is how do I refer to myself and how do I refer to the field when I don’t automatically open with, Hey, I’m Heidi, the acupuncturist Chinese medicine is really complex, beautiful medical system unto itself. And there are eight pillars in the medicine, five of them that we use therapeutically in the treatment room. And another three we don’t often talk about because they’re not applicable quite in the same way, but they’re equally as important. So the treatment room five are nutrition, our nutrition herb.
Movement, which is the right movement for the right body. tuina a type of medical, massage and acupuncture. But when I say acupuncture, that’s really a title heading for anything where I’m using a tool, whether that’s the needles or whether that’s gua sha cupping moxibustion, we have many things at our fingertips.
The other three, which I have to give a tip of the hat to because they’re equally important. Are meditation, feng shui and cosmology. And please note, I did not say astrology because I don’t care what your rising sign is most of the time, but what we’re looking at is what. Has impact on our human experience internally, what is impacting our human experience locally and work or the home.
And what’s impacting our human experience on a much grander scale, a cosmological, a broader scale. And those are things that we can sometimes shift a little bit, but they don’t have quite the same therapeutic immediate impact that the treatment room five. And so because we have this deep, broad education acupuncture school is often in many places in the us four years, full time.
In addition to what other undergraduate you did, but because we have these, I can tell a patient, Hey, you don’t need me. You need a steak. You don’t need me. You have to go for a run you don’t need me. You need to upgrade the diet, but then I’m actually able to give suggestions, work with the patient and offer solutions in a meaningful way where we can impact their health and move them towards their health goals.
So when you’re looking for an acupuncturist, you always wanna find somebody who’s licensed. , this is a difficult licensure to get. We have to graduate. We have to do clinical experience. We have to pass our boards. We often have state testing that we have to do as well. And you wanna look for somebody ideally, who is also an herbalist.
You don’t always need that. In a practitioner, but it’s a good thing to have because they have that extra thing to offer you in the treatment room. So we’re much more than just needles and I encourage you to visit your local acupuncturist to see for yourself.
