Hi friends! This is Isaac!
When my mother found out she was pregnant, she knew right away the name she would give me: Isaac. She gave birth to me at a late age, so for her I was a "gift from God". The traditional meaning behind the Hebrew name Isaac is "gift from God", so for her it was appropriate to name me that. Another traditional meaning behind the name Isaac is "Laughter", as it astounded Abraham and Sarah that they could have a child at their age, bursting out in laughter from not only joy, but of astonishment.
My grandfather also gave me a traditional Korean name in Chinese characters: 明建. Ming (Myung in Korean) meaning "Bright/Brilliant" and Jian (Gun in Korean) meaning "Build". In this way, names can have a way of describing a deeper story, containing multiple meanings depending on the intentions of the nomenclator, and the perspective or context of the interpreter.
It is extraordinary that each acupuncture point was given a name by the ancient ones described in Huang Di Nei Jing. However, in the western world, we dismiss their incredible names, reducing them to an unremarkable catalogue of numbers. Imagine if I were to lose the name given to me by my parents and grandparents, and instead was designated the number IL312.
The heartfelt meaning and experience my parents had when they named me would get lost to the ethers, extinguishing the unseen power of deeper meaning and ethereal energy of connection. Our hope with compiling these translations is not only to bring you useful information to assist you with your studies, but also to bring back the meaningful intentions that the "parents" of these acupuncture points might have had when they named them.
Of course definitions change throughout time, which is why we decided to put more importance into applying the definitions that were established closer to the time period of Huang Di Nei Jing. These translations were done to the best of our ability based on the information available to us, with priority given to the definitions that speak closest to the philosophy of the medicine in general.
Therefore, these translations are not definitive and are meant to be abstract extractions that are open to interpretations by the reader, much like how the Tao Te Ching is interpreted in many ways.
We wish we had these translations while we were studying acupuncture at school, so we are very eager to share this with you to enjoy. Hopefully it can give you an intimate "first name basis" type of relationship with each acupuncture point!
Please note: We are not experts in Chinese, nor do we claim the authority to be. We do not assume to know what the authors of these points meant when they first named these points. Our goal in creating this was to provide the most simple and direct translation of each character to be a basic foundation with the hope that the reader will continue their own research into these Chinese characters. Therfore we have decided not to put emphasis on grammar and have purposefully divulged from using Simplified Chinese forms as much as possible.
[Click here to pre-order the Acupuncture Set or the Complete Set]
* Chinese character explanations will be included in the Companion Book when you purchase the Acupuncture Set or the Complete Set.
