Classical Chinese Acupuncture
The School of Bodily Landscape
Andreas Kühne
Thammavong School Neustrelitz
Introduction
Why this essay?
When we speak about acupuncture today, we most often encounter a highly reduced version of this millennia-old medical system.
Point X for symptom Y – an idea that hardly does justice to the nature of classical Chinese acupuncture. What was originally conceived as a profound system for regulating life itself is now frequently reduced to functional therapeutic strategies.
This essay proposes a different approach: an approach to classical Chinese acupuncture, and in particular to the School of Bodily Landscape.
This way of thinking does not view the human being as a mechanical structure with circuits and switches, but as a living, embedded landscape – in constant relationship with Heaven, Earth and environment.
This essay is addressed to therapists, non-medical practitioners, physicians – but also to interested patients who wish to understand more deeply.
It is not a step-by-step manual for point selection, but an introduction to a way of thinking that can fundamentally change our therapeutic work.
Chapter 1 – What is Classical Chinese Medicine?
A different view of reality
When we speak about medicine, we are not only speaking about healing.
We are also speaking about images of the human being, worldviews – about philosophy. Every medical system is embedded in a fundamental idea of what a human being is and how they are connected to the world.
The Western view: structure creates function
Western biomedicine is based on a causal-analytical worldview. The human being is understood as an objective, clearly delineated entity whose functions arise from clearly defined structures. Digestion, for example, is understood as the result of the interaction between stomach, pancreas, enzymes and neural signals – a function that emerges from measurable, structural conditions.
This approach has enabled enormous advances: surgery, laboratory medicine, emergency care.
But it also has a shadow side: it removes the human being from their context and considers them in isolation – one organ, one symptom, one deviation from the norm.
The classical Chinese view: relationship creates reality
Classical Chinese medicine – especially in its original form – follows a fundamentally different way of thinking. It is conditional: it assumes that nothing exists in isolation, but always in and through relationship. The human being is not separate from the environment, but a node of conditions, a process that constantly reshapes itself.
We might say:
The human being is not explained by what they are,
but by what they are with.
This perspective has far-reaching consequences. It changes not only how we interpret symptoms, but how we understand the human being itself.
The body is not a machine, but a landscape in transformation. Health is therefore not a static state, but the successful interplay of conditions – internal and external.
Short summary:
- Western medicine: structure → function (linear, measurable, objective)
- Chinese medicine: relationship → reality (relational, process-based, relative)
In the following chapters, we will deepen these ideas and begin to understand what it means to see the human being as part of a landscape that lives between Heaven and Earth.
Chapter 2 – The Human Being as Landscape
A living model instead of a mechanical system
When we approach a human being – diagnostically, therapeutically or philosophically – it is often more useful not to ask what, but how.
How does this person live in their environment?
How do they meet the changes of day and night, weather and season, life phase and ageing?
In classical Chinese medicine – and especially in the School of Bodily Landscape – the human being is not understood as a cybernetic machine, but as a dynamic landscape.
A landscape with mountains and lakes, with wind, heat and waterways – crossed by paths, axes, transitions and relationships. A landscape embedded in a greater whole: between Heaven and Earth.
The human being as part of a whole
In this view, the human being is not a closed unit.
Rather, they are an interface:
between above and below,
between inside and outside,
between stability and movement,
between separation and connection.
We might say:
The human being is not a thing –
but a relation.
They are what arises when Heaven and Earth meet.
What forms when warmth encounters moisture.
What happens when awareness opens itself to the day – or withdraws from it.
The School of Bodily Landscape therefore assumes that all physiological processes, all symptoms, all illnesses are expressions of an imbalanced terrain – a disturbed interplay between the inner landscape and the environmental landscape.
Excursus: Where does this image come from?
In Daoist thought, the relationship between human being and world is not conceived as a point of contact, but as mutual permeation.
The human being is neither object nor subject, but an expression of their conditions.
This understanding goes back to early observations of nature and to a deeply embedded relationship with the environment. In classical Chinese medicine, this perspective was cultivated and refined over centuries – among other things through the conception of the body as a landscape:
- Mountains represent stable, slowly changing human manifestations
(e.g. bones, pelvis, skull, character, constitution) - Watercourses symbolise the flowing movement of the Qi and Xue levels
(less stable, more adaptable) - Wind represents instability, penetrability and change
(the least stable, highly flexible)
These terms are not meant metaphorically.
They are functional categories within the conditional model of classical medicine.
What this perspective changes
When we understand the body as a landscape, our entire therapeutic thinking changes:
- We do not search for a single point, but for the appropriate region.
- We do not ask, “What does the patient have?”, but rather:
“How is this landscape currently moving – and where does it stagnate, in relation to which conditions?” - We no longer understand illness as an error, but as a stagnation of a natural process.
And importantly:
We stop trying to repair the human being.
Instead, we support their ability to re-adjust themselves within the flow of circumstances.
A brief comparison
| Western perspective | Landscape-based model |
| The human being is a system | The human being is a relation |
| Illnesses are errors or defects | Illnesses are blockages in transformation |
| Treatment: structure → correction | Treatment: state → change of conditions |
| Goal: restoration of the norm | Goal: restoration of flow |
In the next chapter, we will examine what actually holds this landscape together: the three levels of reality – Jing, Xue and Qi.
And we will begin to understand why transformation is not the exception, but the fundamental principle of life.
Excursus: Why the human being is not conceived as a landscape in Western medicine
The idea of the body as a “landscape” is almost unknown in Western medical thinking – and this is no coincidence. The reasons are deeply rooted culturally and can be traced back to antiquity.
The body as a machine
At the latest since the Enlightenment (17th–18th centuries), a particular image has become dominant in Europe:
The body is a machine – assembled from parts, controllable, divisible, repairable.
This image goes back to René Descartes, who radically separated body and mind. He understood the human organism as a clockwork mechanism – something that could be analysed objectively. Illnesses became malfunctions, symptoms defects that could be localised and treated.
What was lost in this process was the human being’s relationship to their environment.
Their embedded, conditional existence.
Their capacity for resonance.
Historical background: How did this develop?
In Western cultural history, relativity was long perceived as a threat. Particularly through the rise of Christian monotheism, which became dominant at the latest during the time of Emperor Constantine (325 CE), a strong need for unequivocal truths emerged.
There was to be one God, one truth, one order.
Human beings were often conceived as separate entities:
separate from God, from nature, from their own bodies.
Conditional thinking – which sees everything as relationship – had no place within this structure.
In antiquity, this was different. In polytheistic Greece, different gods could hold opposing positions. This was not considered a weakness, but an explanation of plurality. With the rise of Christianity, this plurality was systematically reduced.
Consequences for medicine
Medicine increasingly focused on standardisation, measurability and objectivity.
Philosophy was separated from the natural sciences – and with it, relational thinking.
The human being gradually became a case, no longer a field in which relationships act.
This has brought enormous advantages – particularly in emergency medicine, surgery and diagnostics. But it has also led to a situation in which we often treat the body without truly understanding the human being.
And why does this matter?
When we study classical Chinese acupuncture – especially within the School of Bodily Landscape – we learn once again to think in terms of relationships.
We return to a worldview that does not fear transformation, but understands it as the foundation of all life.
The landscape is not a romantic metaphor.
It is a model of reality in motion.
Chapter 3 – The Three Levels of Reality: Jing, Xue and Qi
How transformation takes form
In the School of Bodily Landscape – and in classical Chinese medicine in general – we encounter a worldview in which transformation is the fundamental principle. Yet transformation requires something that can transform. And it requires levels on which this transformation can take place.
This is where the three fundamental levels come into play: Jing, Xue and Qi.
These terms cannot be translated directly. They can only be understood in relation to one another.
Jing – the most stable level (Being)
Jing is the foundation. It is that which gives a system its constitution.
In classical understanding, Jing is the deepest and slowest-changing level of the human being. It is what we bring with us – our constitutional basic relationship, our level of Being.
Jing is like the rock of a landscape – hard, stable, difficult to change. And yet decisive for the form and character the landscape can assume.
In diagnostics, Jing becomes visible in those aspects that are not easily altered:
for example constitution, familial patterns, fundamental character traits.
Xue – the intermediate level (between Being and Non-Being)
Xue is the level of transformation, oriented both towards Jing and towards Qi.
It is the “fluid” medium of change – the nourishing ground, the milieu. Xue is Being in motion: stabilised by Jing, moved by Qi.
Within the landscape, Xue corresponds to water.
It flows through the terrain, nourishes it, transports information, enables movement and stabilises the Wind.
When Xue stagnates, imbalance arises: local deficiency or excess.
In treatment, the task is often to move Xue and to cultivate its inherent quality.
Qi – the most unstable level (Non-Being)
Qi is perhaps the most widely known, and at the same time the least tangible term.
It refers to the vitality of the transformation between Yin and Yang.
Qi stands for active movement, for impulse, direction and motivation.
It is that which generates flow – and thereby enables transformation.
Qi is the Wind in the landscape:
it sweeps across form, dissolves fog, brings warmth, disperses cold.
Qi is not energy in the modern physical sense.
It is relation – the dynamic between two poles, the movement between potential and manifestation.
Summary
| Term | Image | Meaning |
| Jing | Rock | Substance, constitution, essence |
| Xue | Water | Milieu, movement of substance |
| Qi | Wind | Movement, transformation, vitality of flow |
A reflective note
Jing, Xue and Qi are not building blocks.
They are aspects of a living process.
And they are always in relationship with one another.
A symptom – for example exhaustion – is not simply a “Qi deficiency”.
Jing may be exhausted, preventing Qi from moving effectively.
Xue may be stagnant, obstructing the flow of Qi.
Qi may be present, but unable to reach Jing because the Wind has lost its orientation.
These differentiations are what make classical acupuncture so profound – and at the same time so resistant to simplification.
Excursus: Why “Xue” is not simply “blood”
In modern translations of Chinese medicine, Xue is often rendered simply as “blood”. This is insufficient and misses the original meaning.
In classical medicine, Xue is more than a substance.
It is an expression of relationship, of transformation in motion – a dynamic carrier of nourishment and connection.
The original character for Xue conveyed elements of flow, change and circulation – not merely a red fluid. Through the script reforms in the People’s Republic of China (approximately 1950–1980), many classical characters were simplified. In this process, much of their polysemy and relational capacity was lost. Characters became more definitional – clearer, but also poorer.
Xue was thereby reduced to a substance category: measurable, definable, functional – aligned with modern biomedical thinking.
In the classical perspective, however, Xue remains the mediator between Jing and Qi.
It is living fluid, but also milieu, carrier of transformation, level of connection.
If we understand Xue only as blood, we lose its relation to transformation.
And with that, we lose what classical acupuncture is actually addressing.
In the next chapter, we will turn to the three axes of transformation along which these processes are organised in the body:
above–below, inside–outside, left–right.
They form the framework on which the landscape rests – and through which it changes.
Chapter 4 – The Three Axes of Transformation
How orientation emerges within change
If we understand the human being as a landscape, it is not sufficient to name the elements of that landscape. We must also understand how they are connected with one another – and in which directions they are able to transform.
Classical Chinese medicine describes three central axes of orientation along which all processes of transformation within the body are organised:
- Vertical – between Heaven and Earth
- Horizontal – between back and front, outside and inside
- Lateral – between left and right
Together, these three axes form an organising framework for change. They allow us to localise processes, to interpret symptoms, to establish diagnoses – and, fundamentally, to think in terms of relationships.
The Vertical Axis: the human being between Heaven and Earth
This is the most fundamental axis. The human being is embedded between above (Heaven, instability, Non-Being) and below (Earth, form, support, stability, Being).
- Above stands for Non-Being / non-separation
(external Yang / Tai Yang) - Below stands for Being / separation
(external Yin / Tai Yin)
Along this axis it becomes visible whether a person stands upright – literally and figuratively – in the sense of Shao Yang / Shao Yin balance.
Therapeutically, the vertical axis is involved in themes such as:
- circulation of Xue (too little above, too much below)
- grounding versus dissociation
- capacity for concentration, sinking and rising
- weakness of the back
Those who are not grounded cannot manifest an idea.
Those who do not rise remain trapped in manifestation without transformation.
The Horizontal Axis: back – front, outside – inside
This axis describes the relationship to the environment on the “human level” – to the world, to other people, to experiences, to plants and animals.
- The front represents encounter, openness, movement outward (Yang)
- The back represents withdrawal, protection, preservation of resources, closing (Yin)
This axis is dynamic and constantly oscillating.
A human being must be able to open – and to withdraw again.
To take in – and to differentiate.
In the hierarchy of axes, it is subordinate to the vertical axis.
Blockages along this axis often manifest as:
- irritable bowel, allergies, exhaustion through sensory overload
- back pain correlated with withdrawal or unresolved experience
- emotional over-boundary or excessive openness
The Lateral Axis: left – right
This axis describes movement in rhythm, alternation and everyday life.
It is the axis of circulation, integration and the cooperation of opposites.
- The left side often represents perception, stability, Yin
- The right side often represents expression, action, Yang
This axis regulates the alternation of polarities – like day and night, activity and rest, inhalation and exhalation. It is the third axis in the hierarchy.
In treatment, this axis often reveals:
- whether one side stagnates while the other compensates
- whether movement is rhythmic – or frozen
- whether a person lives in natural rhythms – or constantly overtakes themselves
Interplay of the axes
All three axes act simultaneously – like a three-dimensional coordinate system within a living body.
They give orientation within what would otherwise appear as a chaotic system.
Those who search only for symptoms see a static image.
Those who understand the axes recognise movement within pattern.
Excursus: Why classical diagnostics is not point-based diagnostics
In modern acupuncture practice, the search for the correct point for a given symptom often dominates. This approach is linear and function-oriented: it attempts to control an effect from a single location.
The classical school thinks differently.
It does not search for the point, but for the axis that has fallen out of balance with the environment.
Only when it is clear on which level a disturbance is moving – vertical, horizontal or lateral – does it make sense to select a region or stimulus.
The point is not the beginning of treatment.
It is its result.
It appears where transformation can be initiated – not where the symptom is located.
Excursus: Why “left” is not simply “female” and “right” not simply “male”
In many esoteric or simplified models, body sides are assigned fixed symbolic meanings:
“Left is female”, “right is male”.
Such statements may sound intuitive, but they are misleading.
In classical Chinese medicine – and particularly in the School of Bodily Landscape – the focus is not on static symbolism, but on movement in relationship:
- The left side often appears more receptive, perceptive, functionally Yin – but only in relation to the right.
- The right side often appears more active, expressive, functionally Yang – but only in relation to the left.
Yin and Yang are not properties of things.
They are states of relationship.
Depending on the person, situation, life phase or energetic condition, these qualities can shift or even reverse.
An overactive left side can be very Yang.
A protective right side can be very Yin.
Classical diagnostics therefore does not say:
“The left arm hurts – therefore a problem with the feminine.”
It asks instead:
“How does this pain stand in relation to the other side, to the vertical axis, to the landscape as a whole?”
Chapter 5 – The Nature of the Landscape
Stability, wind and the moving terrain
When we speak of the bodily landscape, we mean more than an image. We mean a concrete arrangement – a functional geography of the body. This is not about organs in the anatomical sense, but about regions that differ in their behaviour within transformation.
A landscape is never homogeneous. There are stable zones, moving transitional areas, connections and boundaries. And there is weather that moves across this structure: wind, heat, moisture.
Stable regions: the terrain holds form
(Mountains / relationship to external Yin)
Certain areas of the body are considered structurally more stable. They change more slowly, react less quickly, and are often deeper or protected by bone:
- bones
- skull
- spine / pelvis
- rib cage (in its depth)
Within the landscape model, these regions correspond to mountains or rock formations.
They are difficult to change, yet stabilising.
Symptoms in these regions often point to deeper disharmonies that do not arise from superficial influences. Treatment here requires restraint and continuity, not force.
Moving regions: where flow occurs
(Lakes, rivers, seas / Shao Yang and Shao Yin)
Other regions are more dynamic, less stable than mountains, more fluid. They function as transitions, interfaces and gathering points:
- musculature and soft tissue
- ligaments and tendons
- abdomen
- diaphragmatic region
These zones are particularly receptive to what classical medicine calls Wind – in both harmonious and disharmonious forms – and are dependent on the stabilising influence of the mountains.
Change, influence, movement from outside and inside – physical as well as emotional – manifest here readily.
Disharmonious Wind is what enters when the landscape is insufficiently connected.
Harmonious Wind is what allows adaptation, responsiveness and development.
Example:
Neck tension after exposure to draught is more than a “chilled muscle”.
It expresses a disturbed relationship between inside and outside.
Wind encounters a region that was too permeable – or insufficiently stabilised.
The most unstable regions: movement in depth and outward
(Wind / relationship to external Yang)
Wind represents the most unstable level – the level of flexibility and adaptability, of communication with external Yang. At the same time, it is also the level most susceptible to stagnation, whether through external pathogenic influences or internal disharmonies.
Harmonious Wind shows itself in:
- the variability of facial expression
- the mobility of fingers and toes
- the fluidity of speech and adaptability of language
In a functioning landscape, Wind circulates freely and according to situation.
Stagnation – such as tension or irritability – indicates that the landscape is not well ventilated; flow is interrupted.
What does this mean therapeutically?
When we view the body as a landscape, we no longer ask:
“Which point is responsible for symptom X?”
Instead, we ask:
- Which region is disturbed in its qualitative nature?
- Which region holds too tightly – or allows too much to pass?
- Where is the landscape exhausted, and where is it agitated?
Treatment is directed not at the symptom, but at the dynamics of the terrain.
Sometimes this means stabilising.
Sometimes loosening.
Sometimes simply restoring the appropriate direction.
Excursus: Disharmonious Wind is not wind
The term “Wind” in classical medicine is often misunderstood, especially when it is translated simply as “cold” or “draught”. In reality, Wind is an overarching concept for movement that is not regulated.
Wind is what changes suddenly.
Wind is what enters when it should remain outside.
Wind is what does not adhere to the order of the landscape.
In this sense, an argument, a shock, or sudden fear can also be Wind – if it breaks into the landscape before it can be integrated.
Wind is the principle of what remains unprocessed.
And at the same time, an indication of open or vulnerable areas within our order.
Chapter 6 – Health and Illness: What Really Falls Out of Balance
Why disturbance is not an error
In classical Chinese medicine, illness is not understood as something that “should not exist”.
It is not a defect, not a failure of the system, but an expression of disturbed transformation – a state that has emerged from a particular constellation of conditions.
Illness is not wrong.
Like everything else, it is conditional.
This changes everything. Instead of asking what is broken, we ask:
What has failed to transform, although it should have transformed?
Health as the capacity for transformation
A human being is healthy when they are able to adapt to changing conditions.
Not when they are free of symptoms.
A change in temperature, an emotional strain, a shift of season, a change in diet – all of these are conditions that require transformation.
The body, the landscape, must be able to reorganise itself.
Those who are healthy transform.
Those who are ill stagnate.
This does not mean that illness is harmless.
But it does mean that illness is not an enemy.
It is an indication of where something has become fixed.
Four groups of conditions
From a classical perspective, disharmonies usually arise from an imbalance between four main groups of influencing factors:
Environmental conditions
– seasons, weather, climate, temperature, air pressure
– also: geopolitical or social tensions
Lifestyle
– diet, sleep, movement, daily rhythm, work
– above all: regularity and proportion
Emotional movements
– joy, grief, dissatisfaction, fear, worry
– not the emotion itself, but its timing and place
Constitutional basis
– Jing, influences of childhood, familial imprinting
– previous illnesses or deeper burdens
These four groups always act together.
Illness arises when their interaction loses its capacity for transformation – when a state becomes fixed, no longer moves, no longer flows.
Excursus: Why symptoms are not disturbances
In Western medicine, symptoms are often regarded as malfunctions. When something hurts, fails to function, or deviates from the norm, it is to be eliminated or suppressed.
Yet the symptom is not the illness.
It is the body’s attempt to resolve stagnation.
A fever is not an error – it is an attempt to heat and dissolve a blockage.
Pain is not damage – it is a marker, an indication of imbalance.
To think classically means to read the symptom, not merely to remove it.
Therapy means to order relationships, not to silence signals.
What does this mean for us as therapists?
We become readers of order.
We do not search for what is wrong, but for what has lost its mobility.
We help the system to remember how transformation works.
Sometimes with a needle.
Sometimes with a word.
But always with an orientation towards the whole.
Chapter 7 – What Does Acupuncture Actually Do?
Separating stimuli, landscape logic and remembering movement
When we work with classical Chinese acupuncture, we do not apply stimuli to defined structures. We disturb relationships, interrupt patterns and initiate transformation. A needle is not a switch. It is a precise irritation within a rigidified configuration.
We do not give the body “energy”.
We remind it of how transformation works.
The needle as a separating stimulus
Every needle creates separation.
Not in a destructive sense, but as a brief, intentional interruption of an established pattern.
- In a stagnant region, the needle opens.
- In a dissolving region, the needle gathers.
- In an overactive region, the needle orders.
The needle brings movement – not from itself, but within the context of the landscape. It functions as a reminder of a relationship that has been forgotten.
A needle is not “against” the symptom.
It is for the restoration of relationship.
The significance of the region
In classical landscape logic, a point is not a centre, but a region with a specific quality within the terrain.
Point names are therefore indications, not solutions.
A region acts through its relationships:
- to the external landscape
- to the axis on which it lies
- to the surrounding structure (stable or permeable)
- to the function it is currently failing to fulfil
Example:
A needle in the region of the scapula can regulate the Wind of unrest that clouds the head – but only if it is understood that the separation between inside and outside is disturbed there. Otherwise, it is merely a muscular point.
Excursus: Why the “correct point” is an illusion
The search for the one correct point for one symptom is a modern simplification, often arising from the combination of Chinese techniques with Western biomedical thinking.
The “correct point” presupposes a clear cause-and-effect relationship.
Classical acupuncture, however, thinks conditionally.
It works with relationships, constellations and processes of transformation.
The same point can support or disturb, depending on the landscape.
What matters is whether it stands in relationship – or is merely present.
Classical acupuncture does not seek the point.
It seeks the disturbed relationship –
and the place where it can be initiated.
The aim: returning to movement
Acupuncture does not heal.
What heals is the organism itself – when it remembers how transformation works.
The needle is a tool.
It provides impulse, not solution.
It disturbs intentionally – not to destroy, but to re-order.
To act therapeutically means to remind the system.
Not to fight the problem.
Chapter 8 – Outlook and Invitation to Further Study
Why we should not stop at the point
What we have attempted in this small book is not a complete teaching system, nor a method, nor a narrowly defined manual for acupuncture treatment.
It is an invitation to understand classical Chinese medicine once again as what it originally was:
a way of engaging with the world,
an image of the human being,
a teaching of relationships.
The School of Bodily Landscape is not a specialised field.
It is a way of seeing the human being.
This way of seeing cannot be acquired through memorisation.
It requires practice, repetition and self-observation.
And it requires the courage to let go of the idea that knowing enough points is sufficient to treat effectively.
What remains – and what may begin
Perhaps, after reading this book, one thing remains above all:
the sense that classical acupuncture does not consist of recipes,
but of observation, deceleration and relationship.
And perhaps something begins:
a new way of seeing,
a different way of thinking,
a willingness to face transformation –
not only in the patient, but also in oneself.
How the journey may continue
This book is part of a larger undertaking.
In a more comprehensive project, the ideas outlined here will be developed in greater depth – with systematic explanations, case studies, historical context and references to practical work in daily clinical practice.
Planned topics include:
- an introduction to the conceptual structure of the phases of transformation
- chapters on diagnostics within the conditional model
- a critical comparison of modern and classical point systems
- in-depth discussions of terminology, historical developments and cultural backgrounds
In closing
The needle is only a tool.
What makes it effective is the understanding of the landscape into which it is placed.
If this text has helped to open that understanding, it has fulfilled its purpose.
And if it encourages you to continue on this path, we look forward to walking it together.
Andreas Kühne
Thammavong School Neustrelitz
2025 info@daocademy.de