The Yellow Emperor's Inner Transmission of Acupuncture by Zhenhai Yang (review)

The core text of Chinese medicine is the Huangdi Neijing, here translated as the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic. That work, originating in ideas and practices from before the common era in the West and before the first unification of China, is thought to have been first compiled into something resembling the texts we have today during the Han dynasty (202 B.C.E.–220 C.E.), but all versions we have now have been edited and revised many times, eventually being divided into two distinct texts, the Suwen or Plain Questions and the Lingshu or Spiritual Pivot. The Suwen focused on theoretical constructions related to acupuncture and moxibustion and other treatments while the Lingshu covered the practice of acupuncture and moxibustion. Over many centuries, the importance of acupuncture waxed and waned in China, reaching a low point in the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) when the emperor's fear of assassination by needles led to the removal of acupuncture as a practice in the Imperial Bureau of Medicine. The imperial fear of acupuncture led elite physicians to avoid discussion of it in their texts. Acupuncture survived mainly among non-elite medical practitioners but was reinvented and revived in Japan in the nineteenth century and in China in the twentieth with a growing interest in responding to knowledge of Western anatomy with East Asian medical knowledge that focused on manipulation of specific points on the body. Today, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) appears to have a unified concept of acupuncture points and treatment, but that only occurred as medical practitioners standardized knowledge and practice in response to Japanese and Chinese government attempts to regulate or abolish traditional medicine. The first three decades of the People's Republic of China saw the apogee of unification of Chinese medical knowledge described in great detail by anthropologists like Volker Scheid and Judith Farquhar, and the subsequent erasure of heterodox traditions. But after the death of Mao in the period of reform and opening up, many practitioners and patients became frustrated with the standardized version of Chinese medicine and sought out suppressed traditions, including religiomedical traditions related to Daoism.

The book at hand is an edited summary of one of these suppressed traditions of Daoist acupuncture theory and practice that was passed down from teacher to student over at least ten generations and finally translated into English. The introduction, by scholar-practitioner Heiner Fruehauf, argues that the book is ultimately about understanding basic human life force and how to aid this life force in self-healing the body through acupuncture. The intended audience appears to be practitioners of Chinese medicine looking for a more authentic and simple approach to acupuncture than that transmitted through the standardized system of TCM in China and the increasingly professionalized acupuncture field abroad. The book provides a fascinating primary source case study of how non-elite and nonmainstream medical knowledge survives and is transmitted.

An extended quote explains:

The needling technique that we are passing on in this book is called "Yellow Emperor's Inner Needling" (Huandi neizhen). When you first heard this name, perhaps you were slightly taken aback and thought it too grand. But it really is fitting and worthy of this name, and the transmission of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Needling is utterly profound and far-reaching. It is not an acupuncture technique made from thin air or one that we have created ourselves, but one that has been transmitted from every generation to the next. Of course … we also find advances in response to the changing times, and abundant developments. I personally received this transmission from my own father Yang Yunqing who was taught this lineage by his teacher Hu Jiayu. Master Hu Jiayu is a teacher who I have known since childhood, and beyond him there are over ten other teachers whose names are noted...