Intro to Acupuncture: Wind

This past week I’ve been working in the garden. I enlisted the help of my minions, or children as some might refer to them, for the task. The weather has been particularly windy and I reminded the kids to cover the back of their neck so wind won’t invade. Given that they’re used to having an acupuncturist as a mother they took this advice in stride, but it got me thinking how the average pedestrian walking by would have been very confused.

You see, acupuncture is an old medicine. How old is debated but it’s generally accepted to be at least 3,000 years old, with the first written record found in the Huangdi Neijing. Suffice it to say that the human understanding of disease transmission was very different from what we have today. Pathogens were thought to come from the elements of wind, cold, heat, dry and damp.

Wind is the element of spring, which for anyone who’s spent time outside recently, is probably stating the obvious. Wind invades the body at the base of the neck. When this happens the muscles in the upper back stiffen. If you’ve ever woken up with your neck locked up for no known reason, an acupuncturist would likely diagnose this as a wind invasion.

Other common ailments caused by wind include colds, muscle aches that move from place to place and itchy skin conditions such as hives. Additionally wind provides a convenient mode of transportation for other other pathogens (usually heat or cold) to invade. This is the explanation for the common cold sometimes giving us chills and other times giving us a mild fever, depending on which pathogen hitched a ride in with the wind.

The simplest way to prevent wind invasion is to keep the back of the neck covered. If you’ve missed that step and you get home with a stiff neck, the best thing to do is apply heat to the area. Cold is most frequently the pathogen that came along with the wind, and the way to get rid of it is by warming the area. So if you happen to be on a walk and hear some kids grumbling about scarves and wind, be sure to wave hello.