Gardelle Catherine (Bursins)

Acupuncture occupies an important place in traditional Chinese medicine, as well as phytotherapy, dietetics, Tui Na (therapeutic massage) and moxibustion. Acupuncture has been known for more than 2500 years and is used to treat and, above all, maintain the health of living beings, both humans and animals. Coming from the observation of nature, acupuncture is based on Taoist cosmology and the concepts of Yin and Yang and the 5 elements (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), among others. Traditional Chinese medicine is based on the principle that the human body and mind form a unity and that they interact with the nature that surrounds and forms them.

It is a functional, global and holistic medicine, whose therapeutic principles are based on the vital functions and an original, ancestral physiopathology (yin-yang, hot-cold, inside-out, fullness-emptiness syndromes, etc.). Man, a true "energy roadmap", must maintain a certain balance between his interiority and his external environment. His vital energy, qi, must flow through the body unimpeded and in sufficient quantity. The acupuncturist, like a precision watchmaker, is able to diagnose, prevent and treat imbalances through the hands (acupuncture) or fingers (traditional Chinese energy).

With its very particular and original physiology and semiology, traditional Chinese medicine has managed to adapt to the Western world, to work complementarily with allopathic medicine and to earn its noble titles by offering a wide range of indications to the public.