Acupuncture: How Traditional Chinese Medicine views Water

My favorite poetic description of Water within the Traditional Chinese Medical Tradition
Acupuncture is just one aspect of Traditional Chinese Medicine.  Practitioners of TCM or East Asian Medicine have a masters or doctorate degree in Acupuncture or Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (AOM) from an accredited program.
The five major parts of TCM are:

1. Acupuncture
2. Chinese Herbal Medicine
3. Nutrition
4. Tai Chi/Qi Gong (meditation/movement)
5. Bodywork/Tuina

Within TCM there are several ways of looking at the body and the world and how they interact.  One of these is the Five Element Theory (5-E).  According to the 5-E way to view the body, the five elements are water, wood, fire, earth, and metal.  These elements have numerous correspondences.  For more information, attend an accredited master's level acupuncture program.

I recently came across my favorite description of water in the March 2012 edition of Acupuncture Today, an article written by a Senior Practitioner of the medicine, Felice Dunas, "The Heart/Kidney Connection".

"Water-Kidneys
It is a dark, cold, starless night.  The ocean is everywhere, soft and rolling.  Its inky depths are seemingly infinite and its capacity limitless.  The hazy blackness is teaming with life.  Formless, without edge or shape, energy flows, continually undulating as moist atmosphere and salt water.  
Here is the strength to power all of life, the ability to express, to nourish and the potential to manifest.  Everything came from this vastness.  All of life on Earth began here, in the dark, blue, salty ocean.
Here is the wisdom that becomes the five elements; here is the waiting fullness of yin yang's potential.  The power to reproduce, life's hunger for itself, is born here."
--Felice Dunas, "The Heart/Kidney Connection". 

For  more information on accredited Acupuncture programs, check out the ACAOM website for schools with accredited programs.
ACAOM = Accreditation Commission on Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, the national accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education for the accreditation of acupuncture programs in the U.S.A.
NCCAOM--National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, the national organization that board-certifies Practitioners of Traditional Oriental Medicine (Acupuncturists) in the U.S.A.  For a national board-certified practitioner, do a "find a practitioner" search on their website.

--Megan Kingsley Gale, EAMP/L.Ac., MSAOM, Dipl. OM
East Asian Medicine Practitioner/Licensed Acupuncturist
Master of Science in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine
National Board Certified Diplomate in Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM)