WHERE DOES IT HURT? HOW I USE MERIDIAN THEORY TO TREAT PAIN

Why chronic pain isn’t always where it starts - and how channel theory can uncover the truth your body’s been carrying.

When pathways are blocked, signals don’t reach their destination. Meridian theory helps us trace the detours and reopen the lines.

One of my patients came in with persistent neck pain that radiated through her shoulder and along the inside edge of her scapula. Structurally, everything lined up. But the tenderness around BL 42 -

the outer Shu point of the Lung - kept catching my attention.

She couldn’t pinpoint anything she was grieving. But week after week, the point stayed tender. The pain stayed present. And something about it kept nudging me to circle back to the idea of letting go.

She had recently sold the house she’d lived in with her ex-husband. A new marriage, a new chapter, a forward-moving life. But that house had held years of memory - both sweet and complicated - and her body hadn’t skipped over the weight of that transition, even if her mind had.

Each week, I reminded her that grief doesn’t always come from something bad. Sometimes it’s the life we loved, the version of ourselves that lived inside it, that we still need to say goodbye to.

Then one day, something shifted. After needling, she felt a sharp ache low in her back - nowhere near the channels we had worked on. I placed my hand over the area, asked her to breathe deeply, and she started to cry.

The neck pain never returned.

In Chinese medicine, pain doesn’t just come from injury. It comes from where the body is holding something. And most of the time, the “something” isn’t purely physical.

I map pain by channel and location - but I also track what the body might be trying to say through the language of the meridians. If someone has persistent hip pain, I might look to the Gallbladder channel and ask where they’ve been stuck between decisions. If it’s rib tension that won’t resolve, I might consider the Liver’s role - not just in smooth flow of qi, but in unprocessed anger or frustration.

Sometimes pain shows up where a system is weakened or overstressed - where the tendons and muscles don’t have the nourishment to recover easily, so injury lingers. Other times, the pain is a result of stagnation - because the emotions haven’t moved, the qi can’t either.

And when qi doesn’t move, pain shows up.

Acupuncture gives us a way in. Not just to relieve pain in the moment, but to ask it something. Why here? Why now? What’s the story your body is telling that your conscious mind hasn’t fully heard yet?

You don’t need to have an answer on the table. You just need someone willing to listen with the right map.