By Eungene Craig Campbell
Koryo Hand Therapy is a form of acupuncture and moxibustion that affects the entire body through treatment on the hands.
The founder of the system, Dr. Yoo Tae-woo, wrote: "One autumn night in 1971, I was awakened from sleep by severe pain in the back of my head. For some reason, I found myself staring at the back of my middle finger. It occurred to me to stick my finger with the tip of a ball point pen, and indeed I found a particularly painful area. I then proceeded to insert a needle in this sensitive spot. The headache was gone."
Here was the beginning of a system of alternative medicine, soojichim, that has taken Korea by storm and spread to 50 countries. Starting in Japan in 1978, as of now 16 foreign countries in Asia, Europe and the America have KHT centers teaching the techniques. Korea has 190 centers and over three million people have taken training.
As a form of alternative medicine that differs form both traditional Oriental as well as Western medicine, it has generated controversy in Korea-especially with the established community of Oriental medicine.
This is reminiscent of how the use of herbs and vitamin-mineral supplements has raised eyebrows among physicians in the West.
KHT is practiced mostly by lay people rather than by licensed doctors. In Korea thousands of people treat friends and strangers alike without pay, and some accomplished practicioners have ailing patients actually lined up outside their doors.
The tiny needles are inserted only about a millimeter deep, yet they can relieve pain anywhere in the body and stimulate the healing of an array of ailments, to name a few: joint pain; obesity; skin problems; constitutional weakness from chronic disease, stress or drug therapy; minor inflammation; headaches, loss of appetite. As are many forms of alternative medicine, KHT is also employed to help keep the body in tone for prevention of disease.
As frequently as acupuncture on a patient's hand, a KHT practicioner will use moxibustion. This means burning small columns of dried mugwort, or moxa, upon specific spots, which conveys heat but not enough to burn the skin.
Small metallic pellets are taped to the skin, too, and machines have been developed to deliver electronic stimulation in lieu of needles.
Sometimes a drop of blood may be drawn from the end of a finger.
But why does it work? For that matter, how is any type of acupuncture effective to relieve pain or cure an ailment?
Organisms contain life energy called ki or chi which in the human body is said to flow through certain channels or "meridians" that doctors of Oriental medicine have defined over the millenia.
When yin and yang forces are in balance, the ki flows normally and the body is healthy; when there is an imbalance then discomfort of illness is the result.
Acupunctures needles or the burning of moxa, etc., are used to manipulate the flow of ki and restore balance to the body.
A microcosm of the entire body represented in one of its sub-units is called a homunculus-the soles of the feet, for example, to which stiff massage can be applied called "foot reflexology."
Another homunculus is the ear, around which yet another form of acupuncture was developed by a Frenchman, surprisingly, not anyone Oriental.
A beginner can use Koryo Hand Therapy to treat a variety of minor maladies simply by "corresponding treatment" according to the following formula. There are five fingers corresponding to four limbs plus the head. The index finger and ring finger correspond to the arms, thumb and pinky to the legs, and the middle fingertip is in the relative position of the head. The palm corresponds to the front torso and the back of the hand to the person's back, and each part of the body corresponds to a specific area on the hand.
An advantage of KHT over other microcosm therapies if that the homunculus is detailed enough to enable mapping of an entire array of 345 acupuncture points on the human body, along 14 meridians.
Here are some examples of treatment utilizing them:
- An important meridian runs vertically down the front of the body
therefore a line along the middle finger and down the center of the palm corresponds to it. KHT utilizes this meridian to great advantage with moxibustion. Learning to use this meridian is very easy, yet the effects are quite beneficial.
- Another meridian runs down each side of the spine.
KHT shu treatment is conducted along points on the corresponding two lines near the center of the back of the hand. Small metal pellets are often taped to the skin at these points.
- More sophisticated treatment points corresponding to major acupuncture points on the body.
One example would be treatments based on "five-element" theory, a major axis of Oriental medicine. In KHT, this type of treatment centers upon the outer two joints of the ring and little fingers.
Thus, Koryo Hand Therapy can be simple enough to learn and begin using in a single day, yet with extended study can be applied to a wide range of remedial treatment.
Mrs. Lee Jin-a, a long-time KHT practicioner, typically uses more than one treatment simultaneously. For example, for a headache around the forehead area, she rolls a plastic chopstick firmly across the upper finger pad(corresponding to the front part the head) of the middle finger of each hand, asking the patient if there are
any sensitive spots. A particular spot will invariably be sore: she wipes the finger with alcohol, places a tiny needle into an inserter and inserters it there. Generally the needles are painless, so if the patient cannot feel it, she pulls it out and tries again in a slightly different point until the patient can feel a prick.
That needle-often more than one-is left in place for about twenty minutes, during which time she will do moxibustion os the other hand. The headache will usually disappear.
If by questioning the patient she suspects that the headache was caused by stress, then she may place the moxa at the tip of the middle finger and the base, as well as the very center of the hand, wheres if she believes it to be connected, for example, with irregular digestion or other imbalance in the body's flow of ki she will use other points instead. The patient may leave with a couple of metal pellets taped to the outer front edge of each little
finger, which area represent the stomach meridian, with instructions to re-tape them on the same spots overnight three times a week for a month. The idea would be to help relieve the cause of the headaches. Mrs. Lee also makes dietary recommendations based on nutritional consideration and traditional Korean folk remedies.
A few other treatments:
- For nosebleed: tie the tip of the middle finger until it turns dark, release, repeat until bleeding stops.
- eyestrain: prod middle finger pad to find a sensitive spot and prick a drop of blood-or roll the stick of a cotton swab around the area for about 10 minutes-or apply pellets.
- cough and stuffed-up nose: tape metallic pellets around the tip of the middle finger.
- sprained wrist or ankle: form a ring of layered aluminum foil and place it around the outermost knuckle of the corresponding finger on the corresponding side.
- emergency unconsciousness: draw a drop of blood from finger tips.
Koryo Hand Therapy is ideal for practice upon one's own self, who is the one best able to pinpoint where various pains or discomfort occur. Moreover, any incorrect treatment will be harmless.
