When we feel pain in the arm, we rub it. When our stomach feels uncomfortable, we rub it. It is natural to treat the area where the pain is. It is not natural, and not intuitive, to treat places far away from where the pain originates. However, this is what acupuncture does all the time. This is where the miracle of acupuncture lies. The standard explanation in the ancient text is: When qi does not flow, pain occurs. When qi flows, pain disappears. Pain is treated to enable the flow of qi. But what is qi?

Qi is a sort of mystery to people who have not experienced it. Normally an acupuncturist will have to wave his arms to explain to his patients with words like, “Qi is a sort of energy that flows in the meridians and carries some information from one acupoint to where the pain is.” Can we say something more precise than that now, in scientific terms? Yes. The answer is:

1. Qi is vibration.
2. Qi is oscillation of the meridians. More precisely, qi is quantum oscillations on the system of meridians.
3. Qi is what carries the effect of acupuncture from one acupoint to other parts of the body.
The oscillations on the meridians are like oscillations on a piano wire. When we hit the piano wire, the wire oscillates, and we hear the sound. We cannot see the propagation of sound from the piano wire to our ear, but we feel the oscillation of the piano wire if we use our hands to touch the wire. The sound in the air is the oscillation of air molecules. We cannot see the oscillation of air molecules, but when sound hits our eardrum, we hear the sound. Sound has energy, and carries a type of message to the ear.

When a needle is inserted into an acupoint, the patient will feel a little pain. More sensitive patients will feel qi moving along the meridians. Qi is the oscillations of polarized media in the meridians (which are most likely made up of stable water clusters with permanent electric dipole moments, as we discussed in an earlier article in this series). We cannot see the propagation of qi with our eyes, but when qi reaches the problem area, we can use infrared image techniques to see its effect.

A meridian acts like a pipe guiding qi along its path to various parts of the body. What if acupoints and meridians are chosen incorrectly? Do they have the same effect? The answer is no. They do not have the effect we want.

Qi has many meanings in Chinese medicine, just as “energy” has many meanings in the English language. When “energy” is used in physics, however, it is precisely defined and measurable. Its meaning is objective and not arguable. Energy is exactly conserved quantitatively. Similarly,here we define qi in a narrow and precise manner as oscillation on the system of meridians, branches and capillaries so that it is quantified and measurable with detectors, so we exclude other meanings of qi cannot be described by oscillations. Qi, then, has a strict meaning with precise consequences in that it will be calculated, predicted, and measured by a variety of yet-to-be-constructed instruments. The principle of these instruments is well-known, and used extensively in physics. They need to be modified to apply to human beings. When such instruments are invented and used, Chinese medicine is expected to make a quantum leap into a new era of rigor.