Scalp acupuncture as treatment for the brain

Jasmin Reif

Student Member: Essex

A fascination with the brain-body response to chronic stress took recent graduate Jasmin Reif beyond her first profession and deep into the history of scalp acupuncture

It was through my work as a contemporary artist and through personal experience of neurological disease that my attention was first brought to the disabilities and limitations and the feeling of powerlessness which arise when the body and brain malfunction.

A curiosity for the science behind autoimmune disease drew me into a self-directed exploration of medicine, neurology and TCM, which I incorporated in my artistic work. Over time, my desire to explore and understand human health in the real world grew until it led me to the City College of Acupuncture London in 2019.

My focus has remained on the treatment of neurological diseases. This encouraged me to research into the history of scalp acupuncture, a technique that focuses especially on treating disorders of the nervous system and the brain. Now at the end of my degree, I would like to share a little of what I’ve discovered along the way.

Defining terms

A form of acupuncture performed directly on the scalp was first described in the Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu (100-300 BCE). But the actual term scalp acupuncture refers to a different technique – a relatively recent development initiated by the rise of neurological and psychological diseases from the 1950s onward.

Scalp acupuncture (SA) is a method in which needles are inserted in the scalp only, as opposed to traditional Chinese acupuncture (TCA) which as we know, works on the whole body and its channels by using local as well as distal points to regulate disorders of a respective organsystem or to connect to other channels.

In order to treat conditions of the brain, needling the scalp has been mentioned since the beginning of TCM. It was said that during the fifth century BCE, Bian Que cured a patient from suffering shī jué 尸厥 (false death or false consciousness) simply by needling the acupuncture point DU 20 bai hui. Although shī jué is not a common expression in modern Chinese the literal (modern) translations of the characters are shi: corpse/remains, and jue: lose consciousness/fall into a coma/faint.

In TCM the brain is seen as an extraordinary organ, the sea of marrow. It is not part of the zang fu, all of which have their respective channels – the brain has no such specific channel. According to the Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu the brain’s transport (opening) is in the upper region at the top of the skull and below DU 16 feng fu. Because the du mai is the only vessel that runs through the brain, it is involved in most SA treatment protocols. Otherwise, all scalp points are located on yang channels. They have been mentioned in the Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen as part of the fifty-nine piercings located on five lines on the head.

Twentieth-century pioneers

The first practitioners to experiment with SA in modern China were Yunpeng Feng around 1950 and Yangon Tang in the 1960s. Due to the influence of modern medicine, neuroanatomy and neurophysiology SA separated in the 1970s from TCA – channels became less important and the underlying structure of the brain matter determined the point location from then onwards.

Jiao Shunfa, regarded as the founder of SA in China, developed a needling technique which combined TCA with western medical knowledge of the brain and was published in 1971. Shunfa treated areas of the cerebral cortex which correspond to motor and sensory functions as well as balance areas and sight.

Also notable amongst other SA founders active in China during 1960s and ‘70s were Tang Songyan, whose head acupuncture is based on the location of the function of the cerebral cortex in combination with the TCM theory of zang fu organs, and Fang Yunpeng, who developed a style by superimposing pictures of the spine and the human body in a prone position on the scalp.

Around the same time, Toshikatsu Yamamoto established a different form of SA in Japan by inventing a microsystem of points located on the forehead. He presented his system at Ryodoraku Congress in Osaka, Japan in

1973 when he introduced it as Yamamoto New Scalp Acupuncture (YNSA) – a microsystem which uses somatotopebased acupuncture points. These basic points and ypsilon points represent the whole body and correspond ipsilaterally to regions of the body and to internal organs, just as in traditional acupuncture (TA).

In 1972, the SA technique Xing Nao Kai Qiao (XNKQ) – translated as Awakening the Brain and Opening the Orifices – was invented by Xuemin Shi and has mainly been used for the treatment of ischaemic stroke. Also developed in the 1970s, in America, was a new style by Zhu Minqing. A book on his methods was published in 1992 in which he describes DU 20 bai hui as the basis for all SA points.

More recent developments

In 1991 the World Health Organization (WHO) published A Proposed Standard International Acupuncture Nomenclature which included 14 official scalp acupuncture lines. Then in 2011 Jason Jinshun Hao and Linda Lingzhi Hao published their book Chinese Scalp Acupuncture in which they adopt Shunfa Jiao’s style.

Ten years later in 2021, Xuemin Shi’s former student Tianjun Wang published his book on a new concept of SA in which he includes new protocols and new disease patterns such as deficiency of brain marrow, brain yang qi and disorder of brain shen.

Practical applications

The use of points on the head in TA is explicitly mentioned in the Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu as an alternative location to treat severe acute headache, if the condition cannot be cured via transport openings. It suggests that in such cases it is possible to apply a local piercing. The only other mention in the traditional literature of the sole use of head points is in the treatment of malaria described in the Su Wen.

Scalp acupuncture aims to reinvent the TCM concept of the brain in order to provide treatment for brain related diseases. In modern SA, the du mai is used to treat conditions called dredging governor meridian, regulating shen, duregulating, cerebrovascular-unblocking, etc.

Influenced by neuroanatomy and western medical approaches, Chinese SA offers a method to directly influence the brain and is widely used for neurological diseases, psychological disorders and pain related conditions such as headache, dizziness, dimness of vision, hemiplegia, epilepsy, loss of speech, mania, spasm, MS, Parkinson’s, ischaemic stroke, and mental problems such as depression and anxiety. Similarly, the indications for Japanese YNSA include all acute pain conditions and neurological diseases.

In Acupuncture for Brain, Tianjun Wang defines lines, zones and areas on the scalp which can be needled. A line is further divided into portions which correspond to the anatomic brain area underneath. He describes the lines running laterally from the midline of the scalp (du mai) to the temporal region where the superciliooccipital line meets the hairline. With DU 20 bai hui used as the midpoint, the motor area runs 0.5 cm posterior to the midpoint. (Other than in TCM, SA measures in cm instead of cun.)

Yamamoto developed new point categories on the forehead, along the hairline and at the temples, by palpating the most tender points on the head as well as diagnostic points on the neck.

In a nutshell

Some functions of TCM points are not included in SA, such as the transport points, apart from DU 16 feng fu. Distal points and shu, mu and element points are also not part of SA.

Needles are inserted locally, over the corresponding motor and sensory region of the brain, to stimulate its structure underneath.

Traditional channel theory cannot be applied to SA, which leaves the impression of a reduction in functionality regarding TCM-concepts. SA is therefore not strictly a classic acupuncture. It is the amalgamation of TA and western medical knowledge which proves to be an effective technique to treat neurological and psychological disorders of the brain.