The Magical Mugwort
A few years ago now, when my treatment room was still part of a tea shop, I had a dear old lady who came in for some acupuncture. As she was lying there with the needles in, out of the blue she said “I know this may sound a bit strange, but there’s a little Mongolian chap in here and he’s going on about something called Mixa or Moxy…do you know what that is?”
“Ah” I replied “Don’t worry, strange things happen all the time in this place….does he mean Moxa?”
“Oh, that’s what he’s saying…yes that’s it…and he’s really cross with you for not using enough of it!”
So it turned out that the lady was a medium of some kind and apparently I had a Mongolian spirit guide who was really frustrated in my inability to hear what he had to say. And clearly what he had to say was that I wasn’t using enough Moxa. I then went on to explain to the lady what Moxa was, as she obviously hadn’t heard of it before and that because it created a lot of smoke and my room had no windows and was part of a café, I very rarely got to use it.
Moxa, or moxibustion is an integral part of Chinese medicine and acupuncture. It is the burning of a dried and shredded herb at acupuncture points on the body or sometimes on the handle of the needle. The heat is then absorbed directly into the meridian and it can used for many therapeutic reasons.
At a very fundamental level acupuncture is all about the balance of Yin and Yang, and within the body these often manifest as cold and heat. It is relatively easy to reduce heat in the patient’s body, as the needles act almost like little steam valves and the heat can literally escape out of the holes. When you need to tonify the body, or add heat, this can be bit a little trickier. One way is for the practitioner to add a bit of his Qi down through the needle but when you are inserting hundreds of needles a day, this can become quite depleting for the acupuncturist. The Chinese therefore invented the concept of moxibustion, where you are literally burning a herb to add the heat at a particular acupuncture point, which warms up the channel and its corresponding organ. So integral is moxa to the practice of Chinese medicine that the actual Chinese characters for the word acupuncture includes the symbol for moxibustion.
At first I thought that it was just the heat that was doing all of the work, but it turns out that Moxa has some very fine properties all of its own. From a Chinese herbal medicine perspective the herb itself aids in regulating a woman’s menstrual cycle, resolves dampness, alleviates skin conditions, improves circulation and promotes digestive health. It is also said to banish demons and ghosts from the lower energetic realms!
In the West, moxa is known as Artemisia Vulgaris or more commonly – mugwort. It has also been used in herbal medicine here for hundreds if not thousands of years. Over the ages mugwort has been known as a sleep herb, being used to enhance dreaming, increase prophetic dreams, and to prevent dreaming about the dead. Placing mugwort in shoes is said to give strength and prevent sore feet when walking long distances. In Ancient Rome mugwort was planted along roads and byways to make it accessible to travellers on long journeys. Named after the goddess of childbirth, Artemis, to this day mugwort has been a herbal ally for women with menstrual and menopausal issues and problems associated with childbirth and pregnancy.
Interestingly, in the Middle-Ages, it was worn to protect against evil spirits and the Native Americans rubbed its leaves on their bodies to keep away ghosts. This concept was possibly the most important use for the ancient Chinese acupuncturist as well, because when working within an energetic form of medicine, people were often seen to bring unwanted energetic parasites and hungry ghosts in with them. The burning mugwort would aid in their banishment.
These day I have a much more suitable treatment room with opening windows and I use Moxa a lot more. I presume that the Mongolian spirit who sent me the warning, is from a higher energetic plane and won’t be affected by it all.