Curiosity because this is probably the first time that you've been introduced to the idea that pain can be relieved by simply holding your fingers on specific points in your body;

Anticipation of learning more so that you can apply this special knowledge to relieving your own pain or that of your friends and family.

Let's talk about joint pain. It could be knee pain from an injury or it could be shoulder pain from arthritis or bursitis.

Remember in the article "I Don't Care What the Tests Say.... My Pain is REAL!", we learned that pain can be from too much energy in a particular meridian? Well, joint pain is no different. There may be other things going on too, but rest assured that if there is pain in a joint, there's probably either too much energy or there's stagnant energy in a related meridian.

Unfortunately, it's not so simple to look at a meridian chart, find the meridian (or meridians) that go through the painful area, and start sedating them. In fact, doing this can actually be harmful, as there are some meridians that just should not be sedated.

(Remember we said in a previous article that sedating a meridian is a term that comes from acupuncture and it means that we are helping a meridian to release excess energy.)

The fact of the matter is that a particular part of the body may be associated with a meridian that is located in another area of the body altogether.

Let's take the knee as an example. The front of the knee is associated with the Small Intestine Meridian. The Small Intestine Meridian runs from the end of the pinkie finger, up the back of the forearm, up through the triceps in the back of the upper arm, across the shoulder, up the neck to side of the nose and ending just in front of the ear. See the figure below.