Ghost Points Trinity 1
23/04/26 Filed in: Spiritual Acupuncture
The First Trinity addresses the earliest stage of disruption: the point at which our connection to reality begins to fray and our senses start to mislead us.
This is the second in a series of posts on the Ghost Points. Read the first one here.
These are points for when we lose our footing in the world. When what we see, hear, and believe can no longer be trusted to correspond to what is actually there.
Du 26 — Ghost Palace 鬼宮
Location: the philtrum — the groove between the nose and upper lip.
This is one of the most well-known revival points in all of acupuncture, used in acute situations: delirium, collapse, sudden loss of consciousness. It carries that same quality of urgency into its role as a Ghost Point.
Du 26 as Ghost Palace addresses what might be called intergenerational or ancestral disturbance: patterns that have come down through our family line and taken root us, shaping us in ways we have perhaps never examined.
Classically, spontaneous, inappropriate emotion (laughing without cause, weeping without obvious reason), can be a sign of this. We feel something we cannot account for, something that doesn't quite seem to belong to us or seems to be shared in the family but we now feel ready to leave it behind.
Questions worth sitting with: Are there emotional patterns in your life that have never quite made sense to you? Responses that feel too big, or too familiar — as though they belong to a story older than your own?
Lung 11 — Ghost Trust 鬼信
Location: the corner of the thumbnail.
Barely visible. Barely felt. And yet this is a Jing Well point: among the most potent category in the system, located at the tips of the fingers and toes where the channels begin and end.
Lung 11 takes its name from what happens when this point is disrupted: we begin to trust the wrong voice. We hear something, sometimes literally, sometimes as an insistent inner narrative, and we follow it, even when it takes us away from reality, away from ourselves, away from our own integrity.
In clinic, this point is particularly useful when a significant agreement or trust has been broken: the acrimonious end of a business partnership, a divorce that turned ugly, a betrayal that left us unable to trust our own judgement. The breach didn't just damage the relationship. It damaged our connection to our own sense of what is real and what can be trusted. This point reconnects us back to our heart. On a personal level it helps with reestablishing trust in ourself. Have you doubted yourself? This brings us back to self relating and trust.
This point is recommended when we being losing our connection to reality. When we experience a loss of connection with our own spirit and so we start trusting this false source (the Ghost). Others begin to think we are losing touch with reality and straying from our path yes we think others are out of touch with reality.
This point connects us back to our heart and bring appropriateness to our relation with the outside world.
It points to the inability of heaven to communicate with lower, the inability of our spirit to digest what we have gone through in life. Therefore it is a powerful point for many emotional and mental disorders related to how we perceive and digest the outside world.
Questions worth sitting with: Whose voice do you trust most — your own, or something else? After a significant betrayal, has your ability to read people and situations felt unreliable?
Spleen 1 — Ghost Fortress 鬼壘
Location: the inside corner of the big toenail.
As far from the spirit as one might imagine. This is not accidental.
Spleen 1 works at the level of the material: the body, appetite, physical nourishment, the ground beneath us. When this point is relevant, the relationship between a person and their own body has become strained.
We might eat to manage emotion rather than hunger. We may carry a poor body image that operates below the level of conscious thought : a constant low-grade interference.
Sleep may be disturbed by unsettling dreams. The ghost here has infiltrated the most basic relationship of all: the one between ourselves and our own physical existence.
There is also a visual dimension to this point. It is historically associated with seeing things that are not quite there, or with the kind of migraine that arrives with aura. The senses are not fully trustworthy; what the eyes report is coloured by something else.
This is a point that speaks to those of us who have, often without realising it, turned against our own body. Who feed it poorly, push it hard, or simply feel distanced from it, as though occupying it uneasily.
Often 'dampness' presides here. We may feel confused, foggy, withdrawn, depressed, fearful, anxious. We might experience abdominal fullness or loss of appetite. We might have voices in our head saying 'no one cares about you' or 'you don't need anyone'. This is when the Ghost beings taking away the nourishment that comes from our relationships with others.
With Trauma, this type of possession is how our eyes are constantly on the alert for the signs of the previous threat. Perpetually on guard in a flight or fight state. This kind of self-protective fortress was necessary at one time. It can take 3-6 months for us to 'un-build' such psychic structures and rebuild new patterns of seeing and relating to the world. This is where longer term work supports this genuine transforming of how we live in their world and how we define ourselves.
Questions worth sitting with: Do you use food, or other forms of consumption, to manage feelings rather than to nourish yourself? Is your relationship with your body one of ease or of distance and management?
The next post in this series looks at the Second Trinity, which addresses possession of the heart and mind and includes what may be the most powerful of all thirteen points.
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Lynden Swift practices Transformative Acupuncture in Bristol, treating on Sundays at the Healing Centre above Bristol Buddhist Centre, Gloucester Road. If you would like to discuss whether this work might be relevant to you, please get in touch.
The First Trinity: How We Perceive Reality.
These are points for when we lose our footing in the world. When what we see, hear, and believe can no longer be trusted to correspond to what is actually there.
Du 26 — Ghost Palace 鬼宮
Location: the philtrum — the groove between the nose and upper lip.
This is one of the most well-known revival points in all of acupuncture, used in acute situations: delirium, collapse, sudden loss of consciousness. It carries that same quality of urgency into its role as a Ghost Point.
Du 26 as Ghost Palace addresses what might be called intergenerational or ancestral disturbance: patterns that have come down through our family line and taken root us, shaping us in ways we have perhaps never examined.
Classically, spontaneous, inappropriate emotion (laughing without cause, weeping without obvious reason), can be a sign of this. We feel something we cannot account for, something that doesn't quite seem to belong to us or seems to be shared in the family but we now feel ready to leave it behind.
Questions worth sitting with: Are there emotional patterns in your life that have never quite made sense to you? Responses that feel too big, or too familiar — as though they belong to a story older than your own?
Lung 11 — Ghost Trust 鬼信
Location: the corner of the thumbnail.
Barely visible. Barely felt. And yet this is a Jing Well point: among the most potent category in the system, located at the tips of the fingers and toes where the channels begin and end.
Lung 11 takes its name from what happens when this point is disrupted: we begin to trust the wrong voice. We hear something, sometimes literally, sometimes as an insistent inner narrative, and we follow it, even when it takes us away from reality, away from ourselves, away from our own integrity.
In clinic, this point is particularly useful when a significant agreement or trust has been broken: the acrimonious end of a business partnership, a divorce that turned ugly, a betrayal that left us unable to trust our own judgement. The breach didn't just damage the relationship. It damaged our connection to our own sense of what is real and what can be trusted. This point reconnects us back to our heart. On a personal level it helps with reestablishing trust in ourself. Have you doubted yourself? This brings us back to self relating and trust.
This point is recommended when we being losing our connection to reality. When we experience a loss of connection with our own spirit and so we start trusting this false source (the Ghost). Others begin to think we are losing touch with reality and straying from our path yes we think others are out of touch with reality.
This point connects us back to our heart and bring appropriateness to our relation with the outside world.
It points to the inability of heaven to communicate with lower, the inability of our spirit to digest what we have gone through in life. Therefore it is a powerful point for many emotional and mental disorders related to how we perceive and digest the outside world.
Questions worth sitting with: Whose voice do you trust most — your own, or something else? After a significant betrayal, has your ability to read people and situations felt unreliable?
Spleen 1 — Ghost Fortress 鬼壘
Location: the inside corner of the big toenail.
As far from the spirit as one might imagine. This is not accidental.
Spleen 1 works at the level of the material: the body, appetite, physical nourishment, the ground beneath us. When this point is relevant, the relationship between a person and their own body has become strained.
We might eat to manage emotion rather than hunger. We may carry a poor body image that operates below the level of conscious thought : a constant low-grade interference.
Sleep may be disturbed by unsettling dreams. The ghost here has infiltrated the most basic relationship of all: the one between ourselves and our own physical existence.
There is also a visual dimension to this point. It is historically associated with seeing things that are not quite there, or with the kind of migraine that arrives with aura. The senses are not fully trustworthy; what the eyes report is coloured by something else.
This is a point that speaks to those of us who have, often without realising it, turned against our own body. Who feed it poorly, push it hard, or simply feel distanced from it, as though occupying it uneasily.
Often 'dampness' presides here. We may feel confused, foggy, withdrawn, depressed, fearful, anxious. We might experience abdominal fullness or loss of appetite. We might have voices in our head saying 'no one cares about you' or 'you don't need anyone'. This is when the Ghost beings taking away the nourishment that comes from our relationships with others.
With Trauma, this type of possession is how our eyes are constantly on the alert for the signs of the previous threat. Perpetually on guard in a flight or fight state. This kind of self-protective fortress was necessary at one time. It can take 3-6 months for us to 'un-build' such psychic structures and rebuild new patterns of seeing and relating to the world. This is where longer term work supports this genuine transforming of how we live in their world and how we define ourselves.
Questions worth sitting with: Do you use food, or other forms of consumption, to manage feelings rather than to nourish yourself? Is your relationship with your body one of ease or of distance and management?
The next post in this series looks at the Second Trinity, which addresses possession of the heart and mind and includes what may be the most powerful of all thirteen points.
────────────────────────────────────────
Lynden Swift practices Transformative Acupuncture in Bristol, treating on Sundays at the Healing Centre above Bristol Buddhist Centre, Gloucester Road. If you would like to discuss whether this work might be relevant to you, please get in touch.