Miriam Lee's Ten Points
Star十針 (Shí Zhēn)
Miriam Lee (1926–2009), as set out in her Insights of a Senior Acupuncturist. Lee learned the combination in China and used it through decades of practice in California, where it became the treatment she is remembered for.
Points
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Moves qi and blood; opens the exterior
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Clears heat; regulates qi and blood
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Tonifies qi and blood; strengthens the Spleen and Stomach
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Nourishes the three leg yin; harmonises blood and yin
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Descends and disseminates Lung qi; releases the exterior
Treatment Principle
Restore the movement of qi and blood, strengthen the middle burner, and re-open the exterior — treating the whole person rather than a named complaint.
Indications
Method
All five points needled bilaterally, giving ten needles. Even (neutral) technique; retain 20 to 30 minutes. Lee typically used it weekly at first, then at lengthening intervals as the patient's energy returned.
⚠ Cautions
LI4 and SP6 are both contraindicated in pregnancy, which rules the combination out entirely for a pregnant patient. Use reduced stimulation and shorter retention in the very frail; a strongly depleted patient can feel wrung out after a full-strength first treatment.
About
Miriam Lee practised in Palo Alto from the 1960s, at a time when acupuncture had no legal standing in California — she was arrested for practising medicine without a licence in 1974, and the public response to her case helped push the state toward licensure. She saw very large numbers of patients, and this combination is what she reached for again and again.
Its logic is deliberately plain. LI4 and LI11 on the Yangming of the arm and ST36 on the Yangming of the leg address the channel system that is richest in qi and blood; SP6 gathers the three leg yin and anchors the blood and yin those points move; LU7 re-opens the exterior and restores the Lung's descending function. Nothing in it is aimed at a disease name.
Rationale
Lee's reasoning was that the patients she saw were, overwhelmingly, depleted rather than diseased — worn down by overwork, poor food and unrelieved stress. In that picture the useful intervention is not a targeted one but a restorative one: strengthen the source of qi and blood in the middle burner, get it moving through the Yangming, and re-establish the Lung's regulation of the surface. She observed that when this was done, a long list of apparently unrelated complaints often resolved together.
The combination is also a teaching device. It demonstrates that a small, well-chosen set of points applied to the person rather than the symptom will do more for a depleted patient than a larger set aimed at each complaint in turn.
Clinical Notes
Best regarded as a baseline rather than a formula to be applied indefinitely. Lee's own practice was to use it until the patient's energy lifted, then to treat what remained — by which point the remaining picture was usually much clearer than at the first visit.
The combination is sometimes called the Ten Needle Technique or the Great Ten. It is the same prescription.
Sources
- Lee, Miriam. Insights of a Senior Acupuncturist: One Combination of Points Can Treat Many Diseases. Blue Poppy Press, 1992. — The primary source; the book is built around this combination.
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