Balance Method, Tung and TCM: How Point Selection Differs
Three Ways to Choose a Point
Before a needle goes in, every Acupuncturist makes two decisions. Which channel or group of points will carry the treatment, and exactly where on it will the needle go?
TCM Acupuncture, Tung's Acupuncture and Dr Richard Tan's Balance Method make those two decisions from different starting places. Broadly, there are three routes to a point:
- start from a pattern diagnosis and choose points for their actions;
- start from the relationships between channels and choose a channel that balances the one in trouble;
- work from a body of points with their own names and indications, learned as a system in its own right.
This guide sets the three side by side. It does not rank them. Each is coherent on its own terms, and SustainHealth Academy runs teaching in more than one of them.
TCM Point Selection Starts From the Pattern
In the TCM Acupuncture taught in most colleges, diagnosis comes first. The Acupuncturist differentiates the pattern, sets a treatment principle, and then chooses points whose classical actions serve that principle.
A typical prescription combines local points at or near the complaint, adjacent points, and distal points on the affected channel or chosen for a specific action. Each point is learned individually, with its location, actions and indications. Two Acupuncturists may write different prescriptions for the same pattern, but each can trace their choice back to the diagnosis.
Needling is often on the affected side or on both sides, and it frequently includes the area of complaint itself.
Tung's Acupuncture Works From Its Own Points
Tung's Acupuncture is a family tradition that reached a wide audience from Taiwan in the second half of the twentieth century. It takes its name from Master Tung Ching-Chang (1916–1975), who brought the tradition from Shandong to Taiwan and was the first of his family to teach it to students outside the family.
Its defining feature is its own set of points. Most lie away from the fourteen regular channels. They are organised by region of the body and carry their own names and indications. Many are needled in pairs or threes along a line, a technique often called Dao Ma, and some lineages use bleeding alongside needling.
Choosing a Tung point draws on correspondences between the point's tissue or region and the area of complaint, on its relationship to the Zang Fu, and often on imaging, where one part of the body is read as a map of another. Tung practice commonly needles the side opposite the complaint and asks the patient to move the affected area while the needles are in, a technique known as Dong Qi.
For a Tung teacher's own account of how the system relates to the fourteen channels, see our webinar on Tung's Acupuncture.
The Balance Method Chooses the Channel First
Dr Tan developed the Balance Method from classical channel relationships, drawing on the Neijing and the I Ching. It works with the regular channels.
You will sometimes read online that the Balance Method grew out of Tung's Acupuncture. Our understanding is that they are separate systems with separate foundations, which happen to share some ideas.
Dr Han teaches point selection in Dr Tan's Balance Method as three steps. Diagnose the sick meridians. Balance them using the five systems. Select points by imaging and mirroring. In class she puts the first step as a question: "What's the first question you ask? Where is the sick meridian? Step one."
The second step picks the channel. The five systems are relationships between channels, based on the Ba Gua and the Chinese clock. They pair channels that share a name across hand and foot, channels in the branching relationship, interior–exterior pairs, and opposites and neighbours on the Chinese clock. The five systems guide explains each one.
The third step places the needle. The balancing channel is read as an image of the affected area, so the needle goes to the part of that channel that corresponds to the complaint. As Dr Han says while choosing, "Knee is mirror to elbow. Elbow is mirror to knee." The imaging and mirroring guide covers how that works.
This is where the Balance Method parts company with textbook indications. In one of Dr Han's neck and shoulder cases, she used a point most Acupuncturists learned at college with a long list of indications. As her case notes put it, the Balance Method "doesn't look at the points list of indications". It uses a point for how it can influence the other meridians, the sick and blocked ones. In that case she changed the direction of the needle towards the channel she wanted to reach, instead of adding a second needle.
Needles usually go far from the complaint, and there are few of them. While they are in, the Acupuncturist asks the patient to move and palpates the area, and may move to another system while the patient is still on the table.
Where the Three Overlap
Distal needling is old. The Neijing already describes it, and all three approaches use it.
Opposite-side needling is classical too. The Neijing describes crossed needling, left for right and right for left. Tung practice and the Balance Method both use it often, and many TCM Acupuncturists use it as well. Our guide on which side to needle goes into the classical source.
Imaging is shared. Tung's Acupuncture and the Balance Method both read one part of the body as a map of another, each in its own way.
The Balance Method and TCM share the regular channels, so the two can be translated into each other. Module 2 teaches Meridian Conversion Therapy, which turns a Zang Fu diagnosis into a channel diagnosis so herbal and Acupuncture thinking can meet in one plan.
Many Acupuncturists combine approaches, often using TCM diagnosis to understand the patient and a distal method to choose the needles. That works best once each method's logic is clear in your own hands. If you take the channel from one system and the point from another, it is hard to tell what changed in the session.
Choosing What to Learn Next
- Which first decision suits how you think? Pattern, channel relationship, or a dedicated point system.
- Does the training teach the whole logic, or a set of combinations?
- Will you see it on live patients, with someone correcting your needling?
- Is there a path beyond the first course, recognised for CPD where you practise?
Learning the Balance Method in Brisbane
Module 1, Dr Tan's Core Essentials, runs in Brisbane on 16–18 April 2027. It covers the five systems, imaging and mirroring, and the judgement to choose between them, with more than 12 live patient demonstrations and 19.5 CPD points recognised by AACMA and ACUNZ. There are no prerequisites, so it suits Acupuncturists coming from TCM or Tung's Acupuncture as well as new graduates.
Dr Eileen Han teaches it. She spent 20 years at Dr Tan's side, 15 of them helping run his clinic, and works with 50–70 patients a day using the Balance Method alone.