The three tiers — point, formula, treatment

The three types of name in use

1. Treatment point.

The code name given to a type of technique, given typically to relieve pain in a particular area. Examples: Pan, Gal, L5-S1 ghisai.

2. Formula. A particular sequence of treatment points which together addresses a specific symptom. Example: the Acid treatment formula. (Trt. is the abbreviation for treatment.)

3. Treatment. A set of formulae, given to treat a particular disease or condition.

Read the first slowly. A treatment point is the code name of a technique — not of a place, not of an organ. Pan names what you do; it does not claim your foot is on the pancreas. L5-S1 ghisai names a rubbing action at a level of the spine, and names no organ at all.

Pan on its own instructs nobody, exactly as the word salt on its own cooks nothing. (8) Pan (3) Gal (3) Spl (7) Liv (5) Mu is a sentence — subject, order and stop. The treatment is the paragraph written for one named person over eight weeks, in which that sentence is spoken on some days and not on others: the point is a word, the formula a sentence, the treatment the paragraph.

Why a treatment is a set of formulae and not one

When a set of symptoms heralding a disease appears, it means that a number of organs are functioning less than normal.

Cure is then obtained by a sequence of formulae, each of which corrects a group of organs, until finally the root cause is eliminated. Such a sequence of formulae is called the "treatment" for that disease.

And because different individuals have differing degrees of malfunction of their internal organs, we may have different sets of treatments for the same disease also.

That is why a treatment cannot be looked up. A formula can be: change it and you have made a different formula. A treatment is assembled for the person in front of you from what your hands found this morning.

The four ways a formula gets its name

a. Formulae which correct a specific condition of the body — the Acid treatment formula, which corrects acidosis; the Genes treatment formula, for genetic disorders; the Black treatments, for pigmentation (black colour in the body).

b. Formulae which correct the function of certain organs — the Vater treatment; the Medulla treatments.

c. Formulae which produce effects akin to those produced by certain chemicals — Heparin; 1,25 DCC; B₁₂.

d. Formulae and treatments with proper names. Where senior students or patients have helped in the research that produced a formula, the treatment bears the proper name of the person concerned, as a mark of respect — the "Maunish formula", the "Raman treatment", the "Anil Shama formula".

A student who knows the four families can often guess what an unfamiliar formula is for before turning to its page — and will never make the one dangerous mistake in the list.

The two kinds of treatment point

LMNT's treatment points are of two kinds.

One kind rouses the working of the various glands. These we call chemical points. Guruji obtained, through sixty years of tapasyā and experience, that many among these show different effects when given in different numbers — from which we understand that they make different chemicals. So while giving them, take care that the pressure is exactly 6 seconds and is given exactly as many times as is written; let there be no mistake in the count. Otherwise either the effect we want will not occur, or, in some rare cases, the opposite effect may occur. The wiki's own examples are (2) Pan against (4) Pan, and (6) Gas 'I' against (9) Gas 'I'.

The second kind are those given to relax the muscles. These we call physical points. These too have a usual count, fixed from experience. But if it is ever needed, in order to give the patient more comfort, one may give them one or two times more than that count.

At a chemical point the number written on the card is a dose and belongs to whoever wrote it: Pan, Gal, Liv, Mu, Adr, Ku, Acid, B₁₂ and their fellows are given exactly as written, at exactly six seconds. At a physical point — Sulta Ulta, Stretch, BAFA, Necklace, Back of Knees — the number is a guideline, and you may go one or two above it for the patient's comfort: one or two, not five, and never downward as a shortcut.

Why does this matter when you are choosing, and not only when you are giving?

Which of the two actually heals

The therapy tackles pain elsewhere in the body in two ways:

a. The chemical points — in which the chemistry of the internal environment of the body is altered, by suitably stimulating the internal organs.

b. The physical points — the muscle-relaxing techniques (MRT), to relieve the spasticity or tension of the muscles, tendons and so on, of two approaches: techniques based on dermatome charts, and techniques meant to physically relax the tendons and ligaments.

Then the honest sentence: the MRTs, while offering a psychological comfort, hasten the time required to bring normalcy. Alone, they would immediately bring a quick reduction in pain, no doubt. But the effect would wear off within a few hours, or, at best, a few days — because the root problem, the tendency of the internal organs to malfunction, has not been removed.

The real healer is the chemical process only. And in many cases, if the diagnosis and treatment schedule have been correctly given, this alone suffices to bring a lasting and permanent cure, even without resorting to MRTs.

Read that as a rule for building plans. The physical points shorten the road, but a plan made only of them expires by the weekend. A student's cards fill with physical points because they produce a visible result in the room; a senior therapist's are mostly chemical, with two or three physical points where comfort needs them.