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Huangdi Neijing · The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon
Lingshu 73 · Assigned Abilities
Read in English. Switch to Original for word notes, or select text to ask a question.
The Yellow Emperor asked Qi Bo: “I have heard much about the nine needles from you, more than can be counted. I have considered and discussed it to make one ordered account. I shall recite it; listen to its principles. Tell me if anything is wrong and give the proper course, so it can be transmitted long to later generations without harm. Transmit it on finding the right person; do not speak it to the wrong person.”
Qi Bo bowed his head to the ground twice: “I ask to hear the sage king’s Way.”
The Yellow Emperor said: “The principle of using needles requires knowing where form and qi lie: left and right, above and below, yin and yang, exterior and interior, the amount of blood and qi, contrary and favorable movement and the meetings of entry and emergence. Plan the attack on disorder. Know how to release knots, supplement emptiness and drain repletion; know the qi gates above and below and communicate clearly with the four seas.
“Examine where cold, heat and drenching moisture lie and their different transporting places. Be precise in regulating qi, clear about channel pathways, and know all the meetings of left and right limb networks. When cold and heat contend, join and regulate them. When emptiness and repletion adjoin, know how to open their passage. When left and right are unregulated, grasp and move them. Understand counterflow and accord to know what can be treated. When yin and yang are not mismatched, the time of recovery can be known. Examine cold and heat in injury at root and end. Finding the harmful influence’s place makes ten thousand needlings free of danger. Knowing the assigned uses of the nine needles completes the Way of needling.”
The brief yin-and-yang clause is compressed in the source. The assurance of safety belongs to its historical account, not a modern guarantee.
“Understand where the five transporting sites call for slow or swift action. Bending, stretching, entry and emergence all have their ordering. Yin and yang join the five phases; the five zang and six fu each have their contents. The four seasons and eight winds all have yin and yang, each in its place, joining the Bright Hall’s separate color divisions. Observe pain in the five zang and six fu, left and right, above and below, to know cold and warmth and the channel involved.
“Examine the skin’s cold, warmth, slipperiness and roughness to know the suffering. The diaphragm has an upper and lower side; know where qi lies. First obtain the pathway, open it at spaced sites, go gradually deeper and retain, allowing slow entry. Great heat above is pushed downward; what comes upward from below is drawn away. The earlier painful place is ordinarily addressed first. Great external cold calls for retention and supplementation. If it enters the middle, drain through the joining site. Where needles cannot act, moxibustion is appropriate.
“Insufficient upper qi is pushed and raised; insufficient lower qi is gathered and followed. When yin and yang are both empty, fire is appropriate. For reversal with extreme cold, sinking beside bone and cold passing the knee, address the named Xialing Sanli region. Where yin networks pass, obtain the site and retain. Cold entering the middle is pushed into movement. Sunken channels and hard, tight network knots are treated by fire. When the suffering is not known, addressing below the two Qiao courses—yin in men and yang in women—is what the good practitioner prohibits. The discussion of needles is complete.”
The Xialing Sanli phrase and the final Qiao prohibition remain as supplied, without a reconstructed point list or a reversal of the male/female assignments.
“Needling must follow standards. Above, observe heavenly light; below, attend to the eight proper directions, avoiding unusual harmful influence while observing the people. Examine emptiness and repletion without confronting the harmful influence. This obtains heaven’s dew. Encountering a year’s emptiness, rescue cannot prevail and the calamity returns upon the practitioner.
“Thus one must know heaven’s prohibitions before speaking of the meaning of needles. Take ancient times as the standard, verify in the present, observe what is dark and subtle and communicate with the inexhaustible. What crude practitioners cannot see, good practitioners value: its form is unknown, indistinct as a spirit. Harmful qi striking a person brings shivering and bodily movement; a proper-season harmful influence strikes subtly, first appearing in color before the person knows it. Seeming present or absent, lost or retained, formed or formless, its condition is hard to know.
“The highest practitioner addresses qi to rescue its sprouting beginning. The lowest attends only to what is formed, allowing bodily damage. The skilled practitioner therefore knows where qi lies and keeps its gates, understanding regulation, the places of supplementation and draining, slow and swift action, and the chosen site.
“Draining uses the round method: press and turn so qi moves; act swiftly, then withdraw slowly so harmful qi emerges. Extend and meet it, widening the opening by movement; when qi emerges, act swiftly. Supplementation uses the square method: draw the skin outward to align its gate; the left draws the pivot and the right presses the skin. Turn slightly and advance slowly, upright and straight, steady and quiet, with a firm, undistracted heart. Retain subtly; when qi descends, withdraw swiftly. Press the skin to cover the outer gate and preserve true qi. The essential point of needling is never to forget spirit.”
The spirit-comparison graph is damaged in the supplied text. The round/square language and brief motions are translated without adding a modern needle angle, depth, retention time or procedural reconstruction.
Lei Gong asked the Yellow Emperor: “The needle discussion says to transmit to the right person and not speak to the wrong one. How can one know who may receive it?”
The Yellow Emperor said: “Find the right person for each task and entrust it according to ability; then the work can be understood.”
Lei Gong said: “I wish to hear how abilities are assigned.”
The Yellow Emperor said: “One with clear eyes can inspect color; one with keen ears can listen to sound. One quick and fluent in speech can transmit the discussion. One slow in speech, steady and quiet, deft of hand and careful in thought can use needles and moxa, order blood and qi, regulate contrary and favorable courses, inspect yin and yang and combine methods.
“One with relaxed joints, soft sinews and a harmonious heart can guide movement and circulate qi. One harsh in speech and dismissive of others can spit over abscesses and invoke against illness. One with harsh nails and forceful hands, prone to damaging things, can press accumulations and restrain obstruction. When each ability is rightly assigned, methods can be practiced and their name made clear. Without the right person, success does not come and the teacher has no name. This is what is meant by speaking to the right person and not transmitting to the wrong one.
“For the person with harsh or ‘toxic’ hands, the text proposes a turtle test: a turtle is placed beneath a vessel and the person presses above it; it is said to die in fifty days. Under gentle or ‘sweet’ hands, it lives again as before.”
The contrasting hand terms and turtle outcome are historical claims, retained with the stated fifty days. They are not a demonstrated biological property of a practitioner’s hands.
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