The word, POINTS at the treatment such as Trigger points and motor points frequently used in Manual therapy based on muscle theory is required to think about what it means.
- With painful, sore and/or injured muscles there often will be tight palpable bands within the affected muscle. These points often refer pain to another area of the body and are called trigger points.
- Motor points are found at specific sights in the body and they most often correspond to the area where the nerve enters the muscle belly. Trigger Points and Motor Points
The treatment points used in Oriental acupuncture are also called acupuncture/acupressure points but it is necessary to understand the literal meaning of Chinese characters.
The Chinese character translated as Point is written with 穴, which literally means hole or cave. It is a letter formed by combining the two letters of 宀, which means house, and 八, the number 8. In Eastern philosophy, eight has symbol meaning of birth, occurrence, emergence and etc. Therefore the character 穴 means that something new arises at that place(宀/house). If we apply this metaphor as a certain place treated at the body, it imply that the stimulation at a specific place(acupuncture point, trigger point, motor point and etc) makes change of body, dynamic mechanism of healing. So I would like to call that POINTS as the nexus of communication and occurrence with our body.