A meridian in our body is just like a freeway through a city: it helps transfer various types of vehicles (information) to different areas. The connection points between meridian lines – the nerve points – are like freeway junctions which allow cars to pass through without blocking traffic.

When a nerve point gets blocked, it is like a traffic jam at an intersection when no traffic is moving: the body becomes stiff and painful.

A traffic jam can have two causes: too many cars going through the junction at the same time, which means too much stress, or an accident, as a blow to the nerve point. In Chinese martial arts, there’s a self-defence nerve point control technique based on this idea called Dien Shije (“Touch Nerve”).