What is Acupuncture?
Acupuncture is a tool within Chinese Medicine that involves the insertion of extremely fine needles into specific energetic points throughout the body to bring the body back into balance. It reconnects and re-directs the neuro-endo-immune system (Nervous, Endocrine, and Immune Systems) to smooth and bring back into equilibrium normal hormonal and nervous system communication. These points are located along interconnected energetic meridians. Stagnation along any pathway can grow and is the cause of pain and illness.
Individualized acupuncture points are chosen for each person based on the unique pattern of their imbalance to send a specific message that redirects normal functions. The body innately knows how to restore balance; Acupuncture engages the body’s intrinsic healing capacities. These energetic meridians have been mapped over a period of 2500 years, and in the last 30 years electromagnetic research has confirmed their existence and locations.
An Acupuncture treatment may include moxabustion (the burning of a healing herb to warm and invigorate a channel), cupping to remove obstructions, and gua sha (instrument-assisted scraping) to vent obstructions, as well as medical massage therapy.
HOW DOES ACUPUNCTURE WORK?
Acupuncture tones the Nervous System: Life can be stressful! Over time, your Nervous System gets stronger in some places and weaker in others, creating weaknesses in some places and hypertonicity in others, whether at a local area of pain or systemically through the whole body. This creates improper nervous system responses, which prevents the endocrine and other systems from entering into the healing conversation.
As a mild trauma that the body can manage acupuncture tones, exercises, and resets the Nervous System to allow the body’s natural healing and regulatory systems to re-activate and respond properly.
Curious about how Chinese Medicine developed and how acupuncture works? Check out the video below!
How Does Chinese Medicine Work?
Taoist “Inner Landscape”
Chinese Medicine is a complete medical system capable of treating a broad range of diseases, by applying a wholly different lense. Based in a holistic and interdependent understanding of the body, Chinese Medicine’s strength is that it strives to understand the whole picture and the relationship between seemingly unrelated symptoms. Made of earth, sky, and a bit of cosmic consciousness, humans and our ability to thrive are inextricably tied to the rhythms of the natural world. Health is a reflection of harmony: between people, between people and their external environment, between organ systems, vital substances, tissues within the body, as well as the mind and the emotions. Using acupuncture, herbs, medical massage, or Qigong, Chinese Medicine eases discomfort and re-educates your body, so that your body-mind-spirit can access that deep place of restoration and healing.
Chinese Medicine is personalized medicine: Individualized acupuncture points that redirect normal functions are based on the disease or disharmony, each person’s needs, age, gender, season, as well as their constitutional tendencies. The human body innately knows how to restore balance; Chinese Medicine engages the body’s innate healing ability.
Body-Mind-Spirit: We recognize that a disorder on any plane of our being will affect the health and harmony of the whole person. Treatments and herbs address your whole being.
What can Acupuncture treat?
Chinese Medicine is a complete medical system that has been evaluating, diagnosing, and treating a wide range of health conditions for thousands of years, from internal medicine issues like sleep and digestion, to gynecology, orthopedic pain, cardiovascular, immune and nervous system disorders - because all the systems of the body are interconnected. While often used to rectify disease, it can also be used to enhance wellness - immune, general organ functions, female fertility, as well as connect us to our highest potential. Acupuncture is effective solution-focused healthcare that treats the root issue, while also providing symptomatic relief.
Learn your body’s language -
What is your body telling you with pain?
Physical Axis
“Anywhere there is stagnation, there is pain.” Chinese Medicine excels in orthopedic pain - from acute to chronic injuries, to mystery pain without a known origin, to headaches. We trace it back to its source to unblock obstruction that has prevented Qi and blood access to heal an area. Whether you want to accelerate healing, regain mobility, or understand your underlying weakness in an area and how to strengthen it, acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine can radically help.
Emotional Axis
Our emotions course through our bodies and affect us physically and vice versa - emotional stagnation, worry, or any overly strong or enduring emotions can cause physical disharmony or disease, and vice versa. The physical and the emotional are inevitably intertwined. Chinese Medicine can help you to untangle, identify, and reroute stuck emotionally somatised pattern(s) that are affecting your sleep, digestion, immunity, and general wellness.
Spiritual axis
When we’re spiritually out of alignment, we have difficulty connecting with ourselves and knowing what’s important and authentic for us. Often it stems from residual trauma and will affect the other aspects of our being - mental-emotional and physical. This is the deepest level of our being and healing.
Within my body are all the sacred places of the world. And the most profound pilgrimage I can ever make is within my own body.
-Saraha