Acupuncture to Treat Chronic and Acute Pain
Burning, throbbing, dull, achy, sharp and stabbing. Pain seems to come in all shapes and sizes. From pins and needles pain to my entire leg is in pain to wrist pain, headaches, back pain to pain in your big toe. As I have mentioned before, pain is your body’s language. It is a sign for help. An alert to take notice of a function, organ or limb. Pain is literally your body asking, pleading or screaming for help.
I like to look at pain from a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) perspective which looks at the body as a highway of pathways or meridians. These meridians are a map of the body. Some people believe the Chinese meridians are how magnetic fields of the earth move through the body. By putting small hairlike metal needles we are directing the magnetic traffic through these pathways.
Imagine that some pathways are so block up that they are blocking all the side streets as well. Other times you can have pathways that are almost devoid of and flow and are close to collapse. By directing the traffic we can “time the stop lights” clearing backups and allowing other pathways which need flow to fill up. This is the beauty of Chinese Medicine, it’s all about balancing the whole. Physics tells us there is no energy loss. If there is too much in one place there in not enough in another. So CM helps us regulate and balance these subtle processes of the body.
But pain is an outcome in either situation whether there be too much in an area or not enough. Our job is to figure out which one is the driving force (or lack of force) and direct traffic in the correct manor. It’s actually not that complicated and having pain cases mixed into my clinical day is refreshing! Often painful conditions can improve in 2-3 sessions. Remember timing is important. The longer you’ve had the condition the more entrenched and often the longer it takes to resolve. Overall health can impact how quickly your recovery can be as well. Food for thought. Make sure that if you are suffering from a chronic pain condition you are not living too large. Good sleep, diet and elimination are invaluable in the recovery process.
Pain makes us crabby. It makes us miss the small joys of the day. It causes us, almost without notice, to make our lives smaller and smaller. Open to life and seize the day. Say no to pain and live effortlessly. It’s a wonderful thing to have a body that works for you. Be kind to it, pay attention and it will take care of you and bring you great joy!
Are you having pain?
Think about acupuncture. It has a 3000 year old history of getting rid of pain.
Safe, effective, natural
