To the points: Acupressure: Unleashing the energy within
Published: Friday, August 04, 2006
"This is the beauty of Chinese medicine. We treat the patient as a whole person," says Dr. Jun , an accredited licensed physician and board certified acupuncturist who practices in Riverside. "I'm a Western medicine doctor and I can give you a medication that can have a lot of side effects. In (Chinese medicine), we don't use chemicals. We use acupuncture or acupressure."
Like acupuncture, which serves the same functions with needles, acupressure is based on the traditional Chinese medicine theory of treating more than 400 acupoints, found along 12 meridians that run along each side of the body and span the length of the body. Energy, what the Chinese call qi or chi, flows through the meridians. Areas with more nerve endings -- hands, feet, face, ears -- are often the focal point of acupressure techniques.
"The body has to be balanced, then you have health. If not, you have vulnerabilities," says Dody Chang, a licensed acupuncturist with the integrative medicine department of Greenwich Hospital. She grew up as part of a Canadian family that grew Chinese herbs. "The 12 meridian lines have energy flowing through them. The qi is regulated from pressing points. It's body work within the scope of massage therapy. It's very specific forms of body work. I use acupressure as part of my treatment because it helps.
"The body is a microcosm of nature, the ear is a microcosm of the body. If you have nausea or stomach problems, the stomach is the zero point of the body, so treat the zero point or center of the ear."
Xu admits that acupuncture is more effective and widely used than acupressure, but points out that the benefits of acupressure are that it's convenient and can be taught to be self-administered. The wristbands handed out on cruise ships, he says, are based on the theories of acupressure.
It's also preferred by patients who fear needles. "We all get a little damage in the pediatrician's office as young people," says Eileen Karn, a Stamford-based licensed acupuncturist and massage therapist in Stamford. "It's also preferred when the situation has a great deal of spasm, say, in the back. It can really help the spasm. The needles will move the energy and correct but something about the hands-on aspect is really helpful and very useful afterwards to get through the lymph and acids that build up and build that hard knot."
Another benefit of acupressure is that you can't hurt yourself too badly. Aside from avoiding pressure to areas with wounds, inflammation or scars, and not putting too much pressure on your face (it can bruise), there's not much to worry about.
Karn has shared some examples that can help alleviate common conditions while demonstrating how acupressure works. In most cases, 30 seconds will work. "There's a beautiful and invisible but very real energy system within us, so it's a natural to consider that which we can do would lead to a healing," she says. "One of my teachers used the term 'healthy normal.' You're going to restore healthy normal with these techniques."
For anxiety, she advises taking the minutes leading up to the feared event and rubbing anywhere along the wrist. "It makes a switch from blocked energy to open flowing energy," she says. Similarly, the web between the thumb and index finger is an area she refers to as "the great eliminator" and creates an energy surge throughout the body.
Rubbing the top part of the ear with your thumb and index finger can eliminate the fight-or-flight response of a cigarette craving. The same method is also a longevity practice in the East.
If you're in a room of sneezing and sniffling people and afraid of catching whatever they have, thump on the center of your breastbone (Karn suggests while smiling and recalling something pleasant) and you'll boost your immune system.
Clogged sinuses can be freed by pressing on the area between your eyes (your third eye).
Although traditional Chinese medicine has existed for thousands of years -- some date acupressure back 5,000 years -- it didn't reach the West until recently. Many credit James Reston's New York Times article with exposing acupuncture to North America. Accompanying Richard Nixon on the president's trip to China in 1971, Reston had to undergo an emergency appendectomy. He was treated with acupuncture and documented his experience in the newspaper.
"A lot of it was geographic problems. China never opened its doors to foreign countries," says Xu, who was branded an anti-revolutionary and left the People's Republic of China for the United States in 1988. "It really opened the doors and introduced it to American people."
As someone who understands and practices both the Western and Eastern methods of healing, Xu says acupuncture and acupressure have some clear advantages: convenience, no chemical side effects, inexpensive (in comparison to Western medicine) and effective.
He cites a neck pain, caused by stress, a sports injury or accidents. He prefers to release endorphins naturally rather than pump them into someone. "A lot of patients go through different treatments, most often physical therapy and pills, that are not very effective," he says. "With acupressure and acupuncture we can increase blood flow locally in the neck and lower back, decrease inflammation by washing out inflammatory factors and decrease muscle spasm. With a larger amount of morphine -- an external endorphin -- you have constipation, you feel lousy and you're addicted. With acupuncture or acupressure you can increase endorphin secretion in your brain by yourself."
In Greenwich Hospital's integrative medicine department, more patients are likely to be open to the idea of acupressure because they are realizing its benefits.
"People often don't know what they're getting into until after a few treatments when they start to feel better," Chang says. "That's what it means to practice Chinese medicine. More people have positive feedback about it because it's getting good results and people are seeking it out."