What is acupuncture?
Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese medicine-based approach to treating a variety of conditions by inserting thin, sterile, stainless steel needles into the body at specific points. It is a minimally invasive method to stimulate nerve-rich areas of the skin surface in order to influence tissues, gland, organs, and various functions of the body.
Your acupuncturist will ask you a series of questions about your main complaint and your general health, inquiring about your digestive health, sleep, emotional states, stress, dietary habits, digestion, bowel movements, menstrual health, medications and health history. We analyse your pulse and inspect your tongue, eyes, skin and general complexion.
A treatment plan will be made based on the practitioner’s diagnosis according to Chinese medicine theory, they will then insert between 4-15 needles in various places in the body to elicit change. the practitioner may wish to employ other treatment methods like moxibustion, massage, cupping, gua sha or electro acupuncture. We have many tools to compliment acupuncture and you may receive one or more in a treatment.
The needles are left in for between 20 and 40minitues and you as the client should feel relaxed during this time, you may even fall asleep. Dropping into that blissful parasympathetic NS state is a part of the healing process, it is actually the only state where healing occurs!!
Some conditions take a course of treatments to be effective, such as fertility and menstrual issue regulation. Other issues such as the flu, some musculoskeletal issues and stress can be a little quicker. It’s all very individual to the person and condition.
An old Chinese proverb is something along the lines of, ‘for every year an illness lasts, expect 1 month of treatment for a cure’.
In our modern times we want quick fixes, short term solutions, so we can carry on with our lives, but often it’s not until we stop and take stock of where we are in life that we can even begin to heal and make change.
From my perspective acupuncture can be a quick fix for some issues, and some people, but to truly make use of how powerful it can be it’s good to give things time, to make changes incrementally and constantly work towards more balance and harmony in our lives so disease can not take hold. After all, disease is a lack of ease, ‘dis’ & ‘ease’.