In the course of my recent journey back into the light, I’ve experimented with a lot of holistic therapies. Most seem to involve the concept of Qi or Chi. Whilst Ruf will scoff at the lack of science behind this idea, I firmly believe that accessing our vital energy is essential to our own well being. Certainly it is key to the performance of any form of acupuncture, but also to many types of martial art, especially tai chi.
Chi flows through the body along specific pathways called meridians and, at certain points on each meridian, it is possible to access and rebalance the energy. This, in turn, promotes better physical, mental and emotional health.
Traditional Chinese Acupuncture
I was recently introduced to traditional Chinese acupuncture – a system of holistic medicine developed over 3000 years ago in the Far East, where a therapist inserts really fine needles into the body’s meridians to rebalance the patient’s energy and help the body to begin to heal itself.
I was astonished by the number of physical conditions that can be improved through this ancient healing art, things like some of the symptoms of Menopause and other gynae-related problems. Also joint-related difficulties, circulation, headaches, allergies, the list was endless. After detailed questioning about my lifestyle and health issues, the therapist took my pulse and looked at my tongue to diagnose and select the appropriate points for treatment.
She was particularly concerned about my liver and hoped that giving it some tlc would help to reduce the digestive and allergic effects of the huge amounts of stress that I carry.
Although there were one or two spots that felt a bit tender as the needle went in, most of them were completely painless and I really enjoyed the treatment, particularly when she used Moxa. This Chinese herb is known in English as Mugwort and has a unique spongy texture. It looks a bit like crumbly plasticine and little blobs are placed on the ends of the needles and then set alight. You can feel the warmth transmitting itself down the metal and into your body and it is extremely relaxing and beneficial.
The only thing I didn’t like was having to lie face down on the table with my head resting on a support with a hole in it. It just seemed to irritate my sinuses and left me so bunged up, it was really uncomfortable. It feels a bit odd complaining about something so minor when you have a load of needles stuck in the back of your head and body.
A friend is currently indulging in facial acupuncture which is supposed to be a non-invasive equivalent of a face-lift. I will keep you posted on this one.
However, I know that a lot of people are squeamish about needles, so I thought I’d fill you in about some very effective alternatives to traditional Chinese acupuncture.
I have experienced the rebalancing of my energy through a variety of therapies, but also via an impromptu healing session with my tai chi instructor where he merely held his hands a few centimetres from my body and focussed where he wanted his energy to go. I could literally feel the warmth surrounding the pain in my lower back and helping to soothe it. Again, at a tai chi event where there was so much energy in the room you could almost touch it, I felt the calming effects of all that goodwill.
But here’s a brief synopsis of the recognised and accredited holistic techniques.
Acupressure
Shiatsu massage (or acupressure) uses manipulation rather than penetration to alleviate pain. The practitioner will use his fingertips, elbows or, even, knees, to apply the correct amount of pressure to stimulate key points on the skin and activate the body’s natural self-healing systems.
This was a cross between a full body massage and a sports massage, done through my clothing. Again, he could tell which points required more attention than others – in my case the backs of my calves, the frongs of my thighs and the adductors across my groin. Some parts of it were so excruciating that I had to resist the urge to kick him in the head, which was so close to my foot, but others were just heaven.
After each session, my body was literally buzzing with the released energy and I went home to sleep like a log.
Microcurrent Bio-Therapy
I have not tried this one yet, but I read that Microcurrent Bio-Therapy is a non-needles method of acupuncture, which can alleviate pain, inflammation, spasm and restricted range of motion, as well as treating tissue damage at the cellular level. Using hand-held probes or pads, very low frequencies of electrical current are applied to selected acupuncture points.
This simulates the effects of the needles used in traditional acupuncture, which generate measurable electrical charges when twirled by the doctor’s fingers and, when these are left in the patient’s body, they drain excess electrical energy from any tense or inflamed tissue.
With all these treatments, the goal is to resolve the underlying problems which are causing the pain or discomfort by realigning the natural balance and allowing the body to heal itself.
Yin Yoga
My favourite needle-less acupuncture is something that I can do for myself. It is the unusual practice of Yin Yoga. This is a form of yoga, which combines traditional Hatha postures, Taoist philosophy and meridian theory, helping to maintain the agility and mobility of the joints below the navel and above the knee.
The basic idea is to adopt a standard yoga pose and find the place where the body naturally stops within that posture and then hold it for five minutes. You can use all sorts of props like bolsters, blankets, cushions, straps and blocks in order to achieve the most comfortable depth for your body without putting pressure on any of the joints or muscles.
For the first minute or so, you may feel discomfort (but never pain) as your muscles relax to the point where there is no longer any tension and you use soft, gentle breathing to achieve a stillness which allows the tissues around the targeted area to surrender into the shape.
The focus of the Yin Yoga poses is to strengthen and lengthen the ligaments, tendons, and fascia, stimulating the flow of chi through the energy conduits of the body.
Because this connective tissue responds better to long passive holds, the practice is sometimes called yoga for the joints and, as with the other versions of acupuncture, it enables your energy system to find its own natural harmony.
I find Yin Yoga incredibly healing as it gives me the time to listen to my body, exhaling to observe if I can go any deeper in the posture but always withdrawing the moment I become aware that this movement is unwelcome.
The practise is different from regular yoga in that the poses are not as architecturally structured. You are not looking to achieve an aesthetically pleasing shape or to reach a definite goal like getting your hand to the floor or your chest to your thighs, but working with your body to find the right stretch that will allow the muscles to relax.
At the end of each session, I feel emotional and psychologically balanced and, generally, I am really starting to notice the benefits in terms of general well being and improved flexibility.
So, there you have it – four ways of engaging the body’s natural healing mechanisms to improve your quality of life and three types of acupuncture without needles.
I would be careful ascribing too much to acupuncture. it has been quite well documented in carefully controlled test after test that it works exactly as effectively as a placebo (i.e.its effectiveness is directly proportional to how much you believe it is going to work.) so it has value but should never replace traditional medicine.
Well… When I have an acupuncture session I can physically feel energy releases and sometimes it shoots through from my feet to my forehead. I could go on… But I’m all about the energy, so I’m definitely with you on this. Great post.
After more than 15 years of suffering from often debilitating migraines, I began treatment with a medical acupuncturist a year and a half ago and I can safely say it’s changed my life. As well as decreasing them, I’ve also noticed a change in energy and vitality, not merely physical but also emotional and creative.
And I have to disagree with Mark re the link between acupuncture and the placebo effect. There was no placebo that could alleviate the jack hammer that was pounding inside my brain or even the aura that surrounded me (where a potential migraine could strike at any moment). But what I have come to realise is that it’s a matter of finding the treatment or approach that speaks best to your individual body.
Sorry – that was long-winded! Fab post. :)
Cheeky Minx recently posted..Plea-d
Hi Mark and Welcome!
Surely that means that for some people it may well work better than more intrusive pharmaceutical alternatives? I’m certainly not saying that it should replace traditional medicine, just offering it as an alternative for those for whom more accepted methods have not proved effective. A positive belief in any medication must be pretty important to the eventual recovery.
Hey Sulpicia
I know exactly what you mean. My tai chi teacher is able to do all sorts of things to me purely with energy because I am particularly open to it. Ruf is a hypnotherapist and also tells me that I am very easy to ‘auto-suggest’. Now I just have to work on using that energy to my advantage. I’m told that if I project outwards, I should be able to get myself more room on a crowded subway or supermarket aisle :) I will keep you posted.
Ah, Cheeky Minx, it is really good to hear of a real life positive outcome. As you say, finding the right treatment to suit every individual means that there has to be a wide range of options available – both natural and pharmaceutical. So glad acupuncture has worked for you.
Cheeky Minx & Mark, though I do have a very specific view on the efficacy of acupuncture, I won’t discuss it here as it would be way too long for a comment window. What I would like to point out though is that your experience with acupuncture is entirely consistent with a psychogenic* condition related to stress, the act of getting treatment (any treatment) is indeed a very stress reducing activity, as is a typical session with an acupuncturist, as is the “alt med” world. Migraines (maybe more so than any other illness) are extremely susceptible to changes in stress levels. Also, since there is no way to have a control in your case (we can’t send you in an alternate universe at the same time in your life under the same condition for evidence based medicine) it is impossible to say whether or not there was a placebo component to your recovery.
Notes:
Psychogenic does NOT mean faking and it does NOT mean crazy, what it means is that the condition stems from psychological pathways. In many cases ulcers can be psychogenic, insomnia is often psychogenic as are many many other conditions including many migraines. I apologize for the excess pedantry, it’s just people often misunderstand the term and get offended.
Rhacodactylus recently posted..Tim Minchin- Environmentalism Rocks
Sorry to post twice, but I wanted to throw out one thought on the “placebo effect.” The placebo effect is often thought of as some mind over matter proposition, or a healing based on belief, but that is slightly inaccurate. What the placebo effect actually is, is the sum total of anything that could have healed the patient other than the item being tested for in a clinical study. In other words, all the things that would have made a patient better anyways. This includes but is not limited to:
-Those who would have been naturally lucky and just got better (if 5% of pancreatic cancer patients get better, and I test a drug to help with pancreatic cancer, it had better beat 5%)
-Blips in the data (whenever a group is statistically deviated from “average,” for instance they are sick, they will tend to head back towards average, or being well, no matter what interventions are tried, this works with any bell curve, it works with ideas, physical traits, it’s a product of math, not a product of healing.)
-Flaws in the experimental design (researcher bias often creeps into studies whether intentionally or unintentionally, and this bias can affect measurements, especially the subjective ones, or the handling and recording of data, or even the reporting of the subjects, and skew data)
There are other things that contribute to a placebo effect, but anything that creates an effect in a treated patient that would have also affected the placebo is a component of the placebo effect. It is really just a researcher name for the junk that can mess up data, and is an often very misunderstood concept.
On a side note, sorry for the formatting, I have to remember, wine after posting
Rhacodactylus recently posted..Tim Minchin- Environmentalism Rocks
Hey Rhacodactylus,
Thanks for explaining all that scientifically – but in language that I can actually understand :) Seems to me the placebo effect is not such a bad thing after all, it’s just a form of self-healing – which is why the pharmaceutical manufacturers try to imply that it’s not a good thing, I guess.
So many of today’s ‘conditions’ are ‘stress’-related and, consequently, do not necessarily need medication to control them. Learning how to control your response to stress seems to be key. Hence my own fascination with yoga and holistic therapies.
However, I’m also convinced that today’s modern diet is a major contributory factor. All those chemicals must interfere with the body’s naturally produced hormones and cause an imbalance which makes us more susceptible to the effects of stress. Perhaps that imbalance is a scientific way of explaining the chi blockages and just sitting quietly receiving attention from a therapist can relax the body sufficiently to allow its own immunity to cope with the intruder…
Yeah sorry for the rant, I tend to ramble if I get on a topic I like. There is actually a major debate in medicine right now over the value of placebo, and one of the problems is that we are finding that the placebo effect is more likely about perception than actual healing. When the placebo effect is tested with objective measurements (e.g. blood pressure, weight, viral load, blood sugar, etc) there is almost never any placebo effect, however when tests are done with subjective measurements (perception of pain being the best example) the placebo effect rears its head. So the question goes, “if the placebo effect makes people think they are better without actually improving their condition, how should that be handled by medicine?” I have my opinions, but I won’t share them.
Well and just because something is stress related doesn’t mean that medication used responsibly can’t be extremely helpful, a psychogenic rash will still benefit immensely from a cortisone preparation.
A couple quick questions: What do you mean by “chemicals,” everything is by definition a chemical. I’m not trying to be a pedant, i just wondered specifically what you meant, lots of people have very different notions concerning food and I didn’t want to miss take you. And, to you, what groups of therapies are “holistic,” it’s a term I’ve never really gotten my head around seeing as every practitioner (except for specialists) are holists at the very least in the biological sense.
Rhacodactylus recently posted..Tim Minchin- Environmentalism Rocks
Oops, sorry about the italics, guess my HTML skills failed me.
Rhacodactylus recently posted..Tim Minchin- Environmentalism Rocks
Rhacodactylus, So many people go to their GP for a scrip to cure the side effects of stress rather than addressing the cause. Absolutely, a steroid cream from the docs got rid of my stress-related eczema the first few times but then it stopped being effective because the root of the problem was still there and my body required ever stronger levels of cream to repeat the cure each time the rash returned.
In so many cases, stress is the root cause for symptoms which mimic other conditions. If the apparently placebo effect of a relaxing holistic treatment (something which addresses the whole body rather than the perceived symptoms of a condition – like acupuncture) does that suggest that perhaps further attention to external aggravants might be better than pharmaceutical quick fixes for apparent symptoms of some physical illness. The problem is that everyone wants it sorted yesterday with as little effort and cost as possible so they’d rather take the drugs than put in the effort to actually isolate the real cause. For myself, the difference an hour of yoga a day has made to my general well being has been so obvious… combined with removing myself from the situation that made me stressed 24/7.
Sorry, you can tell I am very much a lay person, not a scientist. Sometimes Ruf despairs at my confused terminology :) By chemical, I mean man-made pharmaceuticals. So many are now routinely used as food additives – preservatives, flavour enhancers, colourings. Perhaps in isolation, there would not be a problem but we (and, worse, our kids) are ingesting them every time we eat almost any form of pre-prepared food. As the levels in our bodies build up and these chemicals interact with each other, I can’t help thinking that they must have a real bearing on the increasing number of allergies that are around today.