While acupuncture is often thought of for relief from physical pain, this complete system of medicine moves so far beyond that!
I’ve recently helped people with post-surgical pain that their doctor said was “incurable,” super-painful rectal spasms that Western Medicine said there was no treatment for, menstrual cramps that had been lived with for more than a decade, and recovery from trauma that had caused daily anxiety for years.
The magic of acupuncture is that it leverages your internal resources and helps you resolve troubling symptoms so that you can get back to feeling your best again.
Today I would like to share with you three troublesome situations that acupuncture can help you resolve.
1. SCARS Scar work in Chinese Medicine can help people who find their self-esteem challenged by surgical scars or scars from accidents. By gently sliding needles beneath the scar tissue, acupuncture can help the connective tissue loosen up, which helps the scar flatten and settle. This helps not only with the aesthetics of a scar, it can also speed up the healing process.
From a Chinese Medicine perspective, this process ensures that there is a smooth flow of qi (no blockages) in the surrounding tissue.
Sometimes our emotions can get “bound up” in scar tissue, especially if the scar is from a traumatic event, like surgery. Scar work can release any kind of physiological disruptions that might be stuck in the tissue at the surgical (or accident) site.
When my acupuncturist gently slid needles beneath an old scar from a surgery I had 20+ years ago, at the age of 16, I started to shake. The surgery had been “successful” but somewhat traumatic. I was young, and I did not have a great relationship with my surgeon.
That particular scar had always been red and raised. It never hurt or bothered me, but after the scar treatment, the scar flattened out, the redness went away, and I was able to cry in a safe setting and let go of some of the emotional residue of that challenging event.
Scar treatments can help you move on from difficult experiences that might be sitting at the surface of your connective tissue, the matrix of cells that hold your body together.
2. ANESTHESIA Anesthesia can be a real doozy to recover from! I’ve seen people feel foggy, heavy, tingly, anxious, or suffer sleep disruptions for weeks or even months after receiving anesthesia. Anesthesia can also cause people to just generally feel “off” or weird or not like themself.
Though acupuncture is way older than anesthesia—anesthesia was first successfully used on October 16, 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston—acupuncture is a powerful tool to help you clear the lingering side-effects of going under.
Because acupuncture functions to regulate your physiology, this makes it a powerful ally to help you feel like yourself again after surgery or after diagnostic exams that require anesthesia. If you’re feeling generally hazy or strange, or if you’re in pain after anesthesia, consider coming to acupuncture to help you get back to your baseline again.
3. JET LAG Jet lag is real. Especially if you haven’t flown in awhile, take a red-eye, or if you choose a destination oceans away, flying so far can leave you feeling heavy and drained or just generally worn down. Similar to anesthesia, and perhaps even more so, jet lag can leave you with wonky sleep, general malaise, confusion, or just feeling “out of it.”
In cases like this, acupuncture can help you rebalance your energy so that you can get back to better sleep, boost your energy, and feel both at ease and energized so that you can get on with your life.