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HIPAA Notices of Privacy Practices Update – Sam Collins

 

So what’s going on HIPAA 2026, because this is the email I’ve been getting, in fact, several. And it says, hi Sam. Hope all is well. I’m getting a sudden surge in emails about the new HIPAA laws going into effect.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hey, greetings, all my friends. It’s Sam Collins, the coding and billing expert for acupuncture for you, the profession, and of course, the American Acupuncture Council. But most importantly, really it’s just you and I wanna make sure that each time we’ve got something new, something that’s changing to make sure you’re up to date.

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If you’re a network member with me, even better, let’s make sure we always know what’s going on. Otherwise, even if you’re not a member, this is a place where we’re gonna give you the updates. Let’s go to the slides. Let’s talk about. What’s going on, and some of you may have gotten some emails to this and it’s always one that I’m always careful, hyperbole and if you have stress, it sells.

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So what’s going on HIPAA 2026, because this is the email I’ve been getting, in fact, several. And it says, hi Sam. Hope all is well. I’m getting a sudden surge in emails about the new HIPAA laws going into effect. Now, I do understand HIPAA is misspelled here, but I left the email just as it was sent and it says, is this accurate or is it just marketing hype?

And I’m so glad they reached out to me. As good as Google searches and chat, GPT can be, remember, those are still limited to the information they can gather, and is it always correct? No. So we wanna be careful and we also wanna be careful. Is it also subject to hyperbole as well? Potentially to some extent.

I always look at the context. Obviously HIPAA is a big deal. It is. But how big is it? It depends on the size of the office, what you’re doing. At the end of the day, what is hipaa? In a acupuncture office? Don’t let anyone have someone else’s records. Many of you’re using paper charts. That’s pretty hard to get records unless they break into your office.

So let’s make sure what are we really doing and talking about let’s update. There are changes that you have to make. Or potentially February 16th. However, these updates probably will have nothing to do with you. I will tell you, I’m gonna be very acentric when it comes to these things. Code changes, everything else.

I’m like, how does it affect us? That’s what I wanna know. These updates chiefly concerned, a heightened confidentiality, protections for substance abuse disorder and reproductive health privacy. And this is mostly related to. Reproductive rights of people that some states allow certain types of birth control, others don’t.

If you go to another state, they can’t get access to it. It’s just protection. All this is about protection of a patient’s information. Same for substance abuse, that if someone has, gone through some substance abuse treatment, that no one just can easily get access to it. In fact, the easiest way to keep everything private, always pay cash.

If you’re not aware, cash means you don’t have to disclose at all, and the patient has a right to. Now, with this update though, what if it does affect us? What do we really have to do? It’s really updating your privacy practice. I’m gonna say 99.9% of you won’t, but let’s say for some reason you’re doing some reproductive health.

Now, I’m not saying necessarily fertility, I’m talking about reproductive birth control and that type, but let’s say you were, what would you add in there? The patient has rights for reproductive protection and that these records will not be disclosed unless specifically requested. And even then you would make sure who’s the requesting party, who they have access.

In other words, you’re gonna exercise a lot more caution for records, particularly if they have things like substance abuse. Same applies with HIV. So what this really is a defensive way just to make sure patients are aware of their new rights now. Does this mean you need to change your privacy notice?

Probably not. But let’s say for some reason you did, you would update your privacy notice with this additional information of that protection. If you’re not maintaining records on reproductive rights or substance abuse, though change is nothing. So continue the same, which means I don’t update anything.

Now let’s keep in mind though, what if you did have to update it? Would you have to have all patients sign the new privacy practice? No, you wouldn’t. Once they signed one from years ago. That remains in effect. Do post up in your office if you’ve made an update somewhere where they can see it. Make people aware.

But for the most part, they do not have to sign a new one. This is more so just to make sure that if you have these, you’re gonna make the change. Chances are you don’t, and this is where I want to keep things with simplicity in mind. Avoid hyperbole. At the end of the day, what is hipaa? Oh, by the way, you know how you’re supposed to do a yearly HIPAA training?

This isn’t at the very least part of it. It may be for some of you, the whole thing, depending on the size of your office. The basics of HIPAA is that we are protecting protected health information. What does that include? Names, date of birth, social security number, their diagnosis, treatment. In other words, all the information you have on the patient, you’re protecting it.

What does it mean? I don’t let anyone have access but realize. There’s things that can make it more vulnerable. If you do all paper notes, it’s very hard for someone to get it ’cause you physically would have to send it. But what if it’s electronic? Could someone hack into your system? So we have to have other things in safeguards there.

And even verbal information. Be very careful by example. Here’s a common one, A friend recommends a friend and you start discussing things about it. Like someone’s recommended a friend and they said, Hey did my friend John come in? Do you know? You can’t disclose that. You better get permission from another person.

And this sometimes you go I just wanna thank them. Gotta have permission. ’cause maybe they don’t want them to know. So at the end of the day, think of it this way, HIPAA is about giving the least information that’s necessary. We use the term minimum necessary. So if someone’s asking for a very specific date on a patient and it’s a valid request.

You’re gonna limit it to that date. Don’t send everything. Don’t send extra things. Here would be the reason why if you send too much, you never get it back. You know the barn door’s open, but if you send not enough, it’s easier to send more than to try to pull it back. Make sure, of course there’s administrative safeguards in the office.

Again, that’s what we’re doing today. Who’s your officer? Probably you, but make sure you have things in place. Do you do a risk assessment? Have you looked recently? Hey. Have we done all the right things by example? Do all your employees or people you work with get some initial HIPAA training from you and is it done yearly?

Now, I’m not saying it has to be a big yearly thing, but enough to go over it again to make sure there’s no issues. And you should have some type of a written policy. It could even be a page. I’m gonna suggest some of you may have to have more than that, but for the most part it’s like just the protocols of how to deal with it.

Like when someone calls. How do we handle if someone’s asking for records? You know what the answer is? We don’t give ’em anything over the phone, not without a signed authorization. Remember, if you’re working with outside vendors, billers or other people, they have to sign up. A business associate network manager with me, we have that.

We’ve done so because everything, I have to keep private. Make sure that if you have any type of service that’s shredding documents and you’re not doing it yourself, they need a HIPAA notice and then make sure you have. Rules that what happens if there’s a violation? I don’t think you’re gonna have some big sanction.

It just means, Hey, we’re gonna reprimand that this doesn’t happen again. Put safeguards in place and it’s just gonna be, I did a reprimand. You’re not gonna say, I’m gonna suspend you for a damn I, I guess you could, but that doesn’t help us. And then make sure you’ve got reasonable physical safeguards, meaning secure the charts.

Now if you have paper records, that’s pretty easy. Don’t put ’em in a place where people can get them. Now what if you said I don’t have a locked cabinet. Do you need a locked cabinet? Not necessarily so long as it’s protected from the public getting to it. So if it’s in an open area behind where people can walk in, you’re always gonna have some type of safeguard.

It’s never left alone for people just to wander. And now patients are escorted back. Now obviously electronic could be a little bit more difficult ’cause now what if you’re sending an email that’s not secure, or you’re not sure because your system could be hacked? Make sure you’ve got the proper encryption on your computers.

But one simple thing is make sure just when someone comes in your office, they can’t look and see someone else’s information on the computer. It should always blank out. In fact, I’d recommend just the privacy screen. That way when you look only dead on, can you see it? Nope. Nothing from the side.

Okay. And then make sure, as I mentioned, restrict access. No, you can’t go back there. We don’t let you, those are obvious, but it’s something to remember. That’s part of the training that staff have to remember, Hey, we just can’t let a patient go to the restroom. And then they’re wandering around the office and trying to look at someone else’s chart.

Not that I think people. Do that. But every now and then you get a couple of people that are a little quirky that may try to do something like that. And then of course, make sure that you’re shredding documents when you discard them. You can’t just throw ’em out, shred them, okay, by a cross crutch shredder, or there’s a service out that’ll do it.

Remember, you do wanna keep the records timely. On the minimum time for many states. Could be five years, some or seven or 10. Know your state if you’re not sure. Contact me network members. I can make sure, but you don’t need to keep a bunch of records if you’ve been seeing a person for 20 years. You honestly don’t need all 20 years.

You need the last seven years, let’s say. Alright, now what about technical safeguards? Here’s something to make sure this is training with staff passwords. Everyone should have their own no shared passwords. That way we know who was on or what there was a problem. That way, if something happened, we can find out how it happened, who it happened with, and not everyone gets blamed.

If you will make sure there’s log off. The computer should log off after five minutes, maybe even shorter, depending. How about encryption? Now, it’s pretty hard to buy a computer without that, but check to make sure. Where I’d be more concerned are mobile devices and backups. If a staff can have access to records on their mobile device, let’s remember if you have Google or Microsoft, they look at everything, if you use email through Google, they’ve read it and they’re sending you ads based on it. Okay. And they’re selling it to other people. So make sure you keep things very private in that way. I would recommend no mobile devices unless we know it’s encrypted limit access based on job role. If someone’s job is only appointments, then they don’t necessarily need an EHR access.

Okay. It just lends to less people touching, less problem we can have. And then make sure, again, the personal devices. I have a concern because everyone does it now, and then you wonder what things have access. I had a friend that said, Hey man, I have a TikTok. I never had TikTok before. So I put it on, I watched the thing.

I thought it was pretty it’s not for me. I’m an older person, so I don’t wanna sound like I’m down on it, but the thing, I deleted it. Do you know, I get an email now and again from TikTok that says, Hey, this person’s on TikTok. We saw they were in your contacts on your phone. So again, there’s a lot of access there.

I would be really conscientious of. And then remember, patients have rights. Make sure they all do a privacy notice, do they have to sign that every year? No. Once is enough. If you amend or change it, then of course, put a post, a new notice. But at the same token, they have to resign. And if a patient wants, can they have access to the records?

Sure. Can they make amendments? Not really. They can’t amend it. What they can do is give what their opinion is. But don’t make them change the record. They can just write what they think. It should be a little odd. But on the medical side, you might see this. And then if they want confidential things like, Hey, I don’t want you to speak to my spouse, I don’t want you to let this person know, you have to honor it.

And in fact, I would say always simply, I don’t wanna say hide, but use that as your protection. I’m sorry. HIPAA allows me not to do that and just leave it at that. No excuses. That’s just what it is. And if they want any type of authorization, I want it in writing. From them. I don’t want there to be any issue later saying, I didn’t give you authorization to do that.

It’s not complicated in a small office, but you wanna make sure we have the right things in place. ’cause if someone does make a complaint, could that be a problem for us? Maybe which means other simple things too. Verbal discussions. Avoid, obviously if you go in a hospital, you ever notice everyone gets quiet when they get on the elevator.

You wanna make sure you’re not talking. You gotta be very qui quiet. My son’s an attorney and it’s interesting when they have meetings. They literally have soundproof rooms. A hundred that no one can hear anything. It’s really, in fact, if you sit in the room with no sound, it’s a little scary because there’s like anti sound in there.

But that’s how careful they are with the type of things they deal with. So use good discretion. If you’re releasing information and you’re not sure, or they’re asking, don’t release it. You can always get more information. Again, you can never get it back if you’re not sure where you’re sending it.

If you’re not sure. That was them on the voice. But don’t leave a voicemail. In fact, make sure they have permission for you to do so many patients will. And then if you’re gonna send a fax or an email, verify who it is before you send it. Because once you send, if it’s the wrong one, and I, when I say verify it, I mean I want you to send, my rule is you’re gonna send a test email first.

Make sure the respond back saying it’s theirs before you send it, okay? Because once you send it, there’s no coming back. The network, myself and the HJ Ross or American Acupuncture Council, we’re always here for you. We wanna be your support. If you’re a member with me and you want to go into some more details or some training, by all means do that.

Otherwise, for everyone else, use good common sense when it comes to hipaa. You always be on the right track and not saying things can’t change, but remember hyperbole often is just that it’s trying to excite you about something. We’re always gonna be that good and honest resource. So until next time, my friends, I wish you well.

And remember, acupuncture got a nice increase in fees this year. Go forward. Take care everybody.

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Protect Your Practice with Acupuncture Professional Liability Insurance

If you are running an acupuncture clinic, insurance protection is one of the must-haves in your business operation checklist. The reason is simple: one needle-stick mishap, patient reaction, or equipment accident could drain your savings overnight. In the U.S., malpractice claims against acupuncturists are on a steady rise, with serious cases sometimes resulting in six-figure settlements. Acupuncture professional liability insurance is your essential safety net, giving you affordable and straightforward coverage that protects your livelihood without confusing fine print.

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A professional liability policy for acupuncturists bundles key protections – including professional liability (malpractice), general liability (injuries), property coverage, and cyber insurance for patient records – tailored to your practice, with optional add-ons for cupping, moxibustion, or electro-stim services. Monthly premiums are a fraction of the cost of a single claim.

Why now? Claims have increased in the post-pandemic period with the advent of tele-health and in-person visits, affecting small clinics more significantly. Getting coverage is simple: provide your clinic details, get an instant quote, and start protecting your practice immediately. Many plans also include free risk management tools, such as a hygiene checklist.

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Submuscular Facial Needling for Cosmetic and Neuromuscular Concerns

 

So what is Submuscular needling of the face and why would we use it?

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name is Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture educator and author, and today I would like to thank the. American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak to you today about submuscular needling of the face. So I last year I published a book, hardcover book on treating the Face, and it is a comprehensive 500 page book and one of the chapters of the book.

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Is all about submuscular needling. So some of the images that, or most of the images we’ll be working with today come from my book. So go ahead and go to the first slide please. So what is Submuscular needling of the face and why would we use it? Submuscular needling. Involves taking acupuncture needles and placing them underneath, or in some instances through different muscles on the face and the head, and even around the underneath the chin area.

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In order to help the face to function better, and in some instances we can use this same technique to help with wrinkles on the face and sagging and. Essentially what we’re doing is we’re taking needles and putting them in areas that are prone to muscular disharmony and can, this can be very beneficial for things like Bell’s Palsy.

And if someone has had a stroke or forehead, wrinkles sagging under the neck. So muscles like the corrugator and the frontals can help the forehead area. The processis, also the temporalis can help with migraines. Tinnitus other neuromuscular conditions of the face, the masseter can help with things like TMJ.

The auricular muscles can help also with tinnitus and helping to lift the face, and one that’s not listed. The anterior digastric can help with sagging under the chin area. So here’s a couple of images from my book of muscles on the face. And as you can see, there are quite a few. Some of them are superficial, some of them are deep.

And these are the images of the muscles on the side of the face and head. And so first we’re gonna talk a little bit. About muscles involved in raising the eyebrows and the eyelids bringing the eyebrows together from a cosmetic standpoint, these three muscles can cause wrinkles and deep furrows between the eyebrows from a neuro and a wrinkle across the bridge of the nose.

From a neuromuscular standpoint, these. Muscles can be involved with like for example, if someone has Bell’s palsy and the upper part of their face is drooping, and what we would do is insert needles. Doesn’t really matter when you’re doing submuscular needling, which direction you go, but you would take a half inch needle and insert them.

Underneath the muscles. So this right here these muscles right here are the corrugator muscles. And this will help to, and the corrugator inserts right into the braceis here and. This helps to bring chi and blood to this area. And also if there’s any fossil adhesions, it can help to break those up.

And by doing that, it helps to nourish the muscle, to bring the muscle into better functioning. This, these can be combined with facial motor points, which is another lecture, another chapter in the book. And to help so that there’s more symmetry in the face and also less drooping and fewer wrinkles, and this is what it looks like when you would do that.

And I have a little video. I need to move this over so I can click on it.

So as you can see in the video, I took a very thin gauge. I used cen needles. They’re like half inch. I think those are 0.1 fours. And I went right underneath the corrugator muscle. And you can just use one from the top if you choose. But in that example I was using too, so the frontals is another muscle.

So there’s two heads to the frontalis, and that is another muscle that we can do submuscular needling with. So we would put several needles underneath the frontalis muscle and it would look something like this. This can help with droopy eyelids. And also with forehead wrinkles. I’m going to skip the videos.

This is just a brief summary of what Submuscular Needling is. If you want more information, you can either visit. My book, which you can get@facialacupunctureclasses.com, or you can watch one of my recorded webinars at the same website, facial acupuncture classes.com. This is the braceis muscle which you would needle from the top down if you were doing submuscular needling.

It’s like a triangle. This is the temporalis muscle and using a series of needles all around the temporalis can really help to relax this temporalis muscle, which can become very tight. And as you can see, the auricular muscles are also attached to it. And these can, you can use submuscular needling under these and the temporalis.

A lot of the facial and neck muscles are connected to it, either directly or indirectly through the occipital frontals or through the coming back here through the trapezius and. By treating this muscle you can help to affect a lot of conditions on the face, and this is what it looks like when it’s needled.

The masseter is the big strong muscle that if you clench your jaw, you can feel it. And needling underneath that can really help patients that have TMJ and it looks like this, and the auricular muscles. I use these in all of my cosmetic treatments. Needling, underneath those auricular muscles is something that can help to lift the face area.

And I have helped, I have found it has helped my patients who have ear pain and tinnitus and so that is my. Presentation about Submuscular needling. Again, it was very brief, but I wanted to give you guys an overview If you are. I’m interested in learning more. You can visit my website, facial acupuncture classes.com, and I am also available on social media at my name, Michelle Gilles, or at Facial Acupuncture.

Classes. Once again, I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak to you today about Submuscular needling of the faith.

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One Simple SEO Strategy to Help Local Patients Find You

 

I’m sharing one very simple SEO strategy to help more local people find you on Google. And before we get into it, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.

Click here to download the transcript.

Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Well, I’m Michelle Grasek, acupuncturist marketing strategist and host of the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast, and today I’m sharing one very simple SEO strategy to help more local people find you on Google. And before we get into it, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here with you today.

All right, so let’s get into the slides and talk about this strategy.

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So I know that most people already know what SEO is search engine optimization, but I wanna offer a, maybe a slightly different way of thinking about it or a new definition that is going to be useful for us today. So search engine optimization is really the art of getting your website and your business to rank higher in a Google search.

And I think it’s really important to note that we have the opportunity through. Search engine optimization to tell Google. When we are the answer to a question that someone has typed into the search, right? When our business is the answer to a search query, and it means that we also have the opportunity to tell Google what kind of patients to send us, right?

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And I think this is very important because so much that you can do with search engine optimization is free. And we really underestimate the impact that we can have. But we have to be willing to, I. Help Google help us, right? Because Google’s only using what’s already on our website and our Google business profile, for example, to understand our business.

And if it’s very thin in terms of content and we don’t have any keywords that reference the symptoms and the patients that we like to treat, how is Google supposed to know? When we are the right answer to a search query or how is Google supposed to know which sort of patients to send to us, to our website?

So really what we’re doing with search engine optimization is we are teaching Google when we are the answer to a question and helping it better understand our business. We are helping Google help us. Okay. So it’s a great opportunity that we have. And specifically when we’re talking about local SEO, there’s three things that have a huge impact.

So they are relevance, proximity, and prominence. So let’s talk about each of these briefly. So relevance is essentially how, how well does your business answer the question that someone put in to Google? How closely aligned is what you offer to the thing they are asking for. Okay. Are you a good fit for this search query, right?

Or your business? And proximity, of course is how Google determines when someone types in something like acupuncture near me. How Google determines whether you are within a reasonable range to show up for this person’s search, right? So if someone is searching acupuncture near me, and your clinic is an hour away.

Maybe Google’s going to decide that’s too far, right? There are other acupuncturists who are closer and it’s going to prioritize them towards the top of a search, right? And again, this is specific for near me searches, okay? Because Google is using the location of the user, like where is their cell phone, what are the coordinates when they’re typing in this question, and what is the address of your brick and mortar business and what is the distance between them?

Okay, so that’s proximity. And then prominence is really how authoritative, how engaged, how popular is your business, how much are people talking about your business? And this is both. In terms of online and offline, but Google is using signals like reviews of your business, links from other business websites that are local, that are near your clinic to your website.

Mentions of your business. Social media or elsewhere on the internet, that doesn’t necessarily have to be linked, although that’s always great, but maybe someone is talking about your business on Facebook. Maybe someone actually tags your business in a post on Facebook. Okay. Or Instagram. And Google’s paying attention all of these signals to help it understand like how well known, how established is your business.

Because all of this. All of these factors that contribute to prominence, build trust with Google, because really Google wants to make sure that any business that it recommends in the search results is actually active. And is a part of a community, right? It’s called the Worldwide Web for a reason.

Like it’s building a web of all of these threads that come back to your business and your website and your Google business profile. And it’s checking to see is there a local web of people who are referring to your business? And that just builds a lot of confidence and trust in Google and makes it more likely to rank your website.

Above some of your competitors who maybe have less prominent signals in the search results. Okay. And today what we are gonna focus on is just one very simple. Addition or change that you can make on your website that has a huge impact. And this is called location modifiers. And that’s just a fancy term for adding your location to specific places on your website.

Very strategic places that Google cares about to help Google better understand your business. And I wanna clarify, because what we’re doing is we’re going to add things like. Let me see if I can give you an, I’ll just give you an example. Instead of having a conditions page, like if you love treating migraine patients, maybe you have a big long page on your website that’s acupuncture for migraines, and you talk about what are migraines and who’s a good fit for acupuncture, for migraines, and what has been your experience what are the symptoms that you’re helping people with why should they pick your clinic, et cetera, et cetera.

At the top of that page, instead of just having the title be acupuncture for Migraines, adding a location modifier would be as simple as saying acupuncture for migraines in Scottsdale, Arizona, or maybe your town. Or your neighborhood. You could narrow it down a little. Okay. And I wanna clarify something.

So if we go back, my students, my marketing students ask me this all the time, and they are assuming that by adding our location keyword, they’re. Addressing the proximity piece of their local SEO when this is actually not the case. So what we’re doing when we are adding location keywords is we are improving the relevance of like helping Google better understand our business, who we are, what we do, who we serve, and like where we serve.

That it just counts under the relevance category because you can’t really impact proximity with keywords because Google knows your physical location address, and it also knows the physical location of the searcher. It knows the coordinates on their cell phone as they’re Googling something. And so if someone’s typing, acupuncture near me. It’s calculating that distance right and no amount of you adding other location keywords can change Google’s mind about your physical. Location and your address. Okay, so I hope that makes sense. So we’re not impacting proximity here. We’re impacting relevance because what if someone searches cosmetic acupuncture, Rochester, New York, right?

And you are in Rochester. Now you have the opportunity if you’re including Rochester as your keywords. You are telling Google, okay, I’m more relevant for this specific search query because my business is the answer to what this person put in. I do cosmetic acupuncture. I’m located in Rochester. I’m perfect.

I am the answer to the search query. Show me at the top of the search. Okay, so I hope that makes sense. So our focus here is going to be helping Google understand our business in this specific context based on location. Okay? And it’s super easy. These are very easy changes to make on your website.

So we’re gonna do two. Things. So the first is you are going to add these location modifiers to specific pages on your website. You are gonna update existing pages and blog posts, and then in the future, as you add more pages or blog posts, you always wanna remember to include your location. And then the second thing I’d like you to do is to add location modifiers to specific places on your Google business profile.

So let’s talk about your website first. So I’ll give you a bunch of examples. I mentioned the acupuncture for Migraines page. So I find that a lot of people do have these conditions pages on their website. So for example, if you wanted more pain management digestion in women’s health patients, like those are your favorite.

You would wanna have on your website, one page for each. Talking about, what kind of things can acupuncture help for in pain management? And who’s a good fit and what are the outcomes? What are the symptoms? Why is you, why should they pick your clinic? And I often find that sometimes people will just give that page the title, pain management, or maybe they’ll do.

Pain management, acupuncture. And all we’re doing in this case is just adding your location to that title, right? So Pain Management Acupuncture in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Okay. Because then think about. Each of those parts of that title is a key word, right? You have acupuncture, you have pain management, and you have Pittsfield, Massachusetts.

If we’re thinking about how your ideal person is searching for you, they’re probably searching for a combination of those things, okay? So this is really optimizing your website in a big way, and I just can’t emphasize this enough that it’s helping Google better understand your business and helping make you more relevant to your.

Ideal patient. We are just, we’re giving Google more information and we’re repeating, we’re gonna add your location in multiple places. We’re repeating it so that there’s consistency across your website, really emphasizing this. Okay, so some more examples would be migraine Acupuncture in Scottsdale, Arizona, acupuncture for Chronic Knee Pain in Rochester, New York.

You can also add your location. To service pages, so not just conditions, but also your service pages. So most people have a page that describes, what is acupuncture, and then another for what is cupping, what is Chinese herbal medicine, maybe? What is Chinese dietary therapy. So on those pages, you also want to add your location.

So for example, nutrition for hormone balance in Queens, New York. Okay.

So specifically, where are you at in your location? And I’m actually gonna go, I’m gonna share my screen and go on the backend of my website to show you what I’m talking about for some of these. So on your homepage above the fold, you wanna make sure your location is on there somewhere, and on your conditions pages and your service pages, you can see I’ve got it in parentheses here.

You want to add your location in either your SEO title or your H one header? You could do both. It depends on the layout of your page and we’ll talk about that, but one. Is great. Okay. One or the other. And you can add your location into the first paragraph of each of your conditions, pages, and service pages.

If you feel like you can add it naturally, if it’s a challenge and it doesn’t flow with the paragraph or make sense, that’s okay. It’s not as strong as having your location in your SEO title and your H one headers. And then you should also put your location in your meta description for your. Various pages.

So let’s talk about these. So what is above the fold? So this is a screenshot of my website. Above the fold is when you land on a new website, before you have scrolled at all, whatever you can see when you land there, that is considered above the fold. And this is very high value real estate because Google puts a lot of weight.

On whatever you place in this section and this section. So if you are able to add text on top of a, an image, that’s usually pretty common on most websites. You have a header image and then you can put text and a button on top of it. That’s usually an H one heading. So this is the H one heading on your homepage above the fold, Google is giving a lot of weight.

To this section. So you want to make sure that you are adding your location so you can see that I listed the conditions that myself and my associates like to treat. So things we specialize in, women’s health, cosmetic acupuncture, and pain management in Seneca Falls, New York. Okay, so now let me go behind the scenes of my website and I’m actually gonna let me back up a little bit.

So I have WordPress and if you have Wix or Weebly or Squarespace, then your website is probably going to look different, but hopefully you can still figure out where to find these things. It’s probably just the layout or the organization is a little bit different, but everything we’re gonna talk about should still exist in your website and you should be able to edit it.

So over here on the left, I’m gonna click on pages. And then I’m just gonna pick a page as an example. Let’s do the diverticulitis page. So this is the backend of this page. And you can see right here in this section it says, acupuncture for Diverticulitis Relief in Seneca Falls. So this is my SEO title.

This is the title of the page. Okay. Pretty straightforward. And then if we scroll down a little bit, there is a section here, it says preview. It is giving me a preview of if this page were to come up in a Google search result, this is what it would look like and you can modify it. And that’s what we wanna do.

So I’m gonna say edit snippet. Okay. And then you can see, I can change the, so this is the meta title, and then down here is the meta description. Okay. So if you recall from our last slide, I said that one of the places where you can put your location is in the meta description. So that’s down here. So let’s say that someone Googles, diverticulitis relief, Seneca Falls or Diverticulitis treatment, Seneca Falls or something like that. And in the search results, in the list of organic results, you would see this if it, if Google decided that my business would rank. Okay, so that’s. The description is right here. So that’s where people are seeing like, what is this page about?

And helping them decide. Do I wanna click through and continue reading? So in my description it says, learn how acupuncture for diverticulitis can help reduce pain, bloating, and digestive discomfort. Natural diverticulitis care in Seneca Falls, New York. Okay, and then you can see I also added Seneca Falls, New York in this meta title, which is this part right here.

So I think it’s ideal to have it in both places and this section where you get to edit your metadata. Is often included at the bottom of a page. So if you are creating a new page on your website, it’s probably, you have to scroll down a bit. And I’m using an SEO widget called Rank Math, but a lot of people have a widget that is called Yost, Y-O-A-S-T, and these are free, they have free versions, and that’s what I’m using.

So I don’t have all the features, but the most important thing is it is allowing me to edit this. Snippet so I can edit the metadata and add my location. So then I’m gonna say edit. I use Elementor as just like a very common design platform that fits into WordPress, but I wanna show you something. So I also mentioned adding your location to H one headings on your symptom and conditions pages.

So what. This is the page and this here at the top, if you recall. This is my SEO title. This is the title of the page. So if I scroll down, I’ve got all of this text that can be edited and. Right here it says, what is diverticulitis? And it’s probably pretty small. I don’t know if you can see this, but this is, it says heading one.

So that’s an H one level heading. And if you do the dropdown, there’s heading two, heading three, heading four, blah, blah, blah. So heading one is where you would want to add your location, if it makes sense. So on this particular page. I already have my location in my SEO title and I felt like it would be detrimental for the user experience for me to repeat this exact statement.

Acupuncture for Diverticulitis Relief in Seneca Falls again down here. So you’ll notice that in this H one heading, I don’t have Seneca Falls because. I decided that it’s already in the SEO title. It’s fine and it is important when you are adding. Keywords for SEO to always keep in mind that readability is really important.

You don’t just wanna stuff keywords everywhere so that it is awkward and cumbersome for a real human to read because you also want your page to be compelling for potential patients and to make sense to them and not be really redundant. That’s very important. And Google also cares about that, right?

So you can choose where you wanna put your your location in this case on your symptoms and conditions pages. And if you can fit it into both the SEO title and the H one heading, then that’s great. Okay, so let’s go back. I think I covered everything. Let’s see, above the fold, SEOH one meta descriptions.

Okay, so we’ll keep going. There’s only a few more things to share with you. And again, these are very simple. So I also want you to think about your blog content and going back in and editing your blog posts and adding your location to the title of some of your blog posts. So let me give you some examples how acupuncture helps with seasonal allergies in Portland.

What to expect at your first acupuncture visit in Denver. Acupuncture for runners recovering from the New York City Marathon. Okay? So each of those is helping improve your relevance by including your location keyword. Okay? And then when you’re writing blog posts in the future, you wanna try to keep that in mind, like, how can I incorporate my location into the title of this blog post?

And maybe mention it at least one time in the body of the blog post. And then the other thing I would love for you to do today, and this is again very straightforward and simple, is to add your location to two places on your Google business profile. So one is in your Google business description you wanna add.

Your service, probably acupuncture, and then your town or your city. So the same exact thing we’ve been doing, right? Like acupuncture for pain management, digestion, and women’s health in Seneca Falls, New York. You would wanna add that to your Google business description, and you can also add your description in your Google Business profile posts.

Sometimes they’re also called updates. So let me share my screen again. Just briefly, so here we have my Google Business profile for my practice, and if we scroll down.

This is the business description. Okay? So you’d wanna make sure that your location was included in there. And I think it’s a little confusing. I like to point it out because it doesn’t say business description, it just says from Seneca Falls Acupuncture. Okay? But that’s what this is where it says from your business, that’s the business description.

And then down here where I have these. They look like posts to me, but they are technically called updates. You when you are adding an update, you can add some text. I would just make sure that you are referencing your location for whatever kind of update you are adding. Okay, so I do have an example for you.

Whoops. Let’s go back here.

So let’s say that you wrote an update for your Google business profile about knee pain. You could add a header, so to speak, where you’re sharing like what this update is about, treating knee pain and running injuries in Tempe, Arizona, and then you could continue on with. The rest of your information that you’re sharing in that update.

Okay. But just making sure that you’ve got your location in there somewhere. This really helps to tie your website and your Google business profile together, among other things that also assist with that. But this is a really helpful one that can have a big impact on where you show up in the map pack and the organic search results.

And you wanna think of your website and your Google business profile. Like an ecosystem, they should reflect each other, right? So both of them should be helping Google better understand your business and your ideal patients so it knows who to send to you. So a couple of quick things that you can do, if you can check off everything that I’ve mentioned, or if you just wanna do a couple.

And have some quick wins. I would change the I would add your location on your homepage above the fold. I would add your location to any conditions pages that you have, and I would make sure you add it to your Google business description. Okay. So just a couple things for you to do very quickly. That will have a huge impact on.

Your Google rank. So thank you so much for being here. As always, if you have questions, feel free to send me an email, michelle@michelleGrasek.com. I do have a couple of workshops that are on these topics if you wanna dive deep. And you can visit michelle Grasek.com/google. And as always, I would like to say thank you so much to the American Acupuncture Council for the opportunity to be here and share this information with you today.

Have a great day.

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2026 Relative Value Units – Sam Collins

 

 

In 2026 for acupuncture, I’m pretty darn excited because of the changes to relative value units. Relative value units are set up each year to give the cost of a service compared to any other, and that value changes the amount of revenue because there’s a standard conversion they multiply by, and when that number goes up, you get an increase in revenue.

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Greetings, friends and colleagues. This is Samuel Collins, the coding and billing expert for acupuncture, the American Acupuncture Council, and maybe more importantly, the profession. And you, as I warned you last month, there is gonna be changes. And of course there are. Let’s go to the slides and talk about what is coming, or frankly, what is here for the new year.

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In 2026 for acupuncture, I’m pretty darn excited because of the changes to relative value units. Relative value units are set up each year to give the cost of a service compared to any other, and that value changes the amount of revenue because there’s a standard conversion they multiply by, and when that number goes up, you get an increase in revenue.

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So this is applied by Medicare, the va. Workers’ comp, personal injury, and frankly, health insurance. Maybe not all health insurance. Let’s face it. If you’re dealing with a SH or some of these, they’re probably not using rvu. They’re just trying to set a fee. But the bottom line is we use RVU to help us convert.

So let’s talk about what has changed in 2026. Here’s a big list of it, and of course you’re gonna look, this has a little bit of everything. This is something you get in our seminars where we give you the whole detail and go through that. But I wanted you to at least see, what the RVU are for this year.

Where they have changed and in fact to see that better. Let’s really talk about for acupuncture, you’ll notice 9 7, 8 1 0 is now 1.44 conversion. That is literally a 4% increase. You’ll notice 9, 7, 8, 1 1. Now at 0.85 is a 7% increase, so therefore there’s been a nice change. Acupuncturists are really fortunate.

Do you know you’re the only profession that’s got this much of a raise in the last three years. You got about 8% two years ago, another 4% this year That’s doing good, but you only get an increase. If you increase the fee, think of it like owning a home. If your home increases in value 10% and you’re gonna go sell it, you’re not gonna sell it at the value it was before.

So I want everyone to start thinking, how do I use this? So let’s say by example this year, just with a 4% increase. That would mean if you’re charging $78, now I use $78 because that’s gonna be roughly the 4% increase based on a $70 if you will. And you can see here that 4% increase means if you’re charging 78 for the first set, additional sets are 46.

Wow. That’s a nice big difference. Think about that for a second. A VA patient, a Medicare patient. Now you’re looking at probably $170. Maybe not that high, 160 something per visit. That’s quite a bit more than it was. Notice the big jump up though for e and m codes, you’ll notice e and m codes here increased 4%.

They went from 3.37. To three point five, two. Big jump. Most of all of you are undervaluing. Now, you may look and go, but Sam, we had a decrease in the massage rate. Yeah. Body work did go down, but I want you to know the reason it went down. They kept everything else flat. Even though they raised rates on some codes or values, they increased the revenue value by 3.2.

So the conversion they have is 3.2 higher. So that’s a much bigger difference for acupuncture and e and m. And it’s about flat for the massage part. So for the most part, maybe some of those fees will stay the same. But if you’re not increasing your fees a bit, it’s gonna be a problem because every state uses a multiplier and here’s some.

Real prominent examples. Michigan, Florida, Indiana use 200% of Medicare. So you just go back, you just take this rate, 200%, you’re gonna go. Wow. Sam, are you saying 200% means 150? That’s what they would allow. Now, I’m not saying you should charge that much, let don’t get me wrong. I don’t necessarily say that, but would that be within reason?

Potentially. So notice in other states, like California, it’s 150%, or in other states you simply do a number 69, 49, realize the Medicare conversion is about $35. You can see all of these are well above that as a good rule of thumb. Probably 1.5 to two of your Medicare rate, though that may vary ’cause your practice may be dependent upon cash and how do you balance the cash discount.

What I’m highlighting though, is you better start to get online to make sure you’re not undervaluing network members with me, my platinum members. Please reach out. We need to get in a meeting in a Zoom and go through these in detail to know what’s good for your area. ’cause I will guarantee most are losing money.

And this doesn’t just include acupuncture, but exams and some therapies as well, we will do for non-members. I have a seminar coming up January 18th or 25th, east Coast, west Coast. Let’s go through this because the revenue lost by most acupuncturists by not understanding what something is worth is a tremendous crime to your practice.

If you’re billing someone 50 and they’re willing to pay you 75, you know what they’re gonna pay you. 50. Now, I’m not saying you have to charge 75, but shouldn’t it make sense that you should charge what the value is? Relative values bring you there. I’m hoping for all of you, you start to realize that you need to look at this as a business part and not just, it’s the same year after year.

Costs go up as a general rule. Fee should increase about 3% every year just based on cost of living. And sometimes if you haven’t increased it in five years. Maybe you need to do a little bit more. Now remember, this could be indifferent to your cash part of your practice, depending, particularly if you’re doing packages.

So realize you wanna start to really fortify your practice. We’re here to help because notice Medicare increased rates 3.26% just based on that, if they increased. The value by 4%, then increase the conversion by 3%. That’s a pretty big difference that you may not be aware of. And this is gonna be just off of standard Medicare rates, which by no means would anyone say that’s the highest.

So get in line. I hope that you come part to the seminar, particularly for members. Remember platinum members, it’s free for you. Just call in and sign up. Otherwise, everyone else would love to see. And I wanna make sure, is your practice thriving? I have an incentive for you. Your practice is important to us at the American Acupuncture Council.

If your practice is not increasing, we don’t have a business either because we support you. We wanna make sure you understand the business side and acupuncturists, you’re good at your acupuncture, but have you really looked at the business side, allow us to have a chance to help you, seminars our network.

Hope to see you all soon Until next month, however, take care.

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Incorporating Side-bending and Rotation in Treatment

 

 

So just to start off with let’s kinda look at the channel orientation and look at sort of a planer approach to the channels.

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Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.  Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.

Hi, my name is Brian Lau. I’m with the Sports Medicine Acupuncture Certification Program. I also do a lot of work with something called jji Movement Training, where I look at Sinu channel movement patterns. So we’re gonna be talking about that a little bit today. And I wanna first of all start by thanking the American Acupuncture Council for having me.

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So it’s always nice to come and talk about this type of stuff. This particular. Webinar will feature some exercises. You could use these exercises for patient exercises and I’ll give you some indications for that. But they’re also great exercises used for your own wellness program. Let’s go ahead and jump right into it.

We’ll go ahead and look at the slides.

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So just to start off with let’s kinda look at the channel orientation and look at sort of a planer approach to the channels. You have several channels that basically line up along the sagittal plane. If you had a sagittal plane going in the midline, the mid sagittal plane, it would go right in through the Remi and out through the do my, but if I were to move that channel over, I would start accessing things like the stomach channel, the spleen channel.

The lung channel, the large intestine channel, the kidney channel too on the abdomen, but most of the kidney channel would be on the back part of the body with the urinary bladder channel, the heart channel, and the small intestine channel. Those more line up on that sagittal plane in the back. If those channels primarily do flexion and extension type movements, a lot of Qigong patterns feature those channels quite a bit. A lot of ’em ebb and flow between those flexion and extension of the torso, stabilization of the spine, this growing and expanding and a whole bunch of movement patterns associated with that.

I’ve done some webinars on those movement patterns. Maybe in the future we’ll do a few more, but today I wanna bring the attention to the, the frontal plane alignment. So those plane, that plane would go through the body on the side, along the San Ciao channel and the gallbladder channel, and it would exit through the medial part of the thigh, along the liver channel, or the middle of the arm along the pericardium channel.

Those. Sinus of the channel, so to speak. They attach in a way that does primarily side bending type motions and rotational type motions. So let’s look at a little bit of anatomy with that and that’ll set us up for doing a few of the exercises. So here’s a kind of a representation of the gallbladder sinu channel.

You can see that these line up mostly along the lateral aspect of the body. Some of the structures, like the IT band go kind pretty much straight up and down. But other ones you might notice have a little bit more of a diagonal position. Maybe down and out like in the obliques, or you have lat the lats, which primarily just go straight up and down.

There’s a little bit of an angle to ’em. So these are aligned in such a way that they can do side bending, abduction, or, excuse me abduction type movements. So movements in the frontal plane. This is the representation of the liver sinew channel. Classically, it ends at the groin, but I take it up into this continuous myofascial plane through the iliacs, quadratus lumborum and SOAs.

So these structures, again, they kinda line up along that frontal plane. A frontal plane would exit out through this area on the thigh, and they do things like abduction, a deduction. But a lot of the sinus, like I’ve alluded to already. Do spiral around the body. So even though they can do side bending type motions, like side bending of the trunk, they can also do rotation, like the external obliques rotating the ribcage in a contralateral direction away, rotating it to the opposite side or the serous anterior, the pericardium sinu channel involves or includes the serous anterior.

But then it also kinda wraps around following that myofascial link into the rhomboids, it creates a sort of sling that helps rotate the shoulder girdle. We’re gonna look at a lot of shoulder girdle rotation aspects today. So that just gives you a little summary of the anatomy. So then what’s the benefits?

What’s the goal? What do we wanna accomplish by doing movements in this frontal plane or the transverse plane, side bending type motions or rotational type motions. First one is this gonna build Qi in the Shao yang and Dian channels? We’re gonna look at a quick video in just a moment that’ll show some examples of that.

It’s gonna balance the position of the shoulder girdle, rib cage, and pelvis. So we want to work with aligning those those three major centers of the body. The shoulder girdle, rib cage, particularly the lower rib cage. ’cause there’s a lot of movement potential in the lower rib cage and then the pelvic girdle.

If we move those, really what we’re doing, ’cause there’s a lot of sinus that connect those to the spine. So we’re basically mobilizing the spine. Things like the sacroiliac joint and the pelvis. And then if we’re moving those structures, we’re also mobilizing and massaging the internal organs. We’re working with these particular channels.

It’s the case that those are primarily gonna be mobilizing things like the liver, the pericardium, the San Jiao. And the gallbladder, but particularly the liver and the pericardium will be something that we look at. So let’s start with the first goal, basically the first benefit to build chi in the XO Young in the jo y channels.

That’d be gallbladder, San Jiao liver and pericardium channel. And let’s go to a short video and just look at these types of motions to give a kind of an example of what these movements look like.

All right. Let’s look at the second goal, which is the balance, the position of the shoulder girdle, rib cage, and pelvis. I’m gonna use a model, this tensity model. Some of you might have seen this type of model before. It’s a really good representation of the human body and the form of the human body. I think in the past people might have just looked at layers of things like a brick, bricks on top of bricks to like a wall or something to describe the alignment of the body.

One bone stacked on the next bone, which is stacked on the next bone, very much like a brick is stacked on the brick. Those are really more of a compression structure where the force goes through the wall and great for a building. Great for those types of things. It’s not a great representation for the body.

For instance, if you were to move that. Wall into an angle, the thing would come crumbling down. It needs to kinda have that stacked alignment. Our body’s more like this tensity structure where our bones, like these wooden dolls are floating in the sea of continuous tension, which is formed by our myo fascia.

And it’s the myo fascia that gives the form to the structure, so if I were to. Misalign it or shorten one of these wires, one of these elastic bands, it distorts the whole structure. Maybe the person comes in complaining of pain somewhere away from this problem, and as we release this or change the tone here, that kind of helps ign the whole structure.

So our body’s much more like this. So if you were to bring your attention to the bands along the lateral aspect, that would be a good representation of the Sinu channels. Of the gallbladder and San Ciao channel, for instance, and the tone of that has a nice ebb and flow between one side and the next.

You saw this with the movements that we were doing where one side shortens the other side shortens. There’s a nice ebb and flow if I were to bring the Dway Yin channels into it. There can be nice rotation between these structures too, but there’s a communication that happens. Between the, in this case the wooden Dow on top and the wooden dow on the bottom between say the shoulder girdle and the pelvis.

They’re gonna communicate with each other through this continuous tension network. So if we can work on getting movement in the shoulder girdle, that’s gonna help pull on the rib cage and move the rib cage, and it’s gonna pull on the pelvis and move the pelvis and vice versa. If I move the pelvis. It’s gonna communicate through this continuous tension network via the myo fascia.

So we’re gonna be educating and aligning the structures through these XO yang and DY channels. So it’s a nice model. We’re gonna look at some exercises in just a little bit. You can keep a sort of a visual of this nice tensity model ’cause it’s a really good model for understanding movement in the body.

So let’s go back to the presentation. So we’ll go to the third benefit and goal, which is to mobilize the spine, the sacroiliac joint, and the pelvis. You can look at this this kind of ribcage structure and the spine structure, and note that there’s a lot of. Coupled movement of rotation and side bending.

But what I really wanna consider is that the structures, the myofascial sinus that attach the shoulder girdle to the spine, thoracic spine in particular, if those are moving and mobilizing, that’s gonna pull on the spine, that’s gonna contribute to a nice, movement in the spine, it’s gonna, it’s gonna help that rotation and side bending of the spine.

Same thing with those structures like the serus anterior that attach the shoulder girdle to the rib cage. That’s gonna pull on the rib cage. That’s gonna help mobilize that thoraco lumbar junction region. And then there’s sinus that attach the pelvis to the spine. Quadratus lumborum. SOAs, the obliques.

These are all structures that would be part of the network of channels we’re looking at. Those are gonna help communicate movement from the pelvis into the spine. It’s very hard to picture movement of every spinal level when you’re doing a Qigong or a therapeutic exercise. So I kinda like to put my focus on the shoulder girdle, rib cage and pelvis and allow the sinus to pull on the spine and mobilize the spine through that network.

Image on the right shows the enate bone movements and things like walking, but there’s a lot of Qigong patterns that involve that sort of spiraling, contralateral, sort of torsional type movement through the pelvis to help normalize that movement in the denominate bones. And create good healthy movement in the sacroiliac joint.

So the exercises we’ll look at in just a moment will really feature a lot of these types of movements. So the final benefit then, and the final goal will be to mobilize and massage the internal organs. So the image on the left is showing the pericardium. You can take note that the pericardium has attachments onto the spine.

It has attachments on the rib cage, it has attachments on the sternum. So if I were to think about this tensity structure and that pericardium was sitting in the middle of this, attached to all of these structures, as they’re moving and stretching and pulling and turning, that’s gonna help pull on the pericardium.

So it’s gonna create a mobilization and a kind of a shearing force into the pericardium. Same thing with the liver and the image on the right. It has a movement in the frontal plane. So as I’m going into this side, bending type motion. Expanding and stretching one side and shortening one side that’s going to take the liver into a nice range of motion.

It also has a transverse plane motion. So there’s a rotational type forces are gonna pull on that liver and kind of help take it into a nice range of motion. So that’s what I wanna look at with these groups of exercises. I’m gonna take you through a couple exercises. You can follow along with ’em.

And like I said, these can be your own exercises you do for your own wellness program, but they do make really nice patient exercises. So let me go and get set up for that. We’re gonna be in a slight different position. I’m gonna be standing and I’ll walk you through two exercises that can be used for patients or for yourself.

So we’re gonna look at a therapeutic exercise for the San J Innu channel along the lateral aspect of the arm and up into the shoulder girdle. It’s paired pericardium channel on the medial aspect of the arm into the ribcage. From there, it actually wraps around the ribcage. Both of these channels influence rotation and side bending type motions.

So when you’re doing those rotation and side bendings, that helps mobilize the thoracic spine, the sinus pull on the thoracic spine, and that helps massage the internal contents of the thoracic cavity, particularly the pericardium organ. So let’s look at this exercise and I’m gonna do it mirror to you.

So what I call out will be opposite so you can follow along. So the right hand will be on top, fingers facing in the opposite directions. Turn to the left open, turn to the right and close. Turn to the left open, expand. Turn to the right close, compress. Turn to the left open. Turn to the right close. Turn to the left open.

One hand is higher than the other hand. That helps move the shoulder girdle on the ribcage Turn. They become level and they change. So it’s mobilizing the shoulder girdle on the rib cage. Turn open, expand, turn close, compress, turn open, expand, turn close, compress, turn open, expand one hand higher than the other.

They become level and they change. Turn, expand, turn, compress. Change directions. So left hand on top fingers facing to the opposite directions. Turn right, expand, turn left. Compress, turn right. Expand. Hands move away. Turn left. Compress the hands. Start coming together. Turn right, expand, turn left. Compress, turn right, expand.

Turn left. Compress. Turn right. Expand one hand higher than the other. Turn, the change comes around. Turn right one hand higher than the other. Turn. They change, turn, expand, turn, compress. So we’re massaging the rib cage thoracic spine pericardium organ. San Jiao organ, at least in the upper port, upper Jiao, and we’re creating mobility and fluid motion throughout that region.

Open, turn, expand,

open up the stance. We can do another exercise. This one starts to involve much more of the whole body, so including the liver channel. The gallbladder channel, so reach up. They still has that opposite opposing motions. So it’s working the sha yang and the joy in channels in rotation and side bending hands separate.

One arm pulls back, the other hand pushes out. Hands come together. Turn. One hand pulls back. The other one pushes out. Balance, reach, expand. Turn,

turn, reach across. Turn one arm pulls back. The other one pushes out. Turn. Change directions. Reach across. Pull the arm back. Push the arm out and change.

Pull the arm out. Push the arm out. Change.

Pull the arm back. Push the arm out. Turn.

Hope you enjoyed the exercises and you found those useful. Again, I wanna thank the American Acupuncture Council for having me on. It’s always a pleasure to be here and work with work with the American Acupuncture Council and with everybody who’s taking part in the webinar. I’ll see you guys next time.

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