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Click here to download the transcript.
Hello, I’m Brian Lau. Welcome. I’m here today with Matt Callison. We’re both with AcuSport Education. Also here today with Chad Bong. Many of you know Chad Bong. He’s one of the founding members of the Sports Acupuncture Alliance. There’s been three summits so far. Chad, you can let us know about the state of any upcoming ones. We’re in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic, so I believe that’s on hold. But we’ll have a chance to chat about that.
Chad’s also the host of PinPoint Performance Podcast. Just had a recent edition out with Jamie Chavez. I was interviewed for that. That’ll be coming out in a little bit. I think Matt’s been a past guest of that also. Whitfield Reaves, a bunch of other really great educators have been a guests of that podcast. Chad, do you want to say anything about the upcoming summits or possibilities of that?
I don’t know. We’re a little nervous about trying to get a hundred people in a room in our current state.
Yeah, sure.
So I don’t know. We have a lot of decisions to make with that. So as things start to get clear, maybe as a vaccine comes out, then we’ll be able to set it down the line. But it’s a big project. I was very thankful we didn’t have one set for this spring because-
Yeah, timing is not good for your live.
… I couldn’t have imagined having canceled something like that. So I’m glad that that worked out in our favor, but I’m a little nervous about setting one up right now. So we’ll see what the future holds there. But we’ll definitely keep with the podcast. We have a fair amount of them recorded-
Great.
… so we’ll be able to be turning some of them out every two weeks.
Awesome.
Yeah. So, Chad, just a little bit of background. Chad, you have a Master’s in Exercise Science.
Correct.
Also a massage therapist, studied massage therapy. A graduate of Southwest Acupuncture College. You’ve taught at a number of schools, Southwest, you’re currently at the WON Institute, and you’ve taught at Tri-State College of Acupuncture.
Yes.
Then in addition to that, of course you teach a lot of continuing education classes. So many folks who are listening might have attended some of those-
Possibly.
… or highly recommended to attend at some point in the future when we’re back doing live stuff.
Yeah, I definitely prefer the live stuff because I like the hands-on stuff, like what we’re talking about today, the palpation stuff. I don’t know how you teach that over the internet. Although I have to teach that over the internet because The WON is on 100% online classes right now.
Yeah, sure.
In the next couple of weeks here, I have to start teaching, three, four-hour classes on palpation.
Yeah. We’re going to be doing some online stuff with palpation, too.
It’s going to be tough.
It’s tough, but it challenges you in a different way. It brings out some sides that puts the spotlight on and makes you observe a little bit more. I mean it’s good to be positive about it. But I agree. Ideally, there’s no substitution for palpation live.
Yeah. I can’t put my hand on their hand and help them feel what they’re trying to feel. Once you teach this stuff for long enough, you can place your hand on top of somebody else’s finger and feel what they’re feeling through their fingers.
Sure.
So you can be like, “Not that thing right there, that thing right there.” You just can’t do that over the internet. So at least I haven’t figured that out yet.
Hey, Brian. I was looking at our list for the introduction for Chad, and it looks like there’s one line here. So Chad’s also a licensed acupuncturist and he’s completed Whit Reaves’ apprenticeship program. You also co-authored a book with Whit, right?
I helped with his book.
Yeah. So maybe that’s a good segue to go into your article from coracobrachialis that you just spoke about with Lhasa. I think it was last week or two weeks ago. Do you want to segue right into that, Chad?
Sure, we can move into that. So I did a coracobrachialis. We’re trying to put out some information for people during the COVID thing here. So I tried to pick something that I think just gets missed sometimes, I think, that other acupuncturists send me patients for that, for whatever reason, they haven’t figured out or haven’t gotten.
So that’s where we got into the coracobrachialis. It’s an interesting one as far as the palpation stuff because it’s an important muscle to be able to palpate not only the tissue of the muscle, because it’s not super easy to palpate the coracobrachialis versus the short head of the biceps without some practice. Then you also have to really know where that whole neurovascular bundle is that’s sitting right underneath it.
So when you do go in there, the needle, you’re not whacking away on that. Although I know some acupuncturists who purposely hit things like that, but I’m not one of them.
So I think it’s important to really be able to feel the difference between tissues. A pulse would be a real easy one to feel there. Then feel the septum in between the short head of the biceps and the coracobrachialis.
Then we’ll find bony landmarks, the coracoid process, and having some way to think through that, and then be able to see where the muscle ends and where the muscle begins and being able to continue that line down so you can feel the tissue all the way I think is important. So I think that’s pretty good into this whole idea of palpation.
Yeah. The discussion of that, what you were pointing out, is something that I note quite a bit working with acupuncturists, and I think this makes sense. We learn points and we learn an anatomy of points, whether that’s specific muscular anatomy or just bone landmarks and palpation and feel for indentation.
So I think acupuncture is often, understandably so, thinking points and they lose sometimes sight of that real estate of the muscle attaches from here and travels through this region of the arm or whatever structure you’re palpating, and thinking of it as a space and a region and relationship from this muscle to another muscle where the neurovascular bundle is all of those things together. It’s easy to lose sight of when you’re used to feeling for individual points. So I know what-
I agree. If I think back to acupuncture school, it was just like you learn all of this stuff, but it’s just this one point and this is another point and another point. It’s not all of the tissue in between and what all that tissue feels like and the depths of the tissue and the three-dimensionality of the body, being able to think about the body in more than just the surface area. You can get to the same spot inside the body from different angles, different points.
Yeah, sure.
Going back to the coracobrachialis, wouldn’t you guys agree that sometimes coracobrachialis strains seems like it’s a bicipital tenosynovitis. It’s easy to go to a bicipital tenosynovitis when, in reality, it’s actually a coracobrachialis strain.
So that’s where palpation comes in. It’s so important to understand what you’re feeling. Is it really the bicipital tendon and you cross-fiber that? If that doesn’t really cause the pain, then go deeper into the coracobrachialis, especially after some resistance, so you can feel it pop up. So palpation is everything in assessment. It’s what builds a treatment protocol, right?
I find it very important. I bring in the whole massage therapy world to it. Although my concept on palpation and feeling and tissue has evolved quite a bit from what I would have just called myself a massage therapist versus after going through acupuncture school and spending all of that time working with Whit and just getting much more specific and precise with what I’m doing palpation-wise. Whereas in the beginning of massage school, it’s just sliding strokes.
Yeah, sure.
You don’t get quite so precise. But, over time, I think if you keep practicing, you get super precise.
Yeah, yeah. Whit’s very big into palpation, thank goodness, because palpation is a missing link in our training in school, that’s for sure. So with palpation, I mean, isn’t it a lifetime skill also? I mean we should continue to learn all the time, especially the more that you actually consciously know about anatomy. The more that you can actually see anatomy and know what the underlying structures are, then you can start to actually see it in their palpation. So it seems to me that it’s just a lifetime skill development.
Yeah. I think like most things, the deeper you go into it, the bigger the hole is. So you can just keep learning more and more. I sat down and wrote some notes about things that I wanted to talk about during this thing, and building your anatomy base to understand where all of those tissues are. Then, on top of that, building the palpation base.
Both of those are endless processes, things that you could go on learning for the rest of your life, the details of anatomy. I think my anatomy is pretty good, but I know there’s people out there who know their anatomy better. I think I could spend a lot more time with cadavers and ultrasound and things like that and try to develop my feel and the view of this tissue even better. So I think there’s always room for learning.
Sure.
Then palpation, I have students in the beginning, when I first started with them, do the thing where you put a one-inch piece of thread underneath sheets of paper and then they palpate it. People, when they begin, maybe can feel that under 15, 20, maybe a really good person might get 40 in the beginning. But if you keep practicing, you can get up near a hundred sheets of paper with that little piece of thread under there and you’ll be able to find it.
So just developing that sense so that when you feel something different in the tissue, you can start to feel the actual differences in texture, which is really what I’m looking for is changes in texture in the tissue that I’m trying to feel to be able to tell that there’s something different going on in that specific spot.
Wouldn’t you say that then you could also quantify to excess, deficient, damp, hot, cold, which would then set up your needle technique and also your application of acupuncture and moxibustion, right? So if it feels real excess, we’re going to be feeling it with palpation and then needling it as a reducing method. So palpation is … It’s so incredibly deep. Hey, Chad. I think you and I have been bogarting this, and we haven’t been letting Brian speak.
Oh, no, I’m good. [crosstalk 00:11:37].
You’ve just to jump in, Brian.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It’s a first come first serve show here.
Yeah. I do want to segue a little off of Chad giving tips because I had a few thoughts for this podcast of giving maybe some tips. We don’t have a ton of time to go into that, but we can talk about some guidelines or tips since that is an area within the acupuncture profession that could be improved on. You already gave a tip basically, was increasing sensitivity by having some method that you can start to add sheets of paper and feel through those sheets of paper to where you have greater and greater depth that you’re feeling through.
Yeah. If you want to talk about how, I think somebody could get better and better at palpation. First, I think you have to have a basis in anatomy, right?
Yeah, sure.
I think we all have. We’ve all been thinking about anatomy a lot. I think you need to learn that base so you can understand what tissues you’re trying to feel. Then I think you should build on that with learn what all the functions are, learn where the major neurovascular bundles are going through things, and maybe learn the functions of those muscles by practicing your manual muscle test, so that you can see what those muscles are actually doing.
Then you’re building multiple brain connections where you’re not just trying to memorize, “Oh, the biceps does elbow flexion,” you’re actually doing the elbow flexion or you’re having somebody else do the elbow flexion while you resist them.
So I think building your anatomy base, and thinking of it from small to big. Don’t just like, “I’ve got to learn all of the anatomy.”
Yeah, sure.
Just put pieces on top of pieces, layer it. But then once you have the … And I think you should do some range of motion stuff in there so you can see how people move. Then start feeling things. Really, the more different types of bodies, the more different tissue you feel, the better idea you’re going to have on what this tissue should feel like and what is different about the tissue?
Watch the students going through the three semesters of palpation stuff with me, and in the beginning, they can tell their auto-muscle and that’s about it. By the end, they’re like, “Is it that thing or is it that thing?” which is cool to watch the progression with them. Is that what you’re looking for?
Yeah. Well, I mean I have one. We were mentioning the coracobrachialis when you mentioned that doing a contraction to bring that muscle up. A tip that I often teach when I’m talking with students about a little bit more certainty for what they’re palpating is, yes, you can get the muscle to come up by a certain action, but you can be a little bit more precise on what action you use.
Coracobrachialis is a great example because it does really two major actions, but one of them, shoulder flexion. Well, it’s also right next to the bicep. So if you put your finger and span down and get on what you think is the coracobrachialis and have the person do shoulder flexion, it’s not going to tell you a whole lot because it’s going to contract, the biceps are going to contract. And what am I feeling? I don’t know. But if you recall that it also does adduction, [adeduction 00:00:14:46], adeduction is a much better-
Horizontal.
Horizontal adeduction. But also just straight adduction. That’s going to-
It tends to position your arms in, I guess, but-
Yeah, but that’s going to bring it up a little bit more different. It’s going to differentiate it a little bit more from the biceps just based on the action that it’s doing.
Yeah, a mechanism of injury, like, for example, you see usually this injury with people doing too many pushups or bench press or something like that. What else refers to the anterior shoulder, though? Doesn’t the lower motorpoint, which is also the same location of a trigger point of infraspinatus? [crosstalk 00:15:19].
It definitely refers to the front of the shoulder. The story I told at the beginning of the coracobrachialis thing, that’s what I thought it was. I pushed on her infraspinatus, I felt around back there, and I found a spot that just referred right to the front of her shoulder. So I was like, “Well, there we go. This is our thing.” She was a backstroke swimmer. So I was like I’ll treat her. Infraspinatus is the main concept muscle-wise, and this’ll get better pretty quickly, and it didn’t.
Don’t you hate that?
It doesn’t happen that often, but, well, it does.
Did they get somewhat better?
I learned something, though, right? I learned something by having her not get better. She didn’t get better basically.
At all. At all. Okay.
A couple of times actually. So I did some work on the infraspinatus and I did some work on the biceps and the deltoid, and I just wasn’t getting anywhere. Then, finally, I was like, well, I’m going to try the coracobrachialis. Once I needled the coracobrachialis, the next time she was 90% better when she came in. Then she was back to swimming. She’d missed swimming for years, basically, as far as competitive swimming.
How do you needle the coracobrachialis? We teach it as needling the motor innervation [ju pi 00:00:16:36], which is one tsun below [jan ayling 00:16:39]. How do you needle it?
So I’ll come pretty close to there. I’ll find it off of the coracoid process and then palpate out, making sure I’m on the right line by … People can see me, right?
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Making sure I’m on the right line by coming and finding it in here, and then palpating all the way up here and then needling going out and down. But not super deep. You just want to get through whatever you happen to be under there, either the anterior delt or a little bit of the pec major. But, again, all of that neurovascular bundle there is sitting behind the coracobrachialis there. So you’ve got to be a little bit careful.
So I’ll needle it there, but you can also get into it inside the arm here, which is what I talked about when I did the coracobrachialis presentation. But here you really have to know your palpation, right?
Yeah, sure.
You have to be able to separate … I don’t know if you can see my screen right now, but if you do a light flex, you can see that septum in there. If you flex it a ton, it’ll just go away and it’ll just feel like the bicep.
But you can get this little space right here, but then you have to know right behind it. In this position, inferior to it is that whole neurovascular bundle. You can feel the brachial artery right there. So you’ve got to make sure you don’t hit that thing.
But this would be by palpation in here to see if I can find a spot that’s really interesting. Then I’d usually get two needles into it. You don’t have to needle deep. That muscle is basically right at the surface, so you don’t have to go crazy, again because you want to be careful of all the neuro stuff back there.
Then I would just get two needles into that tissue, some light e-stims just until either the patient feels it or you see a little tiny bit of a twitch. Then if you have needles in up here and needles here, you might see these needles moving and these needles moving, if you have a light twitch going on.
Brian, how do you like to palpate it?
Well, I use the motorpoint ju pi quite a bit. But like Chad mentioned, I sometimes do look for trigger points, or ashi points, a little bit more inferior. I don’t discuss that as much with people just because it takes a lot of set up in terms of students. It takes a lot of set up, and there is a little bit more risk. You have to be a little more mindful of the palpation.
But, yeah, I do sometimes needle it in that more inferior aspect. I do find that that’s a pretty common area of congestion. I also do a lot of manual work in that area. I probably more frequently do manual work at that part of the muscle than I do needling it and separating the coracobrachialis.
This is where it comes really having the palpation skills there because you can separate it from the septum. It can create a lot of congestion in that septum between the biceps and the triceps and being able to open that septum up.
Something else that we do when we teach … Chad, you probably know that we use a lot of models with sinew channels. The coracobrachialis is on the pericardium sinew channel, palpating it and then going and needling either a point like [piece X 00:19:44] or something. But in that case, I’d probably go with another muscle on the pericardium sinew channel like the pronator teres, maybe pronator quadratus, and see, when you go back and return to palpation, if that diminishes. Usually it’ll be about by 50% that you can diminish some of the sensitivity to palpation from a distal point. It doesn’t mean you won’t needle it locally, but-
So I’m glad you brought that up because David Legge, in his book, he basically puts it on the lung channel.
Yeah, that’s great.
And I was like I don’t necessarily agree with that. So I’m glad I got somebody else on my corner here [crosstalk 00:20:20] pericardium.
Yes.
It’s all opinion, of course, right?
Yeah, I mean you’re trying to decipher some pretty ancient language that’s been translated.
It’s in a different myofascial bag than the lungs, the lung channels. Yeah, it’s different.
Yeah, I agree.
Yeah, we have the biceps on the lung channel and then how that relates down the arm, the pericardium on the … I mean coracobrachialis on the pericardium channel. I think we have a video where we do on a cadaver specimen, where we have a needle in the … I don’t think this is up on our YouTube channel, but the needle in the coracobrachialis motorpoint and pronator teres motorpoint.
I forget now which one we turned and wrapped, but more aggressive than you do on a person. This isn’t a technique demonstration, but turning the needle to where it really, really grabbed a hold of the tissue. Obviously it’s a cadaver specimen, so there’s no sensation.
But you really want to get the needle stuck and then pull and see if it transmits force. I think it was from coracobrachialis down to pronator teres. You pull on coracobrachialis and you’ll see that [crosstalk 00:21:26].
You saw them both move.
Yeah.
That’s pretty cool.
Yeah.
Now we needled it the way that we needle it in SMAC, which is supposed to meet at the bicipital tendon, going in at an angle distal into that area, into the innervation site, which is common area for strain in that region. It seems like going from what Chad was showing, going from the medial intermuscular septum, in between the bicipital septum, going that way. It seems like we’re just going to the same spot, but at two different angles.
Like I said, it’s a 3D thing. We’re working from three dimensions. So you wanted tips. I think a great tip is for people who … The first time you’re trying to work on a muscle or find a muscle is to break open the Motorpoint Index book and be like, okay, ju pi is right here. So I know that I’m all on that muscle if I go to this point, or at least I’m really close to it depending on some other person’s anatomy. But I’m right on this muscle. So you could find that spot.
Even if you’re not a motorpoint needling person, or if you are, but at least it gets you on the muscle so you can start in a spot that’s in a good spot, and then you can palpate from there. It’d be a good way to find, say, like a popliteal muscle or coracobrachialis or something like that. Just use the Motorpoint Index wording and description of the location to find the actual point on the muscle, I think, is a great way to go about it.
Well, gosh, since we’re talking about that, you might as well go ahead and get the Sports Medicine Acupuncture Textbook because the images have not just individual, but it’s grouped together. So you can see the motorpoints all together. Thanks for that, Chad. That was a nice segue, buddy.
No problem. Anytime.
Yeah, and I think it’s important to see it in relationships too, because it’s good when you’re learning anatomy to see that isolated muscle on a skeletal structure and get a clear picture of where it attaches to and where it lives, but then to be able to see it in relationship to the other structures … Because that’s going to be more like when you’re actually going to palpate because you have to differentiate between blood vessels and other muscles and just the whole picture.
Yeah. I think it just helps people who don’t have quite the palpation background to find a certain spot, but then we also know like, okay, that’s a relatively safe spot to put a needle essentially, is into where the motorpoint is marked out. So you have both a point that’s relatively safe to put a needle in and it gets you on the muscle. So I think it’s a good way to learn where each of these muscles are and where there’s points you could access them as you go about learning this stuff.
Now I want to bring one thing up, is that, remember, our founding fathers really didn’t know the anatomy so well. There is some literature that does show they had … They were doing dissections, for sure. But the anatomy knowledge is not like how it is today.
So not knowing the underlying anatomy then gives the practitioner so much of a feel of what’s happening in the skin over the muscle itself. How well can you move the skin of an acupuncture point or a motorpoint or a lesion or something? How well does that skin move over that muscle or adhere to it because of the skin ligaments and the subcutaneous tissue onto the fascia profunda?
So there’s so many different things that can be developed just by not knowing the anatomy, but by going by what’s happening within the skin. I think that’s how we started, right?
Sure.
Then with dissection then came more anatomy and such, because we’re feeling for excess and deficiency, and I already talked about all of that. But I think that was really quite traditionally was how it began.
I’m sure it was just, again, layers on top of layers of learning over a long time for our [inaudible 00:25:23].
Matt, I just saw a question come in about the name of the book you mentioned.
Oh, great. Awesome. Thank you. It’s called Sports Medicine Acupuncture. If you go to SMAtextbook.com, SMAtextbook.com, there’s information about it. Thank you very much for that.
Yeah, and I guess we can mention Whitfield Reaves’ book. Chad, you had some interaction with that book also, if you wanted to mention that, because another great resource for acupuncturists who are transitioning into a more orthopedic or sports model.
Yeah, the Acupuncture Handbook of Sports Injuries and Pain. Yeah, it’s a great concise book about 25 really common injuries that people … If you’re going to work in sports injuries kind of world, those are the injuries, the 25 of the most common injuries, you’re going to see. So it lays out a really simple way of going about treating those injuries. I’m not a very good [crosstalk 00:26:29].
Yeah, more and more resources are out there now for sports and orthopedic-based acupuncture, which is great. I think there’s more on the horizon, too. So it seems like it’s a really growing field right now.
Yeah, the amount of people who are into this and posting things that they’re trying has grown exponentially since we started.
Hey, guys, there’s only about four minutes left. Is there anything that you want to wrap up with or any other questions that we can be able to take?
I think-
I can give one quick … We’re on some tips. This is an easy tip and it won’t take long. But when we’re palpating muscles, also being able to effectively palpate bone is quite important. What I frequently see when I’m teaching palpation is people tend to go in very quick and jab you when they’re palpating for bone. Just a general tip is when you’re doing it to use a flatter surface.
If you’re using your fingertips and you’re trying to palpate the coracoid process, you can’t really tell if you’re on the head of the humerus, if you’re on the coracoid process. You’re on maybe attachments that can feel hard if you go in too quick.
Whereas if you come in and match the shape of the bone, it has like a little hook. So if you can get your finger around that little hook and get more surface on the bone, and also wait a little bit of time and let that density of the bone … As the tissue softens around your hand, that density of the bone really comes to your hand more. It’s a really good strategy for palpating bone.
Then once you’re on that, you can do a little back and forth movement to get a little more clarity to it. But bone palpation, I find for a lot of people who are not really taught outpatient well, they’re too quick, too quick on the point of their finger. So just imagine how much information … You can’t really bring in as much information on a point as you can on a flatter surface.
Yes, I would-
[crosstalk 00:28:26]. Go ahead, Chad.
I would carry that into muscle as well.
Sure.
I mean, if you go in there really quick, the people are just going to tense up. They’re going to have constant pain, especially if you’re working on bigger muscles, if you use a bigger surface, like I’ll use a fist or an arm or something like that. Then I’ll just find something I’m interested in and just keep working into a smaller thing so then I eventually get down to my finger or something.
But you can feel a lot of very interesting things that you might miss with just a finger with a wider surface on, say, a bigger muscle. So don’t forget to do that. And work your way in. So you can put a lot of pressure on a human being if you work your way in there slow. If you go in fast, they’re just going to jump off your table.
Yes, I agree. Something that I’ve said for a long, long time is if you use a number of different anchors, following up with what you just said, Chad, but specifically your pericardium nine, because, in my mind, what works for me is that allows intuition to come up. It seems like I get a lot of messages when I feel with my pericardium nine finger. Maybe that’s just [Mattism 00:29:29], but I believe that’s actually fairly true for a lot of people.
Yeah. I have people practice with all their fingers, like figure out what finger works for you.
It works better than the elbow, that’s for sure.
I don’t know, man. You can train an elbow pretty well.
Yeah, I agree.
That’s true.
I agree.
That’s true.
I agree.
My elbow sensation 20 years ago was nothing. I could tell I was on a human body. But, no, man, I can feel a ton of stuff. It’s just because I’ve used them a lot to find things. That doesn’t mean I’m using them to cause an immense amount of pressure on somebody. But on big areas, a forearm shaft, a shaft of your ulna, you can find a lot of stuff with it.
Yeah.
Hey, I know we don’t have a ton of time, but there are a couple of reoccurring questions refining palpation, and two that I’ve seen come up quite a bit is palpation on people who are obese, because it can create a little bit more challenge. I mean I’ve worked with plenty of obese people that had just great muscle tone, very easy to palpate, and some very thin people who had very … Very difficult to palpate. But, generally, generally, it’s much more difficult to palpate people who have extra weight. Any tips or thoughts on that?
Matt?
Sure. Move it to the side as much as you can, knead it as much as you can, and also put the patient into a position to allow gravity to move the subcutaneous fat out of the way. For example, if you want to go to the lateral side of the body or into the obliques or something like that, instead of having them being supine, have them roll to the side so you can have that tissue with gravity move out of the way. Different tips like that is fine, but it takes a while. It will start to melt, but it takes time to do that.
Yeah. I think there’s different levels of connective tissue inside adipose tissue, too. So I think there’s a difference in how some of these things are going to feel. Some of it’s pretty easy to move through, some of it’s more difficult to move through.
Retinacular cutis.
Yeah.
Again, it’s practice. That’s why I say you need to try on a lot of bodies. You can’t just practice on one person because, yeah, you’ll get good at palpating that person, but you need to practice on all shapes and sizes of people to really get good at this skill.
Yeah. Having done a lot of dissection, you get to see, with people who are obese, how much subcutaneous fat there is, but also how much internal visceral fat there can be. Even when you’re seeing what you’re doing, sometimes differentiating structures on a cadaver specimen can be very difficult with people who are obese.
These are all great tips, but at some level you just have to do your best and understand that it’s inherently more challenging. That’s why sometimes people who are more obese, sometimes they don’t do certain surgical procedures because it’s … I mean this is when you’re in there seeing things. It’s hard to differentiate.
Now imagine you can’t see anything and you’re going in with your hand trying to differentiate the structures. It’s harder. You just have to understand that it’s harder. But [crosstalk 00:32:38].
But it can be [inaudible 00:32:38] a lot of stuff.
Sure. But you have to also understand that, at some capacity, with some people that you just have to do your best and feel your best and trust that you’re on the right structure. If you are in a risky area, maybe choose not to do those certain points that you can’t safely differentiate where you’re at and needle safely.
Definitely.
Yeah. Now the palpation is followed by needling. Then the needling density also helps, wouldn’t you say?
Yeah.
So then if you’re palpating … Are we still on the obese, I guess?
Yeah.
I mean this is a whole another podcast or webinar.
Sure.
Yeah, it is. [crosstalk 00:33:17].
You’re talking about density of tissue when you’re dealing with a needle. That’s a whole … Like we could talk about another half an hour, probably an hour, about just how a tissue feels and how you need to learn that when you’re practicing your needle. What does it feel like to go through fat? What does it feel like to go through fascia? What does it feel like to go through muscle, both healthy muscle and not healthy muscle? You talked about like you could diagnose somebody off of palpation with excess, deficient, whatever. You could do the same thing with a needle.
Absolutely. Absolutely. That would be fun to do. That’d be a fun discussion to have.
Yeah.
I’m ready.
Well-
You guys, it’s 10:33. So another question or … Yeah.
It doesn’t matter to me.
We’ll also be looking at questions on Facebook and can answer those via written responses. But I think we’re probably about ready to wrap up.
All right. Some closing comments. Chad, I just want to say thank you very much for doing this with us. That was really, really fun. It’s always great to get your insight on this. Also, so, Brian, it’s great always being with you as well.
Yeah, of course.
Let’s make sure that next week that you stay tuned to this because you’ve got Yair Maimon that’s coming in. If you have not had an opportunity to be able to listen to him, he is a brilliant speaker, a real bright light. He’s an excellent person to tune in with. He’s got all kinds of different insights with acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So I hope you enjoy that. Brian, anything else that we need to say, thanking American Acupuncture Council?
Yeah, thanks to American Acupuncture Council, of course. We’ll be back then in a few weeks down the road for some more discussion of orthopedic and sports acupuncture.
Yeah, this is a topic that Brian and I hit on the podcast that we did. So if you’re interested in this, stay tuned for when we release Brian’s podcast, because Brian gets into his thought process on this a little bit more in the podcast.
Awesome.
I agree.
That’s great. When is that podcast, Chad?
I don’t know.
Okay.
We have a pretty big queue of podcasts right now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one with Jamie Chavez, there was a little discussion on palpation, too. It wasn’t the centerpiece of the whole thing. It covered a lot of topics, but there’s a little bit in that also.
Josh, our goal is we get into it a little bit more, because he’s more of a bodyworker. You, we got into it quite a bit because you’re more of a bodyworker, too. So those are probably the two biggest ones we talked about palpation stuff.
Got you, okay.
Josh is … I don’t know when we’re going to release that either, but it’s coming to PinPoint.
Okay. Yeah, I was about to say I hadn’t heard his yet, but that’s why.
Yeah.
All right.
Thanks, guys.
All right, thanks very much, and we’ll see you next time.
See you.
Okay, bye bye.
Bye bye.
We done, Brian?
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Click here to download the transcript.
Hi, everyone my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician and I teach facial acupuncture classes internationally. I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to present a webinar to all of you, on how we can best support our patients, our cosmetic patients, our neuromuscular facial patients now through telemedicine and also once we start opening up, how we can continue to support our patients safely in our treatment rooms if we’re doing any points on their face. So this is one example of how we can actually work on someone’s face. This was me teaching a class… A portion of the class was watching me do some face lifting techniques that are unique to what I teach, and I’m going to talk about that in a moment.
I found this cartoon which I thought was very fitting and it’s supposed to be someone doing long distance acupuncture, and I thought during this time it would be funny… not funny, but many of us have found ourselves trying to kind of scramble figure out how are we going to support our patients if we are in a place where we can’t treat them, and especially if you specialize in cosmetic acupuncture or you have any patients who are new or current patients who have any sort of neuromuscular facial condition, how can you help them? This is a slide from one of my classes and what it is, is a quote from Coco Chanel and she’s saying that from birth until age 25 you have the face that your mother gave you. From 25 to 50 you have your own face that you create, and then from 50 on you have the face that you deserve. I put this slide into this presentation because so many of us are missing that care that we’re used to getting from outside, whether it’s for our bodies, for our faces, for our skin, for our hair, many of us and our patients are used to going outside for these services. I’m in Maryland in the USA and here everything is completely shut down and has been, we’re on week eight now of complete shutdown.
So there are ways that we can support our patients during this time. Telemedicine is actually a wonderful way that you can support your patients, not just with needles like you normally would but there are methods that you can use to help them physically, emotionally… And I’m going to go through a few of those possibilities with you. One of the most important things to think about when you’re thinking about treating the face is how the face is connected to the rest of the body, and when you’re treating the outside you’re treating the inside. So by treating a person’s face you’re treating all of them, and the same goes for if you’re doing body points it also helps to treat their outside.
In my classes I teach a full body protocol for facial acupuncture. It’s not just working on the face which will help if you’re doing cosmetic acupuncture, you can kind of get around… work around some of the things that maybe you’re used to doing by providing some of that full body work. Additionally, now is a great time to do a telemedicine intake for your new patients. Assuming that some of us will be opening up, it’s coming up in the next few weeks coming into summer, really getting prepared so that when you do see your new patients you can limit or reduce the amount of time that you have to spend doing the face to face intake, I’m going to talk about that as well. How can you support your existing facial patients, whether or not they have a neuro condition like bell’s palsy, trigeminal neuralgia, stroke, Ms ptosis. Any condition that affects them here there are things that you can do now to get… to set the stage for when they do come in. Chinese medicine is uniquely suited to help our patients body, mind, spirit and so we really are at quite an advantage over some other modalities.
As I said I’m also going to talk a little bit about what we can do when we do open. So I touched upon that a lot of our patients who are used to getting different services, whether it is their Botox or filler or their lasers or peels, or just a facial amongst other things they have not been able or they are still not able to have these services, but there are things that we can do to help them and any of you who are on social media, know the myriad of jokes that have been going around people and their inability to care for themselves saying they can’t wait. The first thing they’re going to do is get their hair done or their nails done.
So this kind of points to that. So telemedicine in general is great because it does give us an opportunity to work on some skills that maybe we would have never spent a lot of time developing for those patients who are afraid of needles, don’t like needles. It’s a nice, safe way for us to be able to practice our art. Our patients are not… for many of them not taking really good care of themselves right now. So you can speak to them during telemedicine about what’s going on with you as far as yourself care. Have you increased your alcohol consumption? Have you been following your regular hygiene routine? Are you getting enough sleep? How is your stress level? And all of these are very much a part of what your regular telemedicine sessions can be. I’m a Worsley trained five element acupuncturist. So a big part of my background and my training when I’m working with my patients, whether they’re my cosmetic patients or my pain patients is too check in with them about all of their systems to see how they’re going, and certainly you can do that through telehealth.
The reason why I… part of the reason why I was able to really make the jump from in-person to a telemedicine for cosmetic purposes is that the… so the skin on our face is the only place on our body where our muscle is attached to skin. So you can move the skin on your face and what this means to us as practitioners when we’re doing a session like this, we can look at our patients faces and we can see the different signs of their emotions. We can diagnose them constitutionally… and I’m going to break this down in a moment, but all of these emotions will get launched in the face. Since telemedicine is done through a camera, you have a unique opportunity really to look at your patient’s face and diagnose them that way. People are dealing with a lot of emotional issues, loneliness, isolation, fear, grief, people. Parents are having to homeschool their kids.
There’s a lot of over nurturing that’s going on for people that are in families, a lot of togetherness and in some cases there’s a lot of anger and frustration. So all of this is going to show up right here and this is all going to help you with your diagnosis. Also, really talking to them about what’s going on and giving them some self care skills, self-nurturing skills some of which you already know and some of which you might need to be a little creative as far as how can you take your skills whatever they are meditation or [qigong 00:12:44] and deliver those things to your patients. As far as offerings, speak to your patients about their nutritional habits, lifestyle support, are they getting enough exercise? What are the eating? What are they drinking? And as far as actually caring for their skin, you can teach your patients acupressure.
So for your current and your new facial patients, it can be acupressure on facial points and it can also be some body points that affect the face. So anything that you might be needling you can teach them some acupressure, and what I’ve done is I’ve just taken charts and highlighted or circled things, either taken a picture, scanned it and sent it to them. And then the next time I meet with them I’ll do a little training session with them, I’ll ask them how it’s going. I check in from week to week and it really keeps you engaged with your patients, and it makes them know that you care. So facial cupping, if you’ve never done facial cupping before I have a website where all of my live lectures are recorded, they’re all CEU recorded webinars and I teach facial cupping.
I also have a live stream class coming up, I was supposed to be teaching it in London. It is the first weekend in June and all that information is on my website, it’s facialacupunctureclasses.com and part of that class is a facial cupping. So this is what a facial cup looks like and it’s relatively easy to teach your patients how to do facial cupping and also facial Gua sha. The Gua sha tools I like look like this, and I’m going to talk a little bit more about those in a second. Also, micro needling is something that you can train them to do at home with a Derma roller as well. Any of my live stream classes are also recorded as well, I did want to mention.
I put this picture of myself… This is me teaching. I do make a lot of jokes when I teach our time is limited here so I’m going to keep the jokes and stories to an absolute minimum, but I put this picture up because you can see the lines on my face and those are very typical or someone who smiles and laughs a lot. When I’m teaching I go through all the different lines and what they mean and where they come from but I’m going to give you guys just a quick overview right now, and things that you can talk about with your patients or just use them as your own diagnostic tools. So on the left here is more of a picture of the different areas of the face and the organs that they correspond to, and this picture on the right is from Lillian Bridge’s book Face Reading, and I actually don’t… I personally don’t teach either one of these, I have a recording of one of my friends who is licensed to teach her class.
I have a section of that, that I include on Chinese face reading but there are a lot of different types of lines on the face that you can use when you’re diagnosing. There are a five element tools if you know five element acupuncture or if you’re interested, I go over a lot of this as well but looking at your patient’s facial color, the sound of their voice and the overlying emotion these are things that you can actually do with your patient through telemedicine. If the camera or their lighting isn’t good, they can take a picture of themselves with their cell phone and send it to you, and you can get a better idea of their color. You can also do tongue diagnosis and this can give you more information, same thing have them take a photo and compare it. Although you cannot feel their pulse, you can certainly get an idea of the pulse rate.
So if they’re wearing one of those Apple watches or whatever, whether it’s their pulse is slow or fast and if they don’t have a device, one of those Fitbits then you could just ask them to feel their pulse and count it for you. There are a lot of physical signs of aging that you can use through telemedicine to help diagnose what’s going on with your patient. If I have time I’ll get back to all of these, but I just wanted to put some of these up. These are slides from… I think they’re in their first module of my recorded webinar about diagnosis, and some liver and gallbladder lines. Some signs of kidney out of balance, [spleen 00:19:27] deficiency and then all the different facial lines and signs of aging and what they mean. These are things that you can look for when you are diagnosing your patient through telemedicine.
So, that’s a lot about diagnosis now What about treatment? What can you actually do for your patient? Well, by treating their spirit you’re going to treat their face, right? If someone is stressed it’s going to show up on their face. If someone is angry it’s going to show up on their face. If someone is fearful… if they’re grieving all of this is going to show up right here. So using ear seeds and teaching your patient… I have one of these little ears that I use and I’ll show my patient where to put the ears seeds, and then I’ll give them a diagram of the ear and I’ll put little dots. You can… here’s a great point for relaxation and then there were actually points right on the ear lobe that treat different areas of the face, the endocrine system to help with their complexion can help to balance their hormones. I’ve had patients call me their hair’s falling out, their face is breaking out. So the ear seeds can be great and they can even put them on acupuncture points. If they’re home they’re not going out which a lot of us aren’t, they could just put the seeds right on points. As far as the cupping and Gua sha, you can either take one of my webinars, you could… as long as you credit me you could use some of the pictures from that.
You could draw a picture for your patient and just show them it’s relatively easy and just because your teaching them doesn’t mean they’re not going to come to you afterwards. Because they will enjoy having you do this to them much more than doing it to themselves, but just teaching them some simple facial cupping, some facial Gua sha, how to really use the Gua sha tools and learning how to prescreen your patients for whose a candidate is important.
So I do recommend that you get trained, you don’t just try to wing it. There are some pictures from some of my classes and some acupressure that your patients can do. If you have current cosmetic patients and they’re contacting you going, “I got to get in, I got to get in.” You can teach them some acupressure on different points on their face that they can use to help to stimulate some of these points, and these are some common points that I use in my classes, and also some distal points that would be part of a facial acupuncture protocol. I found this picture online, I liked it because it was color coded and it made it easy to share with my patients. Of course, herbs are something that you can recommend for acne, rosacea, different cheek deficiencies, blood deficiency, stagnation any of these things are going to show up on the face. Puffy eyes, redness.
Any sort of skin condition usually can be helped through herbs, and I am not an herbalist so I’m not going to go into a lecture. There are prescriptions and formulations that can help with different skin conditions. As far as micro needling you can get a microneedle device. I sell them through AcuLift skincare, my company the AcuLift Derma roller and Lhasa has them, but you can buy them sell them to your patients or ask your patients to get one. These are great when you are practicing for your patients to use them between treatments or during this time when they’re looking for a really low tech way to treat their skin. It’s roller with titanium needles and it doesn’t damage the skin at all, it’s very gentle and they could just roll it on their skin. It stimulates collagen and elastin, and it can really go a long way to keep their skin looking good. When they’re at home you could teach them how to use it and again these are safe.
They are approved by the American Acupuncture Council, the AcuLift brand is approved by AAC for use in the treatment room. It is the only brand that is approved by AAC, and they can be used if their hair is falling out, you can use it on your scalp to help to stimulate blood flow, reduce [inaudible 00:25:14] excess testosterone, balance the hormones in the scalp. They’re great for pitted scars, acne scars and a lot of other things and I teach microneedling as well.
I don’t want to spend a lot of time on all this. You can go to my website and look up all of this. I want to make sure I have time for once you open. So I have noticed that a lot of people are going back to work in the next couple of weeks. So one of the big questions is, what do you do once you reopen? If your patient is supposed to be wearing a mask, how are you going to treat their face? Well, there are a few options.
So first when you think about a mask, there’s really only a certain part of the face that a mask covers, right? So if your patient is wearing a mask, the areas that you’re going to have difficulty reaching will be anything around their lips or kind of the gel area. So doing points like stomach 8, [inaudible 00:26:42], gallbladder 2 which you can still reach, and distal points, large intestine four, stomach 36, stomach 40. These points will all help the lower [Hussey 00:27:01] points will help to access this area of the face. Also, using Dr. Tan, if you use Dr. Tans you can do body imaging and you can treat their body.
So even if they are wearing a mask of course you can still treat everything here, and you can do ear points, you can do scalp acupuncture and these can all work to treat all of this, and then using some of your other tools of some of these other points can help with the rest.
So some of the… one of the skills that I teach in my class is using… utilizing the auricular muscles and doing submuscular needling, and this also helps to lift the face. Even if your patient is wearing a mask, you can still access these as well as doing points along the gallbladder 18, which works on the galea aponeurotica up which connects the occipital and frontal bellies of the occipitofrontalis muscle. These are all things that really work to lift the face. What about if you’re trying to… if you are practicing five element, and you need to do some entry exit points on the face? Well, you can access all of them actually except LI20, and in that case you would go down to the next accessible point, which was large intestine 18 which is in line with stomach nine and right behind the SCM.
Lastly, some other alternatives if you feel comfortable having your… if you’ve check their temperature and you screen them thoroughly, and they are asymptomatic and you are wearing a mask and a face shield depending on what the regulations are in your state, you could have them remove their mask or move their mask and treat their face that way, and the last thing is I did find this face shield if you could see here on the right. It was designed for estheticians to be able to treat their clients. It’s a giant sneeze guard and when I first I saw it I thought it was a joke, but I just ordered one. So we’ll see how it goes but again it’s a possibility because if you have on a mask and a face shield, you’re safe but you also want to protect your treatment space. If your patient did cough or sneeze, that it wouldn’t be spread throughout the treatment space.
So again a lot of the stuff I talked about was for cosmetics, but definitely for your neuro patients utilizing body points… any points you can access and I also have a two part webinar on treating neurovascular facial conditions, and a big part of treating a lot of these conditions is scalp acupuncture and body points with some facial points incorporated in. So, that is the end of my lecture and I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to share everything that I shared. If you have any questions you can go to my Facebook group which is Facial Acupuncture, I’m also on Instagram Facial Acupuncture. I have a Facebook page, Facial Acupuncture classes and my website where you can also write to me is facialacupunctureclasses.com and next week we will… AAC will be hosting Matt Callison and Brian Lau. So, that should be a great lecture and I want to thank all of you for your time, and I’ll be more than happy to answer your questions as best as I can. Thank you so much.
(silence).
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The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many companies from different industries. That includes the acupuncture sector. Many already have scaled their operation down to their skeletal workforce. The goal is to improve the level of protection versus this health emergency.
As an acupuncture liability insurance provider, we would like to reiterate that it is our goal to keep supporting our clients in any way possible most especially in these challenging times. So, in this post, we want to give some tips about good practices that every acupuncture clinic should consider implementing.
Opting to virtual consultations – With the help of modern technologies, acupuncturists can make use of virtual consultations. They can use video conferencing for case assessment. Of course, patients should still receive appropriate, evidence-based advice and guidance. Managing any health issues such as pains or disorders should not be a hassle in spite of distance consultation.
Practicing physical distancing – If there is a need for an in-person consultation or during treatment, physical distancing should be followed. This practice should be part of the ‘new normal’ while the medical community is still working to find a COVID-19 cure.
Wearing facemasks, PPEs – While on duty, the use of a mask and other necessary personal protective equipment should be considered. Along with proper handwashing, doing it can help improve the level of protection against COVID-19.
Choosing cashless payment – Instead of paying cash, acupuncturists may require clients to pay cashless. They can opt to go for electronic transactions, credit cards, debit cards, as well as using online payment platforms.
Of course, acupuncture liability insurance coverage should be part of the minimum requirements in running a clinic these days. This is to ensure that acupuncturists, in their practice, are protected from liability lawsuits even during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic.
For liability insurance inquiries, contact us at (800) 838-0383.
Click here to download the transcript.
Hi, folks. Jeffrey Grossman here from Acupuncture Media Works and AcuPerfect Websites. I am thrilled to be here. Thank you American Acupuncture Council for inviting me on here to conduct a program on their To The Point live training series on Facebook. I’m really glad to be here. I’m really glad to be a participant and a presenter here. We’re going to be doing some future programs, and I’m going to be talking about creative solutions to grow your practice using simple, effective, and sleaze-free strategies. I know that marketing is something that is imperative to help you grow your practice, and I also know that as an acupuncturist, you might not be that thrilled to participate in the marketing world.
But yet as an entrepreneur and as a healer, that which you, everyone who’s watching this who’s an acupuncturist, you are both of that, you will need to participate in and embark on and embrace both hats of being the entrepreneur and the healer. My goal through this program that the AAC is putting on is to provide you with some tools moving forward to help you market your practice, attract patients, reactivate your inactive patients, and to essentially grow your practice in a way that makes you feel comfortable, that allows you to reach some of the goals that you want with growing your practice, and to achieve some of the financial goals you’re looking to obtain with helping more people in your community with this beautiful medicine.
Again, thank you American Acupuncture Council for having me here and inviting me on as a presenter. Today, I want to talk about five different actions that you can implement now to prepare your practice to reopen. I also want to talk about a couple of things that you can be doing now to pivot your practice, so when this crazy time happens again, hopefully it won’t, but my feeling is that we’ll be going through waves of what we’re experiencing now with this crazy pandemic. One of the things that I want to encourage you all to do is to consider about different ways that you can pivot your practice now so when things happen in the future, you’re already there. You’re already prepared.
You already know what to do and how to keep the patients flowing and some finances coming in based upon what you’ve doing now to prepare yourself for the future. One of the things that’s really important is that it’s important to market your practice now while the competition is low. Because a lot of people right now are pulling back their marketing dollars and all of their marketing outreach because they’re scared or they’re frightened or they want to save and conserve money. But I really feel that now is not the time to be conservative in your marketing efforts. In fact, I think you should be putting a lot more energy into that right now, and I’ll talk about a couple of things that you could be doing in order to make that happen.
One of the things I also feel is really important that you could be doing right now is to educate yourself now on what you’ve been wanting to learn in the past. Whether or not you want to educate yourself on website basics or email marketing basics or specific acupressure points or tapping techniques or things of that nature, those are some important things that you could be incorporating in your life right now during this time that we have to reset and refocus because we’re forced to stay in doors, to really tap into those things that you’ve been needing to do in your practice. Five actions that you can implement now to prepare your practice to reopen. One of the first things that I really encourage you guys to do would be to maintain your digital awareness in order to stay on top of mind awareness.
The biggest thing I want to encourage you to do right now, which many of you may have been putting off and many of you may have already been doing this already, is to evaluate your website. Now, why evaluate your website? Well, good question, because your website is the calling card that everyone is going to be looking at and tapping into whenever they hear about you. Any future referral or any future word of mouth or any type of marketing that you’re going to be doing in the future, everyone is going to be going to your website. It’s going to be important for you to take this time to use it as wisely as you can. One of the things that I suggest you do is to make whatever improvements need to happen to your website now. Here are a couple of things I want to encourage you to do.
Explore your homepage, okay? What happens when people visit your website? What is the first message that comes across to them about what you do and what you have to offer for them? Is it easy to navigate? Do you have a message that comes across to them when they hit your website? Do they know that you’re a specialist in sports medicine or a specialist in fertility or that you’re amazing in helping support immune health or that you’re really good for stress and anxiety relief? Many of you might not be specializing right now, but I encourage all of my students in my practice management class and all of the practitioners that I’m mentoring to figure out something that they can specialize in.
The reason is is because every acupuncturist is trained to be a general practitioner, which is great. We can help so many different conditions. This being a specialist means that you are able to focus your mind, your money and your communication processes and your messages on specific niches. That’s one thing I would really encourage you to do. Also, make sure that your blog posts are current and up to date. Maybe you could take some time to write a couple of blog posts now about immune health and about staying calm and about how to be productive, what points are good for immunity, what points are good for keeping you stress-free, and what points are really good for helping you stay motivated and productive. Okay?
Also, you want to check to make sure that your website has multiple calls to action. If you’ve seen any past webinars or trainings that I’ve done, you’ve heard me talk about calls to action. These are specific calls that are on your website that make people take action. Maybe you people visit your website and they might not schedule with you right away, but maybe they’ll give you their email address in exchange for a free eBook on immune health, or maybe they will click to download a low cost complementary evaluation or exam that you may be offering. On your website, you need to have multiple calls to action, little buttons that say, “Click here for this. Click here to schedule for this. Click here to download this.”
If your website doesn’t have that, I encourage you to take that into consideration. One of the first things I really want you to do is to audit your digital awareness and evaluate your website. If any of you are interested in getting a free website evaluation, feel free to put some comments in the box below the videos here and I will reach out to you. I’ll have some team members reach out to you to provide you with a free website evaluation because that’s something that we do that’s near and dear to our hearts. Okay? The next thing that I think is really important for you guys to do is to tap into some technologies now that you can learn how to use and learn how to work with your patients that you could use now and also into the future.
Because, like I said, I don’t think that this is a one and done kind of thing. I think this is the kind of thing that’s going to be coming back to us. Telehealth, that is the big buzzword these days. Doxy.me is one of the easiest platforms that you could be using in your practice. It’s really easy to set up. There’s no downloads that need to take place. Clients, they just click and they access your telehealth portal. Exploring technology is important. I think one of them would be making sure that you’re familiar with telehealth, and the other one is to do videos.
I think doing something like this where you could actually put on a camera or use your phone and sit there and educate about immune health or educate about tapping specific points for calming anxiety or stress or improving insomnia or helping to support the immune system. You have so many tools at which to educate and teach on. Don’t hold back, okay? Maybe you’re scared about getting in front of a camera or maybe you’re scared about what you should be saying. But the thing is, I feel like this whole crisis that’s been happening now, people are becoming less judgmental and you don’t need to be a model and look handsome and beautiful in order to be behind the camera.
Just showing up and being real and offering really solid content and making sure that you’re there to support your community, people will get that. They’ll really resonate that with you. I encourage you all to tap into the technology of using videos for your marketing prospects and to help grow your following. YouTube is the way to do that. There are so many different ways. You could turn on your iPhone and take a couple of videos. You could have other friends and family members or other practitioners even interview about a couple of things. One of the things I would encourage you all to do is to jot down some of the points that you know that are really great for supporting immune health, right?
You could name a few off the top of your heads, and put together a short little video. It could go something like this. Hi, my name is Jeffrey Grossman, and I want to share with you about how acupuncture and acupressure can help support your immune health in these crazy times. I’m really committed to helping people in our community to stay well and to stay healthy. Many of you might not be aware of the fact that acupuncture is really great for supporting immune health. What I want to do is I want to walk you through three acupressure points and how to use those points to stimulate immune health. That’s it. Really super simple, right? That’s one video I would definitely encourage you to do.
Also, those of you that work with herbs, what herbs are in people’s kitchen right now that can help with lung health or coughs or immune health or raising the chi in any way? I am sure you can think of some. Do a video on these kinds of things, okay? Those of you that are frightened about doing any types of video, but you want to do them, again, drop a comment below here and I’ll reach out to you because I’m committed to helping practitioners find success during this time and to overcome some of the fears that are keeping you back because this is the time to not be stagnant, right?
This is the time to tonefy and to move forward, to move your cheese so you can get out there, so when this whole thing is over and it’s going to come to an end and it looks like there’s a silver lining on the clouds right now, for many of us in the different states that we’re at. Things are going to eventually get back to normal for the most part, although there’s going to be things that aren’t going to be as normal as they are right now. I’m encouraging you to tap into these things that might make you feel uncomfortable. Because when you hit up against that wall of discomfort, you know you reached your limit, but moving beyond that is where you need to go. It’s not that hard to do. Okay?
You need support, you need some mentoring, you need some guidance, and maybe even just a short little script or some ideas on how to do that. That’s what we’re here to do and offer you. All right? Technology is really important to tap into, telehealth, putting up some videos, and also email marketing. It is the lowest hanging fruit that you have right now in your practice. Most of you that are listening to this have some semblance of an email list for your patient. Use it. All right? Tap into this knowledge. Again, if you do a video on immune health, you could use that same content to put on your website, to put on your social media pages, and to also put as an email to your patients. Because what else are you doing?
What else are they doing right now? If you’re providing solid content with them that is encouraging and engaging and inspiring, they’ll eat it up. They’ll really enjoy that. Sending emails out to your patients now is really important to stay in top of mind awareness so they don’t forget about you. Because if you’re not doing it, somebody else might be and somebody else is going to be getting in front of them. When this whole thing blows over, they might not come back to you because somebody else kind of captured their attention. Don’t lose their top of mind awareness of you. Okay? You want those people back. All right? The other thing I want to talk about, one of the other actions that you can be taking right now is to tap into your goldmine. Okay?
Now, your goldmine are the people that already know you, like you, and trust you. Those are the patients that you already have in your practice. Now, I want to encourage each and every one of you when I’m done with this video is to write a list of all of your A patients. Your A patients are those patients that you love. Whenever you saw them on your schedule, your energy raised up. You’re like, “Oh my God, I want to clone my practice with every single one of that kind of patient,” right? Those are your A patients, the ones that raise your chi. Now, your C patients, the ones when you see them on your schedule you’re like, oh my god, how am I going to do this? Okay, I can muster up that energy. It’s the end of the day. Okay, I can do this. I can do this, right?
Maybe some of you are giggling right now because you can resonate with that. Make a list of your A patients and call them. Simple conversation to have. Here it is. Hi there, Jeffrey. I am just checking in with you. I miss seeing you here at the clinic, and I just want to see how you and your family are doing during this crazy time. I also want to let you know that there are a couple of new offerings that I’ve been tapping into here at the clinic. We are now offering telehealth, and I’m hosting a class on four points to support immune health. I also want to share with you on certain specific herbs that are really helpful that you probably have in your kitchen that can help support your immunity. That’s the conversation. Just call up your A patients and just check in with them.
In my group mentoring class that I run each month, people are doing that, and the practitioners are surprised that they’re getting such a great feedback from their patients. They’re like, oh my God, thank you so much for reaching out to me. How many other doctors have reached out to you during this time? I mean, I imagine probably none. Okay? For your patients to hear from you when you’re just, “Hey, I’m just checking in and seeing how you and your family are doing. I want to let you know about some really cool offerings that we’re having here at the clinic,” that’s cool. That goes a long way. Make a list of your A patients, reach out to them with a phone call, and then with a follow-up email, simple conversation.
Really that’s all we need to have with them. The other thing I want to talk about would be consider diversifying your offers. Okay? Now, what do I mean by that? By diversifying your offers, what else can you think about that you can offer now and in future times when we might have to close our practices because of this craziness that you can offer? Can you offer herbal consult? Can you learn about EFT tapping techniques? Can you learn about specific acupressure points that you could teach more deeply and more widely? Can you learn about like breathing techniques to stimulate the chi or qigong? Okay?
What kind of off things can you offer now and in the future that you can potentially charge for, that you could teach online classes for when and if we get to this place again where you’re seeing your patients through the internet? Okay? A couple of things that you might want to consider too is offering more retail. When this whole thing is over, one of the things that you could be selling still would be herbs that get drop shipped to your patients and retail like supplements and other types of things from like Emerson Ecologics that you could drop ship to your patients. That’s a great way for you to generate a little bit of income now and to still be in top of mind awareness of your patients.
I want you to ask yourself what kinds of changes can you make today that will manifest for you now and also into the future? Because I think this is going to happen and I want you to be prepared. I don’t want you to get stuck and like become a deer in the headlights at some other point. Okay? I want you to be prepared now. Where can you pivot your practice now in order to come out of this positively in the way? Don’t get stuck. Don’t stop marketing. Don’t stop the communication process now. Stay in top of mind awareness however you can in order for your patients to remember you and to be reminded of all the good things that you have to offer them. Don’t assume that everything’s going to go back to normal because they might not. Okay?
Determine what you can do to survive and thrive during the now and also how you’ll come out of this in a powerful way and into the future. Thank you so much again for the American Acupuncture Council for hosting me on the first training that I’m working with you guys on. Thank you everyone for watching me here. You can reach me at jeffrey@acupuncturemediaworks.com or in the comments below here or even through our websites at acupuncturemediaworks.com or acuperfectwebsites.com. Feel free to reach out to me there. Make sure you join us next week for the next To The Point by the AAC. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. Stay strong, stay connected, stay focused, and do not stagnate. Okay?
Do what you can now in order to manifest your future, so when this whole thing ends, you come out of this smelling like roses. Be strong. Stay healthy. Talk soon. See you next time. Bye, bye.
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