So today, I am going to speak to you about how we can clinically work with these patterns through motor points, scalp acupuncture, facial cupping, facial gua sha, submuscular needling auricular muscles, and facial acupuncture points.
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Hi, this is Michelle Gellis, and I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today. So in part one, I spoke about the feedback loop between the face and our nervous system and our organs. And just as a little review, what I had said was that every time you treat the face, you’re treating a feedback system.
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You’re not just smoothing a line or lifting a contour. You are interrupting a loop that may have been running unchallenged for twenty, thirty, forty years, and this is extraordinary work. And it is work that no neurotoxin can do because neurotoxins silence the conversation between the face and the soul.
We, as acupuncturists, can restore that So today, I am going to speak to you about how we can clinically work with these patterns through motor points, scalp acupuncture, facial cupping, facial gua sha, submuscular needling auricular muscles, and facial acupuncture points. So I’m going to speak in very general terms.
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If you want more specific information about treating the face and how to work with this whole emotional feedback loop, in my book, “Treating the Face,” I have a chapter that covers, It’s called “The Anatomy of Expression.” And I also have a full-length recorded webinar on the anatomy of expression. So I’m gonna talk about this from two different angles.
One is if you were just to look at the individual muscles that are used to express these emotions what would be the easiest way to deal with the muscles would be facial motor points. And so for each facial muscle of expression, there are different motor points on the face that we can use to bring these muscles that may have atrophied from years of neglect, not using them, or which are overused and are becoming very tense and tight from being used too often.
Either one of these can cause dysfunction and disharmony, and in the case of cosmetic acupuncture, can cause pain. I’m sorry, can cause wrinkles. And in the case of neuromuscular acu-acupuncture, can cause pain, neuropathy, and things of that nature. And as I discussed in part one, I really got into the emotional components of all of this and what that can do, not just for our relationships with other people, but especially for young children who use their the facial feedback loop to learn how to make emotions and feel emotions.
So the motor points are great for just looking at individual muscles of expression and treating them. But we also have other tools. If muscles aren’t functioning properly, we can use scalp acupuncture and look at the area of the scalp that is involved with facial expressions facial muscles rather, which make our expressions, because on the face, the muscles are connected directly to the skin.
And in order to fully express and move the skin, you need to have functioning muscles, whether that’s for anger, sadness, happiness grief, worry fear. All of these expressions require different muscle groups Additionally, in addition to motor points and scalp acupuncture, another tool that we have is sub and intramuscular needling of the muscles on the face.
We can use our needles to either go underneath or through some of the muscles in the face in order to bring the muscles into proper functioning and bring them into good health. So for example, if our patient has gotten Botox and they no longer want to have their forehead paralyzed we can use our needles through submuscular needling and also through motor points.
For example, for the corrugator, we could use the motor point for the corrugator, which is slightly lateral to bladder two, and we could also needle underneath the corrugator, and this will help to, Once the neurotoxin has settled, you wanna wait about three weeks. If the patient does not like it, then in order to bring this back into good functioning, we can use these two tools that we have.
Facial cupping and facial gua sha can also help to revitalize the facial expressions, and sometimes it’s not even just intervention. Sometimes there’s been injury, sometimes there’s been illness, sometimes just with normal aging, we can’t fully express in our faces the way we could perhaps before the illness or the injury, something like Bell’s palsy or a brain injury or a stroke or some trauma to the face, neck, or head.
This can all affect our ability to make facial expressions. Just using our regular acupuncture points and treating not just local points on the face, but treating points on the body and opening up, for example liver qi stagnation that may be happening across the forehead by opening up points on the body that help to open the smooth flow of blood and qi to the face can help with patient’s ability to fully express themselves.
And this is really the beauty of our medicine, is we don’t just look at the face as a series of muscles to be treated. We understand the connection between the body and the acupuncture points on the body, and the channels, and the different substances, and how keeping that smooth flow is really important in order to keep our facial expressions flowing smoothly and more fully.
So not just being able to smile, but being able to use all the muscles in order to smile fully. I hope that this short little lesson has helped to give you some insight as to how acupuncture treatments can work to treat the face, the facial muscles, and to really think about the connection between our expressions and our emotions.
And again, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity, and I look forward to seeing you next time.