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.
Hello and welcome to another episode of To The Point. I’m Dr. Nell with the American Acupuncture Council, and I wanna thank AAC for having me here and letting me talk about advocacy and how it can help build your practice. So let’s go to the slides.
For those of you who know me you know that this is actually part of why I got involved with aac. So being trained as a practitioner building my own practice and really my goal was always how are there. Gonna be enough hours in the day so that we can focus on building this profession.
And so I designed my practice in such a way where I could also spend time being an advocate. And what I found through that process was that advocacy can actually help build your business. So some of the things we’re going to get into today, really surprising ways that you can be an advocate. We a lot of times all have certain views when we hear the word advocate or the word advocacy.
Might have certain assumptions around that and might think it has absolutely nothing to do with business building or practice building. And that it’s a very separate thing. But we’re also gonna talk about how you can leverage advocacy to bring more. Into your practice. And then, okay, what are next steps, right?
So are you involved as an advocate? Should you be involved? And what do those things look like? Like I was saying, this is a big reason that I did get involved with AAC because as a solar practitioner, there are certain things that you can do, but there was also this really great organization that was helping to advance the profession in really tangible.
And as one individual, we fit as part of a collective in the profession. So it’s an exciting time. We’re gonna talk about a few of those things today and how you can really get involved. But first let’s get into a little bit of what is advocacy and what are those surprising ways? , this is usually this picture or this previous picture is what people normally think about when they hear the word advocacy.
It’s that, oh, I have to be a public speaker. I have to be out in front of a large crowd, or talking to a lot of people, or. Doing some type of pr I have to be visiting legislators offices, and that can feel a really daunting and b, sometimes just unappealing to your general practitioner who wants to be able to sit there and talk with their patients.
And so really the goal is, all right, let’s understand what are some creative ways to be an advocate, because it doesn’t have to look like this. This is what it looks like for me because I enjoy going and speaking at schools, and I enjoy being a part of the national Association on their board and going out and talking to different legislatures.
But that doesn’t mean that’s what you have to do to really have an impact. So really simple ways that you can have an impact is realize that. You as a licensed acupuncturist, anytime you are talking to someone about this medicine, anytime you’re talking to somebody about acupuncture, traditional medicine, how it can help them the education that you have, you are advocating.
for this profession. And so that could be a one-on-one conversation, that could be a one-on-one conversation with a prospective patient with someone on the street. I always use the example of meeting people in coffee shops. I clearly go to a lot of coffee shops cuz that’s always my default on how people must meet people.
But let’s say you’re talking to somebody in a coffee shop about acupuncture and they’ve never heard of acupuncture. and they come and see you or they come and see one of your colleagues. That person can turn into a person who then goes and tells another person that they should come and benefit from this medicine.
So you are helping to grow efficacy. You are part of an effort. To expand awareness around care, to let people know the value that this profession provides. So it’s not always that you have to then go and talk to someone in Congress or at a state level. , although that is something that we’re gonna talk about as well, if that is something that you’re interested in.
So thinking of yourself as really this term of a professional model, professional modeling. We’re showing people who are coming into the profession, if we are more veteran practitioners, showing people the way, helping to advocate for. Effective business practices for being successful in practice so people know, oh, this is a safe profession to come into.
This is a great profession to come into. And so through those different avenues, whether it’s general public, your patients other practitioners coming into the field, you are helping to be an advocate, even if it is on a one-on-one level, and it’s not going directly to our legislature. , but let’s talk about this because this is sometimes the pushback that we get.
Let’s get past the public speaking and I don’t wanna do that. We can do that with our patients, we can do that, on a one-on-one. But, we’re also trying to build a practice, right? And we need to make a living. We need to be able to support the patients that we do have. We need to be able to bring in more patients than who we currently have.
So how can advocacy. Potentially build our practice. . A foundational concept of being an effective advocate is communication. So we’ve done a couple different Facebook shows around this topic, storytelling your elevator pitch, how are you articulating the value that we provide? One, using those skills in any of those avenues as an advocate, helping to hone those skills is going to make you more effective when it comes to building your practice.
But also, I have to tell you as I got more and more involved in larger skill advocacy work, so I was the president of my state association and now being on the board for asa, which is the National Trade Association, my patients really loved this. , I was a little nervous at first that, oh, I might not be in on this particular Friday because I’m gonna be going to this conference and speaking, or because I’m going to go and do a meeting with my representative.
I’m gonna have to block some time off and let patients know oh, you can see me Monday through Thursday next week because this is what I’m doing. Actually sharing that information with patients is critical in how it can help build your practice. I had more patients when I was practicing in LA who would refer people in and they would say, oh, my friend sees you, and he said, you’re the president of the state association.
That’s so cool. So patients get really excited. You’re knowledgeable about your craft, that you know the industry that you’re part of, that you’re part of a community, and you are, versed in how to leverage that community. Because resources that you have as a provider, that you have as an advocate then trickle down to your patients.
And when it comes to blending those two concepts of how do we get really good with our communication? . And then how do we articulate this information to patients that we are involved in our profession because we love it so much and we wanna see it succeed, and we want this medicine to reach as many people as possible.
When you blend those two things, then you get to the point where, You’re better at articulating that treatment plan and you have more credibility when you’re telling your patient that you are involved. So not only are we practicing the communication not only are we truly involved in our profession and know what’s going on but.
then we can fully articulate that to our patients. Have the credibility to be able to say, I know this medicine. I know other people in this medicine, and if you need an additional referral, I’ve got you. That gives patients a lot more confidence and a confident patient, a trusting patient. An enthusiastic patient.
Those are the patients who are going to help you build your practice. So then you’re not stuck in that one-on-one referral machine. You have people who are then out there advocating for you as a provider for your practice. So last question we wanna answer quickly is, Are you involved and should you be?
And what does that even look like? Like I said, for some of you, your involvement is going to be, I’m gonna get really effective at articulating the value of this medicine to people, and I’m gonna be an advocate on that level so that on a, in a one-on-one conversation, more people are gonna come into acupuncture.
You could take that a step further. You join your state association and there’s so many different levels of involvement there. You can simply be paying dues to help support the mission of the association. And I have to tell you, we’re like the only healthcare profession that makes this optional.
Every other healthcare profession, you get your license and you’re a member of an association and they have very powerful associations for that reason. They’re able to pass more legislation, they’re able to get the attention of representatives in a more effective way because of the strength of those associations.
We’re the only ones who just say, ah, if you wanna be involved. So to make it really easy for you all, you can simply be a dues paying member. What does that. It helps support the mission of the association. It helps advance the medicine, the people who are working on those boards, on those committees who are working so hard.
Those dues help that mission continue. But at the same time, you also get to be kept in the know. So maybe you’re like, I don’t have time to serve on a committee. I don’t have time to serve on a board. I wanna focus on my practice. At least you’re getting that information via email. Webinars that come up where there’s information available you can attend.
And you have the option to get more involved. You could be on a committee for your state association, you could be on the board. And then state associations in turn are members of a national association. So you could get involved with the national Association, through the state association as well, and work on things on a more federal level.
So there are conferences coming up for the asa as the National Association in. I will be there. AAC will be there supporting as always. One of my favorite things about this company is, man, do they show up for these associations and trade shows to make sure that the organizations are well supported.
And then you have. Organizations like the Society for Acupuncture Research, if you’re really into research, that could be a great organization to get involved with, to know what’s going on in an international level. They have a conference coming up too in May and. AAC will be there as well. So I’m hoping that as you’re going through this, you see it’s not just a one size fits all approach.
This is not something where you have to be out there doing public speaking. This can go anywhere from, I’m getting really good at communicating the value that this medicine has to provide to, Hey, I wanna be on the board of a national association. There are so many things in between that. So many ways to start honing your skills so you can help grow this profession, grow this medicine, and help improve the experience for your patients and your practice as well.
As always, if you have any additional questions for me please feel free to reach out. It’s nell@acupuncturecouncil.com. Loved seeing you all, and don’t forget to tune in next week for another episode of To the Point, tons of value to be offered for you guys. Have a great day.
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’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician practicing in Florida, and I teach facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes internationally. Can you go to the first slide?
What I’ll be speaking to you today about is treatments ancillary treatments that you can add in to your facial acupuncture practice. A little bit about me, I am currently on faculty at Yo San University in the doctoral program. . And before that I taught at the Maryland University of Integrative Health as a clinic supervisor and adjunct faculty from 2003 to 2021.
I have been teaching facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes since around 2005. So when we’re talking. ancillary services. The things that are included in that, and this is not a comprehensive list, but they can be facial cupping and guha and microneedling and red light. . So I’m going to talk a just briefly about those topics and why you might wanna add them, and just a little bit about.
First we have to think about our facial anatomy. So when we’re doing cosmetic acupuncture, we’re really working a little bit on the skin level, but and a little bit on the fascia, but more on the muscles and The different meridians that help to lift and tone the face itself. And we’re also doing body treatment, so we’re working on a deeper level to help the face to look better because we’re working with all the organs and as we get, if you think about the face there’s a lot of things.
Affect the way our face looks. Our facial expressions can affect the quality and the appearance of our face. As we get older, our tissues in our face be, can become more stiff and inflexible, and this can affect the appearance of our face. The retaining ligaments can loosen, things, can sag. Also the fat layers on our face can move down and settle in different areas.
And since fat is one of the things that gives our face is volume and it descends really being able to work on the skin level, the muscle level, even the bone level. Can have the best effect on what your patients will notice during their cosmetic acupuncture treatments. So the first ancillary treatment is facial cupping.
So facial cupping is designed to bring blood and chi and circulation to the skin and the muscles just like cupping on the body. and it helps to stimulate the blood, get it into the tissues, to help the tissues to be more healthy, and it also helps to stimulate collagen and elastin production because when you’re stimulating the blood circulation, it helps with the fibro fibroblasts production, which helps in the production of collagen and elast.
and those fibroblasts are what help to thicken the skin because our skin thins as we get older and it keeps our skin looking more youthful. So facial cupping can help to lift and tone the face can help on the skin level, but it’s really a way to get that good healthy blood out to our.
Facial cupping can help with the fine lines. It helps to relax any tight facial muscles because what can happen is our facial muscles through overuse like our forehead muscles, the muscles around our lips, the abicus oris, they. Tight. And then the skin that’s over the muscle can become very wrinkled. So by relaxing the facial muscles relaxing any fascia that has become stiff, It can help the way the skin looks.
Also, facial cupping can move lymph through the face, and that means fluids and toxins down into the lymphatic system. And this can also help with issues like inflammation, like redness, such as rosacea and. Facial cupping helps to strengthen the vascular integrity of the face so you don’t end up with as many of those little spider veins and a lot of the discoloration that you can get as you age.
This is what facial cups look like. The ones that I like are the small rubber bell, a rubber ball with the glass bell cups. The glass is nice and smooth. It doesn’t harbor bacteria. It can be cleaned easily. It glides really well on the face and these small, specially designed cups. Are very easy to squeeze, unlike some of the other cups that you can purchase where it’s really hard to squeeze them.
This is a couple of slides. Taken from my facial cupping class. Facial cupping should start with a lymphatic drainage. You never wanna drag the cup down the neck, always suction and release. Then you go under the clavicle and into the lymphatic drainage area. . My classes are designed for acupuncturists, but can be attended by other individuals.
As far as health professionals, as long as you understand where the landmarks are.
So here’s a slide where I’m showing opening the entry exit points on the face, which can allow the greater movement of chi throughout the meridians and. . This is an example of how you might suction a cup on an acupuncture point and then drag it up to another acupuncture point up to Glo gallbladder two to help to lift the jawline area, and then suction and releasing down the neck and into the lymphatic drainage area.
Facial guha is really fabulous when you’re dealing with facial fascia, and it can really sculpt the face. The tools that I like are shaped like this. and AccuLift Skincare has two tools and two cups that come in a kit, which I really like. But when you’re looking at Guha tools, you want ones, I like the ones that are multipurpose and Jade is very much a part of our medicine.
J Jada’s very tonifying to the skin. and when Jade touches the skin, it creates an electromagnetic field and it helps to bring the blood and the sheet out to the skin. And it has, this particular tool has, as I mentioned, it’s multipurpose, it has corners for massaging different points. It has a nice. Flat edge when you’re working around the temporalis.
It has a smaller flat edge for under the jaw, and then this great notch here for working along the jaw line and along the cheekbone.
I had mentioned facial faia. The face is the only place on our body where our muscle system is connected to our skin, which is why we can move the skin on. Our face, and this happens through this smash layer. It is a superficial, muscular, upper neurotic system, which helps to amplify our expressions out to our skin, which allows us to move our lips and our forehead and our cheeks without moving any bones at all.
And. What can happen as we age is fascia, which is like this very fibrous layer if you’ve ever. Looked at raw chicken or raw meat, and you pull the meat away from the bone. That’s what fascia is. And nerves can get trapped in between the muscle and the fascia, and it can prevent the signal from getting out to the muscle.
And so our facial expressions cannot. Illuminated and it can also cause tightening and a pulling down of different areas of the face, especially in the cheeks around the jaws. By doing gua, you can help to release some of these BA adhesions, which can cause ent.
So here’s just a quick cross section. You have the smash layer and you have bone, and you have your maier muscle and you can see the nerve and how if the fascia is in the way, it can entrap the nerve.
This is an example of doing facial guha here. I’m using the tools underneath to help with. The that kind of waddle people can get underneath their chin, really moving any stagnation, helping to tone the digastric muscles and really work on that whole girdle that lifts up. Underneath the chin. And then in this bottom slide I have this bottom photo.
I’m using the u part of the tool to really sculpt along the jawline, help to break up any fossil adhesions to actually working on the bone level. And you can stimulate with the corners different acupuncture points as you go along.
Is also really wonderful for releasing tension down the back of the neck because everything that goes on in the back of the neck is going to affect the face. The back of the neck is connected to the face through. Occipital frontalis muscle, and also the connections on the temporalis. All of these things work together to halt the face up and it by treating the back of the neck, you c you’re also treating the front of the neck.
A lot of people are getting. At young ages, lines in the front of their neck from keeping their head down. Their trapezius muscles are getting elongated. They’re having a tightening in through the s e m and the platysma. And all of this can affect the way the neck ages both in the back and the front and the way the face ages and can also affect headaches in the back and well all over the head, which can affect the way your face looks.
If you are in pain and you’re making that facial expression, eventually it will get lodged in your. Next I wanna talk a little bit about microneedling. And microneedling is a big topic. It’s a hot topic in cosmetic acupuncture, and this is a picture of a microneedling device and. Microneedling helps to stimulate collagen.
It’s a very much a skin level treatment. It helps our body to produce its own collagen and it also helps serum any serum that you put on the face to be absorbed. , some of the benefits of microneedling are there’s very little downtime and it’s low risk, very effective. It produces collagen naturally.
You don’t have to inject anything into the face, can help with stretch marks scars, acne scars, any sort of depressed scar. It can help with hair loss and wonderful for neck wrinkles, lip wrinkles. It’s comfortable. It very little pain and the results are very long lasting. Once you’ve done a series of treatments, the results can last up to five years.
The way it works is when the microneedles go into the skin through the epidermis, the cur keratinocytes, produce keratin. And this happens right in the base layer of the epidermis. And when you’re microneedling. It helps to produce these fibroblasts which meet up with Venus and arterial capillaries, and they form together and they create new collagen.
And collagen is what gives our skin it’s. Its plumpness, its overall glow collagen is what keeps the ca skin smooth and helps it to snap back and to look more youthful and more healthy. . Now, there’s a lot of different types of microneedling devices. There are derma rollers, and these are great for at home.
If you do it gently, you could do it every day, every other day just to help your serums absorb. Or it can be done more deeply. And then you would only wanna do it every couple of weeks or less, depending on your age and your skin. . I sometimes offer this as a service in my treatment space, but typically I sell drummer rollers to my patients to use in between their cosmetic acupuncture treatments.
Microneedle pens are wonderful as well, and. They are electric devices. I do not recommend your patients do this at home. I recommend that they come into your treatment space and that you buy a good high quality microneedling device that is at least 18,000 RPMs and has a cord and batteries, and then you get trained.
By someone who’s registered with the American Acupuncture Council. AAC has been great. They have approved this AccuLift pen for use in the treatment room. And coming down here, this is a glass vial with gold needles on a little roller, and you can put CRM right in this, and you can do micro with that.
This is called a HRA roller. As I mentioned, safety is really important and. , if you can go to me, I’ll show the difference between some of the, so there’s different types of cartridges when you buy a microneedle pen. The best are the bayonet cartridges, and some of them have a double locking system.
Lemme see if I can get this really. Close. Wait a minute, . There we go. So this is like a double bayonet, maybe I’m too close. And it has a two, it locks in two places and then it has two holes on the outside to lock in to your microneedle pen. This has. , 12 needles. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12 needles in it.
And the the AccuLift pen has a triple bayonet and I don’t know if you can see that it has three. I’m trying to get this in the screen here. , I don’t know. There we go. It has a triple locking mechanism and it also, so three bayonets instead of two. And then it also has a three holes here.
So it has three attachment points on the. and 16 needles and there’s many different microneedle pens out there. I recommend that when you’re choosing one, you do a little research and see which one works best for you. The anti backflow is very important. You want a cartridge that cuz these, the way the cartridges work is the needles go in and out.
And when they’re going in and out, you don’t want the fluid to go back into the pen. You shouldn’t have any bleeding, but you still don’t want. any sort of fluid getting into the pen. That’s why the triple locking mechanism is really great. Okay, we are gonna talk about red light therapy quickly, and this is another ancillary treatment that you can add on to your facial acupuncture.
And l e d lights are wonderful. They’ve been used since I, I think that’s like the 1960s or seventies. NASA started using them to help with wound healing and with different things with the astronauts. L e d light interacts with the cells of our skin and it helps them to produce new collagen and elastin and is really great for things like acne scars and skin dyschromia or discoloration.
And there’s a picture of me laying under mine and. . So these little tiny lights, these light emitting diodes it was the 1990s, I’m sorry, I said the 1960s. The 1990s, NASA began studying l e d effects in promoting wound healing. And l e d therapy was approved by the FDA for wound healing and for skin rejuvenation and helping tissues.
So when we’re talking about l e d lights they have several benefits. They can help with inflammation bone healing, swelling, and neuropathy. , and as I mentioned, wound healing. But for our purposes in our treatment room with cosmetic acupuncture, we really wanna think about things like collagen production, wrinkles hairy growth, skin dyschromia, and.
Tightening the skin. So the red light is the most powerful. This is where you get the skin. Rejuvenation helps the oxygen content in the blood and can help with pain. That has to do with some superficial inflammation. , the yellow light is great for increasing oxygen in the cell and helps with spots and removing pigment.
The green light really will target the dark pigment, broken capillary sun, sunspots, and like overall skin dyschromia like melasma. The blue light is great for killing bacteria, so you can use it before you do a microneedling treatment, which is wonderful. And, but the blue light can be a little stimulating.
People, they sit in front of the blue light. If they’re depressed, it can really help your energy level. So if you start out with a blue light in your treatment room, it’s nice to end on the red light, and that can help the with the person’s overall just relaxation. And then these particular lamps you can do a combination of red and yellow, red and blue, or all four lights.
So if you have any further questions, you can go to facial acupuncture classes.com on contact us or go to facial acupuncture on. Social and can either private message me or I have a group on Facebook called Facial Acupuncture. So I hope you enjoy today’s talk and I look forward to seeing you next time.
Hi, I’m Dr. Martha Lucas, and I want to thank the AAC for this great opportunity to talk with you today about ways to treat fertility challenges and the importance of the Dai Mai.
Click here to download the transcript. Click here for the slides.
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, I’m Dr. Martha Lucas, and I want to thank the AAC for this great opportunity to talk with you today about ways to treat fertility challenges and the importance of the Dai Mai. I’m Dr. Martha Lucas. As I said, I have practices in Denver, Colorado, and Littleton, Colorado in Littleton. I work in. Western Medicine Clinic.
I’m a research psychologist who started out my medical career in Western medicine doing research in hospitals, and then I started to think about what else is operating besides the person just had surgery and I ended up loving doing Chinese medicine for more than 20 years. My specialty is the diagnosis.
I also specialize in cosmetic acupuncture, but generally my biggest practice is internal medicine because of my specialty in making an effective diagnosis. So if we wanna go to the slides, Our today we are going to talk about the Dai Mai its functions, reasons to unblock it. I’m gonna show you what it feels like in the pulses and talk to you a little bit about how you can open it up and make your treatments, your fertility treatments more effective.
Now, you’ll notice that I say fertility. And that’s how I talk about treating fertility. I talk about treating fertility challenges because. Infertility is what I call a damning diagnosis. You go to the doctor, and I think for a long time we’ve talked about the word diagnosis and how when you get a diagnosis for something, suddenly it becomes who you are.
I had a woman years ago who was so attached to her fibromyalgia. She said, my fibromyalgia, she kept saying my fibromyalgia, and finally I said to her, , can we say my experience with fibromyalgia or the diagnosis of fibromyalgia? So it’s, I don’t want to be saying infertility. Oh, you have infertility and you’re coming to see me.
I like to say you have a fertility challenge. You and your partner are having some fertility challenges or sometime it’s just the individual woman. I recently had a patient who had the whole embryo transfer. Procedure because she doesn’t have a partner. So I like to say fertility challenge because I don’t wanna set up that psychological problem of I’m infertile and I, it just happened to a current patient of mine who’s 45 years old, granted.
Getting a little up there for that. However, she went to a fertility clinic and they basically told her, you’re never gonna get pregnant. You’re pretty much in menopause. Almost like two months away because she hasn’t had a period in quite a long time. And they said they won’t even take her on as a patient.
She went to see a different fertility doctor who said to her, yeah, there’s still a chance we can still try. So again, they women, when they come in, they’re, they have been to other. Practitioners, they’ve been to fertility clinics. They already have a quote unquote diagnosis. I recently got an email from a woman who said, Yeah.
I just was diagnosed with infertility at 35 and she put a question mark because within infer with fertility clinics, infertility clinics, that’s the age. That’s the age 35, where they feel like, okay, that’s it. You’re infertile. I remember my own oldest daughter who doesn’t have any children, but I remember her saying to me at 35, oh mom, did you know, I’m infertile now?
And of course I just roll my eyes and say, you’re not infertile. So I like to say, Phrase it as we are having a fertility challenge. So the Dai Mai is so important overall for almost anything you’re treating, but certainly for fertility issues because I think that’s where schools make a big mistake. If they tell you to just keep tonifying, the lower gel tonifying, reproduction tonifying the kidneys, because if the Dai Mai is block.
What’s gonna happen with all that tonification? You could actually create toxic heat in the lower gel if you just tonify, because you don’t know whether the Dai Mai is blocked or not. Now I tell people, if you don’t know how to find the block, Dai Mai in the pulses, just open it. It’s not gonna hurt anyone. Just do your gallbladder 41, San Jo five, and just open it.
because it’s going to be good for the patient, even if it’s open. Okay. Then theoretically opening it didn’t do anything because it’s already open, but it’s all good. If you don’t know how to feel it in the pulses, which I am gonna show you today, then just open it for your fertility patients and. One of the first times, very early in my Chinese medicine career that I recognized the power of the block Dai Mai and opening it for fertility.
Challenges were, I was seeing a couple icy couples. I know it’s going to be the woman who calls you or emails you or texts you and says, I’m, I am having a problem getting pregnant. I need to come see you. I treat the couple because it takes the young part. So I tell them, regardless of whether the male feels like he’s veil and there’s nothing wrong with him and nobody said there’s anything wrong with him, I always say that according to the theory of Chinese medicine, it takes both of us.
It takes the young part and the in part, and if you’re an active gentleman and you fall skiing or fall mountain biking, or have been rear-ended, then there’s a chance your Dai Mai is blocked and it doesn’t make you a very good reproductive partner. According to the theory of Chinese medicine, so I insist on seeing both.
I do generally see the woman more and longer than the male, but I insist that I at least see the male and so I can make a, take his pulses, make a diagnosis about what’s going on with him in terms of reproduction. But it was a couple who were seeing me and they said at their first visit we wanna get pregnant next spring.
It was maybe September. We kind of wanna get pregnant in the spring. We think that would be a good time for us. But we are starting now cuz we kind of wanna get, just like everything, all our ducks in a row. , I saw them both. I opened both their Dai Mais and they were pregnant the next month.
And of course they were like, oh, I thought we told you we wanted to get pregnant in the spring . And I said hey, your husband’s Dai Mai is blocked. We open it up, things are flowing, and boom, you get pregnant. So it’s very important. So let’s talk a little more generally. About the dynamite. So first of all, it is called the be.
It’s one of the extraordinary vessels, one of the eight extras, one of the specials some people call them. It is also known as the Belt Channel or the Girdle channel. And it goes around the body horizontally and we can see that the pathway of it is literally around the belly and the hypochondriacal, one of its main functions is to connect the vertical channels.
Okay, so the belt channel, the, we know that the Dai Mai connects the upper and lower bodies, and it’s it’s very important for the functioning of all of the vertical channels, the longitudinal channel.
Right here is our core energy. That’s where all the, this is the part of the pulses that fund everything. This is what funds all the rest of the pulse diagnosis movements.
That’s how important the Dai Mai is to stay open a block. Dai Mai can lead to poor digestion. Now we know digestion is how we make our energy. Digestion is partly how we make our blood. We need those. Items in order to be able to reproduce. So if the Dai Mai is blocked, we can also have problems with our digestion.
It can be implicated in a whole bunch of health issues, migraines, reproduction issues, psoriasis, low back pain, knee pain. It’s always good to be able to figure out whether the Dai Mai is blocked or not, because then we can see. , oh, that might be related to the condition that this person is suffering from or their quote unquote diagnosis.
And then even if they feel uncentered, it can be because of a blocked Dai Mai losing the connection. This makes total sense. Losing the connection between the upper part of the body and the lower part of the body can make the person feel uncentered. It can make them feel like they have lost their energetic center.
And, that’s why it’s important to know about the blocked Dai Mai. Now, how does it get blocked? It can get blocked from a fall, and I have to tell you that. A large percentage. A large percentage of people have a black Dai Mai no matter what they’re coming to see you for. It’s always good to check for the black Dai Mai, and I think I said before, with your reproductive patients, even if you can’t figure out how to feel a black Dai Mai in the pulse, just open it.
Just do the gallbladder 41, SAN five and open it. It’s gonna help them no matter. Whether it’s open or not, and you need to recheck after you open it, because sometimes that doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s so blocked, like for example, by repressed emotions that opening it with the master and the couple point does not open it.
So sometimes. What the books tell us is going to happen doesn’t happen. Which is another reason why it’s so important to keep taking the pulses during the treatment so that the person, you can tell whether your acupuncture prescription worked or not. So let’s say you take it again, it doesn’t work, then you need to do gallbladder 26.
And we’ll talk about that a little bit more, but at any rate, a fall, even a sports fall. And that’s interesting because especially men will say, no, I’ve never had a fall, because they’re thinking, old person fall. They’re thinking like, oh I, yeah, I need the walker cuz I fall or I, yeah, I fall and I’m gonna break my hip.
No, it means, , I’m skiing, I fall. Guess what’s gonna happen in your body? Your Dai Mai is going to block because it’s trying to protect your internal organs from that trauma. Now you get up, you walk away, nothing’s broken, you’re good. So we don’t think, oh wow, that was a fall, perhaps. I injured myself. And when I was playing soccer, I did the same exact thing.
I would get knocked over, I’d fall, I’d roll back up. No, no blood or broken bones, but the Dai Mai gets blocked. So if a person is active, , chances are they have a block Dai Mai getting rear-ended because of that, that jerkiness that happens to you when you get rear-ended will block the Dai Mai pregnancy blocks the Dai Mai.
I open the Dai Mai, I treat my patients, my fertility patients before they’re pregnant, during their pregnant, and then after they’re. Pregnant and during the pregnancy, their Dai Mai is blocked because for heaven’s sakes, there’s a huge blockage in there. Now they have another human being in there, so they have a big group of cells that is creating a block.
So I open it every time. You can just feel the energy and they feel like, oh, I’m so much more open now. I feel so much more free flowing. If you have an abdominal surgery, it can block the Dai Mai storage of emotions, so repressed emotions. Sometimes when I feel the Dai Mai is blocked and I’m asking the person, oh, is your Dai Mai blocked or not?
Is your dite? Did you have you had a fall? Oh no nothing. But I know it’s blocked. I can feel it in the pulses. I might ask them, do you express your emotions? And some people say yes, and some people say not so much. All right. Holding it. Remember, it’s gonna block the spirit, right?
We all know about liberty cheese stagnation. It blocks that angry energy from getting up to the spirit, but also repressed emotions that we stuff down get. Below the spirit below liver 14 and can actually lead to a block Dai Mai. So a block Dai Mai is actually a fairly common condition for you to see in your practice.
So the major organ systems involved in fertility healthy kidney G, I already mentioned that the block Dai Mai prevents the healthy flow of G down into the reproductive area and into the kidneys. That good flow of energy is necessary for ovulation and healthy menstruation. We all know that, so we know for the lower gel energy to be flowing correctly for fertility purposes, we need to have the open dynamite.
For those of you who don’t know me, I am a total techno boob, so I really appreciate Alan’s support and you guys being patient. At any rate, healthy kidney G, we need it for fertility, healthy liver energy, right?
We need healthy liver energy. We all know that for reproduction, for having a good period for being emotionally stable and the block, Dai Mai is not going to allow us to have healthy liver energy. We need healthy heart energy. Heart is partly how we make our blood and flow our blood. It’s, it sends blood to the uterus.
And remember, your fertility patients have a lot of emotions going on, so we need them to have healthy heart energy. So two of the extraordinary vessels that are involved in fertility besides the black dynami are the remi and the chmi. Now the Ren links and regulates yin channels, essence, and fluid.
Regulates menstruation nourishes the fetus. In men, it affects libido and impotence. It affects our endocrine system and affects digestion. And this is why we also very often during fertility treatments, open up the Ren and the Chong, or treat the Ren and the Chong. The Chong affects reproduction.
Effects digestion, respiration, it’s a reservoir of chi and blood. For example, the woman is not having very good periods, what I call a tiny pink period, meaning not very much blood. It’s the root of postnatal chi, so post heaven chi, and it basically is known to treat all menstrual reproductive. Heart issues, spiritual issues, digestion, depression, anxiety.
The CHMI is another one of my favorite extraordinary vessels to use. So I’m going to show you a little picture here of the pulses and we’ll review the positions so you can see that we have a left side and a right side, and the positions are what we all know the kidneys are. The Cor Chi. Then we have Earth and all of the regular positions.
So we have Imperial fire wood, and then the kidneys.
And it’s just the same my system uses the same as we’ve No. Although I do need to tell you that on the left kidney, in the left kidney position is where you also find uterus and prostate. So it’s in this position that you will find things like uterine fibroids or if the male’s prostate is getting enlarged.
So it’s, this is an important position to be paying attention to. Oh, it’s also where you’ll feel pregnancy, that position, the left kidney pulse is where you will feel the actual pregnancy grow.
Where do you find the block, Dai Mai?
It is in the kidney, in the pulses. You will feel a block right here. The kidney energy will not be going into the liver sector. So what happens is between your fingers here, it’ll feel like it’s hitting. That’s where you feel the blocked Dai Mai. Now, sometimes it’s so blocked that you will also feel it on the right side.
This kidney pulse will be hitting. Instead of flowing through, because as I, you can see these energies are supposed to be flowing and when they’re not flowing, because there’s a block here, then again the kidneys aren’t supporting the other organ systems and neither can the other organ systems flow back over into the kidney.
This is like the infinity symbol between the pulses moving, they’re all supporting each other, so that is where you find it at a deep level. So deep, deep down in the. Pulse positions very deep over there on the left side. You cannot feel the kidneys moving through into the liver gallbladder, and as I said, sometimes it’s so strongly blocked that you don’t see it.
You can also see it blocked on the right side. So what do you do? As I said, you do gallbladder 41 san five. That is traditionally what opens the Dai Mai. It’s what the books tell us, however, the next little square says, but it’s still not open, which means I did gallbladder 41, san five, and instead of assuming.
That worked. I rechecked the pulse and I see that, oh, their Dai Mai is still blocked. What point can I do to open up the Dai Mai again? Gallbladder 26 regulates or modulates the Dai Mai. Put that point in. Recheck it. See if it’s still, if it’s still op, not open. If it’s still not open, then sometimes I palpate the diaphragm.
Maybe I palpate the diaphragm with my right hand while my hands are on the left pulse. So I’m trying to see is the energy flowing from the kidneys to the liver yet to see if maybe I have to actually do some diaphragm points or a little diaphragm. Massage or acupressure because the Dai Mai is still so blocked.
So I work at it until I know that the Dai Mai is open in the pulses. And then after the Dai Mai is opened, you can start finding other blocks if there are any, or start more or less a treatment that you would use for fertility because as I said earlier, If you just tried tonify, the kidneys or the lower G, but the Dai Mai is blocked, so that energy you’re putting in can’t flow, then it’s liable to actually create something like toxic heat.
The best case scenario is. Your treatment just isn’t effective. You’re not creating any toxic heat, but you’re wondering why? Why isn’t this person getting pregnant because everything looks like it should be wonderful. If their Dai Mai is blocked, then your treatment may not be as effective as you would like it to be.
So that’s the importance of opening the Dai Mai in your fertility patients, both male and female.
I wanna thank the AAC for this opportunity. If you would like more information, you can reach me at either lucasteachings.com or acupuncture women.com. At lucasteachings.com, we have events, we have courses both online and in person that offer CEUs and my books are available there, and good treating. I hope that this helped, you have really effective treatments.
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.
Billionaire Warren Buffet has said that this skill is something that can help raise your value by 50%, and is a skill that any person who is running your business should learn. So it can also help you grow your acupuncture practice and without having to always be constantly posting on social media or spending money on ads or seo.
So this is Chen Yen, your 6 and 7 figure Practice Makeover Mentor at introvertedvisionary.com and your host for the AAC live show. So today let’s talk about five ways that speaking can help you with growing your practice. So that way you have an avenue that helps support you bring in a consistent flow of patients you enjoy working with.
Now, the first way to use speaking as an avenue of growing your practice is to set yourself apart. So when you speak, people will get a better sense of what it’s like to be in your presence and especially when acupuncture is something that’s such a hands-on experience and people are wanting to know what kind of a practitioner this person is and what they’re like when they’re in front of you.
When you’re in front of them, then they can suss that out. So much better than any kind of a written post or marketing or ads or anything else like that. They might see online because they get to see you and experience you and see if they resonate with you. Also. By educating more people about how you can help them, it sets you apart from other acupuncturists who may not do that.
And so I would say that, and from all the different I’ve talked to thousands of practitioners at this point. acupuncturist and other holistic health practitioners, and of all the different approaches that I hear from them about what’s working, what’s not working in their practices, hands down, speaking still one of the fastest ways to, and most effective ways to grow a practice without having to always be Constantly feeling like you need to be doing all sorts of song and dance and think things for marketing
And when it’s also the, it feels it has one of the highest impact of all the different kinds of marketing approaches because one of the reasons why people may not be coming to you yet is because they don’t really know about you and they don’t really know the scope of what you can help them with.
Have you noticed that many times, even if people do understand that acupuncture can help? Many times they just associate acupuncture with pain, and that’s about it. So when you’re able to educate them about much more beyond what they likely know, acupuncture can help with, and you’re more likely to.
Be someone they’ll think of when they have a certain kind of issue or when their friends or other people they know have the issue, they’ll then they’ll think about you. So it totally sets you apart. That’s the first way speaking can help you with growing your practice faster. And the second oh, and also the other thing too is that it’s also a way for you to get known and recognized in your community as a go-to acupuncturist and amongst your peers.
When people just see you in a different limelight when you are speaking. For example, if you were a guest speaker at a particular organization, they don’t, it’s not if you were to advertise or post on social media. It’s Hey, I’m here. I’m here. It’s a different kind of a feeling because when you actually show up and speak, people automatically already see you as a go-to expert.
So it’s such a great way to, to get known and recognized in, in your community as a go-to acupuncturist. The second way speaking can help you with growing in your acupuncture practice is by helping grow you more personally and professionally and, business, having in your own business is one of the best personal development tools we could ever have on ourselves, for ourselves.
Have, do you agree? Have you noticed that? It will, having a business will put a mirror up to your triggers. , it will put a mirror up to your insecurities. It will put a mirror up to your inner strength as well. And speaking is a reflection of that. I. And also how clear you are about your vision and what what really aspires you to have this practice and be able to communicate how you can help people and communicate that effectively.
I know that for the longest time I used to hide. I used to hide behind mainly writing because I felt very inadequate when I would speak. In fact, when I was little and it came from this experience that I felt was traumatic when I was little. So my dad’s a PhD, research scientist, engineer, so very left brain, very analytical, and When you’re younger when I was about eight years old Sunday mornings, I used to dread when other I used to think, oh gosh, I’m so jealous of other kids, because when the Sunday paper would come, I imagined that other kids would get in.
They get all excited about reading the comics. And every Sunday my dad had me do a current event talk and I hated it so much. , I did so much that because I would always be in tears. My dad was very strict and he would critique me in the style that he felt was best. And it was very, left brain analytical just, and not my style.
Totally. And I would just cry and I would feel like when I grow up, I will never. Speak in front of an audience if I could help it. And over the years I would feel a lot, a big sense of dread come over me when in class we would be asked to present. I felt like I had to I felt like if it wasn’t perfect, then I would get criticized and I would feel really bad about myself.
And but then also, I would blank out. So even as I got older and I thought, okay, I could do this right and because one of the reasons why I decided to speak and educate is because I like to teach. As a little kid. I would grow up in my I would grow up, I would bb in my neighborhood, and the funnest thing for me was to.
The, these worksheets for my third grade teacher and then end up giving them to, to all the people I was, the kids I was playing with. And that was my sense of fun as a kid. And so the, because I’d love to teach, I ended up deciding, you know what? I would love to learn this. I would love to learn how to speak and help more people, reach more people at once.
But I used to blank out a lot. and I would literally say things that didn’t make any sense when they came out of my mouth and my face would turn red. I would feel so livid. I would want to hide under a rug. And, but and I felt judged like. , all the eyes were on me. And but if I am, if I was able to, the reason I bring this up is if I was able to go from that to now being invited to speak nationally and even internationally, then you can too, and it doesn’t.
Have to feel intimidating and each level of growth as you speak is you will grow your ability to be very concise and impactful and engaging and inspiring, and it is a skill that no one can take away from you and to the extent that you grow. this yourself personally. This way, it’s going to help you with growing in your business too, without you even realizing it until one day you look back and you realize that, that you start to attract people who you enjoy working with.
Have you ever felt like of all the people you work with currently, the people you absolutely love working with, you would love to work with more of those people. Have you ever felt that way before and. , when you are able to sharpen your saw with speaking you, you will naturally start to see that more and more people who are more in alignment with you will end up being attracted to you.
And it’s such a different feeling than just helping everyone and then having people who may not be as much in alignment. . And the third, and by the way, I also wanna say , at the beginning of this I mentioned that Warren Buffet and billionaire has said that speaking is one of the, like num, it taught a nu a one skill that can really increase your your value so much.
And, he also had, when he first started speak, , he actually ended up he did this Dale Carnegie course thing, but he actually ended up dropping out of it because he just wasn’t very like, . It wasn’t his second nature, a second nature kind of thing for him. It’s not like he was great at it and he got nervous and that kind of thing, and it took him the second round and it’s, you’re not alone with it.
And at the same time, the, those of us who feel like we have a voice and. And we want to share something really awesome and amazing like acupuncture, Chinese medicine with people. Then it, as we grow this way, we’re gonna just help more and more people. Third way speaking can help you with growing your practice is this.
, it’s to, you’ll be able to reach more people at once instead of feeling like you need to network or one-on-one or which can also be good. But then you could be, imagine reaching 20 people at once, or 50 people at once, or even a hundred people at once or more. And this could be virtual or it could be in person.
So for example, for myself, I feel. What it can feel less intimidating when you’ve got, a bunch of people listening to you virtually compared to in, in person, a huge dorms room in person, right? So you could find what feels comfortable for you and start there. And then as far as, what’s really cool about this is that you could, it’s one of the few things.
When you’re marketing your acupuncture practice, you could say something once and then repurpose it in different ways. So for example let’s just have a look at even social media. So if you were, if this is a platform that you have an interest in also supporting you with growing your. Did you know that most of the platforms are going more towards video?
For example, Instagram, their executives came out more recently and had said that we’re going towards video in the upcoming years. And what this means when they say that is that algorithms will favor if you favor you if you do video and. Similarly before Instagram had, their executives had years ago they had brought up, this is going to be primarily a video platform.
And so if you are not interested in doing video, for example on social media, that might be okay for now, but down the. , you’re, you will likely not get the kind of reach that you’re used to getting right now without doing some kind of video or unless you wanna be spending money on ads. And so if you were to do a video, the good part about it is that you could end up repurposing that.
So the video could be, Put on other platforms. For example, if you do a video on Instagram, you could put it on Facebook. You can also put it on YouTube so it, you can end up expanding your reach with just one video. You could also put it on your website. You could also. , email it to your patient base.
And so there’s so much that you could do with that one video, plus that video can be turned into something that’s written, for example, a blog article or you get published somewhere and in a paper or some kind of publication where people are reading about you and learning about you. So there are many ways where you could just take one video.
Do the work once and then everything else ends up getting distributed to, to share about your practice. To promote about your practice, so you don’t have to do that work many times. Now it, you can’t do it the other way around. You can’t go from writing to. You can’t do it writing to video, but then you would need to hire either somebody to say the things for you, , or do some kind of animation, which requires you hiring also or paying a additional money for that kind of thing.
So it’s harder to go from written to video, whereas it could go from written to video to written, and so many different aspects of where you create one asset and you can use it over and over again in different ways. . So now the fourth way to use speaking to, to grow your acupuncture practice is to.
Communicate more effectively to your potential and existing patients and clients? It’s interesting because we have clients who come to us because they would love to educate more people in the community and get known and recognized as a go-to acupuncture clinic. And then as they’re working with us to for example we help them get their.
A talk dialed in a signature talk that they feel really good about and that people wanna hear about. And then we help ’em dial that in. We also help them with getting booked and invited to speak. And then also be, be attracting patients from what they’re saying too. And in this process it’s always fascinating to me that sometimes people don’t even get to speak yet, and then they’re already really busy with patients.
We had an acupuncturist client of ours. This happened too recently actually. So we got started pretty early on in this process and he didn’t even get. Be speaking. He’s oh my gosh, my, my practice is so busy. It’s already doubled. And it, and it’s when you can communicate more effectively to your potential patients or clients in a such a way that it lands for people, then it, they’ll get it and they’ll actually come and see you or they’ll refer, and , according to Ted, Ted Talks the curator Chris Anderson.
So he said, as a leader or as an advocate, Public speaking is a key to unlocking empathy, stirring excitement, sharing knowledge and insights, and promoting a shared dream. And as an entrepreneur, as someone who owns your own practice, it’s one of the most. Important skills to, to have so that you could share your dream, your share your vision, share your excitement in an inspiring way to people so that more and more people are help.
More and more people are part of your also a part of your vision. And then love to also come and get treated by you too. And Being able to do this effectively, speaking effectively is one skillset that can help you achieve all of those results that we just talked about. And so it’s like he talks about how it’s like a superpower, to share your ideas and accomplish your dreams, and also offer your services.
So the fifth way speaking can help you with growing your acupuncture practice is to bring more patients in the door and even another stream of income. So we, when we know, when we think about this in terms of speaking for one, there’s one thing to just educate people and it’s another to. , educate and inspire new patients to come from it.
So it’s a very different skillset, which is why a lot of our clients come to us for help with this. And then as far as speaking can end up bringing patients in if you have a a way, a system that supports like what you’re saying, for one, that inspires new patients to come from it, and a system in place that supports them coming in.
Even after the talk itself. And also it. Bring in other streams of income. Why? Because you could offer other kinds of things. You could offer supplements, herbs, products, other services. You could also offer things like some of our clients are offering acupuncturist, clients are offering an automated online course.
Have you ever thought about that? Where do you ever say the same things over and over again and you end up feeling like. are a broken record sometimes and you don’t mind that, but then it still takes up a lot of energy and then it’s not like everything always, like your patients don’t always remember everything you share with them.
So what if you could put it together in such a way that helps them? And be able to understand in their own time and listen to it in their own time, they can benefit from it. And your, it’s it’s not just your patient base, it’s also beyond your patient base too. Imagine all the people who are too far to drive to see you.
They can actually benefit from what you’re teaching them, and it can help them with their health. How good would that really feel? . So then you could offer automated online courses and you could charge anywhere between, we have clients charging anywhere between, it could be, $50 to hundreds of dollars to even a thousand dollars or more.
It just really depends on what topic it’s about. And it could be for the lay public audience. It could also be for other providers. Have you ever thought about how all the things that you figured out over the. That it could really benefit other acupuncturists or practitioners, whether it’s clinical side of things, whether it’s workflow efficiency, whether it is with marketing your practice.
There’s certain things, maybe something very key that you figured out and you could make that available as an automated online course or and you can, it can also, PDFs or that kind of thing and sell it, right? And or you could offer group workshops virtually or group programs virtually.
And so there are many ways that you can end up bringing another stream of income beyond just seeing patients. And how do you get the word out about it? How will people know about you and sign up for your automated online course, for example? That’s where you can use speaking as an avenue to educate people about.
And also develop a connection with you. So they feel I would love to, to sign up for this automated online course and of yours. So that’s just one example. And so speaking can help you with Growing personally and professionally and help you become more confident and also communicating effectively your vision, your aspirations, and can help you bring in another stream of income plus more patients, consistent flow of patients into your practice.
. If you are at a place in your practice where you’re at a plateau and you would love to, to have it grow in such a way that feels like it’s more an ease and flow and or you would like to explore this as an avenue of growing your practice, cuz you just, you’re bubbling up inside where you feel like, oh, this is something that, that I’ve been wanting to do and I want to share acupuncture and Chinese medicine with more people and then, but you’re not really sure how to get going, how to get things going so that you get invited at places to speak and then also be able to attract new patients and another stream of income from it.
Then feel free to go to introvertedvisionary.com. So feel free to go to introvertedvisionary.com and till next time.
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.
I wanna thank the AAC for this opportunity to share with you my colleagues. My name’s Lorne Brown doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I have a practice in Vancouver, BC Canada. I’m also a cpa. I’m the founder of Healthy Seminar. And the author of missing the point on why acupuncturists fail and what they need to know to succeed.
And I wanted to share with you today the idea around how to attract patients who are open and willing to pay your fees. And I. I’m preparing this for you guys, and it’s not like a full on lecture. I got notes in front of me. So to be fully transparent I have these ideas and I always come from the idea, or I’ve heard the idea that those that cannot do will teach right.
and I like to do I think of myself as somebody who does and once in a while teaches. And so I’m not a professional teacher, but I think I’m okay enough that I can convey some important pearls for you to help you in your clinical and business practice. So the topic today is how to track patients willing to pay your fees.
And I do know that there are patients out there. There are people out there who are willing to pay your. And the question is how do we track those? Because it’s a drain energetically. When somebody comes to your practice and they are complaining about your rates, or complaining about how often they’re told to come in, and I know for myself, and I can share that I know this for you, that when a patient comes in and they’re excited to see you, and when they leave with real gratitude that they really appreci.
The treatment that you just provided. And they don’t balk at your fees. They don’t complain about your fees. It feels good. And wouldn’t it be nice to fill your practice with those patients? And so this is what I wanna share with you the concepts around that. What does it mean when a patient tells you that?
They would like to comfort your treatments, but they can’t afford your fees. I’m sure you’ve heard this before. I’ll tell you how I interpret it. I interpreted that they are saying that first of all, they’re being nice. They’re nice. They don’t wanna hurt my feelings. So the first part is I really want to come for treatment.
That’s probably a bit of a lie. They’re just being kind. I’m in Canada, so we like to be kind , and so that’s just them being nice. what they’re saying between the lines when they say, I would like to come for your treatments, but they can’t afford your fees, is you have not communicated to me that your treatments are valuable enough for me to make that hour in my day and pay that fee.
That’s really what they’re saying because when people want something and in their heart believe that you are the solution that you can help. , they show up and they pay for it. And so I take it as it was my responsibility most of the time that I haven’t communicated it properly to them that The value of what I’m offering or how it can benefit, how they can benefit from it.
So the message here is we have to create value for our patients. And just so you know, the value. Is not how many years you went to school. That doesn’t create value for your patients. That’s not gonna make them want to come or pay your fees. How much school debt you have, that’s not gonna make them want to pay your fees either.
It is about perceived value and so they have to perceive that what you’re offering is the solution to the problem. And you have to be able to communicate that and that perceived values what’s gonna have them want to come and see you at their clinic. And I’m gonna share with you. A couple of stories here as well, but I wanted to let you know that if you’re selling acupuncture, then you are a commodity, meaning you’re, there’s nothing unique or special about you.
You’re a commodity and you are competing based on price, and so you need to be the same price or lower price than the other acupuncture commodities in your area in order to track patients. So I don’t see myself as an acupuncturist. I’m not dogmatic about it. It is a medicine that I practice that I’m trained in.
I’m trained in clinical hypnotherapy as well and other modalities. It’s about being patient center focused versus doctor center focus focused. So although I do really love acupuncture and I’m passionate about it, that doesn’t mean my patients are what they want. Is a solution. They want resolution to their problem.
They want to feel good mentally and physically, and if you tell them to drink orange juice and stand in one foot and go in circles three times a day for a week, and you have research or anecdotal evidence that works, they will do that. So they’re not coming for acupuncture. They’re coming for what the acupuncture provides.
but they don’t necessarily care or need it to be the acupuncture as long as they have that transformation. So your patients are looking for a transformation and there’s a great marketing book by , Donald Miller, I think it’s his name’s, Donald Miller. And he really puts it in a nice way. He puts it in a really clear way where the patient is the hero and you, the doctor or the guy and the patient is looking for a transformation.
And I’ve said this in my book and in my lectures in the past that. We wanna be patient centered versus doctor centric. And when you’re patient-centric, you’re focusing on them, their transformation, you’re gonna help them have the transformation, you’re the support, the guide to help ’em have that transformation.
When you’re customer, when you’re company centric or doctor centric, you’re focusing on you and you’re talking all about your acupuncture and bragging about how great you are, and that’s not gonna be as exciting for your patients. Yes, they do need to know you are the right and best guide. There is something about who you are, but it’s really about how can you make me the patient, have a transformation.
And so if you’re a commodity, if you’re selling acupuncture, then you will have to compete on price. And you do want to find a way to Show them the value. And I can think in our profession, three things that come to mind from you right away. The example is showing a shift on the table. If that patient can have a shift, an experience on the table, then you are going to earn their trust and confidence.
and they will probably want to follow your treatment planning, come see you that once or twice a week for a series of treatments to get that full resolution. And examples of that I can think of on my Healthy Seminars platform that I’ve learned from is practitioners like David Jeweler. He has that palpation based acupuncture courses.
The reason that one is powerful is he teaches you how to do palpation on the table. And find aches or problems that the patient is having, and then choose an acupuncture point based on that, and then go ahead and press that sore spot again, and the patient on the table notices that tenderness is gone.
And so that is quite the shift on the table. Pony Chung. Also unhealthy seminars. He has a style where he puts the needle in. He uses a pointer plus to activate the needle just for a few seconds to show muscle movement. To demonstrate that he has properly located the point. Now this is twofold. One, from the practitioner’s perspective, it lets you know that you actually hit the right point, cuz we always have the right intention when we put in spleen.
We think we got the right sling. Six for that patient. Pony has shown through his research and cadaver work and how acupuncture ties into the peripheral nervous system that you can actually check. To see if you actually got the right point. Get instant feedback and that is impressive for the patient in my practice cuz my fees are higher than anybody else in my practice.
And I have a wait list of two to three months for my practice and people who pay top fees and nobody actually. Complains about it. And after they have their session with me, the first session they book six to 10 follow-ups immediately is the trend. And that’s because they have a shift mentally on the table, mentally, physically.
What I mean by this is I do a lot of conscious work and help people work through fear, shame, guilt, they have physical symptoms, but the emotional symptoms around that as well. And I use my acupuncture laser and my mind body approach through my clinical hypnotherapy training and the training I’ve gotten through Amid OV cause he has a whole series of this unhealthy, using those styled acupuncture in his palpation.
It’s similar to ef FT on the table. Patients in that hour have their tears often come from feeling highly anxious, fearful anger. And on the table, having a full on shift where they feel peace, relief, and often even joy, they’re feeling it physically, viscerally felt sense. And so that shift is where they get that trust and confidence.
So rather than me selling acupuncture, I’m selling my treatment for a major shift and people, and I call that energy psychology with Accu Laser and people come for that. The key that I wanna share with you is I had to invest in myself and and build up my confidence and my experience, and now I’m at a place where patients are coming to my practice and the word of mouth is growing so fast because of what people experience on the table and going.
And so for us as acupuncturists, I think of David Jeweler’s style of acupuncture, that palpation base where on the table patients notice a difference. It’s, you still will need a series of treatments, but it’s nice that they get a shift on the table and pony Chong. And Hamid Monka. So those are three practitioners to start with.
There’s many more that I have trained with and I highly recommend if you’re looking to not be a commodity and give that transformation, and if you can do it on the table, then you can make a big difference. The message I’m sharing here is you want to create value for your patients and to create value means you have to a, believe that you have the value and you have to usually invest in your.
and be able to communicate the value, and they have to perceive that as good value. Just because you took a great course and it costs you a lot of money, that’s not enough. You have to be able to communicate why they’re gonna benefit and they actually have to experience that benefit pretty quickly, usually on that first treatment.
And I’m gonna just give you an example about perceived value, how this works, and tie this back to that early statement where I said, patients say, I wish I could come see you, but I can’t afford you. so many years ago, we introduced low level laser therapy for fertility in my practice at Accu Balance, and we invested in good quality lasers.
Now, there’s a lot of people, as of today’s recording using laser therapy for fertility in a practice, and they’re using laser systems that are a couple hundred to a thousand dollars. My systems were 20,000 to 40,000, so I really invested to get results. and we changed our fee structure for patients when we did this.
So I’ll share with you back then. I’m gonna round up the numbers. Let’s say acupuncture was a was it was $95 a visit back then. It isn’t today. It’s more than that, but it was $95 a visit. And we had patients that joined our laser baby program. And the laser baby program fee was accu combined with laser for one 30, visit twice a week over three.
And many of the people we had seen, ha, who had initial consults with us who said, I can’t afford $95 a week for acupuncture, joined the laser baby program at two 60 a week. So they couldn’t afford 95 a week, but they could afford two 60 a week for three months. What’s going on here? The way we shared the laser fertility and the way we were able to communicate how it could be beneficial in sharing some of the research and some of the anecdotal stuff that’s out there from other people doing it in Japan and Denmark before we were doing it, reached them and they saw the value.
And this is my point where when they say they can’t afford your services, people will find a way to afford something if they see the value, if they can’t afford it. Usually what they’re saying is, I don’t see the. in it. And I knew this already before that because women who and men who said they couldn’t afford our fees would go and spend $20,000 on an IVs treatment much more than my treatment.
And so what is that telling me That they will be willing to spend that money cuz they have a perceived idea that IV. We’ll get them the baby quicker and better than say acupuncture. That’s their perceived perception. So this is why you have to be able to be of value and be able to communicate that value.
And I thought that was an interesting story, right about, just think about it, $95 a week couldn’t afford it, but one 30, twice a week they came and joined those programs. So I thought that was quite, quite interest.
I’m just pulling out my notes here guys, cause I wanna make sure I said everything for you guys and in my practice, just so you know, we have fees for acupuncture and laser and even how we communicate this in our clinic today. At the time of this recording it’s one 10 to have an acupuncture treatment and it’s one 20 to have just a laser acupuncture.
But if you want them together, it’s one 40. So rather than one 10 plus one 20 being two 30 in that same hour, we get acupuncture and laser and they pay one 40. You have to be able to communicate the value and the benefit. Everybody does like a deal. And so rather than coming just for acupuncture, just for laser, get the benefit of them together at a really good rate.
And Probably 60% of our practice is combined laser and acupuncture, and then the other 40% is pretty much just acupuncture. And this is that idea of that perceived value. But I’m sharing here that when they’re getting a deal, you have to do the math sometimes for them.
Acupuncture is one 10, laser is one 20, but rather than paying two, You can have both for one 40, and so you do have to do the math and communicate. If you don’t let them know they’re having a discount, for example, and it doesn’t show on their invoice, then they may not know that they actually got a deal.
So you do need to communicate. That’s the second point I’m really wanting to emphasize here is one is you have to have value and the patient has to perceive the value and they’re not gonna perceive it if you don’t believe it. . So we want integrity and genuinely you believe you have the value. And two is you have to be an excellent communicator to help them see the value and the benefit.
And going back to that book I mentioned by Donald Miller, I didn’t mention the title. He’s got three out there. They’re all similar, so check them out. But the, it’s being patient-centric care. They’re looking for the transformation. You are the guide. Now you need to be a good guide. , but it’s them. That’s the hero that is looking for the transformation.
And again, if you can do that shift on the table, pony Chong, David Jeweler, amid Monk, three excellent practitioners that that you can learn from, where you can learn to get a shift on the table. It will help you with patients finding that trust and confidence and having that transformation to want to continue.
I think that is what I wanted to share. I’m gonna just check my notes here. Going back to my treatment and the fees I pay, I wanna share with you that it’s taking me years and to get to this level of training where I’ve done clinical hypnotherapy, nlp, psych, k Maris, peer rapid transformational therapy.
I just joined Dawson Church’s program. Here’s a transparency idea. Just to let you know, he has this six or nine month online program. And I was looking for transformation. I’m always looking for spiritual evolution and like many of you, I want to heal my shame, my guilt, my imposter syndrome that I sometimes run that doesn’t feel good.
And I saw his program and how it could work, how you can work through shadow work. And that’s something I’m really interested these days. And his program was advertised for like 10,000 US dollars, early bird, 9,000, and. really wanted that transformation, so I wasn’t so stuck on the cost. And that amount of money would hurt.
By the way, that’s not an easy money to spend, but I joined that program. Now I’m getting twofold benefit. I’m getting my own spiritual evolution. I love to continue to do my personal growth, but I’m learning ways to communicate to patients, and I’m learning new tools that I can bring into the treatment room, and I’m pretty aware.
Within six to nine months, I’m gonna raise my fees again because I’ve gotten better at what I do. And as long as I can communicate that to my patients then I expect that they will fo will follow. Now, Dawson’s program isn’t cheap and there’s a lot of people that paid for that program like me, and so he’s got people that are really wanting that transformation and they’re willing to pay that price.
Although you may think your fees are. , the patient is focusing on the result. First, can you be the solution? Are you the person that’s going to help them have that transformation and have that solution? And if they believe that, then they will invest in you first. You need to invest in yourself. . And when you as a practitioner invest in yourself, then the public will be willing to invest in you for their healthcare needs, has been my experience.
So it’s not a, you’re gonna turn this around in 24 hours or in 48 hours? Every two years. I’d like to add a designation to. to me. So every two years I go into a intensive type of program that I like to learn. If you go to healthy seminars.com, you’ll see that we have these mentorship programs on pregnancy, on fertility, on consciousness.
And so these programs are what I partake in sometimes through healthy. I’m doing Dawson Churches programs not on my healthy seminar. So I do pay for these sometimes too, cuz I’m constantly investing in myself and when I see that it’s taking my game to another level and I. I can bring that to my treatment tables and I can communicate it, that’s key.
Where the benefit is, then I’m able to increase my fees as well. And it’s been my experience that when I increase my fees and I believe there’s value there and I know they’re gonna get results and they have that experience early in treatment. There’s not an issue when I raise my fees because I need more fees, but I don’t believe in the.
people fight me over it and it doesn’t work. So I have to take up a relationship and work on those issues around money and me feeling good enough first and really believe it because I believe in energy chi and if I don’t believe that I’m of value and I have and I’m uncomfortable charging the fees I’m charging, that does get put out to the ether.
And you’ll attract people to challenge you cuz you’ll track people to help you work your issues. Those limiting subconscious. . So first you invest in yourself and you take your game to another level. You have to be able to believe that you’re of value. What you do has to transfer to your patient on the table.
They have to have results, and you have to be able to communicate it. For example, when I treat patients, even though they’re coming regularly for certain conditions, I’m telling them why I’m using these points and lasers and herbs. I’m constantly remind. Engaging the placebo maybe? I don’t think of placebo as the negative that it’s inert.
I think of placebo as engaging the innate ability of the human being. The brain is the greatest pharmacy on the planet, and every time I’m explaining how acupuncture is helping them. Regulate inflammation in the immune system, regulate hormones, the hypothalamus, pituitary ovarian access all the things that we’re learning that acupuncture could do from the western medicine perspective.
And I explain the blood flow and what we’re doing, all that is engaging. The healing in the body as well, but it’s also reminding them why they’re coming and the value they’re getting versus just coming and getting needles put in that commodity. Why they don’t know what, why you’re putting a point in spleen six and large intestine four, that doesn’t make sense to them.
Why that may help a digestive issue, for example. They don’t know. And so explaining to them constantly be becoming a great educator, a communicator, a teacher in the treatment room is. . And so that’s of what I wanted to share with you guys. I’m just looking at my notes to see if I left anything out.
I think I have not . Just a few things I wanna mention. I have launched a Conscious Fertility podcast. If you’re looking about that mind body stuff and consciousness, you don’t have to be trying to conceive to enjoy it and to benefit from it. Check out the Conscious Fertility Podcast also on healthy seminars.
I do wanna remind you. That we have lots of on-demand courses where you continue education purposes and check out those mentorship programs that we have. They are super valuable in bringing more value to you that you can take to your practice. And again, contact me if you’re interested in a copy of my book.
Missing The Point. I do want to thank the American Acupuncture Council again for this opportunity to share with you some practice management tips to you, my friends and my colleagues. Thank you very much.
So we’ll be looking at movement, corrective exercises and some other things to be able to recognize patterns in patients when you’re looking at it from a channel perspective.
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, thanks for coming today. My name is Brian Lau and sometimes I present with these AAC webinars with Matt Callison, but he wasn’t able to make it today. And I’ll be presenting solo, but this is something I’m gonna be presenting a little bit more of an expanded view on at the Pacific Sports and Orthopedic Acupuncture Symposium.
Which if you’re watching this live is coming up in spring, but you might be seeing this. , it’ll be an ongoing event, so maybe check it out another time. So this is a little sample of that and I’m gonna be expanding on it quite a bit at that symposium. So what I’m gonna be looking at today is specifically treating patients who work at a desk.
But this is really looking at more movement oriented aspects of the channels, looking at the movement from a channel perspective. So while sitting if we’re in a static position is not really moving, but it is moving cause we’re holding the position. So we’ll be looking at movement, corrective exercises and some other things to be able to recognize patterns in patients when you’re looking at it from a channel perspective.
So we have this nice image in the beginning title slide. And I took this from the internet and I liked it cuz it says bad posture and I guess it’s not great posture. That could definitely cause strain. We’ll talk about this a little bit more in a second, but I generally don’t think anything is a bad posture.
There’s positions that have a use and that particular position of somebody was crouching over and had to look up. It’s a fine position, but if we’re gonna hold that for a prolonged period of time, it becomes problematic. and it can definitely lead to pain. So I don’t really like to think about good posture or bad posture.
I like to think of movement potential and the ability to move in and out of a particular position and to move in and out of that position with ease. So that’s a little bit more of the take. We’ll be looking at and we’ll go through some specifics on that. So let’s jump right in. So first of all, prolonged sitting puts a strain on the body, especially if the patient sits with poor posture.
Yes, I just said that maybe nothing’s could be totally bad posture, but if they’re sitting in a position that’s collapsed, that’s putting pressure on the organs, that’s putting pressure on the joints for a prolonged period of time, that’s gonna lead to problems. , and this is the frequent position the patients will sit in, is they’ll have their back and shoulders rounded.
So you could say scapular protraction would be there and their heads are forward. The myo fascia of the back is not engaged and it’s locked long. So things like the lower T trapezius, the erector spinna in certain regions, those are all gonna be in a long position and they’re failing to bring the body back into extension.
And then the other key point is that the core is not gonna be. We’ll be looking at that from a movement perspective here in a second, but that’s gonna be the general thing that you’re seeing with people. They get tired, they’re there at the desk for a long time. Things start to sag and slouch.
When they do that for prolonged period of time, that can lead to many injuries that obviously all of us see in our clinical practices. So these will be things like muscle tension, headaches, you can see especially. Younger kid in the bottom picture, a great picture that’s not staged.
That was a camera that was on, on particular people. And these were just live action shots that they got. You can see how much capital extension that younger kid has and how much tension that’s gonna put on things like the suboccipitals. And the cervical muscles that can refer into the head and create very much of a tension type headache pattern.
So tension headaches are gonna be a massive one that’s going to be pretty prevalent with office workers. Thoracic outlet syndrome is the scaling shorten and the peck minor shorten that’s gonna look, have a potential for entrapment sites for the brachial plexus. And then they’re gonna have symptoms down into the arms.
Rotator cuff tendonopathies. It’s putting the shoulder in a bad position and especially with activity that’s gonna tend to put more strain and wear and tear on the shoulder. Peri scapular pain, both the cervical fast sets muscles like lava or scapula. Other things can refer into that peri scapular region.
So that’s gonna be a common complaint and all of that’s gonna put a lot of undue stress on the cervical joints and lead to premature or increase the chances of degeneration. For generative disc disease and that can lead to a whole host of other problems. So it’s a massive problem. Many of our patients are office workers.
They sit for prolonged periods of time on the desk. So it’s really important to be able to have a good working knowledge to be able to help them come out of those patterns. And we’ll look at some acupuncture ideas, but I wanna start with looking at it a little bit more from a movement standpoint, because I think this is something that we can.
Really increase our effectiveness if we can give them some movement reeducation. So just a little bit of something I’ve been working on, especially starting just a little bit before covid and then all of a sudden I had a little bit more time when I had my practice closed for a little bit then have it closed too long.
But that sort of allowed me to really start getting into my own training. and as I was getting into a lot more movement training, I have a pretty extensive background with Qigong and Tai Chi and some martial arts. But I started doing a lot of body weight calisthenics and just something I was really interested in.
When I was younger, I used to be a wrestler and wrestlers have a lot of similar training where we use a lot of body weight type, climbing rope. pull-ups and a lot of other body weight type stuff. You’re obviously, if you’re wrestling, you’re using a lot of other people’s body weight as you’re doing competition.
It’s something I was really interested in when I was younger and I of started coming back into it in my, I guess this is just before my fifties and really enjoyed it. But since I’m an anatomist and since I’m looking at the channels a lot, especially the channel sy and thinking. Movement quite a bit.
As I’m doing all these exercises, I’m going over my head what channel am I working with? How is this organizing between channels? It’s just something that’s really taken a hold with me and I’ve been really looking a lot more at developing a system for understanding movement through the perspective of the channels and use.
And generally, most of the movement that we’re gonna be looking at is gonna fall under one of three categories, and these will be. The Y and Shao yin channels, so movements that are organized around those. That’s primarily what we’re gonna be looking at today. So we’ll come back and talk about that one.
But that’s gonna be primarily extension type movements and we’ll add to it a little bit in a second. Shao y and Joy Yin. So the Shao y and joy Yin channels. So these will be actually one of two things that are co-related, either side bending type motions or snowball. So when we’re walking and moving, we’re stabilizing from our sides and preventing excess movement.
So that would be part of it. Or just literally like side bending type motions and also rotational type move movements. Maybe another webinar we can go into a little more detail of how those are co-related through the joints to this pelvic joints. But for now we’ll just keep it simple side bending and rotation.
and then Ming based patterns, much more flexion oriented type positions. We can look at the movements from the channels and design very health giving type, Chiang, movements that are organized through the channel. Syk, these movements can open fossil planes, mobilize joints, and mobilize and massage the organs.
So looking at the movement of the organs and the movement potential of the organ. Those channels actually take the organs into a movement. Briefly going back to Shain SHA Yin, the liver itself has a rotational type movement where it rotates around the the su inferior venava. So the, any type of rotational movement’s.
Also mobilizing the liver side. Bending the liver has a side bending type motion where it kind of moves and side bends. So any side bending type of movement will also mobilize and move the. So understanding the channel syk and their movement actually gives a little window into understanding how to self mobilize the organs through movement, which is really a lot of what Chiang and those types of exercise systems are about.
But we can just look at it a little bit more with a modern lens. So let’s go today into the ta, young Shein pattern. So this would be urinary bladder, small intestine. I know you everyone knows this, or at least if you’re an acupuncturist, So urinary bladder, small intestine, kidney and heart. We’ll be focusing a little bit more on the urinary bladder, kidney portion, but these movement patterns engage the back and the core lines.
So those are gonna be a big part of it. The general movements involve hip and spine extensions, so they’re things that lift us and bring us upright into the world. So extension. Would be the big part of it. Spine and hip extension, scapular depression. So they help pull the scapulas down.
Again, this aspect of lifting us up into the world. So very open and upright and present in the world. We’re gonna have external rotation, especially the small intestine sy channel. An extension, so shoulder external rotation, extension, elbow extension. all of this with a very stable core because as you’re going into extension, it’s easy If those muscles in the back are in the urinary bladder channel and small intestine channel are too overactive in some respects, they can over overextend us.
So we need the stability of things like the transverse dominance to keep us stable. So there’s a nice relationship between how the back and the front work, especially via the kidney and the urinary bladder channel. , both of them, to give us a sort of extension, this nice expanded spine and nice upright posture that’s really prevalent in much of, much activity we do.
And sometimes becomes less prevalent when we’re sitting and starting to fall and collapse a little bit. So these would be active sitting and just to keep us upright and keep us in a really good decompressed position of the spine. So the movements are gonna include things like stacking the spine and pelvis, stabilization of the shoulder girdle and engagement of the core.
So I have a little video here that you could use this for an exercise for office workers. It’s not the main one I’m gonna be showing for today, but just to highlight some of these features. It’s a front lever progression. So a front lever would be if I were holding onto the bar and making myself completely.
Horizontal with the ground, something I’m not able to do, working towards it, maybe in the year next year, come back and we’ll see how I’m doing on that. But it’s a very difficult exercise it takes a lot of strength in the back, a lot of strength in the core. But this would be an easier way to do it.
You can see being at a much less angle where I’m more upright, still at an angle. I have to extend the back to be able to get upright. I have to externally rotate the shoulders. I have to pull down with the lats and I have to stabilize with the core. And I think you can see all of that a little bit better with the actual movement.
So I’m gonna play the video. This is a pretty short video about a minute. The very first thing I’m gonna do is relax the arms so they become passive shoulders go into protraction. I become rounded in the back. Then I’m gonna start to let that relax all the way down the back. I’m not sticking my behind out.
I’m just letting the spine stretch and drop until I’m underneath the band passively hanging. And when I’m ready, I’m gonna start to push up, haul into the band, gauge the lats gauge, the lower trapezius gauge, the core return to that straight line.
All right. So that’s a very nice exercise cuz it massages the spine and basically going into a lengthened. In the urinary bladder, small intestine channels. And then the standup portion is where I start to engage those structures. So I engage ’em from a position where they’re already lengthened.
And, a pretty decent full length position and then engage ’em from that position to come back to an upright posture. So I sometimes use that as a nice warmup exercise and just to inform and give information to the channels before doing something that might be more strenuous.
If I’m doing, trying to do the front lever, working with that and putting more strain in the body, I like to have a a good warmup to where I start to inform the body of what muscles are activating and how is the. Organizing those movement between the channels. You don’t have to think about it so heady, but just how does a body organizing that movement before I go into something that’s a little bit more difficult.
But that is a really nice exercise by itself for for people who are in offices. If you have a setup for something like that, it can be really nice. But I’ll show so one that’s maybe a little bit more accessible in the. . So let’s briefly go over some channel information. So as all of us know, the urinary bladder channel moves down, starts at the brow and travels down to the foot.
But how about the Sinu Channel? So the Sinu Channel, we of already saw it a little bit with this previous video. The Sinu channel tends to pull downward. to create an upright posture. I really like this image on the right, which is from a outer print book from an anatomist John Hall Grundy, who Tom Myers, if you’ve ever studied with him, really likes this book quite a bit and uses some of his images.
I, I think his images are great. They’re very thoughtful. He gives just these dissection images. Sometimes this one’s more of schematic. That kind of shows the body from a different perspective. That helps us understand something about the body. And this one’s kind of showing that aspect of those erector spina, almost like a pulley.
And what they’re doing is they’re pulling to bring us upright. Yeah, maybe they can get too tight in areas and over pole, but they’re just like this, those hands on the ropes or just of lifting us up. They’re lifting us up from the back. They’ll lift the front upwards. So the downward pole in the.
lifts us upwards in the front. Very good representation of the urinary bladder sinu channel. So we would have that capacity at things like the lower trapezius. See if I can get my cursor on here. So lower trapezius is gonna pull down on the scapula to help lift and open the chest. The erector spin A is gonna pull on the spine to help us come out of flexion and into extension.
GLUT Maximus is going to help us prevent us from going too much into an anterior tilt to the pelvis. So it’s gonna drop the pelvis down and keep the pelvis in a good neutral position. So when it gets weak and inhibited, sometimes people will then go into more of an anterior tilt to the pelvis and put strain on the back so it helps stabilize the back, stabilize the SI joint muscles like the lateral portion.
of the leg here, this lateral branch of the UB channel on the bottom left which I interpret as the Proteus longest and brevis, those help. Or if they get too short, let me say it. That way, if they get too short and lift excessively, they’ll help, they’ll collapse the foot into the medial arch. So we have a technique that we show, and we have this on our YouTube channel where we pull those down, descend help.
Propri receptors understand they don’t need to be so excessively lifted. They can drop down to help take away that dropping into the medial arch. And then we’ll combine it with a lifting technique on the medial arch at things like kidney two, which is the abductor hallucis motor point. So I was gonna put that into my presentation.
I wasn’t sure if I’d have time, but that is on our channel. I decided not to put it. Not relevant necessarily to office workers specifically, but just to understand that downward aspect of the channel and how the channel in pathology sometimes can excessively lift. So the kidney channel moves up and stabilizes.
So when we start looking at the channel sinus, we have structures like in front of the spine. The so as major. The anterior longitudinal ligament, a big stabilization of the the spine in the front of the spine, and then this portion at the neck up at the top of the spine there on the image on the right would be the longest coli and longest capitus.
Those are very important for stabilization of the neck, so when those get weak and inhibited the neck tends to jut out. So they have a certain amount of ability to keep the neck in a nice upright stacked.
The kidney channel also. Not, if you look at the description in the ling shoe of the SY channel, it’s pretty vague. You have to really start looking a lot at cadaver dissection and some research, fossil research. You have to bring a lot of things together, I think, to get a good understanding of what structures could be potentially part of this INU channel.
It’s a work I’ve been doing for about the past 10 years. But it would be hard to find a description from the Ling shoe that talks about things like the transverse of Dominus as part of the kidney sinew channel. But if you look at the channel system as a whole, the low connecting point does talk about the core in a way.
because this channel, this low connecting channel, travels up the abdomen following the kidney channel. Question I have is what depth? I think it’s at the depth of the transverse abdominus that goes to a point just below the pericardium. If the transverse abdominus is part of those structures, it’s gonna blend in with the diaphragm pretty seamlessly.
And then the heart sits right on top of the diaphragm. So that would technically go to a point just below the pericardium. And then those the multifidi connects also with the pelvic floor, but also I’m sorry, the transverse of dominus connects with the pelvic floor, but also the multifidi, these deep lumbar muscles that are stabilizing muscles of the spine.
So I think the kidney low channel is really giving some kind of description, maybe not of the muscles, but of the ability for those muscles. to stabilize a big part of the kidney channel to stabilize the lumbar region to support. And I think their description, their trajectory hints at these core stabilizing structures of the transverse, a dominus, the pelvic floor, the diaphragm, and the lumbar multifidi.
in sports medicine, acupuncture, we take those core structures and put ’em in the Sinu channel just for ease. So the kidney sinu channel would include those core stabilizers of the spine, the SOAs, which is other, and also a core stabilizing muscle, at least the portion, the stabilizing, the , the deeper fibers and the more superior fibers of the soaz, which are really stabilizing the spine are part of the kidney channel.
A little bit of a aspect of the ql. Also, all of these stabilizers of the spine really speak to the kidney channel and its lumbar and spinal stabilization role. But then also, like I said, up in the neck we have those longest coal, iron capitus. So very much about standard. So collectively the urinary bladder in the kidney sinew channel are looking at balancing the spine in a very easy way, or at least a simple way of looking at the spine.
is to look at the curves of the spine. Cause it’s tricky when you start doing postural assessment. Is that right? Is that normal? So one thing you can look at is there a balance between these curves of the spine? And what these curves are is things like the cervical lordosis that’s in that picture is referred to as a secondary curve, meaning that it’s not there at birth.
As we, start looking up into the world and put strain in the body, we start developing that secondary curve in the cervical. primary curve in the thoracic spine that’s there at birth, we have just an a c curve, so they call that a primary curve. And then same thing as we’re crawling and moving and eventually stand up and walking, we start developing a secondary curve at the lumbar spine.
So looking at that kind of curve of the spine can help us understand if the, there’s a good balance between the urinary bladder and kidney channel because we want a really good balance between those curve. We don’t want all thoracic curve or we don’t want an excessive cervical lordosis or an excessive lumbar lordosis or maybe a flattening of the lumbar lordosis.
Some people naturally have less curvy of the spine. Some people have naturally more curvy of the spine, so you can start looking and seeing is there a balance between those secondary and primary curves. Back to Tom Myers, his work, I’ve studied a little bit. , he also extrapolates that out to the posterior knee, which isn’t a spinal curve, but that’s a normal, there should be a little bend, a little gentle lordosis and if you wanna call it that in that posterior portion of the knee.
But as you look at people, sometimes their knee becomes hyperextended and say, so they’ve lost that curve relationship or even the arches of the feet. So you can take that idea of that balance of the curves all the way down the. Into the knees, into the feet and the arches. So we want just a nice, even ebb and flow in those curves of the spine.
So I think you can agree looking at those images of the desk sitters that were dropped, , their balance was lost. They have a, capital extension, a strong curve up at that upper part of the cervical spine. But everything is, the whole spine is in curved. They’ve lost a little bit of the lumbar curve.
There’s not a really good balance between those positions. So let’s look at an exercise and we’ll talk acupuncture. And we’ll also look at a myofascial release technique. Let’s look at an exercise that is a little bit more accessible. Cause people can do it in a chair. This is something you can work with them.
on. This is gonna be a seated exercise. It’s modified from a Chiang pattern eight pieces of brocade for those who know it. This is the second move. It’s two hands, hold up the heavens and it stacks the spine. That’s gonna be the first thing it does, but then it’s also gonna start moving in the frontal plane.
So a side bending movement. The reason of that is because, Office workers, everything is moving forward or back. Maybe the neck shutting backwards or forwards. Maybe the thoracic spine is sinking back, but everything’s moving away from that frontal plane. The head maybe moves away from the frontal plane, the back moves away from the frontal plane.
Everything is in. That front and back position, maybe those people exercise, maybe they don’t. But frequently when people exercise, everything’s in that front and back position. Like running much of weight lifting, everything’s flexion, extension, flexion extension. So most people, especially office workers, aren’t doing enough movement in the frontal plane, like side bending motion.
So this exercise is gonna stack the spine, get a good balance in the spine, get a good stability in the. Engaging those back muscles and then it’s gonna start going into a side bending motion to help bring in a different movement potential that they’re not probably, or let’s just say they’re more than likely underutilizing.
And that can really give a little tensional support from the side and help that elevation and lift coming up the body. So I’m gonna go ahead and play that video.
Many of my patients sit for prolonged periods of time in this position, the head is forward, the back muscles are under slack, and the core is not engaged. Prolonged times are spent with major parts of the spine move forward or back. Let’s look at a simple Qigong exercise that can be a mini break from sitting and help alleviate some of these issues.
This Chigong pattern is one of the eight movements in a system called the Eight Pieces of Bou. This is a great chigong exercise for office workers since it highlights an engagement of the back and core while performing a side to side movement. These are movements which are frequently absent and sitting, especially if the posture suffers.
The exercise can be performed standing or seated. Here we see it standing, but we will look more detailed at the seated version since it can be easily adapted to a work environment.
Start by sitting upright on the sit phones or the issue two Verocity. Roll off the back of the zip bones and round the back, then roll back onto the zip bones, engage the back and core, and grow back to an upright position. Again, roll off the back of the sit bones and round the back. Roll back onto the sit bones.
Engage the back and core. Grow to an upright position. Repeat the same movement, but this time, rotate the arms and turn the palms up.
Turn the palms down as you grow back to upright.
Now let’s look at the full movement roll down. Like before, interlace the fingers as you grow and expand. Start to turn the palms towards the sky. Get the elbows lined up with the side of the body. Reach upward and maintain an open chest.
End to the side, allowing the opposite side ribcage to open and the spine to curb. Keep both sip bones on the seat. Return to the midline and then repeat and stretch to the opposite side.
Return to the midline stretch up. Then let everything relax down while bowing the spine. As the hands passed, the solar plexus row opened the chest gauge the back and horn. The entire movement can be repeated several times. At least three times would make a great little mini break and help bring back length and ease while sitting.
All right, so that’s on my YouTube channel. It’s Jing Jin Movement Training, if you wanted to check that out. It goes through a practice run of it if you wanted to do it with the video. So that it gives you a chance to practice that. I think there’s three three repetitions of that. If you were to work with that on a pa with a patient the whole movement’s great because of that side bending aspect.
Again, that’s a movement that they don’t often do and everything that they are doing is forward and backward generally. So it’s nice to have some tensional support. Put into the body from the side to help give tension, good tension to give, like stabilization, kinda like an old-fashioned boy scout pup tent.
You want a nice balanced pole in all of those wires that are giving the tent nice shape. So it’s nice to have that little pole from the side. But if you didn’t have the time, or maybe a patient wasn’t super aware starting with that, rolling off the sit bones and letting the spine. and rolling back on the sit bones and letting the spine stack is a really great educational tool for the patient because my general view, again, is that there’s not a good or bad position for the body.
If I were to roll off the sit bones and curve and I were reading a book and I had a book in my lap, that’s not a bad position. I have a nice, I wouldn’t wanna be there all day, but it’s a nice curve through the spine. It’s a balanced curve. And if I roll back up on my sit bones and stack everyth I think that’s a good position. Again, I wouldn’t wanna necessarily sit in that all day. I wanna get up and move around a little bit. Where I think people run into the most trouble is when the spine is not working in a balanced position. Maybe they’ve rolled off the set bones, they’ve collapsed the chest, but then they arch the head up.
So part of the spine is inflection, and then another part of this spine is making up all that difference and. and that position is where people I think tend to get in into more trouble. It’s fine for a momentary movement, but when you’re holding that position, it’s not a particularly comfortable position.
Puts a lot of strain on the neck and the shoulder girdle and can lead to injuries. So I like that aspect of rolling up onto the sit bone so they can get that support under them from the pelvis. And finding that position of stacking the chest, bringing the head back, lining everything. , but you don’t want ’em to go too far, you don’t want ’em to roll off the front of the hip bones and hyperextend either.
So it’s just finding that balanced tone from the pelvis, torso, shoulder, girdle head, everything is comfortable, balanced, and it’s a much more injury-free position. Doing that, I think is a better strategy than trying to dictate to somebody how to sit and pull the shoulders back and everything becomes very stiff.
Finding that relationship of how the pelvis stacks on the chair and everything else stacks above it is a really great tool. Acupuncture can be very useful for obviously for a lot of these injuries. So if we’re looking at acupuncture, we have to spec specify really what they’re coming in for. So a lot of the local base injuries are gonna be more specific treatments for those.
I’m not gonna get into that cuz there’s a whole host of them. Learning how to treat and recognize those particular injuries can be very useful in guiding that. But just some general guidelines for distal points. If people are in that position for a long period of time and they’re not engaging the back, those back muscles tend to get inhibited and they have a hard time finding those muscles that help depress the scapula externally, rotate the shoulder girdle, stack the spine.
So UV 64 SI four is really a wonderful combination, both of them being source points to help. Channel T to help inform the channels and give a little bit of energy to the channels to help them find those find those muscles and engage those muscles more effectively. So UB 64, SI four are really a great great treatment.
UB 60 SI three. Obviously a lot of people use that combination of their acupuncturist. UV 60 as many people know is really working on that excess young that rises up the channel. So there’s people who have their ears up against their, their shoulders up against their ears, and everything tenses.
And that channel rises excessively that, especially if it’s much more of a tension stress high-end type thing is a really great point to help descend that chi down the channel. S I three obviously used for a lot of neck pain. So those are great great combinations for those people who have a lot of excess rising of the back of the body.
And leading to things like tension headache tension headaches, kidney four, low connecting point of the kidney channel can really help engage the core structures if they have a very weak and inhibited core like transverse, abdominous, pelvic floor, that kind of stuff. And then working with local motor points for things like the rhomboids upper and middle trapezius and the chest muscles to help balance the front and the back can be a great strategy.
So last thing we’re gonna look at today is the am myofascial technique that’ll help stack the spine and Descend. The channel in the back descend the urinary bladder channel. So this is a technique we teach at sports medicine, acupuncture program. And we have, I have this one up on my YouTube channel, Jin Movement training.
There’s a similar table technique to this on the sports medicine, acupuncture, YouTube channel.
Let’s look at a myofascial technique where we spread down the urinary bladder. Jin, especially concentrating on the erector speed. A muscle room. We will have the patient roll forward vertebra by vertebra.
While they are actively flexing the spine, we will spread through the tissue to soften and lengthen any areas where the erector being a or bunched. So you can do this with both hands simultaneously or one hand at a time. Both hands is nice, but sometimes it’s good to guide the patient by working on one side while you’re assisting them.
It depends on their ability to do this. First thing they’re gonna do is make sure they’re solid in their feet. They can even give a little small push back into their feet so that they can support against your pressure.
Now let the head go and she’s just pulling me through the erector. Speeding. So I’m lengthening, I’m looking for balanced movement. Okay, let the left shoulder go that. You can just go straight down. So with women, you’re gonna have to readjust around the bra straps there. You gonna stop for a moment so when they stop, you’re gonna sink back in and then have them go deflection as you spread through the erector.
Spna
all relax
and hold. Stop for a moment.
Sink back in and then have them continue down in deflection the whole time being supported in the feet. Let the left shoulder go a bit. There you go. Good. And now continue to drop and you’re spreading through the erector. Speeding now into the lumbar.
All right. Now you can help them as a stack. So behind settles first, a little bit more weight here. There you go. A little bit more.
A lot of people wanna come up instantly with the head. I’m gonna do this incorrectly for a second. A lot of people wanna come up here first, but we want them to stack first and get the support stack chest. and they’re in a neutral position.
Great. So that’s a bench work technique that’s very common in structural integration. It’s the type of work I did before an acupuncturist. Rolfing is a type of structural integration. We do a ton of bench work. I really like it cuz the patients are actively engaged and they’re they’re able to informed the body, by that movement of stacking, in this case, stacking the spine.
If you do go to the YouTube, my YouTube channel at the Jing Jin Movement Training and watch that particular video, I’ll give you something to look for. She had a hard time stacking her lumbar spine. and I of wish I would’ve pointed it out on the video. I of noticed it when I was demonstrating the technique that I didn’t wanna take the time there.
But as I, as she goes to stack the body, she has a very difficult time coming outta flexion with a lumbar spine and then misses it and comes up above it. And she has a tendency to have like a lot of people who are very athletic She has a pretty notable anterior tilt to the pelvis, so maybe a little more time spreading through that lumbar region.
A little bit more time stacking would’ve been indicated. But I was just doing it as a demo. But anyway, something to sharpen your eyes. You can look and see, cuz what we wanna see is that each vertebral level moves apart one by one, and then each one then stacks from the bottom. That’s kind of part of that training of the UB Jing gin to get that stacking and get that upright posture so that then people can feel comfortable in their seated position.
So thank you to American Acupuncture Council for for having me for this webinar has been very nice presenting on some of these ideas. These are, like I said, things that we teach within the sports medicine acupuncture program, especially in. One of the classes that I helped co-develop the class that’s looking at assessment and treatment for the channel sy use.
So check that out. If you get a chance, you can also, like I said, check out those YouTube channels and hope to see you guys again. So thanks. Thanks again to American Acupuncture Council.
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