Hi today we are going to talk about the treatment of radiation in TCM and this is quite an unusual topic, but we are, it’s one of the topics that we are getting a really great results, both in the treatment.
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, everybody. And welcome. I would first like to think the American Acupuncture Council to put up this presentation for all of you. And I would like to start with the presentation. I hope you’re all. Hi today we are going to talk about the treatment of radiation in TCM and this is quite an unusual topic, but we are, it’s one of the topics that we are getting a really great results, both in the treatment. And also even in the research that we are following up. Radiation therapy also known as radiotherapy is one of the most common treatments.
In cancer. Almost half of the cancer patients will get radiation therapy. Although, there’s so many advancement in the treatment of cancer, different drugs, et cetera, radiation therapy is just continuing to develop and be there as the, one of the major modalities that are used the cancer care.
And how does it work? Basically radiation is a very high frequency of radiation, which is used and it works in two ways. One, it has a direct effect and direct effect of radiation. It damages the DNA in the cell by producing more and more free radicals, but it is also a. Eh, a larger indirect action by producing the whole area of more free radicals, which are damaging more cancer cells and much less healthy cells.
So this can also give some kind of additional effect to the radiation. When we look at the radiation, we are actually looking at the very high frequency res. If you look here, you see the size of J regular Ray radio radiation. And as we move along, you can see the side that the radiation that we are using in x-rays is here.
And in gamma rays, we are even going to a much smaller size, but x-ray the size. And the frequency of radiation is extremely high, and this will help to understand the effect in Chinese medicine. And one of the side effects of radiation is here. As you can see here in the picture, like a person that is radiated for neck, a very common area for neck cancers or for women with breast cancer.
So you can see the redness appearing there, and this will help us also later to understand the effect of radiation in Chinese medicine. And the side effects of radiation are very much dependent on the doses. The area of which is radiated and also the sensitivity of the surrounding tissues or organs.
And today, the radiation is very exact. So there is less damage to surrounding tissues in the past, there was much greater damage and the radiation side effects, first of all, the main one is really this heat, but there’s also fatigue. And there is some diffused feeling of not of being ill, not being yourself.
Sometimes headaches obviously on the skin, they can be in DEMA inflammation, like in his trunk. So sander. And if the radiation is like to the throat, to the mucus area, then there can be mucositis or dry mouth or dry dryness, wherever the radiation is directed at, the radiation can be directed to any place in the.
The very common thing we see in the clinic is radiation to an in throat, in their throat cancers, but also to the head and to the breast, obviously for breast cancer. But radiation can be done to any tumor. The side effects let’s look at them for a minute from the Chinese medical point of view, the way we view them.
So as you can see, it’s a very stressful. And small frequency of a phrase that penetrates deeply and they’re causing dryness. First of all, dryness to the fluids and dryness to the fluids over a long period of time in Chinese medicine, we’ll create in deficiency, which means a long-term thirst and a longterm inflammation, either the local or even more general.
Radiation in itself is toxic heat. And I think this is one of the key issues when we are teaching oncology acupuncture now to treat and diagnose patient with a TCM in oncology. Toxins is one of the main things we have to consider, because this is a new parameter, a new pathogenic factor, which is not very much obviously mentioned and then aging and the classical Chinese medicine.
So to understand toxins and its effect is one of the key factors. We have a combination of toxins and. And toxins and heat. We’ll also create some cheat deficiency. And if after a long period of time, even Jing deficiency, this deep penetration of the Ray goes deep inside the cell. And obviously also to the DNA of the cell.
But if Chinese medicine we’ll talk about this going deep into the gene level. And so this is the main factors that we are seeing in the. And this is the pathology in Chinese medicine. So first of all, it’s toxic. It is the nature of the x-ray. We see the dryness in many different area. It can be either superficial to.
Dryness or can be deeper. And then we’ll talk about the fluid and fluid production, like on the land, in this and the stomach, which are involved in Flint production. If it’s a very strong radiation, we’ll see in the efficiency, as we talked before, especially if it’s for a larger area, Xi deficiency is a classic and the two deficiency can also extend even four months after the treatments and locally we can see.
And which can affect like the tender masculine Meridian in the area that is being radiated. And we look at the supply of the tender muscular Meridian to the area, the classical combination of points, which are addressing this pathology. So large intestine elect will help to take the heat and it’s a young midpoint, so it will also help to cool.
And also GB 14 is actually for head radiation or neck radiation. It’s when they all the young meridians are joining will help to take the heat out. The excess young for drugs. Again, we’ll use points on the young meaning stomach for the foreign, large intestine. Two, both of them are water points and they’re in reaching back the fluids for inefficiency.
We can add kidney the six and if the radiation is over a long period of time or area with many bones, then we can add gallbladder 13. Which is the viewpoints and for bone marrow and some other kidney points depends on the radiation area. If there’s a general chief efficiency, we’ll do stomach 36. If it’s deeper, we’ll go to the seas and use stomach 30 and, or Lang nine, the gain to help to rebuild back the cheap.
For local area, we’ll use more local effected points, team end points. So let’s give you a kind of a general idea how I will treat the radiation and how we are treating radiation. And when we are teaching them college acupuncture, we start with some general prescription and go into many other options of treating.
One of the very interesting research that was done because there’s many high quality research, which are showing that acupuncture is good, especially for dryness of the mouth of the radiation for patients with head and neck cancers and this dryness. Extreme, and it’s very debilitating and it really create a extreme suffering to this patients.
Imagine that on top of having radiation and having a throat cancer or mouth. Your mouth feels like it’s desert, there’s no saliva or free for the production and because there’s been many evidence that acupuncture is good for it. There was one really interesting research that they want to share with you.
And it’s, they looked in functional MRI on patient. It’s actually not patients. There were just volunteers. I know Gary Dan from Memorial Sloan Kettering, he did this research, so we took volunteer. And punctured them a large intestine to, and looked in functional MRI and the amount of saliva produced and and the real comparing to placebo.
So this was the use of the occupancy was at the large intestine to comparing to a non occupant tree point, just on the side of. And this design is quite a interesting, because they did this time acupuncture, some got the real acupuncture, some got the sham acupuncture. Actually they did the crossover. So this.
People who were in the research in the beginning either got real or shy and then crossed over. And what was compelling was the mechanism, the functional MRI, and also the amount of saliva, the results were quite unusual. And you can see that the patient, whenever they are this, in this respect, the people who are examined when the large intestine two was punctured the area in the.
Which is to do with the saliva production was got more blood and you could see it in there. It was activated, comparing to the placebo point where there was no specific area in the head, in the factional MRI. And as far as salivation, they put the cotton ball in the mouth of this patient. And. Wait it before and after the puncturing of either the real large intestine two or the placebo, and this was very significant higher amount of saliva where large intestine two was punctured.
So it’s one of these beautiful research which shows you how a point. Both has a physical effect and potentially some mechanism of action, how it is working. So the conclusion of the study was that acupuncture in large intestine, two was associated with neuroma activation in the brain, but also was correlated to more saliva production.
I love this research because a lot of time, even as an acupuncturist, we would laugh to see this correlation between the city. What we know and the real finding, and that’s the beauty of research that you can actually look at it finding. Cause what it means. It has a lot of other ramifications than just supporting people with.
And dryness in the mouth due to radiation. It also means that this point is effective to many other conditions of dryness in the mouth. For instance, your grin, which is an auto immune disease, which the mucous membranes that had drying up any other dryness of the mouth which is stemming from different disease or even from in the efficient.
That we see, like for women, with menopausal people who get up at night and have to drink water. So we can use this point in additionally, maybe to kidney six and other points that they discussed to help with this dryness. And why is it working? And that’s, to me, the beauty, and as I say, I teach a lot. I am cology acupuncture.
You’re all welcome. If you’re interested in this field to do join us teaching and. It’s one of the things that we see this strong effect of acupuncture on different side effects in cancer patients. And we can understand why when we look both into research and we look into the Chinese understanding of the point.
So a lot of interesting people, too. And always been a water point and the large intestine Meridian goes to the mouth, as we know, and it’s a young Ming Meridian, and it was indicated for dryness in the mouth, but also for two sakes and for throat pain 2000 years ago. Now we can see the evidence, how it works and we can utilize it also with more confidence, looking at the risks.
But also understanding more how occupant you can help for patients with cancer. I’m on this beautiful project. When we draw the points with my two colleagues about the human needs, key from Poland, Dr. Babish Kaminski and Annie yell from Israel. And this is just an example of the drawing of the large intestine in Meridian and large intestine two.
And this is just to add to the beauty and understanding of the water production. Eh, around this point, another optional points actually see between 83 and another point, which helps in producing saliva and generally enrich the body fluids in the body. So as we know, large, interesting too, is both a water point is in spring point.
So it has a lot of different Chinese, eh, indication. So both reduce here. Young meaning points like large intestine in stomach of both helping to reduce it, helping to replenish fluids and in a deep way, even to strengthen the kidney and through the internal docs of the same chow. So despite, as you can see as a very large options in helping patients with dryness, But specifically also to treat radiation other points because we are on the treatments of radiation, which are very good for the neck and the patients who have neck and throat cancers is also maybe Lang 11, the Firebird.
And you can use lung five or alleged. This 18 is a local point again, to gain back this Floyd and reduce the heat and the toxic heat, even bleeding a point like large intestine 11, if there is a very stubborn and acute throat pain and a pain in the throat after a day. This was a little bit about acupuncture and the use of acupuncture and the, also the proof for acupuncture points and why acupuncture works so well for ideation, I did also more than 15 years of research into one formula.
And one of the things that we tried this formula, and when we combine it with radiation there is always a few. That herbal medicine, especially willingly they’re fear with radiation. And what we know from this formula, it’s called LCS. One, one is that it’s not that it’s not interfering, but it’s actually working through the same mechanism of actually producing more free radicals.
And also we have proven how it’s kills cancer cells. And does it affect. When we tried it with radiation, and this is a publication that we publish this in one of the very reputable journal. With my colleagues here. And my last colleagues is professor Berger, who is the head of the oncology services in the hospital that just to work Sheba hospital.
So it’s a very interesting publications, which is showing actually the twin. We take this formula here. We showed it the different cancers here. It’s for example, breast cancer in prostate cancer. Because if you actually have a look, you can see the blue line is just radiation alone. And on the side you see the amount of cancer and that is killed.
So the lower you go is the hundred percent of cancers are killed. So this is the, just the radiation. It’s. That the amount that we are using here is killing around 50% of the cancer cells. When we are adding the formula in small dose, it kills much better when we are adding it in higher doses, it much better, but even five.
So this isn’t for example, for breast cancer cells, and this is for prostate cancer cells. So what we see actually in this experiment that we published it, the formula is not just helping him killing cancer cells, but it’s actually even having a synergic effect. Definitely not interrupting. And there’s the whole debate of using herbal medicine together with radiation.
Definitely anything which reduce the amount of free radicals you shouldn’t use with radiation vitamin E for example, vitamin a. But actually it was this herbal formula. This we’ve been researching, we’ve shown not just that it’s not interfering, but it’s actually potentially adding to the radiation effect.
And that’s what we see because it’s similar. We know that the mechanism of action, so we can explain even why. So I’m advocating for people who are using radiation also to use this formula. So we have that. We have acupuncture, we have herbal medicine. All helping patients, oncology patients. So in this presentation, I talked about acupuncture stressing about the, also the mechanism of flagging this thing, do it, how it helps in radiation and other points.
You have quite a nice selection of points that you can use for patients in radiation and the herbal medicine LCS 1 0 1 or protective veil. Is it called? So you have already, I think even from this way, Some key component in ideas of how to help patients with the radiation, especially for the, they can throat.
But generally, if you’re interested in courses, you can look at it the same academy, there is much more information and quite a lot of free information about it. So I hope you enjoy this presentation and I’m wishing you all the best of. And from Shane to Shen thank you. On Friday, we’ll be Tsao-Lin Moy presenting on this channel.
So you will come to watch it. So keep healthy and safe and all the very best buy for me.
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors.Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi, my name is Michelle Gellis and I am going to be speaking to you today about the benefits of microneedling for acupuncturists. I wanted to say thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity, and we’re going to go to our first.
Over here. As this is a picture of me, for those of you who don’t know me and today as I mentioned, we’re going to be talking about the benefits of microneedling and micro needle noodling. What it is the use of tiny needles to beautify the skin. And this can be like a microneedle pen or a microneedle Derma roller, and, or what’s called a hydro roller or a Hydra needle, which is a little device where you put liquid in and you.
Infuse it into your skin directly. So all of these different devices are very modern ways of beautifying the skin, but they are based on the Chinese principles of using needles to beautify the skin, which is something that’s been done for thousands of people. And it is not just so it is preventative as well as it is restorative.
And it doesn’t just work on the outside. Microneedling if done by an acupuncturist will work on the inside as well. The principles and the practice of microneedling is almost identical to practices that we already have of either circling the dragon to treat a scar or some sort of just chromia in the scan or.
Intradermal needles or a seven star hammer, like a plum blossom needle for things such as hair loss and other skin concerns. And seven star hammers are used in Chinese medicine to treat blood stagnation, neuropathy, scars, and alopecia, but we can do the same thing with some of these other more modern.
Devices. So here is a photograph of a, what we call a dark spot or a liver spot. And Yeah, little wrinkles that might form around the lips or in the nasal labial area. Typically we will take small intradermal needles and insert them with tweezers, superficially to bring blood and Xi to the area. We can also thread larger needles and doing things like this helps to release.
Stagnation, any sort of fascial adhesions, which can cause the skin to fold and wrinkle and help to encourage the growth of healthy cells. So these are things that we can do with regular acupuncture needles. But this can also be done with a Derma roller or with a micro-needling pen. And this will mimic the, these are modern ways of mimicking some of these ancient techniques.
When I teach microneedling in my classes, I do. So as part of a holistic TCM practice, I incorporate my five element. I’m a traditionally trained five element acupuncturist, and I incorporate it as part of my. Overall system of health and wellness. So I do my diagnosis either your five element or TCM Dyke neurosis, and then you would use body points to help to build the cheap yen blood move stagnation, move, stagnant, fluid, stagnant sheet, stagnant blood.
And this is all in service of treating the outside because in order to treat the inside, you have to treat the outside and vice versa in order to treat the outside, you have to treat the inside. Here is a map of the face. And one of the principles of our medicine of course, is the connection between our skin and our internal organs.
And this is actually mapped out on the face as a microsystem where different parts of the face, when you treat them, it affects. Different organ systems.
So what are some of the things you might use microneedling for in your treatment room for a cosmetic. Purposes, it can be used for fine lines, acne scars, loose skin, and large pores, crows feet, lip wrinkles, any sort of dark spots or melasma things like stretch marks and even hair restoration. Many people have suffered post COVID hair loss and microneedling can help them.
So how exactly does it work and what does it do? From a Western standpoint, when you puncture the skin, when you make little holes in the skin, your body is stimulated to build its own collagen. Plus if there’s any products you’re using, like I showed this little Germa stamp here. The Hydrus stamped.
You can put fluid in here and infuse it directly into the skin. If you are, even if you’re just Derma rolling, or if you’re using a microneedle pen, you put your products on and then when you. Use these needling devices, these microneedling devices, it helps to infuse it because many of the products that we use, we put them on our skin and they never get absorbed.
So what are some of the benefits of microneedle Lang versus maybe some of the Western treatments, some of the more invasive treatment. That people are having done, whether it’s fillers or toxins, such as Botox with microneedling this very little downtime, it’s very low risk. It’s very effective.
There are many clinical studies many clinical studies that have been done. If you go to my website, which I’ll show you at the end. If you go to my website, you can see many articles that I’ve linked to and blog posts that I’ve written on this. So it’s very low risk. It’s very effective and it allows your body to produce collagen.
Naturally it can help with stretch marks, acne scars can decrease hair loss, encourage new hair growth. Like with eyebrows. As we get older, we lose the tails on our eyebrows can help with. Wrinkles on the neck and within cosmetic acupuncture, the neck can be a really difficult area to treat. So when you’re dealing with the neck, those fine lines around the lips crow’s feet.
So areas that would require a lot of small needles, the microneedling devices can address those. It is not painful or most cases it’s not painful. And the results last a long time. So the needles create these little micro channels and then a micro channel stimulate a healing response and collagen and elastin are produced.
And when that happens, the skin becomes firmer. Any depressed scars, start to gradually. Diminish, and this will help to smooth the wrinkles over time. You can do microneedle laying on your face, your neck, your scalp, your stomach, your thighs, your arms, pretty much anywhere on the body. You don’t want to do it inside the orbital rim on the red part of your lips or Ani, any mucus membrane.
So here’s just a little refresher. Here is a cross section of scan. And when we’re microneedling, we are just working right in this top layer here, the epidermis and the collagen induction therapy. As I mentioned, works on the wound healing responses. There is this all. Inflammatory reaction that happens.
And then the body recognizes it’s been injured and it makes nice new, healthy skin. So here’s a, just an example. This would be with a Derma pen, but it looks very similar with a Derma roller dermis stamp and you can see how it creates temporary little. Micro wounds or microtraumas, and then the body heals itself.
So if you’re already doing cosmetic acupuncture, like what are the differences and what are the similarities? So with micro needle, Lang you’re working very much on the skin level, the fine lines, any depressed scars, you don’t want to go over raise scars. With the nano needle. So there are little nano needles that you can get for the microneedle pen, which you actually can use inside the orbital rim and on the red part of the lab.
And the results happen fairly quickly. There’s a little downtime depending on how deep you go. And then the results are very long lasting up to five years with cosmetic acupuncture, your really working with the underlying causes of aging. You’re going much deeper till the muscle, the fascia you’re working with the blood and the cheek.
And it’s much better for the sagging skin jowling and your patient is going to need 12 to 24 treatments with microneedling. It’s four to six treatments and there’s no downtime with cosmetic acupuncture. So what can you expect? This is someone before treatment, during treatment and after treatment, they really should just be a little pink.
Like they have a sunburn, there should be no bleeding. Germer rolling. However can be done in your office. Or you can sell your patient a Derma roller and. Have them take it home and with proper instruction, they can do self care between treatments, which is really great. So here are some before and after pictures of a microneedle laying, this was with the microneedle pen.
So here are acne scars, and then you can see these fine lines around the crow’s feet around the eyes. And this is actually a picture of me. This was before I had done any microneedling on my eyebrows and this was after. And you can see not only is my entire brow thicker, but I have new growth in here where I didn’t have much of anything going on before.
And I don’t have any eyebrow pencil or eyebrow mascara going on here. You can see my eyebrows now. So I’ve been microneedling my eyebrows for about six months now. And I started to notice a change after about eight weeks. It was quite astounding. How do you set up your pricing? Let’s say you were already doing microneedling.
You already know all of this stuff, but you’re not quite sure about pricing and maybe how to market it. So the way that pricing is set up, typically with microneedling is. You’re going to charge per session. And depending on where in the country you are treating is how you would market your per session treatment and your packages.
Now one way that you can find out, what is a good price where you live is to maybe call some of the Medi spas and see what they’re charging. The caveat to that is I always do full body acupuncture along with my microneedling. So I put the body points in and I put, if I’m going to use numbing cream, I put the numbing cream on.
And then I come back in and take the numbing cream off and I do my microneedle. And so my patients tend to be on the table for about a half an hour. And so you want to price accordingly? Taking into account the fact that you are giving them an acupuncture treatment as well. And also depending on where you’re practicing in the country, you have to check with your local acupuncture board and make sure it’s okay for you to do packages, but you can also do a package because most people are not going to be satisfied with treatment until they’ve had at least four treatments spread out once a month.
Some other pricing options are to maybe only do the brows. Some people only want their mouth area done. Now with microneedle Lang you could do someone’s brows and then give them a. Cosmetic acupuncture treatment afterwards with the mouth area. What I have done with my patients who have a lot of lip wrinkles instead of using a lot of intradermal needles is I’ll put the numbing cream on I’ll do their body point.
And then I do any lifting points, points around the eyes, forehead, things of that nature. And then I come back in, take all the needles out in the fairs, take off the numbing cream and I do the microneedle and around the mouth, you can also just do neck and chest. You can do the back of the hands.
Microneedling is very effective for the back of the hand. And I don’t know if you can see my hands I’ve been, I am right now as of this recording, I am 60 and I hit don’t have any of those dark spots on the back of my hands. And I credit it all to microneedling because I started out many years ago when I was in my four days doing a Derma rolling on the back of mine.
Whatever CRM I used on my face, I put her on the back of my hands and then I would roll it in and then I would wash my face and it just helped everything absorb. So the vitamin C serum that I used really got absorbed very well. And I really feel like it’s helped my neck and the back of my hands and my overall.
Skin health doing the DerMarr walling. And then during the past year, I’ve started microneedling all myself with the microneedle pen as well. Also you can do knees and elbows, which Or another place where people tend to age along their elbows around their knees. And if someone has stretch marks, so these can be like standalone treatments and you can just decide how much you want to charge.
I’ve given you an idea of what I charge in my treatment space. And but you want to check around and see what’s going on with. As far as the microneedle pens, what you want to look for in a device is something that has a minimum of 14,000 RPMs. And that’s the speed. So when you’re turning it on, they have.
I could get my camera here. They have different levels and whatever speed you set it at when it’s at the highest speed, it should be a minimum of 14,000. This one goes to 18,000. Also, you want to look for that? The tip is a bayonet tip, which means that instead of just a little point of tip, it has a couple of connectors that you can put right in, turn it having a pen that comes with a couple of batteries is great.
And then if the battery does. Being able to screw it off and have a plug-in attachment is wonderful as well. Look at the warranty and make sure that the settings are easy to read that there’s a guide on it. And that you can tell. Where you’re setting the needle depth. So you’d be able to easily adjust and see the needle depth and also.
That it comes with a good user’s manual product support. And ideally it should have some marketing material that come with it. So you don’t have to go through the process of printing out brochures, coming up with information for your website, et cetera. And training, making sure that you get properly trained on whatever device you’re using is very important as well.
And so this is just talking a little bit about the side products. When you’re looking at products, you want something that is organic, so it doesn’t have chemicals in it. You will have patients that are vegan. They’re not going to want animal products or something. That’s vegan, something that’s easily absorbed.
And has properties that brighten the skin, nourish the skin, won’t clog the reporters, something that reduces inflammation, the products that I use have arnica and CBD. And and you want some after-care products for after you’ve done the treatment? I have arnica and aloe. Product that I give to my patients.
And then you want it to be slippery if it’s not slippery enough that you’re going to get drag on your device. This AccuLift skincare is my company, and I mentioned you can go to my website. AccuLift skincare.com for. Information on microneedling in general, you don’t have to be a customer.
There’s many blog posts and many pieces of information about microneedling in general. And I also teach cosmetic acupuncture classes. This is my website, facial acupuncture classes.com. All of my classes are recorded and they. Carrie CE use. I think that is my last slide. Next week we have Yair Maimon and he will be presenting for the American Acupuncture Council.
And I want to thank AAC again for having me on again, and I will see you again 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.
Hi everyone. This is Sam Collins, your coding and billing expert for acupuncture and the American Acupuncture Council. With another episode to always make sure that you’re on point and making sure your practice is continuing to thrive and to grow our role with the American Acupuncture Council and my service, the network is to always help.
Be the best it can be in implementing the care for your patients and ultimately being paid. One of the things that comes up and I’ve had this question quite a bit from members is there some sort of limit to the amount of acupuncture I may provide someone and that’s a question, certainly some people think do what can I only do two, can I do four?
What is my protocol? Is there some sort of. That I must follow and in a way, yes, but in a way, no. So let’s talk about that. Let’s go to the slides. Let’s talk about what’s going do the type of acupuncture you’re gonna do and what are the limits. So from here, you can see just my basic information, there’s our website, my email address for those that need some extra help, but let’s talk about the care of.
Let’s talk about what is reasonable or what is necessary and what I’d say that always comes back to as a medical necessity. So I’d say the limits to acupuncture more than anything is going to be, what does the patient need? What does it medically necessary? Let’s define that here’s a statement from Cigna Insurance specifically on their acupuncture policy, which by the way, just recently updated.
And it says medical necessity decisions must be based upon patient presentation, including diagnosis severity. And documented clinical findings. So in other words, the more severe the case, obviously the more severe the diagnosis, the more care they might likely need. So you’ll see here, they’re not really putting a limit per se.
What they also indicate is that an individualized treatment, meaning frequency, duration, and so forth is appropriately correlated with the clinical findings. So again, it goes back to severity. So when someone says to me, Sam, is it okay? I do four sets. I’m going to say it can be. But it’s gotta be, is that’s what’s needed it.
I would be careful of a being something that’s based on my style that everyone gets four sets, no matter what. It should be based on what the patient needs. Let’s give one more. Let’s take a look at what Aetna says, and this is Aetna’s clinical policy bulletin, which has also just been republished again, but for 2022, and it says this acupuncture services are considered medically necessary.
Only if there is a reasonable expectation that acupuncture will achieve measurable improvement in the patient’s condition and is reasonable for a predictable period of time. In other words, we’re showing we’re making the patient better. So I’m trying to highlight here is that. They don’t really give a definitive that you can or cannot do whatever is necessary.
In other words, could some patients get better with two, maybe three or even four? Here’s something that came out and we’ve had a lot of offices gotten letters like this. Here’s one from the company empire, which is out of New York, but this is an Anthem company. And we’ve seen this across the U S of course I teach seminars all over and you’ll see here at.
The review indicated your average utilization of acupuncture sessions of what hour are greater or what are greater for personal one-on-one time is greater than what we consider the average of providers. So right there, they’re saying, oh, you’re doing an hour. That’s greater than the others. Now you’ll notice it.
Doesn’t say you can’t do it. It just says, because you’re doing more. They’re trying to say why they’re questioning it, but notice what it says here. We are aware of many factors that may impact the coding of your acupuncture services. So they’re indicating if it is with, for I know someone who treats post-surgical, that is her absolute specialty.
That’s all she does is referrals. Post-surgical patients. She goes, Sam, I generally sometimes do two hours. She’s doing six, seven sets on these patients. But when you think. These are post-surgical patients, lots of severe pain. So would that be reasonable? If they were questioning this, you’re going to just have to be able to respond.
It’s reasonable based upon the severity and need. So is there an absolute artificial limit while in some instances there is. You’ve probably seen something, what they call the medically unlikely edits MUE it’s often termed and you’ll see here. This is the United healthcare is promotion of it. I won’t say promotion, but their indication of it.
This is set up on a federal level and it says this, it says in accordance with the code descriptions and or the centers of Medicaid, Medicare services, meaning medical. Guidelines that CMS national coding initiative, it says the following are, the service limits are as follows. And you’ll notice the initial set is one.
Of course, how many more sets can you have than the first set? The first set is always one, but notice the additional sets all indicate two. So in other words, the amount of sets per this guideline says there’s going to be three pre-visit. I will tell you a lot of carriers have adopted this. I’ve seen this, not just with, I seen it with Cigna plans as well, where they’re pushing these three set part based on this medically unlikely edit.
Now you might look at this and think, wow. Are they picking on our profession? Not really because every profession, chiropractors, physical therapists have limits just like this. And you’ll notice here, I’ve just given a quick list of common codes. Obviously I put acupuncture, chiropractic notice for acupuncture.
The one. The initial two additional chiropractics, only one. And then you’ll notice certain therapies. Like by example, if we moved down to massage, you’ll notice they allow up to four, meaning once you’ve over one hour, they’re going to say no, and these are kind of artificial limits, but they’re just saying they don’t feel that often.
It would be reasonable to do much more than that. So now the issue becomes, if I’m billing insurance, am I limited to this? In a way, it’s what the insurance may cover. They may only cover that many. Can you do more? So let’s say you’re an out of network provider and the patient has a policy where it only pays for three.
Could you still do four and be paid for four? You could, but not by the insurance company. The insurance company is going to pay three who would pay the. The patient. So you have to be willing to make sure informed the patient. Your plan allows a maximum of three. However, for your case, I believe we need four and here’s the additional charge.
That’s if you’re out of network, here’s the downside. What if you belong to an insurance? So let’s say you belong to United as a provider. You will be limited to three. And if you do a fourth, absolutely. You can do a four. But you will not be paid for it and you can not collect from the patient. Cause remember when you join an insurance, you’re abiding by their rules, which means if they allow three, that’s the maximum that we can do for reimbursement.
If you do more go right ahead. There’s no additional money. So you have to make sure beyond these plans. When you join an insurance, you now will become beholden to these rules. If you don’t belong to the plan, you can tell the patient, this is what your insurance covers. This is what we need. And so therefore you do, what’s medically necessary.
Obviously people want to use insurance and we want to give them the best access, but maybe it doesn’t always cover everything. As we’ve all witnessed. How many of you have been to a doctor and you’ve had to pay substantial money out of pocket or things weren’t covered because your plan didn’t cover.
What do you do? You pay out? Here’s one. This is tri west. Now try west. Remember is on the west coast. Basically Texas and west of Texas that handles the VA. And you’ll notice they follow the same thing, one initial and two followup. So you’re seeing this also for the VA side federal plans obviously, and realize that’s also for Optum, which is part of United.
So to answer directly for some plans, there is a limit of. That’s payable. That doesn’t mean you can’t do more. It just means your limit for payment is three. Which means if you’re in network, you’re stuck with three, but if you’re out of network, can you build a patient for additional you’ll notice the anthems didn’t fall that I’m going to always say, treat what you need to do for your patient.
Treat the patient. Not insurance. Remember insurance is nothing more than an eight and never feel fully trapped into it. You’re going to let someone know here’s what your coverage covers. Here’s what we need to do. Here’s the difference provide what is necessary for your patients. So if you need to do four sets, do four, but if you’re in United health care, you will be limited to three.
So be conscientious of following through and understanding different plans and understand what your rights. In the sense when you’re in network or out of network, remember when you’re out of network, it’s up to you to charge what you feel is reasonable and the patients can choose or not choose to get it.
But bottom line is you are not limited unless you belong to something. When you belong to something like the VA, oh, they can say three are United. And so I will say the medically unlikely edits is there. If you go to a massage there. And they want to do two hours, but the plan only pays for who’s going to pay for the additional hour.
We, as the patient or the patient would, so same idea here. What I want you to take away from this is do what’s medically necessary, do what your patient needs, but just be careful understanding when you belong to a plan, there can be limits. And that limit is three to give you a little history of it.
Pre 2019, it was actually for manual. And three for electro and post 2019, they removed it and went down to three. Now the good news to that is I would suggest that many patients, I know me and myself as a patient, I’ve often not gotten much more than a 30 minute, maybe 45 minute. I’ve never had an hour treatment and I’m not saying anything wrong, but I think most patients can respond.
So we want to treat what’s adequate and be careful if you’re doing an hour. And here would be my question to you. Does the patient really need the hour? Are you just doing extra because you’re not busy enough and I’d sometimes be careful of that. Be careful of having a patient that you overdue, just because you feel like you want to throw everything at it.
Be. Be mindful, be helpful. What’s your patients they’re looking for is a response to care whether it’s going to take 30 minutes or an hour. So don’t put yourself in the realm of limiting, but also bear in mind. What is my cost benefit ratio? And remember, benefits are continuing to increase. Take a look.
And the benefit of 2022, it says Aetna will add acupuncture as a standard benefit in new and renewing commercial health plans in 2022. So everyone who has a commercial Aetna plan will be covered. Now, this doesn’t mean some of the federal ones, but all the commercial ones will cover, which means greater access.
Now will Aetna limits you to three sets? I’ve not seen them. I will say Optum United. But not Anthem and Aetna bear in mind, again, medical necessity. What comes down to, we want patients, we want access, give them the best help and understand do what is medically necessary. We’re always here to help remember the American Acupuncture Council, specifically the Network, not the insurance side.
The network is here to help you. I can become part of your own. Where you can call me, email me, fax me. We even do monthly zoom meetings. Take a look at our site, take a look. It’s very reasonable and as well as always gives you access, have an expert on your staff. Always reach out to us, go to our site. And I’m going to say to all of you.
Thank you. Continue success. Peace. Be with you, my friends catch you next time. Oh, and don’t forget, they’re going to bring it up on the screen. There is another show this Friday, and it’s going to be Michelle Gellis please tune in. We’re always here to help take care of everyone. Seeing that.
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, everyone. Thank you very much for attending our American Acupuncture Council webinar presentation. My name is Matt Callison. I am here with my esteem colleague, Brian Lau. I thank you. That. We’ve got a really fun topic today. It’s a proprioception at Extra Point Chonggu. Brian, can we go ahead and go to that first hetero slide?
Let’s get this slide.
So we’re going to be discussing is a needle technique for Extra Point, Chonggu, which is actually just one portion of a treatment for a upper cross syndrome posture. The upper cross syndrome posture, which we’re going to be elaborating here in just a little bit can lead to a multitude of different injuries.
And today is very short presentation. We’re gonna be. We’re going to be lecturing about how to actually needle this particular point and stimulate these lower cervical area that usually has a proprioceptive deficiency from this particular posture of a Ford, had an upper cross syndrome. So let’s go ahead and I think jump right into upper cross syndrome so we can discuss that.
So this term upper cross syndrome was coined by Vladimir Yonda close to 40 years ago. He is an osteopath in specializing in rehabilitative medicine, and he coined this term basically from looking at his patients that have a very unique type of posture that we actually see in our practice. And you as well, commonly, I would say every single.
It is looking at a forward head posture of a plumb line, increased thoracic kyphosis. So you can see that upper back really starting to curve without forward head. That’s going to lead to a number of different postural imbalances and agonist antagonist. So Bladimir, Yonda when he saw this, he actually coined this term is looking at it as a cross.
So you can see that the pectorals in purple here, the pectorals are going to be in a locked short position. Pulling on that humerus, making the humerus internally, rotate, collapsing the chest. Now going through that, you can see the next purple would be the neck extensors. Now those neck extensors are locked short, but they’re actually with through evolution, looking at portions of these neck, extension extensors are going to be locked short, and some of them will actually be locked long.
The longer part let’s say the lower cervical aspect of. That posture you’ll see that the neck extensors would be more in a lengthened position because of the forward head. Then the upper cervical region, the neck extensors actually be in a shortened position. So a little bit more on that with the next slide and just a little.
So that’s the purple aspect. Those are your locked short muscles. Now you’re locked long muscles will be, if you can see where the increase thoracic kyphosis would be your rhomboids, your middle trapezius, your lower trapezius, those muscles be very weak, allowing scapular, protraction, as well as that increased thoracic kyphosis.
Now, if we look on the Antar aspect of the body, you see the neck flexors. So it’s the deep neck flexors in particular that are going to be. Locked long or inhibited posture. If we look at the sternocleidomastoid, which will also be a neck flexor, that’d be more in a locked short position. So you have your general upper cross syndrome, but there’s also going to be just some variabilities within those muscle groups that will be locked long and locked.
So the point, the takeaway here is to look at as today’s presentation is that lower cervical region will be usually proprioceptive deficient in that forward head posture. It’s a lengthened area. So we’re going to use an acupuncture needle to try to reestablish some of that proprioception combined with an exercise to bring that forward, head back to neutral position.
Let’s look at a couple of models here. Let’s go to the next slide. There’ll be. So zeroing in on this upper cross syndrome or a common posture that lengthens the lower cervical region. So you can see how the head is really quite forward, but then it’s going to compress the tissues of the upper cervical region.
So if you could take two fingers and just put them right there at gallbladder 20, and once you have that, just simply start to look toward the ceiling. You might tilt the head back just a little bit. That’s called Qapital extension. So that’s different than cervical extension. Cervical extension is when you have all of the cervicals moving capital extension.
When you had your fingers there, gallbladder 20, you might have flipped those muscles. Just move just a little bit. When you’re looking up, that’s going to be looking at the upper neck extensors, especially the suboccipital triangle. And when those muscles get really quite taut that can lead to a number of different types of headaches, nerve and syndrome.
So the third occipital nerve, the greater occipital nerve, the suboccipital. Lots of different injuries that can occur from this particular posture. So you can see what the, both these models, if they got increased thoracic kyphosis, the head goes forward as a compensation for that forward head. The person’s just going to tilt their heads slightly upwards so they can see the horizon.
And that’s going to cause that capital extension and a number of different injuries. Now Brian’s going to go ahead and show a video that he did of himself to explain this a little bit more. Brian, do you want to take that away?
Yeah, sure. Videos just showing the relationship between the shoulder girdle movement, the scapular movement and the.
So there’s a ton of sinew channels that act on the position of the scapula and the movement of the scapula, not a ton, but there’s several. And we can go through them, but really, I just wanted to highlight in this video, how the spinal movement links with those scapular movements and the tie into what we’re seeing in these images here, before we go into the video, these models, as you see, have increased thoracic.
So their spine in that thoracic region and the upper, or excuse me, lower cervical region. The spine is stuck in flection. So we’re going to look at the relationship between the flection and extension components of the spine and how that relates to the scapular movement. Pretty short video. It’s an Instagram video.
It’s going to be on our Instagram channel or Instagram page. So it’s a minute long Instagram. Doesn’t give you a lot of time for these things, but it’s very brief. So let’s give it a look at. Okay there. We’re going to look at the relationship of the spine to the shoulder blade movement using this resistance band.
So as I go from protraction retraction, that movement likes to occur. As the spine comes out of flection, the cervical spine starts drying back and pact traction. That the spine will want to go into election retract. Buying comes out of flection, cervical spine throughout the back. Many people have a forward head posture.
So the spinal movements not coordinating with the entire movement of the body that sets them up for injury in the cervical spine angle, her girdle potential job problems, headaches. So they need to learn how to get rod, that surgical site back to encourage the entire.
all right. I’m gonna go back here for a second, a fun thing about filming things is you notice aspects that you wouldn’t notice otherwise. I had my mic here on the shirt. So when my head goes forward, of course, I go a little ways away from the. But I was acutely aware of how different my voice was and I was strained.
My voice became when I went into that forward head posture. So that was quite interesting, but yeah, just also noticing the the difference tension in the extensor suboccipital reason and how that sets you up for a whole host of different potential problems. But with that video you might notice the scapular movement and how much activity there, there occurs in the rhomboids lower trap.
It was mentioning those structures that are pulling the scapula back and retraction. So that can get us thinking about ways of treating this beyond just the technique we’re going to be highlighting. And I think Matt’s going to get into that on the next slide here. Okay. Okay. Thanks, Brian. That was good.
So just as an overview, what we’re looking at is just a portion of that upper cross syndrome, the increase thoracic kyphosis, which are going to, it’s going to have a lock long and weakened and. Rhomboids middle trapezius, lower trapezius. The head is going to be forward, which is going to be a lengthening of those lower cervical vertebra.
Then you have a shortening of the upper cervical tissues. So in this image, the head is neutral. Now, if we look at, if we can be able to take that head and just move it forward, we can start to see a little bit more of how. Lower cervical vertebrae going forward and how it would be great if there was a way for us to actually pull that lower segment of the cervical vertebra and all of the tissues that are highly appropriate, receptive your deep paraspinal muscles, your supraspinous ligament, your interspinous ligament, and encourage that to be able to come back while the person’s.
He is trying to strengthen the rhomboids, the lower trapezius, the middle trapezius, and add proprioception add sheet to that particular part of the. So I would say probably about 15 years ago. So I started playing around with this needle technique with the exercise and the combination is pretty profound.
And this is the reason why we wanted to share that with you today. Again, the takeaway here is this is one portion of the needle techniques or the points that we’d be using and the exercises that we’ll be using for upper cross syndrome. And Ford had an increased thoracic hypothesis, but it is a Pearl.
This is a big point. This is a great technique to be able to use. So it’s underneath the C6 vertebra. You’re inserting the needle through the skin, through the superficial fascia, the adipose tissue, and then the first tissue of resistance that you’ll feel would be the supraspinous ligament. Now, once you go through that, supraspinous ligament than the.
Long and wide interspinous ligament is going to be the next issue of resistance that you’ll feel with that acupuncture needle on most people, it’d be probably about, just about a one inch needle insertion, which is completely safe. You’re very far away from the spinal cord. Some patients when they’re laying on the table prone, it’s difficult to get to that C6 area because maybe they have a lot of tissue in the area or are just increase extension for some patients.
Some practitioners like to lower the head. To be able to open up that neck personally, as a patient. I don’t care for that very much. Having my head drop down a little bit. Doesn’t feel very good to me. Usually what I’ll do for patients is just to put a pillow underneath the chest and that’ll open up the neck.
So as a practitioner, just take your finger or two fingers and start feeling underneath that C6 vertebra separating the tissue so you can get an idea. On how to be able to put that needle up underneath the spinus process of C6 and get through those a formation, a four mentioned tissues. Once you get into that interspinous ligament, which is about, like I said, about an inch deep propagate Xi, and it may take a while actually for that patient to get to you because of the lack of appropriate.
Now, remember this is also going to be combined with other points for example, the wrong point motor point, the middle trapezius rotor point, the lower trapezius motor point you could use GB 20. There’s a number of different points that we can use depending on the patient’s case. So once you’re able to get an established Che at Extra Point Chonggu, then what we’ll do.
We’ll wrap the tissue around the needle by twisting the needle in one direction until the needle starts to get stuck. Once it’s stuck, then we’re gently going to start to pull that tissue back posterior where alongs. So we want that tissue to go back it’s lengthened because of the forward head position.
We want that tissue to go back at the same time as the. Doing an exercise, the prone and neck protraction exercise. So let’s go to the next slide there. Be
all right. So as that person is elongating that lower aspect of the cervical spine, bringing him back into extension, you’re pulling up with the needle so they can start to get an understanding of raising that lower cervical part of their body up toward the. They’re going to slowly just start to tuck their chin a little bit.
So that starts to get rid of some of that capital extension. And they set up this exercise by lowering and squeezing the scapulas together. Then engaging the middle trapezius, the rhomboids and the lower trapezius. So this is an exercise that you would do after all of the needles have been taken out with the exception of Extra Point, Chonggu.
Brian, is there anything that you wanted to add to that before we jump right into the video to show them. Yeah, you’ll you’ll see this a little bit on the video coming up that the tendency for the people who really need this technique in particular, the tendency, when people start to lift their chest by engaging the rhomboids middle lower traps they’re really tied into the idea, not even consciously, but just their body’s kind of stuck in it in a particular position to where they want to arch their neck.
And exaggerate the neck position that we’re trying to get them out of. It’s just something that’s very difficult for people who really need this technique. It’s difficult for them to find that movement where they both retract the scapula and bring the, draw the cervical spine back and lengthen that posterior portion of the cervical spine, especially the upper cervicals.
And now of course, the technique is designed to help with that, to help give them a signal and encourage them. But you have to look at the. And make sure that they’re not going further into capital extension, like trying to lift a lift up and going further into capital extension. So you have to coach them.
Now, the good news is the technique helps give a little cue and coach them at the same time, but sometimes verbally coaching is necessary. And you’ll see an example of that coming up. Yeah, that’s a really good point. A lot of people will go into that capital extension just because they’re used to doing that.
So thanks for saying that, Brian, by coaching the person, just to tuck their chin a little bit, that helps with it. Now, this technique also is useful. If you didn’t want to needle it by just pinching the tissue of Chong GU and lifting that. But it’s not as successful in my own opinion as actually using a stainless steel needle, going into the interspinous ligament propagating sheet.
To me, that’s the changing proprioception far better than just actually just lifting up that skin. Cool. All right. So let’s, and again, you’re in the blue channel, right? With the needle you’re in the do channel, you’re in the ligamentous tissue and you have a lot more sway on it. So you’re ready for the video.
Yes.
super supplies.
Squeeze caplets together, race together and relax everything. So bring these guys to be a backbone because you put this together
for me and agree this.
all right. That video is up on our YouTube channel by the way. So if I noticed the birds are a little aggressive, they’re mad in your background, they’re making some noise and it might not have heard anything. This sounds a little put out by that, but we do have that up on our YouTube channel. If you wanted to check that out sports medicine acupuncture, and you can do that.
Oh, sorry, Brian, are you finished? Can I go? Okay. This was a recording that we just did in New Jersey to finish the 2019 2022 smack program. It was three years because of the smack of sorry for him because of the COVID. So we just finished this. This was a module for neck, shoulder, and upper extremity. This is one of the techniques that we’re using now.
Remember, we’re also going to be needling the other points as well, and that helps with proprioception. So the person gets an idea on how to be able to lower and squeeze the scapulas together. So that’s great. That’s, this is a really wonderful technique to be able to use. We’re going to be teaching this class again here in San Diego and that’s coming up in June four days and that will be wrapping up completely of the 2022.
So also what we’re going to be teaching with this is a wonderful myofascial technique that Brian has introduced into the program that works extremely well for that particular posture and opens up the tissue. Great mile fast, mild fascial technique to use after all the needling. Brian do want to take it away.
Yeah, sure. So this is a seated technique. It’s a interactive between you and the patient. So first and foremost, you want the patients sitting in a position that is going to help facilitate change in the body. So you don’t want to just slouching though. I am starting a little slouch. So if you look at the picture, there’s three images, the one in the left most image once you have the person stacked on their sit bones, you’re going to take your Louis kind of knuckles.
I usually use just the flat kind of inner phalanx of two fingers. And you’re going to place that approximately I’m not being really exact on any location, really, whatever real estate you can get in that upper cervical spine. And you want to allow the patient to drop their chest and go into the Capitol extension.
Why am I doing that? I’m doing that so that the tissue shortens and I can get a good investment of the tissue. I can hook, I can engage the fascia. I can sink into the fascia and then you’re coaching the patient to start a lift. The sternum, descend the scapula by engaging the rhomboids lower. And drawing the cervical spine back.
So they’re a long gating, the the posterior part of the cervical region, especially those lower cervical structures that we’re trying to to engage. So they’re doing that while you’re descending and gliding through the tissue. So again, just initial setup, they drop the, they exaggerate the posture, so you can get a hook on the tissue.
And then as you’re drawing that tissue down, And elongating, they’re doing the movement, bringing the cervical spine back and opening the chest. So you’ll see that in the technique, these just give you the kind of rundown and the instructions for that. But let’s look at the video.
this technique is a combination between the manual work that you’re doing and also the movement of the patient. So you want to coach them with the movement, first of all, so have them drop the chest. And serve a call extension. So that’s going to be the starting position, starting them with bad posture.
And then they lift the chest and the length and the posterior cervical spine. So they start an extension with the chest dropped and then lift the sternum, like in the back of the neck, the chin comes in. Many times patients will have a difficult time doing that. When they go to lift the sternum, the loss of go more into extensions and some patients you have to coach them to the movement of this technique is really a big part of it to starting them.
And this position is it let’s come back to neutral. I’m going to gently place my fingers up towards the occiput. Just any area of the cervical spine that I have access to. I’m going to take them into the starting point. That will shorten the tissue. It allow me to get a purchase of the tissue and now it’s a pin and they start to come out of that and I’m stretching the tissue in the posterior cervical spine associated with urinary bladder.
Edgington.
and another pass maybe slightly lateral or slightly medial is again, place your fingers on the deck. Take them into the starting position. That allows me to get a hook last meeting the hold of the tissue, because it’s in a short position now, as I bring the tissue to known where they come out of that position, lifting the sternum, bringing the chin, like the need of the posterior part of the neck.
And I can take it all the way down through the upper part of the thoracic spine.
all right. So this is a supine version. I guess time to the seated extensor technique. So in this one, we had the patients who I’m limited the ability for them to be as involved in it, by dropping the chest, by lifting the head. So it takes away a little bit of the re-education aspect, but at the same time, there are next, a little bit more relaxed or they’re in a more neutral position that way.
I can still take them into capital extension with them in capital extension. I can sink into the tissue pretty close to the occiput. And as I bring the tissue down and start spreading downward, I can bring their neck back into a neutral position. So it’s a little more passive on the patient’s arm and the seated.
so it might be appropriate if there was currently neck pain, that they were having a harder time in the seated position, or if you just don’t have time to put them into a seated position or to use the time of their place,
the two movements. With the hand where you’re bringing them in to flection
lengthening the posterior part of the neck. The other one with the other hand, simultaneous where you’re spreading downward descending, the aging.
So a question about how many times, or how long would you do this technique? It’s a short technique, two passes, three passes. You don’t need to do it really more than three passes. If I were to doing multiple passes, I would probably move slightly lateral or slightly medial and cover the same region but tissue that’s slightly medial to the first pass or silent lateral to the first.
These are short techniques. There are supplement to the acupuncture. They don’t need to be something you spend a lot of time with something else, especially with the seated technique that might not be apparent is when I was following the person, as they went into a kind of exaggerated drop chest capital, a extension I’m not cramped.
I’m not digging my hand in as deep as I can. I’m really just following it’s more of a pivot point is you’re guiding them and following you’re not trying to force them into that position. So I’m not using a lot of pressure. By doing that, I get a hook on the tissue and the pressure really comes from when they start coming out of that position.
So you don’t need to use a whole, a strong ton of pressure with it. It’s a pretty gentle. There’s four, so they’ll feel it, but it’s not anything that you’re driving them in or trying to sorta mobilize the spine by doing it. So it’s more just following, Hey, Brian. I also saw that same question about the needle techniques.
So I think I’ll go ahead and address that as well. Do you want to go to the next slide? Just so people can see that information?
There we go. It’s just has our information that you do, but general, we have a lot of these videos up there. We also post them on our Instagram account and Facebook page. So all sports medicine acupuncture. If you searched for that, you’ll find it. And then our webpages there. So to address the question about how often are you using the Chung goo lifting technique?
Until the patient actually has a really good command of the movement of going into prone, neck retraction. Once they have that, then you can go ahead and stop now. So we addressed this needling technique as basically for that forward head, but you can also use. This 0.4 disc problems, cervical disc problems.
Also, if there’s going to be tenderness to just in that local area, there’s an Oscher point. You can also just go ahead and needle that without actually the lifting technique is for when you see that forward head posture. But again, this point could be used for a number of different types of local injuries.
Brian, is there anything else that you want to add before we had. Just as the bounce off what you said. Yeah. It’s used when they’re, when they have that forward head posture. It might also be used when you say use that neck extension exercise that we highlighted and the person’s really struggling and they can’t figure out how to coordinate that movement to bring that portion of the spine back.
It’s very difficult. And actually I was teaching, I teach some online Teagan classes that was covering this today because there are people that do that very thing when they go to open the chest. Arched the neck up and you try to coach them and they have a very difficult time finding that region.
So it’s appropriate aseptic technique. It gives that a pointer to this tissue bring this back, without using words, they can feel that the noodle kind of pulling that region is oh, that’s what you’re asking me to do. You’re asking me to bring that back. It’s just, it becomes very clear.
It’s like a spotlight on that region. So yeah. Just use it, use the technique, but you might use it when you’re seeing people struggle with particular instruction that.
The guys that wraps it all up. If you have any questions whatsoever for Brian or myself, or you’re interested in the program or any of our classes and information, there’s our contact information that was there in those notes. Thank you so much for attending. Really appreciate it. I remember next week also, Sam Collins is going to end up being here.
I thank you again for the American Acupuncture council. And we’ll see again next, next month. Yes. Thanks everyone. Thanks everybody.
I would like to talk about seasonal allergies and some of you may have heard me talk about it, but I think it is because of this time of year, it is the time to talk about it and see how we can help people with this condition.
Click here to download the transcript. Click here to download 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.
Hello, my name is Moshe Heller, and I would first like to think the American Acupuncture Council for having this, having me on this show. So great privilege and it’s a great show and helping us acupuncturists talk about different stuff. And I’m the first today I would like to talk about seasonal allergies and some of you may have heard me talk about it, but I think it is because of this time of year, it is the time to talk about it and see how we can help people with this condition.
So I will start with.
The weather’s getting warmer. The trees are starting to bloom and we are starting to feel that. Or our patients are starting to feel the effect of of this season. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting a lot of calls to my office to try to help with these seasonal allergies.
So I wa I thought the best way to discuss how to help people with it is to bring a case. I’m going to talk about this young boy has, he was nine years old when he came to see me. And he’s been, he has been suffering from allergies for the past, about five years. So since he was about four and it’s interesting cause I’ve been seeing more and more children with allergies because I think it is actually a condition that is growing in numbers and we see more and more children and.
And adults would that matter who are suffering from allergies and we can see the numbers are growing. Even the CDC has published information about that too. So you are going to see more and more of these cases in your office to them. Sure. So he’s a nine year old. He is a chief complaint is nasal congestion, sneezing.
These are all and watery, itchy eyes. These are all very common symptoms of the seasonal allergies. Occasionally you will experience a lung congestion. So it goes down to his lung and he’ll have cough with a clear. And sometimes yellow sputum and this user does sputum is difficult for him to expect rate.
So it sounded it’s a sign of some congestion. The patient mother says that he’s more susceptible to catching colds than his peers. And family members. And she’s also reports that he’s allergy testing a reveal that he’s allergic to soy and tree nuts, which indicated to me, so other than the environmental allergies, he also has some food allergies.
He had a difficulty falling asleep and it was very hard for him to wake up because he would go to sleep late. And then only have six hours of sleep for a nine-year-old. As far as I’m concerned, this is not really a sufficient amount of hours. He also suffered from nasal clear nasal congestion.
He would have headaches when he was tired. And interestingly enough, he also had called sores one or two times per year. That cold sores for me are signs that there’s some kind of immune disorder. And also there’s a lingering pathogenic factor as involved with. He’s very sensitive to smells and his tends to have eczema behind the knees and elbows or in the elbow bends.
And the rash is usually red and itchy and raised in bumpy, but not Uzi. Eczema as usually another common disease that is Como co coincide with children who are very allergic. And also we see that with adults. He would have chest tightness and shortness of breath, especially when he’s exposed to cold.
So cold will make it the condition worse.
So his tongue is pale and puffy, which points towards some deficiency and slight center crack, and a red tip with particular in the upper jaw. And the coding is slightly thick and white meaning that there’s some More on the cold side and that the particular showing some underlying heat.
As we can see, it’s already pulling, pointing towards a complex. Condition, the pulse was slippery in the turn, but otherwise weak and his lymph LAN glands were congested and positive. This is something I do on a regular basis when I see children I palpated for the lymph glands under the jaw.
And along the anterior aspect of the SCM. So if they feel that if I feel that there are marble sized protrusions, then definitely that’s a positive lift Glen and a, usually those are the, when the lymph glands are positive, it points to. Maybe the condition involves a lingering pathogenic factors.
They have to see other factors also, but it’s a, quite a a strong, positive although he was nine, I was still looking at the finger vein and finger vein observation is something that we do a lot in pediatrics. It’s mostly done for children around to. Two years old, from from newborns to, to two or three afterwards traditionally it wasn’t used so much, but I’ve found it very helpful to look at that to look at the finger vein, even at older kids, because they’re radically.
At that age, it should not be president if it is it’s indicative of something. The finger Bain was very dark usually indicates heat. That was another indication that there was some underlying heat disorder in his case we, I observed his face and his cheeks seemed to be a bit red.
And the mother reports that they are a lot of times are red. And she said always red and there were also dark circles under the eyes and they were puffy. I have actually included a picture. You, it’s hard to see the redness in the cheeks and with the lighting. Case, but believe me, this area, this whole area, you could see it’s a little discard colored.
And you, and in real life, this was red. You could definitely see the dark area under his eye and you can absolutely see the puffiness of.
So I diagnose this, a guy with lingering passion, pathogenic factors and LPF with phlegm accumulation and underlying lung chief acuity. So there is definitely some lung T vacuity in the sense that that the tendency to get sick. And the lung congestion that happens as a result of that are all indicating that the lingering pathogenic factor included the large lymph gloat and the lymph gland and the history of having frequent colds and the phlegm accumulation could be seen in his tongue.
And and post. And the symptoms. I chose to use a combination of points, large intestine, 11 to help clear the heat, the underlying heat lung seven, to regulate the lung and strengthened the lung. Gallbladder 40 as a point to help clear the sinuses. It’s a point. Frequently when I see rhinitis or allergic rhinitis, a lot of times I would use that with moxa, especially if there’s pure cold in this case I didn’t, but frequently I will use marks on go about at 40, I use spleen nine to.
To the spleen transform dampness and and so screen nine is a point I use a lot when I see that the spleen needs to trends to help in the evacuation of damp and phlegm. And then I also have added liver five is I know that some of you may have not don’t remember, but Oliver five is the master point of plump.
It for me, that trans translation of that, or understanding of that is that liver five helps to work. The liver work through phlegm. No. We know that Fleming damp does hinder the flow of Liberty. And therefore I look at liver five as a point that helps deliver, move through phlegm and help the transformation and movement to a phlegm and resolution.
So I used that a lot of times when phlegm is involved live. I sent the, I sent him home with magnets and I do that frequently with children to support the treatment or continue the treatment to have a more significant effect. And so magnets are an amazing tool. Both were adults and kids.
I find them very helpful if you understand how they work. Then it’s really easy to use. And I’ve used it for, I use it a lot with children and also adults, as I said before, the advantage of the magnets is that you have. Of the polarity. You have the ability to either disperse or tonify. So depending on what magnets you use the magnets I use come with a dispersing aspects.
Facing the skin. So if I use, if I stick the magnet to buy lab, as I received it, then this would be a dispersing function on by Lao. If I flip it over, it will be tonifying therefore you be 13 and you be 20. I flip them over and help to To tonify both the lung and the spleen. And then I use this point below stomach 44.
It’s on the other side, on the the sole side of the foot behind opposite to stomach 44. That’s a point that’s used by Kiko Matsumoto for Allergies in general and specifically allergic rhinitis. The use of below stomach 44 the opposite side of stomach 44 with a magnet and dispersion is a great take home for kids and also adults as a.
I recommended them to avoid dairy and wheat. And the reason is of course we I do believe that they are very allergy forming foods. But also they are if you remember, they are the major phlegm producing foods in, in Chinese medicine dietary theory. Avoiding dairy and wheat will help with resolving damp and phlegm, as well as avoiding soy and nuts.
Those, we also see that he’s allergic to, and it will be good to avoid them until the body is able to ex you know we clear some of the heat and the phlegm, and there’ll be an improved. And we also talked a lot about trying to increase the sleep to at least seven hours so that he starts going back to trying to sleep early.
We talked about different things like either yoga moves or chicken moves to help him move into. Sleep. And I taught him some of those and that also helped him to fall asleep a little faster in. I gave him some herbs as part of the treatment. I combined shout child who tongue with a variation of Wu may one.
You may ask yourself why why did he use womanly one? We’ll talk about that in a few minutes, but I use that frequently for patients who are trying to address allergic or atopic tendencies the treatment was continued once a week. The acupuncture treatment for six treatments. And at that time, the patient reported.
He felt less congested and the skin rash was almost completely gone in general. His, he had quite a significant improvement. The treatment continued for another six treatment, but every two weeks and after which the patient skin has cleared completely. And at the time the patient was, I gave another formula.
I changed the formula. We took him off of the shell child who tongue and gave him every Haitian of Jade windscreen for continued treatment and every changing of the season, he comes for our a tune up to prevent the recurrence of the allergies. And this has been very successful.
I put here the formulas in ingredients. So you have it, I’m going to send or post the PDF version of these slides. So you can have. But this is a variation of G of a jar. The will, may one. And this is the shower chow Yukon tongue, the classical shower champ, shallow child who tongue I use in his case.
And this is the variation of the Jade windscreen. I added some Jean one and a Jaguar to the combo to support his condition. I wanted to just Talk a few minutes, a few seconds about why I chose we’ll may one as my formula. This comes from the studies that Dr. Lee did for the treatment of food allergies and also allergies in general.
And she based her and you can actually see, read this article if you have a moment. I think it’s very interesting. The reason she chose the idea behind it, it comes from diet. The concept that actually. The exposure to per Siddiq two parasites in patients who have allergies will reduce their allergies or in air in areas where parasites are very common allergies are much.
Present. She thought that an antiparasitic formula will create similar effects. And indeed she did some studies that were very favorable and therefore I decided to this formula and right here you’ll have the exact base formula, which he star, she based her. Her research on, she called this formula F a H F one.
And it is basically the classical rule may wand. And one, one more second about this in her original formula, he she. The form of the, she took she food, the foods and the shisha were eliminated in her test form nine. And I guess they had some issues with both of these herbs and as a, as part of the formula, I later on created a similar format and I’ll talk to her about that in a few minutes.
I added it back. I also wanted to mention that allergies always equals diets for me. I have never treated an allergy person without discussing whether it’s food, whatever, the allergic reaction where it’s allergic asthma or allergic eczema or any atopic disorder. When we suspect there’s an allergy at the root of your patient’s disorder always discussed die.
It’s really important to eliminate phlegm producing foods. It’s a live and just look at the diet and see if it is a contributing factor. I want to remind you that there is at day two logical factors for allergy there’s. One of them is actually. Pesticide and GMO foods that irritate the gut and cause what we call a leaky gut syndrome.
So that’s also something that we need to look at and And so it’s really important to make a real important discussion, to have a really important discussion about food. So I always start by asking them, what do they eat? How’s their schedule and what’s happening. And I asked them to keep a three week journal food, John journal of what they’re eating and how it is affecting them in here.
You have. The chart that I have them fill out for each day. So that keeps me, keeps the record and helps me see if there’s any patterns or any foods that are being consumed that could be contributing to the factor. And as I said here, pesticides and GMO can be irritating to the gut and cause me one of the causes for the allergy allergic reaction.
I also strongly believe that vaccinations can definitely contribute to To the allergic reaction and because of their effect on or how we see the effect on the body and the FA the fact that the pathogen that is being injected can actually become a latent and cause hyper activity in the immune system.
So I actually developed a formula called guard in my company that’s called motion herbs. And you’ll see the link at the end of the slideshow a formula that’s called guard, and it is a formula that you will Give to your patients before and about two weeks before and keep it on two weeks after each vaccination.
So it helps to eliminate that causative factor. I also, as I mentioned before, leaky gut syndrome is another theory that we have about why a children have or adults also in that case have allergies. As you can see here, there’s an irritation of the gut and the relationship of.
The gut to the immune system will or could create allergies. I one of the Part of another syndrome that we should probably discuss, just because we are talking about allergies is mass cell activation syndrome. I have a few slides in here that are, that talk a little bit about what is mass cell activation and also.
What are the diagnostic criteria is here? There’s a, an article because this is a really important factor when we talk about allergies. Here’s the definition of mass cell activation disorders and And one of the sentence I wanted to point out is dermatographic ism, which means that when you scratch the skin, it leaves a mark, a stronger than most people.
And that’s a really good sign to an indicator for muscle activation disorder. I am going to leave you. To read the signs and symptoms and this really going all over many Systems in our body affecting many systems around a body, but I wanted to also talk to you, just point you to this three herbs Chinese Arbel three Chinese herbs that are, that there were some lists research done on how they can affect.
The the reduce mass cell activation. So it’s called the three or formula Shuang one Leons and it stabilizes mass cells through the activation of the ma mitochondrial calcium on a uni. These are really, this is, I thought very interesting. And you’ll have, this is the summary of the Arctic of the, this article.
And and so it will, I think it’s really helpful to read about that and know that this syndrome actually exists and we can help it a lot with Chinese herbs and acupuncture Points that I consider to to work on when I when I see that there’s mass cell or for that matter allergic or a topic disorder.
So I always look at this kind of area of between large intestine, 10 and 11, and even towards the the triple burner channel this whole area is an area that regulates the immune system. And if it’s tender, I usually will need it needle it We also think of triple warmer, 16 is our lymph regulator because a lot of times we will have liver congestion as part of the syndrome.
So that’s really important to think about it. Do 12. Is helps with lung T regulation and we call it the thymus Glen reflex. And we know that the thymus gland is something is an, a Glen that deteriorates as we age, but is takes an important part in regulating the immune system at younger ages. So do 12 is a point.
I always pop it to see if there’s any sensitivity. I already mentioned behind stomach 44, which I used with case studies that we discussed and that I will. Popping along the spine to look for tight spots around, do two or three around L four L five L three and also around T 11, which is two six.
I also want to quickly mention this formula called Santiam 12. I used. Formula a lot for it’s a formula that is that is you can order it. It’s a patent and it is great for allergic rhinitis. And I look at these herbs as herbs that are very help with allergy symptoms.
So I always look at this formula and take herbs that pertain to the patient I’m working with to to reduce allergic reaction. I also created my own version of the of the variation of well may one. And I called it react with motion at motion herbs and react is a great support for children and adults who are having either food or environmental allergies.
And you have all the ingredients here. To to look at, and also I added this kind of idea of what are the indications and some of the specific dosage suggestion and cautions of this form. And a little bit of how I formed it. And finally additional support, like what I would do to help support it.
I just want to mention that core sit-in is an amazing supplement that you can Dispense to your patients to support to your treatment with seasonal allergies and allergies in general, it’s a natural bioflavonoid that downgrades, the histamine response. So it’s a sort of like a natural anti-histamine and it works really great.
Yeah. Strongly recommend that you explore that. And I use usually a product called de hissed by so the highest is a combination, of course, certain nettles. And I think bromelain is there too. It is fantastic. And if you suspect any gut Irritation or leaky gut. I always think of glutathione as a supplement to, to support my treat.
Thank you very much for listening. I hope that what I’ve talk to you about today, you can actually take to your clinic and use it to help many children or even adults in this transition time so that they can also enjoy the spring. And so thank you very much.
I also would, again, to thank the American Acupuncture Council for doing this show. It’s a, it’s really great. And hopefully you’ll join the continuing sessions of this this program. Thank you very much.
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 edition of, To The Point. Very generously produced by the American Acupuncture. Today on this cold spring day, I am really excited to have a guest. Leta Herman is now chemical healer and a TCM teacher. She has a podcast called the Inspired Action and she’s an author of several books.
One is through the mystery. Also the energy of love, connecting your circle and the big little guash of book. And she’s just a delight. She has a training center for her El chemical work called the alchemy learning center. And we had a nice long discussion by phone about her work. And I think you’re really going to be interested.
Many of you are really going to be interested in this. We’re calling this entering the mystery of alchemy with Chinese medicine and Leta. Please, introduce yourself, say hello.
Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me, Virginia. And thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for having me here.
I’m thrilled to share this information with you in any way I can.
Yeah. Now we hear the word outcome. He tossed around. And some of us have studied it with Jeffrey UN for example. And it’s, and it really transcends just Taoism. And but how do you define alchemy or how are you looking at and trying to practice alchemy?
Yeah. So I think about, for me as a very generic word, and as there’s alchemy in the west as well as the east. So it’s a very broad word that generally means transformation, but because of the studies that I’m doing in alchemical Chinese medicine, I would like to define it a little bit more narrowly.
And in terms of saying that alchemy in Chinese medicine, Is this idea that we’re all perfect. We just don’t know it. And we need to like, as human beings, we’re here to evolve. We’re here to have experiences and we’re here to maybe even the Dallas would say fulfill a curriculum of this lifetime. And alchemy is about transformation in a big scale, on a big scale.
And it’s about how can we ask ourselves better questions about who we are? How can we take a journey along in our lives so that we can continuously evolve. And I think it’s equivalent somewhat to the Buddhist enlightenment idea where Buddhists are trying to achieve something in called enlightenment and in Daoism, we’re trying to achieve something that would be called a realized human being.
Jen Ren and and that’s a person that’s like a Sage or a wise person who basically is approaching life very differently than the average person. And there’s a long tradition in China of Chinese medicine, healers who have done this, like since they Meow and go home, but others as well, who were the ADA mortals, for example, that a group of people and there were others.
That group of alchemists who got together and they were working on their own evolution.
Yeah. And that’s solid bet.
So I, I know that we both not only studied with Jeffrey Ewen, we both studied plant spirit medicine. That’s a rather rare, esoteric subject. How do you bring that into this work? Or do you, or are you doing it more in a Dallas way? Is it a fusion of things?
It’s funny because I studied plant spirit medicine, which is truly a shamonic technique, even though it came out of the five element acupuncture tradition it basically incorporated the shamonic traditions with acupuncture and came up with a new and new kind of medicine.
From that perspective, of course, plant spirit medicine has been a native man medicine. Eons, but, so I studied that first and then I went on to study with Jeffrey Yuen and really delve deeper into the alchemy concepts. And then much later Jeffrey Yuen started teaching shamanism as well, which was just very interesting to me because I’ve obviously been attracted to the esoteric.
Day one. And I’ve always been working with people where I felt like I really wanted to get to the root of their problems. It’s like they, they didn’t feel well or they had emotional issues and I always wanted to find what is that root of the problem? What is that? Psychological, mental, emotional, spiritual root of those problems and both plant spirit medicine and alchemy are about that.
So I, I think that’s why I’ve been attracted to those different approaches.
Yeah. Yeah. I know the work that I did with plant spirit medicine was really, probably the most perfect. Lead transformative work that I did, despite a lot of meditation and other kind of traditions and practices.
And I had done shamonic work as well, but it was something It was from me. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak on certain issues and traumas that I have. And so I’m really, eager and curious to see how you work and whether it doesn’t matter whether or not you bring that into it, because I know from reading, your book, the which is the entering the, what is it?
Which one is it? The through the mystery gate that. You have had amazing results with patients, very transformative, not just getting rid of just physical pain, but getting at the root of very deep issues and Yeah, excited to, to learn more about that. And so actually, since we’re talking about treatments, how, what is your treatment like?
Okay. Okay. I have two kinds of treatments. One is a set of treatments that are just ours. Two-hour long treatments that people do over a very long period of time. It’s called the nine stages of alchemy. And that’s really about cultivating your passion in life, your full potential in life.
I say it, the goal is to really get you to fly in your life. So that’s all of the kind of forward-looking. This is where I’m headed work. But before we do that, There’s a lot of the past. And we say a lot of skeletons in our closet, a lot of things that haunt us from the past or that are hooked into us and won’t let go.
And so that’s where we do longer sessions. We do a, basically we devote a whole day to someone’s healing in that perspective and the most common one we do in that case, it’s the 13 ghost points and the 13th ghost points is about those hooks. They use the word ghost. Which it doesn’t mean you’re haunted by an entity.
It could just be you’re haunted by the past. It could be that, someone did something to you or you had an accident, or you just had a really difficult childhood or some kind of abuse scenario and those things they, you’re not free in your life because those are hooked into. And so we basically have a whole day where we do the 13 goes points.
It usually takes somewhere between four to six hours. And we just give someone the time and the space and the honoring of what they need. To let it go to really, truly let it go. And it is a transformational, like I’ve had
phenomenal and also your head is not into the mentality of oh, keeping on the clock and the next patient.
And then, you can really dive in very deeply with people. That’s beautiful.
Beautiful work. And people always say, aren’t you more tired after you do a long day like this? And I say, no, actually I’m less tired because I’m not switching eight times in the day changing, getting people in and out of the room, et cetera.
I’m just devoted to that person for the day.
Yeah. That’s one of the things I like about the facial rejuvenation acupuncture that I do because I try to make it a transformative treatment. But it’s I’m just with someone for a couple of hours. And you can just slow down and just you, I don’t know, you just, for me, I need that time to go more deeply with someone than, maybe some people could just go in and give them a look and change their life.
But yeah I think also for the patient, they feel more cared for and can really open up and relax into the. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Wonderful.
And the changes are pretty dramatic. Sometimes it’s right in the treatment room, where someone will say, oh my God, the monkey’s off my back.
Like I feel it. Or and they truly mean it. Like they come back in after that and they’re like, my life has completely changed. Sometimes someone’s voice will literally completely change. They might have a really high voice and suddenly. Lower voice or I’ve had people who that goes points are really interesting where I didn’t even know they smoked.
And that was an issue for them, but like a month or so later, they’re like, I don’t know why, but I just stopped smoking and I wasn’t even trying. And it was like maybe that’s because he were smoking. Because of this thing that basically were carrying around, it was latent in your body and now it’s gone and you don’t need that habit anymore.
You don’t need to smoke to deal with it, that pain.
Do you work with any prenatal trauma or.
Oh, absolutely. There’s another treatment that I do call the nine heart pains and then the nine heart pains treatment we begin with utmost source heart one, and that is supposed to be related to pre.
So in terms of just what you’re coming in with, what we’re basically a human being that’s incarnating. And that point is representing this, the start of a new ARN incarnation. And what’s all the baggage that might be there in the very beginning in utero. Wow.
Can you talk about the, so when somebody comes in how does the treatment.
I like to start with a little kind of ritual that I do with people, which is just talking and then having them pick a poem out of a book, having them pick a card out of a deck of cards, just to break the ice and get, even if I know them well, it’s just, they might be nervous. They might be anxious about getting there.
They just settle into something very simple. And then they get up on the table and. I take pulses and we, we do something really unusual in these treatments. We have an iPod or some kind of playlist with 20,000 songs on. And we shuffle it and they’re of all genres. And the idea is we’re trying to simulate how things were done in the ancient times where they had live musicians which I was really fortunate to see a similar type of event at mouth Shaun in China.
When we went there with Jeffrey Yuen, where these musicians were just playing. This live improvisational music and, there were symbols and all kinds of instruments. I don’t even know the names of, but that music was very. Emotional. It emoted things from people like people had tears running needed down their face.
And we’re here where, we don’t really know Chinese music as much. I have Chinese music on my playlist, but it’s more than that. It’s we need music that we can identify with. So I put every genre I could think of good, bad, whatever. You’re. Opinion is about music.
We have it all and we don’t segregate, we don’t we don’t try to limit it in any way. And so what we’re doing is just allowing the music to vibrationally. Move the treatment along. And the treatment itself is a vibrational technique. It’s about shaking up stuck patterns.
All alchemy is vibrational in the technique. And so it’s really about stimulating something that is been stuck and trying to really evoke more than just transformation. I like to say transmutation something really. Stronger than a slow evolutionary change.
And are you using needles or is it more energetic or.
I
am feeling I have, I, you can do needles or not needles. And I personally do not use needles for alchemy. I use my finger as a needle, and the idea is, I don’t want the separation of between me and the person of the needle. So energetically, my finger becomes the needle. So I just call it non needle needling.
And I always recommend my acupuncture students attempt to do some of these treatments with needles and without, and then they can choose how they want to do. It’s a little more challenging to do some of these treatments with needles, because some, in some of the treatments, the needles are retained and there are needles on the front and the back.
So it’s a logistical issue and it has been done. It’s not that it can’t be done, but there is an issue of, if you’re. Four to six hours on the table, the person’s going to have to go to the bathroom. What are you going to do about the knee? So there’s a lot of complexity that gets removed.
If you do the non needle technique,
and then you’re probably more apt to use your intention and transmit your G then just relying on the needles to do the.
Exactly. Exactly. And I really don’t recommend in general, I’ve had people who have gone to acupuncturists and receive the ghosts points and the, they did it like in a traditional stick, the needles and leave the room.
I don’t really ever recommend that because it’s such a powerful, emotional shift that it really needs to be. The, what I talked to people about is becoming an alchemical. Healer is really walking the walk with the client. So you have to be in the room. You have to be not only just not sticking the needles in and leaving the room, but each needle could take an hour to insert if that would be extreme, but it could because.
It’s takes that long for that person to allow the shift to happen. So you have to think of it in a totally different way. Becoming an alchemical healer is really different than just, how we’ve been taught Chinese medicine in general.
Now I understand even, even better why you’re doing it without needles.
Yeah. That makes sense. And can you talk a little bit more in detail about the nine stages of that? Yeah. So treatment approaches.
Yeah. Yeah. It’s actually my favorite work. The ghost points are very dramatic and they really shift people in huge way and it feels like a miracle often every day in my clinic, when I watch people walk out the door completely transformed.
That’s beautiful and I love that work, but that’s trying to get rid of something. That has been that package for them, that they that’s not about them, that they’re just trying to unload and. And then when you do the nine stages of alchemy, it’s like, how can you almost become more precious, like a metal that’s being polished and polished until it’s, beautiful.
And I feel we’re all a little bit tarnished and we need a lot of polishing. But in, there is something really precious. And so the nine stages of Alchemy’s. Just taking one step at a time. And I like to say that you can invent your own alchemy. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. I just like to say there’s some really.
A wise old ancient Chinese people that said, Hey, if you do it in this order, it works really well. So stage one is a treatment that we do. That’s just about E. It’s about creating more ease in your life. And so you do this treatment, maybe quite a number of times, you might do it over a whole year with someone where they’re just getting to a state of ease.
Now, imagine you might have someone who already has their. So you don’t need to do a lot in that stage. Maybe you do it once or twice or three times. And then it’s there’s not much happening here because you’re already there. You’ve done that work. So then you move on to the next stage. And the next stage is about I call it the best protections, no protection.
It’s about all the armor we wear and we don’t ever want that bad thing to happen again. And so we’re always on the lookout for it. We’re always checking for it and it’s tiring. It’s exhausting to live that way. And so what would happen if we removed that protection? Because we’re so good in ourselves and some of them throws a dart at you.
You just Dodge it. It’s not about you. It’s about them. They’re having a bad day and you can see that. And so once you start to step into stage two, you’re no longer protected. And then stage three is about all that prenatal stuff. It’s about the ancestors stuff. It’s about your past lives. So we need to unload that and then stage four, five, and six are where all the fun begins because you get to be, you get to be free of all that stuff and you literally start to shine.
You start to look like a light. And stage four is about being like a child. Stage five is about channeling and listening to the world and being like a wise person. And stage six is about really, truly flying in your life. Some of the immortals were purported to fly. And as late as in the 1950s people send, they saw them flying.
The movie, crouching tiger, hidden dragon, that’s not supposed to be just fictitious it’s supposed to be real. And what I like to say is I haven’t seen anyone levitate off my table yet, but I expect them to do it at some point, but they start to fly in their lives, and that’s really magical to see.
It’s yes, like taking off on a runway, it’s maybe some people have been taxing a long time, but they just haven’t been able to get liftoff. And a lot of this work is about that. And it’s about. Living what we call in our podcast, the inspired action podcast. We talk a lot about Wu Wei and stage six is about what is sometimes translated as non-action, but I like to call it inspired action.
How do you live that kind of spontaneity in your life, where you’re just free and easy and just, basically looking at the footsteps in front of you that are already there. And all you have to do is put your foot in there and put your foot in there and put your foot in there. You’re good to go.
So that’s on me.
I like that, flying in your life because that’s really more important than, developing some yoga city, some power You know it, I know I had a teacher who used to say, these people that spent all this time and energy, trying to levitate, even if it’s just a few inches or a foot off the ground.
And if they use that for, more of their inner development or for helping, world peace or something, how much more useful that would be. And yeah. I like that idea of people flying in their life. It doesn’t have to be something literal, and that it doesn’t even have to be that doesn’t even have to be the goal.
Any literal flying. It probably would just happen if somebody reached a certain stage. Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. That’s how I look at it. Exactly. And like I said I would love to see it literally, but I just like to see it as someone living their full potential and. It just really not held back by all the things that hold us back.
Yeah. And so what about 7, 8, 9.
Yeah interesting that you ask. So I decided a long time ago that I can only go as far as how far I’ve gone. And so I’m working on stage seven and I. I believe that in stage seven, you have to really go into the case. So to speak, you have to retreat from the world to do that level of work.
And it’s really about morphine. It’s really transforming in a big way. And in ancient times, in, for example, when I went to , there are caves, there were people. Basically living inside the cave for many months at a time, people bring them some water through a hole or maybe a little cracker too, but they’re basically in there until they figure their stuff out.
And so the idea is, I have. Been, I’m still very much in the world and I’m still like living a stage six life. And I want to keep working on my stage seven. And so therefore I don’t really want to take anyone else through stage seven, eight and nine. So seven is about this idea that you can morph.
You could completely transform yourself. Stage eight is that you can become like a ninja. You can become an. And stage nine is that if you become invisible, you need to learn how to reappear, if you want to. And there, there is a story of go hung when we went to gongs mountain where, he basically was surrounded by all his apprentices and he suddenly vanished and his clothes fell to in a pile on the ground.
And so he never came back that we, that I am aware. Or that I’ve been told. He obviously could still be a mortal walking this plane, but but the, his idea of immortality wasn’t necessarily that you had to come back that you just needed to transform into some other dimension.
Yeah. Also the, in India they say, if you reach a certain stage. Enlightenment or development that you have a choice, whether or not you come back to incarnate. And then
third
answer is you do come back to.
Yes. And that they not talked
about needs and desires and unfinished biz. Yeah.
Yeah. And we say that it’s stage nine is like being a Bodhi. PSAT’s a bodhisattva, you come back for the benefit of all and you’re coming back to help.
I’m going to bring you. Okay, here we go.
Okay. I’m back.
Yeah actually, maybe because of the tech issue, it’s a time to maybe it’s a sign to conclude this, but I would like to have you back and have you talk about the starry sky points and the nine heart pains and, there’s so much more we could talk about, unless there’s anything you want to say in conclusion,
Okay. All right. I was thinking that in terms of alchemy and just Al chemical healing in terms of like people who are doing acupuncture that are interested in delving into these concepts, it is it is like a a different roadmap for people it’s really about.
Am I interested in cultivating myself in terms of my own alchemy? Am I interested in becoming an alchemical healer because I want to transform as much as I want my clients to transform. And so I really look at this as like first, what about me? The practitioner? And I really came to that conclusion because in the beginning, I didn’t really think of it that way.
And it took me a while to understand a lot of that. Through my own cultivation. So as I did more and more work with this, I transformed much more quickly than I think I would have on my own. So I say to practitioners that every single time you do like a ghost point treatment or one of these treatments, the sign that you’re actually doing it well is that you transform as much as the client.
And I know that all of us have that experience of that big aha moment when the client shifts and then you shift as a result. But it’s way more apparent in alchemy. It’s really about not only the client, but the practitioner themselves. And I don’t mean that in a selfish way at all.
You’re not doing it so that you can transform but that’s one of the things that happens.
That’s, I always say that, people can memorize the classics and Chinese and what have you, but if they have. Cultivated themselves, spiritually and psycho spiritually. And if they haven’t learned to cultivate their cheek, then if there’s limitations on what you can do for people.
But if you’ve done those other things, it can transcend anything that you can find written, modern origin.
Yes. And so that’s why one of the things that we are doing is we have a website called the learning center and there’s an app as well called the alchemy learning center. And what we’re doing is we’re putting a lot of these.
Genes into a format that people can do on their own. So there’s things for both lay people and acupuncturists, and there’s this, just very simple cheek gung as an example of things that you can do to build your cheek, but there’s also, things about a deeper level of the five elements and how to understand ourselves on a very deep level, because if you’re doing alchemy, you really need.
Who is my authentic self, energetically, but also, in all different ways. And we talked a lot about the nine palaces, which we also, did a lot of teaching in that’s available there. And then we have something called the master outcome program. And that is for apprentices.
We have two programs now. We’ve. People coming from all over the world. So we have a virtual one and then we have an in-person option where you can come to the clinic and get supervision to do some of these treatments on your own. So when I did it, I had a teacher who really, mentored me.
Much many years later. Now I want to offer that to people as well, because it is work that is really hard to embark on your own.
Yeah. And it’s very hard to find an apprenticeship, people get out of school and they’re they’re not totally on their own, but th it’s not, there’s a reason that the traditional way was, a continued apprenticeship because that’s how you got.
And,
Yeah. Yeah. And I like to say, we go to a lot of CU classes, and we get a lot of download of information, and I just took this one piece and I did it in the clinic over and over again. And now 20 years later, it’s I want to share that with others so that it doesn’t take you as long as it took.
To figure this stuff out. So I think in practice it’s much different than in theory. And so the theory is great and it’s great to get CS is about theory, but we all know we have to somehow translate that into practice. And I always feel like my gift is that I used to be a tech writer before I went into Chinese medicine.
And so I like to take something super technical and then bring it into something that is. Easy for us to learn and utilize. And that’s, that is the same as tech writing. Really. That’s really what it’s about. It’s a health
teacher. Yeah.
Yeah. So that’s what I’m doing at the alchemy learning center. We have ongoing programs that start every every six months or so.
And. And so we will take a new group through starting in September. So yeah, so we, and we have a clinic in north Hampton, Massachusetts, that’s called the alchemy healing center. And if you want to actually get the supervision and you want to shadow, for example, a ghost point treatment, Just be able to observe me doing the work.
You can come to the alchemy healing center and do that as an apprenticeship program. So that’s what we’re offering in terms of that. So again, it’s just, it’s really about you can go and do it on your own. Everyone knows what the ghost points are there they’re online. Like anyone could use them, but, are you going to just stick the needles in and leave the room?
How
do you use them? I taught school for years and all the beautiful, poetic spiritual sounding names and qualities attributes that are, attributed to them. But it’s how, you’re actually. Helping people to achieve those kinds of results that you can’t do from just reading the description, really it has to be an alchemical process for the practitioner.
Absolutely. And just, when I started out, I actually started from more of the five element tradition. My, my mentor was a part of the Worsley school in England. And so I came at it from more doing internal devil’s IDs and EDS, internal dragons and external dragons treatments, and then started incorporating the ghost points as another option.
And then I started learning more and more. But going back to those days, I remember feeling terrified about doing my first IDs treatment. I imagine that a lot of people are scared in the beginning. We don’t really understand it. We don’t know what it’s about, so we need a lot of handholding
and also you’re entering into territory of somebody’s psyche that you really don’t know what to expect.
And. You shouldn’t just go charging in there. I know, you know that.
Absolutely. And I think that the important thing is to remember too, in the beginning interestingly, you don’t want to, you think you want to do the ghost points with the people that have the most obvious, disruptive. Things going on in their lives either mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.
But when you train, I’m really looking for people that are a little bit, Pretty doing pretty well in their lives. They’re not in deep crisis because we don’t want you to train with someone who’s, everything is just so tumultuous in their lives. That’s a very advanced, case.
And you don’t want someone new in that level of work quite quite at the beginning. So a lot of times when people take a class with me, they’re like, oh, I’m going to go do this. And I’m like, okay. But pick someone. Might just want to unload a little bit, if a few skeletons in their closet, not a whole closet full of skeletons that are going to bust out and remember it is a Pandora’s box for some people and there’s no closing that box back up once it opens.
And you have to think about these. There’s a lot of ethical issues to think about in terms of when you’re doing this level of work, how do you feel about it? What do you think is right and what is really going to be best for the client? So there’s a
lot of, we spoke about that on the phone. If somebody comes to you for.
10 of the muscular pain and you sense that it’s something deeper, I’m thinking of that story. You can tell them from the book. But do you have to ask permission or in, in your way of looking at things as opposed to just treating what you’re seeing if you see that there’s something much deeper than.
I use, I tell the story of my golfer person who came in and I said, this elbow pain you’re having go, this golfer’s elbow. I, is it possible? It’s emotionally based. And he kept saying no, there’s not. I, my life is great. There’s nothing wrong. I just have this pain. It’s my.
It’s my elbow. I just have this pain and he kept pointing to one of the coast points, large and test at 11. So we went round and we did a lot of treatments and we did . We did cupping. We did all kinds of points. He did everything you can imagine. And even he bless his heart. He came back, he kept coming back and no change, which is usually a good indicator that you need to do this work.
So finally I said to him, look, why don’t we just try. Emotional treatment. Let’s just try it. I didn’t talk to them about the ghost points, cause that’s a little odd and I knew it was a little bit out of his sort of frame of reference in the world, but I didn’t want to throw him off that way.
And honestly it’s just large intestine 11. It’s just another point. So I said, but this point, this point might really help you. And in fact, I think we should do a series of the points I did all of the ghost points with him and I said, let’s do a series of points and just see, okay.
We haven’t gotten it yet and you’re still covered. So let’s try this. So I did. And as soon as I got to large intestine 11, in which I did it over, you can do the points over many treatments if you want. So the day that I got to large intestine. He suddenly out of the blue started telling me about the fact that his secretary who was a longterm, many generational friend of the family embezzled like a hundred thousand dollars or something like that from him.
And it was. And that she was currently in court to be tried and go to jail about it. And so he said, yeah, I guess that is an emotional thing. And the next day he came back, the next day he came back, the pain was. So he became a convert obviously, and we did all of the stages of alchemy together.
And by the time he got to stage six, like all of the money concerns went by the wayside. He did, he got like a million dollar contract. He sold this house. Like all these things were happening and he just couldn’t believe it. It was just like, my lucky stars or something, yeah.
I think that, when you look at, how people are unaware of these things that are lurking deep down and they just think, oh, my wife’s good. My job’s good. They just don’t necessarily think about it, but sometimes there’s a lot there. And so do you have to say I’m doing this like really esoteric ghost point treatment?
No, you don’t want to lie to them. It’s more about what’s the language that they use. So I don’t try to shock people into thinking they’re doing like really weird stuff. I’m just like, what’s the language that helps them understand what you’re going to do. And in fact, there’s a ghost point called ghost market rent 24 and rent 24 is the fact that there’s a gift that you have that needs to get to only certain people in the world.
You don’t want it to go to the people who don’t. You only want it to go to the people who need it. What are the words that are going to best express in a way that person can receive the. If you say a bunch of things that are very alarming to the person who needs the gift, they’re going to be like no.
So you know how I look at it is how about, just using words that the person can take in and can help them understand that. Yes, I need Barden tested 11, I, it doesn’t need to be some big, scary thing. For some people, yeah. Some people come into my clinic and say, I’m feeling. I have a possession and I know it.
And then it’s okay, so we need to use that language. I need to be able to express to them. Yeah, we can work with possession. That’s okay. That’s what these treatments were traditionally for. So of course,
like a literal, energetic. Just that people get so obsessive that it becomes like a possession of thoughts, both versus an entity,
right?
Both. So the ghost points are wonderful for obsessed. In fact, that’s my favorite way to use them is there’s so many of us right now who need ghost points. Pretty much all of us. If you’ve been on this planet for like more than 20 years, it’s pretty likely that you’ve had some events in your life that are continue from the past.
So we that’s obsession. Like we can’t let that. And so that’s what the ghost points for really miraculous for. In addition, if you actually have an entity which is called a gateway to you, I just ghost a good way is a person that maybe died at some point and their spirit didn’t go home, to, to heaven or wherever you want to think.
And it stayed around and then potentially got into someone else. That is the Chinese medicine belief that can happen. And, whether you believe in it or not, doesn’t matter. The fact is that the person exhibits certain qualities that we would associate with that kind of possession.
And so we say there’s emotional possessions, and then there’s these entity possessions. And then we would do different treatments depending on which one you might have. And that’s really something that I. Developed through practice. For example, I still use Worsley’s IDs and EDS treatments, and I love them for particular cases.
And then I like the ghost points for other cases. And they’re all in the same realm, they’re all in this realm of, you’re not totally in charge of yourself, whether you’re obsessed or possessed, you’re not really running the show. And that’s the level of that.
I’ve heard alcoholism described as people especially for people whose personality changes when they drink that they, it’s almost there’s an entity that wants to experience that sensation of drinking or drunkenness.
And so they keep Eh, they exert this control over the person. It’s like somebody sitting on your shoulder and that you really have to, for some people with ringing problems, you have to, do, if it’s not a formal exorcism, somehow you have to deal with that energy.
Yeah. And for alcoholism or any kind of drug problem, I would say that there’s two parts to it.
There’s probably something that is like a ghost, again, it may just be. The drugs influence on you, but something taken over like a possession or an obsession. So there’s that. So I might do the ghost points, but then there’s more to it with any kind of addiction, because there’s often a reason why we got addicted.
And that is where I would do something called the nine heart pains. And the nine heart pains treatment is about loving yourself. And usually what’s behind an addiction is some kind of self-hatred or self-loathing or dissatisfaction with who you are. And so that treatment is usually also necessary and really important.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Cause that’s getting it, and maybe in this case it could be a two-pronged route to the cost, but yeah. To get to the root cause, no matter what.
And a lot of people when they’re just learning about alchemy, they don’t understand. So we can talk about the points.
The points are fascinating. They’re interesting. But to do that treatment, that loving yourself treatment, for example, which I call the nine heart pains treatment, you have to be so present. And so unprotected yourself, vulnerable yourself. So that person. I can now take that in and start to love themselves so that’s a deeper level of motivation.
Like we got through that. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh that’s great. I want to thank you so much. I know, taking time out of your day for this and do it with hard energy and humility. So I’m looking forward, maybe we can do this again in June and. Looking forward to doing more things with you, so fantastic.
Yeah. Anyway, thank you very much everybody. Next week. It’s Matt Callison and Brian Lau talking about they have great things. But we will see you soon and thanks again, the American Acupuncture Council and for all you listening. And I hope you’ll look into this because I think it’s going to make you a better practitioner and a better person, no matter what you’re doing.
So I’m signing out Virginia Doran of luminousbeauty.com.
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