We’re going to talk in the next 30 minutes about treating children with anxiety and it’s definitely a growing issue that I see more and more in my office especially lately and since the pandemic.
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’ve been practicing and teaching Chinese medicine for the past. 28 years. And I wanted to first think the American Acupuncture Council for organizing the show and giving me an opportunity to speak about this really important subject matter treating children with anxiety.
If you can start the slide. We’re going to talk in the next 30 minutes about treating children with anxiety and it’s definitely a growing issue that I see more and more in my office especially lately and since the pandemic. And I think the pandemic definitely has a strong influence on children’s.
Tendency to be anxious. And and we can see this very clearly in even in the CDC report from March through October, the PR the proportion of mental health related emergency department visits increased 24% in children aged five to 11, and 31% among teenagers age 12 to 17 compared to 2019.
So there’s a huge increase. And but I wanted to present how we can really help with with Chinese medicine, with our medicine. Very Much. So I wanted to I’m going to start by just going over a case study that will present some of the common issues that I see in my office. So I want to talk about Sally, which is not a, it’s a not her real name is a 17 year old female that.
Came to see me in the office. And she was brought in by her. She gave me with her mother. And then as you walked in the room, I noticed that her, she had a really pale complexion and. With that her eyes were very bright. Although she didn’t, we didn’t, she didn’t have a direct gaze.
At the beginning there was a lot of shyness. Her body was very thin, but looked very tense and her main complaints were having anxiety. Digestive disorders like indigestion. She felt a lot of gas and bloating and very uncomfortable with her in her digestive system. As he said, she came with her mother and she was at first very shy.
And her mother would actually answer her questions, but after a while she opened up and we even I asked the mother to wait outside. So we had some time together to talk about her issues. So she reported that the anxiety really started a little over a year ago and that was about a year into the pandemic and she thought it was related to the changes due to the pandemic.
The pandemic created a lot of change in children’s lifestyle. The way that they had to learn and that caused of course, a lot of stress and therefore anxiety. In the past three months though, her symptoms became much more severe. And they included things like. Difficulty falling asleep, palpitations nightmares difficulty focusing on schoolwork and being easily distracted racing thoughts and then loss of appetite.
And then also a tingling and loss of sensation in the fingers, fingertips and toes which is a very typical of some of the panic disorder. And and also had some diarrhea like on and off diarrhea and a pasty feeling in their mouth and nausea, frequent nausea. So that’s, these are all the symptoms.
She reported. So she also experienced on the background, some seasonal allergies. So she had that tendency to have some damn port phlegm frequent headaches. Mostly occipital and frontal and tension in the neck and shoulders was very, as a co, she experienced that frequently. She also complained of having a weak digestive system even before meaning.
She would be very gassy and experiencing soft stools and diarrhea frequently. She craved sugar and was taking an iron supplement because of low iron count in. Her misses were regular. They came every 28 to 30 days. But there was a lot of heavy bleeding and it lasted four to five days and had some low back pain prior to the arrival of the bleeding and her pulse was really thin and tight.
And the tongue very swollen and puffy, and there were teeth marks and a thick white coat on the all over the tongue. But the tip was a very rare. So I diagnosed her with having a spleen and heart by acuity which is a common pattern that I see in in, in adolescents. And the blood acuity and liver G w also having some blood vacuity and liver cheek constraint with a slight damp accumulation or pretend to have some Dem.
So I chose to include points like heart seven rent, 17 rent, 12 rent, six stomach, 25, stomach 36 and spleen six. So I would choose anywhere between four, four to six points. And you do that by laterally and would see her once a week. So we talked about changing her diet, eliminating Dan producing foods, meaning that reducing her dairy cheese intake and simple carbs white flour products and and.
And adding, eating more foods that strengthened spleen, QI and blood things like beets and yams and butternut squash to include it in her guide. So that there’ll be some nourishment as well as maintaining a warm dive, meeting, eating more soups and And cooked foods rather than raw food.
So we could see here that there’s a, that I arranged all the symptomology and how each with each of the which each of the patterns the loss of appetite and the gas Ines and the sugar cravings and weak digestion and tendency for soft stools, all indicated a spleen. Vacuity the.
Back by acuity was manifested with the palpitations, the nightmares, the difficulty focusing on schoolwork and being easily distracted. And the blood vacuity with difficulty falling asleep which is something I differentiate, Difficulty falling asleep as more of a blood vacuity, as opposed to falling asleep easily and waking up at in the middle of the night, which is a more of a yin vacuity.
Then the heavy menses may also contribute to the blood vacuity. So we are seeing these heavy menses. It may also indicate. The Liberty constraint and we see with the the frequent headaches she will also the tense look, the tense neck and shoulder, and this kind of tendency to be easily stressed.
And this combination of having Liberty stagnation with blood vacuity which points towards the liver blood vacuity would explain this kind of tendency to have loss and tingling sensation in the toes. And. And the seasonal allergies, of course may lead may point to a bit of a lung deficiency, as well as maybe some tendency to have dampness, as we say.
And also the tendency to have nausea and this kind of pasty feeling in the mouth all point towards dampness. I think I skipped the. Okay. So I actually prescribed a F herbal formula and I prescribed a formula called calm plus, this is a formula that I’ve I created in my herbal company called motion herbs.
And then I have a link down at the end of the slideshow to our website motion or. Dot com. And this complex is a combination of herbs that move liver cheese com the heart and and strengthen the blood and yen and therefore, I used that I like to use this formula for anxiety and it’s really fit very well into this picture.
And after 10 days of this formula she reported feeling much calmer. She did not have any anxiety episodes in the last few days and she felt much better and sleep pattern was also. Much better. And she was able to do schoolwork with less effort. So she showed marked in poor improvement with taking this formula.
After three months of this formula, most of her symptoms were resolved and including her digestive issues, and we decided to stop taking the formula. So after three months of this formula, she reported that the. Our symptoms has, we’re almost, we’re completely resolved. So I wanted to to go over I’m actually just going to skim quickly about the definition of anxiety in biomedicine, in the sense that we want.
Understand how, when people say that they ha they’re anxious, what does that mean? Usually anxiety falls under what we call generalized anxiety disorder. And we can you can read this hopefully this th. PowerPoint would be available for you to go back. And there are under this the anxiety section, we also see panic disorders as part of that, as well as things that are associated with D with with anxiety is phobias and specific D different specific phobias included in.
And also social anxiety disorders and separation anxiety disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder is a very common diagnosis nowadays. And very important that we understand that when somebody complains of having anxiety, it could be related to post-traumatic PTA.
In terms of Chinese medicine. On the other hand, it’s interesting that anxiety is not really a classical category that is used in classical Chinese medicine, but it’s more modern term. And since we see palpitations. As being one of the very common symptoms with anxiety, it is a lot of times included in it.
So fear and palpitation Gingy or panics robbing that’s Chang Chong or junk chow, which is agitation. It’s this kind of feeling of being overwhelmed.
I’m sorry. I think. Okay. But in children, that is really a we have to remember a few things that are very important. I think when we’re treating children with anxiety, because children have unique characteristics that make them more prone to having anxiety. First of all there’s this famous saying that says that all children disease are caused by fear, fright and indigestion, and that starts from an early age.
Most of the pathologies that we see in children stem from having some kind of a fright or fear or being anxious, and then also in combination with
These are the two important aspects. So we also have to remember that it is the characteristics of children to be excess in wood and fire and deficient in earth, metal, and water. So that means that this kind of excess in wood and fire will create a higher. Tendency to be very anxious and very stressed or they would pick up stress more easily.
Whereas the metal where’s the earth being deficient is causing a spleen vacuity which was. Although we think a lot of times as as a spleen vacuum being not necessarily associating with anxiety in reality, I see that a lot of times this kind of earth vacuity is the cause for anxiety because of its relationship with the heart in particular.
It also is important to see that in each developmental stage is each age. We see different pathologies common pathologies. And I wanted to put point out that this. From seven to puberty is the age where we are becoming more aware of our emotions and being challenged, especially by society too.
Control those emotions and in that period of time that is very very time where we need to pay attention because children can easily develop anxiousness around different issues. Because of that. Necessity to be in, in control or have this transformation where suddenly they have to be in control of their emotions.
So a very, as we say, a very livery time, and that is it at that period of time. So we have to remember the children are susceptible to emotional stress, and I’m talking about little kids two years old, a year old, a few months old, four or less, or even later, even the stress doesn’t necessarily need to come from.
Themselves, but rather from the environments of the pickup stress and what’s happening from their mother or from their caregiver or from their family or their surrounding. And I always believe that children are this, like this emotional antenna. So they pick up whatever is in the environment and it affects their their own.
So in that case I always remember that when children come in with anxiety, I always check in with the caregiver in, from this idea of treating the child, treating the mother to treat the child. So especially with anxiety, that is very important to, to consider.
I in the R coursing gene chin pediatrics we tend to we also teach this whole idea that there is this kind of spiral of development, and we revisit different issues at each period of time. And I, we really believe that this developmental Mandela will tell you how to approach children at different ages, according to where they are in this cycle of growth.
And so we see here that each cycle of growth is related to to an element and that and since it is controlled by a certain element, it has the same kind of nature that we would expect from that element in in, in, in that period of time. So attention. Alienation and anxiety are a modern pandemic.
We see that very quick, very commonly. And we see that because I think we are giving children too little, too late of these things and things like too little connection, too little exercise, too little darkness, too little quiet. To the BOR being bored. So children don’t know or don’t want to be bored.
And I think that’s actually an important aspect of growth growing up, but we also give them too much, too fast too much food additives and an energy rich, nutrient poor diet too much pollution too much artificial light and screen time. All these things create an excess of young, whereas not enough of a balance.
And so it and so the so that it creates this kind of. Imbalance of having too much of the fire and the T then scatters and therefore eventually will cause or is it gives a tendency to form a anxious. So there are, I wanted to also point out that there are two there are a few common patterns of illness that I see very frequently that you can pick it, pick up and they, a lot of times.
We’ll be we’ll cause development in, or be part of it. It will be that the child will be anxious. So the first one has to do with it, what we call an accumulation disorder and we see that frequently in younger children. Although, I think we can see a lot of times the remanence of that later on in age, but it’s one of the advantages of treating children, treating pediatrics is that you can catch these things very early on and really prevent.
Years of suffering later on emotional suffering or physical suffering. If you catch that on, when a child is young and that they have a lot of red cheek and a lot of irritability and insomnia, but also have this kind of indigestion or difficulty digesting foods and you might suspect an accumulation disorder in, and by the way, accumulation disorder is something, a term that was coined by Julian, Scott which he has great ideas and I found it to be very true ineffective, but we go very deeply into assessing and diagnosing accumulation disorders in children.
In our course at pediatrics. And that this accumulation disorder also points to this kind of very important triangle or three aspects that we that are connected and interrelated. And that is the new Europe, neuro gastro immune triad. Or a trial. So there’s a relationship between our nervous system through the Vegas nerve that affects our gastrointestinal.
Function. And that affects our immune function. And there is feedback in both directions that that we need to understand that it’s all connected. So when we have an issue with our nervous system, like having anxiety, we definitely need to be in tune with what’s going with the gastro immune function.
Accumulation disorder disorders are a gastric dis disturbance that we need to look at. And we’ll talk about the immune aspect in a second. So I just put in some main points that we use for treatment seafaring is the main points when the child is young up to probably two years of age later on, we might use more body.
For a treating that, that accumulation. Hyperactive spleen sheet deficiency is another diagnosis that we commonly see. This is a child that has all the signs of spleen vacuity, but behaviorly is really having a lot intends to be very anxious, has a lot of sleep disturbances little. Asleep difficulty falling asleep enjoying being the center of attention and w and wants to be very manipulative all these symptoms and usually the child looks very thin and and weak, but the energy is bursting.
So hyperactive splintery deficiency. Another pattern that we commonly diagnosed. And or see frequently especially associated with anxiety later on in life. The interesting thing is that when we have when we have hyperactive spleen Xi deficiency, our treatment is based on strengthening the spleen and not necessarily calming all that excess.
It will come from this. The seemingly a false excess comes from a deficiency and we need to strengthen rather than disperse. There’s another pattern that we usually see, which is called hyperactive kidney cheat deficiency. This this also will have a lot of spleen Xi deficiency, signs and symptoms, but they’ll have very specific other symptoms like dark pools around the eyes.
The page would be a very thin but long a face would be really pale, bright. Wow. And be very fearful and anxious in this case, the fear is very strong and having a lot of anxiety about different things. Being very hypersensitive and also has a lot of issues around sleep and takes very long to go get into bed.
These are very difficult children to treat because they are so afraid from any thing that is done to them, that they can become very hysterical. In any case? The important thing is that the treatment is again mostly use points that strengthen both kidney and spleen and not necessarily any dispersing treatment.
And the last one, which is the other arm of the tr triple the triangle which is the immune part is the lingering pathogenic factor. And I think this is a very important thing to remember because when we look at pathogenic factors that enter into the body, Child as young as they become, they can become lingering.
And there’s a lot of signs and symptoms that will, you will help you diagnose them. And once they are lingering, they can affect our emotional gr the level of the, our nervous system. And therefore, Can cause anxiety later on or tendency to be very anxious. We’re running out of time.
So I’m going to run through the rest of the slides the treatment for the lingering pathogenic factor as we have this really. Amazing. Treatment protocol, which is bylaw. You be 13, 18 and 20. And I use a combination of shout child tongue or some kind of variation of shout child, your tongue to treat that lingering pathogenic factor aspect of the patient.
So in pediatrics I just wanted to point out we have different treatment modalities. We’ll out, tend to use a lot of TuiNa shown Ishan technique is an amazing technique, which we teach again at the Jim Shang pediatrics course. I think that it’s an amazing technique that we can apply to children and get very good results without inserting needles.
And that the gates, the fear factor, especially for anxious kids. And I also use another. Technique, which is cutaneous electricity stimulation, meaning using electrical stimulation to stimulate certain points as opposed to using needles, all that is taught in our course. We also connect we use magnets and we use, we teach how to use them for Paid for pediatric patients.
And they’re an amazing tool that you can actually send patients with it and shows the show them how to massage it and and participate in the treatment. And it creates great results. So I’ve concluded some of the points that I use for anxiety, as well as common patterns in terms of using both both points and herbs.
And I’m actually running out of time. So I will end with this With thank you for being here and listening. And if you want to hear more, there’s many avenues to to hear more and learn more about treating children and and with anxiety or treating children in general through either My herbal company, which is called motion herbs which I have sometimes free webinars on, on, through that venue, I’m going to be treating teaching a course through global branches, which is called the first cycle of life and focusing on the first years, 7, 7, 8 years of children.
So you can Look at the global branches, look it up online and you can register on that their page. And through our Jing Shen pediatrics sent course, which will be distributed through net of knowledge and loss, OMS which, and you can pick it up. So I want to thank the ACA again for this wonderful opportunity to speak.
It’s been a pleasure and I want to remind you that next Wednesday log on here, Sam Collins. 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. My name is Tsao-Lin Moy, and I’m the founder of Integrative Healing Arts in Union square in New York city. And I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for putting these lives on for your entertainment and also for educating you about acupuncture and Chinese medicine.
Please and comment for today we’re going to be talking about adrenal exhaustion and burnout and the amygdala hijacking, which has a slightly different and okay. So let’s go to the slides.
Okay. There we go. All right. So today we’re going to be talking about adrenal exhaustion, burnout, and the amygdala hijacking and what strategies that we can be using with acupuncture and Chinese medicine. So here we go.
All right. So what we’ve got here is what adrenal exhaustion. And in Chinese medicine, we call that the kidney yin and yang deficiency, where the beginning young is out of balance. And what we see is elevated cortisol. We’ve got low melatonin, a lot more physical conditions, such as fatigue irritability problems with sleeping.
So we start to see the day and night shifting. It’s very common that your patients may be on some kind of prescription medication. There is a lot of tiredness and Schedule is irregular, right? So they may be taking anti-anxiety medication sleep aids, antidepressants. All right. So this we see is very common.
Most of our patients that come in have something going on with their kidney energy and given the situation that we’re in right now with the news and everything happening around the world that for sure. This is going to be coming into your practice. And we’ll go to the next slide and look at what are going to be strategies for this level.
And we’re looking at so strategy here is really regulating the yin and the Yom the nervous system, because this is where we’re starting to see that it’s out of balance. A big component is going to be sleep right for regulating the circadian rhythm. We can address it with diet, right? Making sure that our patients are drinking enough water staying away from alcohol getting some exercise.
Very important is going to be detoxing from social media because that actually gets people really upset. And to clear those cookies as I call them that type that tend to follow another what we’re looking at for your patients is acupuncture for sure, because we know that it’s. The brain chemistry and the neuropeptides that actually allow the body to go into that deep, relaxed state herbal medicine.
Some of it, yes. Definitely supplements. If you. The basic we call the formulas such as the shadow side, the free and easy wander or something like way P tongue, where there’s going to be a lot more worry. So this is going to be, for someone who is relatively healthy that they’re just going, that they’re out of balance, right?
So we’re like, Like the exhaustion, it’s a little bit different from the Western, what we call exhaustion, where they may be given anti some kind of steroids. But here we have an opportunity for the person to shift back into balance and go into some more state of relative balance. We call it and as a practitioner, We also do social support therapy.
We talk with our patients about how to balance their life really important. A lot of times when people are very stressed out, it’s very difficult for them to do something like meditation. And what I have found in my practice is really offering them breath work. And that could be the 4, 7, 8 breath work.
There is also Wim Hoff, which is has been. Become very popular. There are lots of videos of how to do it, and if somebody is feeling stressed out, all they need to do is to shift their breathing. The other thing too is to really look at taking time in nature. And at this moment when you’re working with your patients that are in this particular kind of imbalance, they actually are pretty open to listening to suggestions.
The time in order to stabilize, I would give it three to five months really consistently coming in for treatment and then also to create and cultivate different habits where they can manage their stress and become aware of it and actually be much more proactive in it. So the next slide.
Now burnout is what we look at is a whole other level of kidney depletion, right? Compared to adrenal exhaustion, which is a little bit more of the physical is such, we’re looking at more of the emotional, and here we’re seeing that this is this more inward and racing thoughts, but also the trouble of blue sleeping.
So I’ve underlined sleeping because that is a huge problem. And this is going to be really a key for addressing something with your patients, like where can you start? So when someone comes in with so many symptoms, it’s very important to keep your treatments. Another thing that we see with burnout is that there’s more depression going inward.
Even self-medicating the people may be on a lot of medication. The essence is being drained. And then we also see with the physical manifestations, we start to see things like chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia auto-immune really like depletion, and really. Feeling defeated. And so here is we’ll go to the next slide, like how we’re gonna let’s change to this next.
Okay. So as I mentioned, oh, we want to go back one, let’s go back one. We can very similar to adrenal exhaustion. The idea is you want to. Rescue them in a way, strengthen the mind body connection and their ability to really connect with their body. So this is a place where, we would use acupuncture and for all of you that are live.
I would be very interested to find out like, what acupuncture points would you choose? Because right now this person is really so depleted. What kind of points would you use? And the thing with the more exhausted that a patient is, and this can also happen from a recovery, from an illness that, you know, they.
You might want to do a lot for them, but in fact, the less is more. And the areas to really focus on are going to be the really deep and restorative sleep, because that is where their nervous system is going to be able to do a reset. If they can do a practice like meditation or yoga just to get their chair moving and to build up their energy formulas would be for someone.
Adrenal exhaustion. You want to support the kidneys and also the stomach and spleen, a very classic, maybe the blue Jong ichi Tong, really to help them to nourish. And again my recommendation is. To for them to add in something like breath, work and breath work is we can see it. If you’re exercising that you actually do get really good oxygen saturation, which will help with deeper sleep.
But for someone who’s really exhausted, you really don’t want them to. To, I wanna say encourage them to go back to a, in a adrenal field way of living where they’re running marathons all the time, or getting up and trying to do too much. And in fact, the more serious let’s say or the condition, what we’re looking at with the adrenals, you really want to offer them something very simple because they can’t really take any, anything more.
Okay, so we’ll go to the next slide. My little clicker is not working here. So here is an example of breathwork. So breathing, we’re doing more than just regulating the nervous system. You’re also reducing the cortisol levels. And this is really important when we’ve got something going on with our adrenals and our kidney energy.
And again, when we breathe in, we’re actually looking at that lung and kidney relation. And here studies have shown that this higher level of oxygen actually encourages deeper and restorative sleep, which is known as a slow wave sleep. And why is that important? Because people with extreme adrenal exhaustion and burnout have, will tend to maybe sleep a lot, but not get the restoration there.
So all right, we’ll go to the next.
So here is a don’t know what happened to the top of it, but here’s, I wanted to show a picture of what somebody looks like when they’re really terrified. And this is actually a kid who is on a rollercoaster. And what is happening is the wa eyes are wide open. The heart rate is increasing.
They start to breathe, very shallowly, dry mouth sweating. And then what we look at is the tightening of the extensors. And this is really the do check. So in all that stress you see with animals when they get stressed out that the back of their neck tenses up. And so we see a lot of our patients come in with neck and shoulder, tight neck and shoulder TMJ.
And that is, innervated by the cranial nerves. So we’re looking at this connection with stress levels and then how it manifests in the body. So we’ll go to the next slide. So what are we looking at? We’re looking at the kidney and heart being out of balance. We’re also looking at the liver and spleen out of balance. And so this is this water, fire relationship. The water really would, your kidney energy really helps with your heart energy, that connection. And when you’re, it’s out of balance, we’re looking at too much fire, right?
Not enough of the balance of water for two cool things. We’re also looking at the wood and earth relationship out of harmony. So what happens is we end up with things like emotional turmoil the worry of the spleen, the fear of the kidney actually cause the heart and the psyche to like escape.
And then we have the. The liver, which is the wood and responsible for the smooth flow starts to control. Everything goes out of balance. And we realized like, Hey, what’s happening? The liver energy is trying to control everything. And so what we see is a lot more of that literary and. And at this point, I invite a lot of comments.
What do you think, what kind of points might you use when you see this? What’s, what is when you start to see this happening and I’m sure it is in your practice what point prescriptions might you use? So I’m very interested for your opinion, please come right. Or we’ll go to the next slide.
All right. So here the five elements chart, or we see the liver’s role is the smooth flow of cheap emotions and blood and interesting studies recently show that the liver does have a regulatory function with the central nervous system. And there are fibers, both sympathetic and parasympathetic fibers.
That are linking to from the liver, going to the brain. Very interesting that right now we’re looking at, Hey, the liver does have access to, the brain chemistry. One of the things in Chinese medicine, as we know that the liver stores the blood while we’re at rest. And what that actually means is it actually helps to filter it.
And then when needed the blood the clean blood actually goes out to the. When that’s not happening, such as when stress hormones are increased they actually increase enzymes in the liver and cause inflammation and toxicity. And so we see this with women that are, pre-menstrual a lot of that those emote, the strong emotions come from inflammation of the cytokines, which is like right before the bleed aspect of the cycle.
We’ll go to the new.
So what happens when we’re under prolonged stress and I’m putting in fear what happens is that the brain starts to remodel and we get a lot more systemic change. And this is as we’re going to be moving into, what is the definition of an amygdala hijacking or a takeover? The amygdala is a almond shaped a part of your Olympic system or your reptilian brain.
It’s about emotional survival. It filters all of your senses. And the more that it’s triggered, it actually grows larger. And then what we see is an underactive hippocampus, which has to do with a lot of memory starts to shrink. And so what this does is that it. Causes the individual to not be able to regulate themselves, it interferes with self-regulation and we see things like a systemic decline. So some of the symptoms are also the memory problems, a lot of distortions of paranoia, things like conspiracy, more angry and manic behavior. And this is, these are. Behaviors. We also see with patients that have early onset with dementia and something like Parkinson’s right.
And also we look at there’s an increase in this amygdala activity in patients that have bipolar, especially during their manic episodes. So we’re looking at here’s this connection, the more exciting. A person gets and more this fear, the swinging, the extremes that we’re looking at, the amygdala is involved in it and causes can cause a lot of turmoil.
So we’ll go to the next.
So the amygdala is this almond shaped structure in the brain, and it’s involved with processing the emotions. So going back to where the five elements are. When the amygdala is triggered and hijacks the person we call the, or the brain that those emotions are distorted. And so there are the two structures that are, there are part of each one of the brain, and they’re located near the base. And what we see is when the. Amygdala hijack brain parts, brain, no longer function. It actually just shuts it down, but without the ability or the use, and this is in the frontal lobe, which is like decision-making a person is unable to think clearly and they have confusion.
And they’re not in control of their responses and we actually need, we see a lot of it. We see a lot of it that’s been happening in the news where people are having outbursts and screaming, and everyone says this person was like a really nice person. I don’t understand. But what happens is they got triggered.
We’ll go to the next.
So the amygdala engagement, the more that it’s engaged, the more difficult it is for someone to think clearly. And self-regulate so when you get the amygdala hijacks, a control of a person’s ability to respond Nat rationally. It’s tapping into fear oriented perceptions and views, most things as a threat.
So this is where we’re looking at. It’s a real serious Shen disturbance because the liver is out of control, right? So the more things are out of control seem out of control. The more that the liver energy starts flaring up and Causes the the mind or the shin of the heart to leave in the, and that’s like a disturbance.
The response usually tends to be aggressive and can be very violent. So we look at episodes where someone may have anger management issues or sudden outbursts and blow ups. So what’s the next.
So here is a picture of someone who is like the earlier picture that I had there, where there was a little boy who was actually showing fear where you could actually, that was that momentary fear where what happens is the eyes are opening up and the heart is racing and here is actually a picture of somebody.
Who is actually in this state where they’re acting extremely irrational. So when some parts of the brain are revved up, others are shutting down and this, like the fear can actually cause the areas of the brain to the. Have judgment to just not be there. And so it’s very difficult for the make a good decision.
So here is actually a picture of what has been known to be as a Karen. She is this woman who just lost it and then it is actually terrifying some people in their own car. And I’m sure she’s a very nice lady. However, she went off and this is when you actually see this irrational behavior.
So we’ll go to the next excellent.
So how can we rescue this? I checked the medulla. Technically when the amygdala is engaged, it takes about six seconds or like the chemicals to recede. So this is, so that we don’t live in this state for a long period of time, whatever the problem is, if it’s triggered over and over, we start to see that it grows up there.
And then what happens? We get this perpetual behavior that continues to be reinforced. So if you have a patient that’s coming in, because they’re, they, they’re having a lot of problems that what’s important is to help them become aware of what’s happening in their body so they can take steps to prevent it.
And really important is going to be. Addressing the liver. And even though this is what we considered a Shen disturbance we may want to give all kinds of calming Formulas, but the problem is that the liver is gone wild. And until that can actually be stabilized, that we start with the end of just treating some of the symptoms.
So it has to be at least two or three pronged where Getting rid of the inflammation that is literally in the liver and we’re coming up upon spring. So this is a really, we may start to see more of this energy coming up because of the season. And what you can do is have your patients start drinking things like nettle tea, dandelion, and burdock, really to help clear that out.
The other is to do some breathing and breath. So this is going to help to reduce the cortisol levels. It’s going to also help address their. Acupuncture. Definitely. The thing is if they are really in a heightened state that actually you could trigger something with them, with acupuncture very interested in, which possible treatment strategies.
Could be aggressive energy treatments might be the thing is if you start needling on the back surface, that’s the sympathetic area. So you actually might have. Actually stimulate something more with the do channel being in excess, you might want to think about treating Ren the fund, the front more funds to bring energy more towards the part of the body.
With herbal formulas again probably less is more definitely there issues when people have. These outbursts that are related to low things like low vitamin D vitamin C. So you might recommend some of the supplements if you are unaware of what supplements there are a suggest or how they work to do a little bit of research on it.
Sunshine, we need a lot of sunlight that actually is going to help also with the liver, right? The liver process is D No processed foods. We know that causes a lot of inflammation. We want to avoid alcohol and a lot of other stimulants. So let’s go to the next slide. Comments. All right, here we go.
Stress negatively impacts our body, mind, and spirit, and really long-term stress affects the body’s ability to regulate itself and actually makes changes to the brain and these negatively affect cognition and are also connected with mental disorders. And including dementia and previously I talked about PTSD.
So in the case, Also in the case of something like PTSD, we really look at how the brain chemistry is altered. We see this, this is one of the challenges is that it’s not as easy as when someone just has an adrenal exhaustion to actually go back. And balance themselves that we are actually dealing with someone who their brain is functioning a little bit differently.
However it is possible to help them to to heal right. To heal. Just as a quick, PTSD is more of a site that is considered a psychiatric disorder. And it’s related to someone having an experience or a trauma that then they will relive over and over again. So they have that flashback and that becomes a barrier for them to use.
I would love to hear some comments. I’m sorry if my the presentation got off to a Rocky start we had a little bit of an adrenal surge when we didn’t know whether the The computer was going to work or the mic. And I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council. And for next week we have Lorne Brown that is going to be joining the American Acupuncture Council.
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 so much for coming to our discussion on the quadratus lumborum structure, function and treatment. My name is Matt Callison. I’m here with Brian Lau and we’re here to shortly discuss this. Amazing muscle that we use quite a bit in acupuncture. That’s also very popular in massage therapy, as well as functional medicine.
It’s a muscle that has been discussed for four decades as being a primary pain generator. But with the advancements within mile faster research and also with biomechanics and functional medicine, the quadratus lumborum is actually evolving into a muscle that is different than from when I first learned about it in sports medicine in 19, late 1986.
Early 1980s, actually. So it has evolved quite a bit with its actual functionality. So Brian and I here to be able to discuss a little bit about this muscle give some quick assessment and some quick treatment techniques with us. And Brian, is there anything that you want to go for as an overview before we jump right into
slide two now I think we can jump on in the presentation up.
Yep. All right.
All right. So the quadratus lumborum is a complex muscle with a various fiber directions. Okay, this is, what’s so interesting about this muscle is that it’s just not one pancake of a muscle. That’s going to elevate the ilium or lower the the 12th rib, which is the way that I was actually taught in the early 1980s, late 1980s is that it was an elevator of the ilium, which we’d really don’t see that very much at all anymore.
What we’ll be discussing is looking at these different fiber arrangements and how this muscle is seen more of a, like a cross-link between. At other muscles acting on the spine or the ileum. So it’s really quite interesting that its role as more of a, synergist or an assistant to a lot of other muscles in different movement patterns.
So we’re going to start to talk about that here in just a little bit. Let’s look and see where it is actually oriented. You can see that the muscles part of the post, your abdominal wall, looking at this cross section of as directly connected to the transverse of dominant. So Brian, can you get the cursor in there?
And maybe we can see that the quadratus lumborum has a direct line along that core line, right into the transverse of dominance. Now that’s via the lateral Rafa tissue. And because it’s got such a strong connection to the transverse abdominis, that is the quadratus lumborum. If there are dysfunctions or increased tensions or lack of.
Tension actually in the transverse of dominance in the Antar aspect, it will directly affect the quadratus lumborum and the poster aspect, and also vice versa. Common commonly you’ll see this with certain fascial distortions as well. Let’s get into the latter Rafa just a little bit more here and the next slide.
So let’s look at the quadratus lumborum and how it’s sandwiched between the anterior and middle layer of the thoracolumbar fat. As we know, the thoracolumbar fascia has three different layers. It has an anterior later layer. It has a middle layer and it has a
post to your person
noticing you’re actually doing a really dumb job plus, cause that’s not easy to do right now.
All right. So we’ve got the quadratus lumborum and the three layers of thoracolumbar fascia. Increased tension, lack of tension to the quadratus. Lumborum how it’s going to affect the transverse abdominis, how it’s also going to affect all layers of the thoracolumbar. So that poster layer, the thoracolumbar fascia is what we commonly see in the anatomy artwork or anatomy charts, where you can see on the backside, the white tissue, that’s connecting the store side down to the glute Maximus bilaterally.
So that would be your post to your thoracolumbar fascia. And we just need to remember that there are two other layers and the quadratus lumborum is sandwiched between those two layer. Very important. And let’s see what’s next.
All right. So looking now from an anterior view, you can see that post to your abdominal wall. You see the quadratus lumborum from there. And also the psoas. The psoas is something that Brian and I spoke about for, gosh, it was a three hour conversation on the structure, a tree, a function and treatment.
Which was great. It was a lot of fun because there were so many things to discuss on the psoas. And that was in January or was that Brian? He did that.
Yeah, we it was early, earlier in January, maybe mid January. I think it’s a loss of now recorded the week we had the live class still online live class in January 10th.
It sounds like. I think it seems about right.
That was the first of the acupuncture anatomy series that Brian and I. Intending to do quite a few videos. Within this realm or the folder of acupuncture anatomy. And this is the second one actually, but it’s coming up soon. So what this presentation today is actually going to be able to give you a couple of pearls that you can be able to really use with the quadratus lumborum and some knowledge about some possibly new knowledge about it.
And then if you wanted to actually go a little bit deeper with it, we’re going to talk for about two hours or just over two hours. I’m just the quadratus lumborum and it’s connection. And it’s connections. Like I was saying before the quieter, some borrowers is seeing more of a crossroad now, like an assistant or a synergist to a lot of other functional movements.
So it’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun to be able to discover that and how it can actually be able to change a needle technique and also treatment protocols or extra points that you can be able to use in addition to the quadratus lumborum so not just local, but also adjacent and dystonia. So looking here at the view, you can see the quadratus lumborum there, that Brian has his cursor on I’m gracefully placed.
I might add. And where are the quadratus lumborum inserts? You can see how it has a direct connection to the diaphragm there at the RQ at ligament. So that would be the lateral arcuate ligament. Okay. Going over the, so ads would be your medial, Q it ligaments. So they act as like a sleeve where it is part of the function of the diaphragm, which is an important thing to remember when you are treating low back.
So then also take a look inferior where that quadratus lumborum attaches to the iliac crest. It interdigitates, it becomes as one with the Illy axis. And it’s really quite fascinating to see on a cadaver because the fibers do actually come together. So if we were to tease away the fibers underneath the iliacus and the quadratus lumborum with a scalpel, just riding along the periosteum, you could lift that up and it would just become one to.
And all the way to the diaphragm, if you continued up that way.
Yeah. True. True. All right. So Brian, I think, are you
taking it away now? Yep, I believe so. Okay. All right. So this is a from research with six cadaver specimens, really looking at the physical arrangement of the quadratus. Lumborum not keep in mind.
This is six specimens. So it’s not a hundred or 200 or 300 spins. But at least it gives a, it starts to give an idea of the complex arrangement of the quadratus lumborum. And when looking at these specimens in this research, there’s three layers to the quadratus. Lumborum, we’re looking at the back through the the, posterior part of the body right now.
So we’re looking at the posterior layer, but then there’d be a middle layer and there’d be an anterior layer. So there’s really three layers to this complex muscle of the quadriceps. And this particular research then compared the six specimens and looked at the various fascicle arrangement. And this is something we might expand upon when we do the the longer two hour class.
But just to give a quick overview of this now there’s first of all, there’s a lot of variability from specimen to specimen, variability, and size or place. Really number of assets, musicals all those types of things. But generally there was mostly at least half of the physicals acted on the 12th rib and there were Leo costal fast tickles.
So that’s what outlined in green from ilium to the 12th rib, there was Leo lumbar facet. That’s what in that more yellow line from the alien to the lumbar spine. Actually, there were some Elliot thoracic basketballs that went all the way up to the body of the 12th thoracic vertebra, but by and large, these are the bulk of the, vascular disease.
Leo costal, Emilia lumbar. The middle layer is the one that has the lumbo costal from the transverse processes to the 12th. You can’t see those from this image, but that would be sandwiched in that middle lane here. So do you have to memorize all of these different farcical arrangements? Not necessarily but, to understand the role or at least to understand the complexity of this muscle, it’s important to remember that there are these various layers, some going from alien to rib, some going from ilium to the lumbar spine, some going from lumbar spine to the 12th rib.
So very complex. And it’s a classical arrangement in size. And. So because of this complexity, the muscle fiber and physical orientation of the QL, it’s difficult really to identify the actions when you’re looking at the quadratus lumborum and this line of pulse the one thing, if it went from ilium to 12 three, that was just like a straight shot from the ilium to the 12th.
Speculate much more easily of what these this role would be because it would be acting from the hip to the rib. And it would be a little more of a straight shot, but because of the fact that there’s these various forces, various vectors acting on it, there’s a lot of uncertainty on the role, the action of the quadratus lumborum.
So let’s go over the general actions. Notice that all of these, at least the first two bullet points on the actions have an asterisk. So let’s talk about the asterick first. So these actions are really placed under question right now by researchers because of just what we said because of this complex arrangement.
So it seems that maybe the quadratus lumborum has not so much to do with a particular action. Let’s say lateral flection of the trunk Obliques are in a much better mechanical advantage to do lateral flection of the trunk, but the quadratus lumborum is there to help out with the, to assist with that, to be a helping aid at same time, it can stabilize the spine.
So there’s a lot of stabilization roles of it probably in potentially. And that’s what the research seems to show extension some sources say extension. It doesn’t really have a good leverage to do extension, but it has leveraged to help with extension help with directors. You can see a lot of different rotational aspects based on the fiber direction.
So really what it seems is that like, when Matt mentioned is really more of this cross link where it’s helping in assisting more functional units of, structures that are moving together. But the traditional roles of the quadratus lumborum is that there’s a unilateral contraction or when there’s a unilateral contraction that does lateral flection of the vertebral column of the lumbar spine.
And whereas the opposite side then would be stabilizing. So we were looking at this right QL that could laterally flex the the lumbar spine. So it’d be come. The lumbar spine would become concave to that side. Bilateral contraction is where it’s usually talked about as a extension, but it seems like it’s pretty minimal and extension and more about assisting if it doesn’t mean.
And then it does seem to have a role in assisting with inspiration because of it’s a poll on the 12th rib as the diaphragm contracts, it would want to lift the 12th rib. So the QL is under there to stabilize the 12th rib and, aid in countering the, diaphragm’s pole. So this would be important, but things like speech anything where you’re getting up there and really projecting your voice in particular, you can picture that QLD in there to assist with that.
So complex muscle.
Yeah. So those, oh, Hey Brian, can I add something to that? Sure, absolutely. So the first two bullets, you guys with those asterix. That research. They actually did some EMG studies on that and they had the patients go, or the models go into extension of the lumbar spine as well as lateral flection into a number of the D into the muscles that actually act on the spine.
And what they found was that the erector spinae was actually like 90% involved in the extension of the lumbar spine. Whereas the quadratus lumborum only 10%, which truly is very interesting. And they basically had the same results with the unilateral contraction. The quadratus lumborum as well. How is wasn’t really actually a primary mover.
It’s just, again, it’s like more of a cross-link across road, a synergist and assistant a stabilizer. So it’s really quite fascinating with that. And I think
we were discussing this recently about myself and I feel like working on the muscle, which is jumping ahead and I don’t want to get into too much on that now, but if the lumbar spine isn’t hyperextension.
To me. I’d never really think that I really want to lengthen the QL so much because it does have, it seems like it has a minimal role in extension, but to be able to get that free gliding of the QL and the erector speed and to be able to decompress the tissue. So you can almost try to lift the tissue out from, being buried deep into the lumbar spine.
To me, that’s how I think about it more. And its role of extension is more postural and less dynamic.
Yeah, the QL being more of a posture muscle, like for example, in single lady, single leg weight bearing in order to have the stability of the lumbar spine than the lateral sling comes into play. So you’ve got the glute medius and minimus and the tensor fascia Lata on one side, and then you’ve got the quadratus lumborum on the opposite.
With that sling, being able to keep the balance in the frontal plane when somebody is standing on one leg and how important that actually is, this is something that we’re going to discuss quite a bit further in the law. And discussion of the quadratus lumborum is coming up in a couple of months. It’s important gives you a lot of great treatment protocols and ideas about what senior channels to be able to treat locally, adjacent and distal as well as mild work and addition exercises to prescribe as well.
That’s going to be very important with that frontal plane. Cool boy, we talked about that slide for a long time.
Okay. A you’re on stuff. Yeah. The quadratus lumborum has a, relationship in terms of at least the topography of it with the lumbar plexus, but it’s really a little bit more complex than just that. So first of all, just a review of the lumbar plexus. This is coming from the ventral Rami of L one through L four, but if you look at this top image the subcostal nerve, the T 12 intercostal nerve, which is called the subcostal.
Share some fibers down into L one. So really the subcostal nerve five contributes to the lumbar plexus. Why are we focusing on the lumbar plexus, these specially, this upper portion, the subcostal nerve, the Elio hypogastric nerve which I don’t know. I can see this on the screen, but subcostal nerve would be right under that 12th rib.
Then the next one to come out would be the ilial hypogastric and then the ilioinguinal. Those travel right on that anterior surface of the quadratus. Lumborum okay. Interesting. But th those are also the primary innovation sources, which especially the subcostal nerve, which is map it’s going to get into in just a moment.
But something to bear in mind as we get a little farther in the lecturer, we’ll come back to this and talk about it is if we follow these these nerves that wrap around the posterior part of the abdominal wall and start to become anti. Because they have cutaneous sensory branches that create sensation that, that supplied the skin and then the sensory aspect for the posterior lateral gluteal region.
I think that says thigh, but that’s really say the gluteal region. Posterial lateral gluteal region. The greater trocanter region, the suprapubic region and the proximal medial thigh. So hold that thought, we’ll remind you about it. But just keep that in mind that, the nerves that are kind of part of the innovation of the quadratus lumborum that have us a structural relationship into, in terms of where they are have the sensory distributions to the lateral.
Greater trocanter grind and I’m up in the superpubic region. So we’ll come back and look at that and how that applies in just a bit. Anything you wanted to add to this map before jumping into the,
no, it was a good setup for what’s to come
fix some interest on it. All
right. So we’re staying within the motor nerve innervation. So this isn’t some research that I gathered. It’s really quite interesting. I found this to be true is that varying research articles and textbooks. There’s not agreement on which nerves actually innovate the quadratus lumborum, but the most important one will end up being the subcostal mainly with the research that’s below because of its large Dianne.
It’s measurement of being so large diameter, therefore you’re going to have more neurons and motor neurons it within that motor nerve, that’s going to be entering the quadratus lumborum and then it also discussed the ill hypogastric nerves that were also innervating the quadratus lumborum. But with those nerves, actually having less contribution to it.
So there are, what we know of is three primary. Motor entry points with the biggest one or the go-to one in my mind will be the one that the subcostal nerve is actually going to be intervening. So let’s go to the next slide because it does show some research on here and you can see, so here a you’ve got the T 11 intercostal nerve, and then you’ve got the subcostal nerve will be B.
You can see that it’s has a larger scale. And innovations to that. Now what they did is actually they opened up that subcostal nerve so that you can actually start to be able to see the different branches then see, is going to be your
So see what ended up being, I believe part of the hill in Greenville and possibly part of the ilial hypogastric so you can see how that subcostal nerve in B is going pretty close to. Brian, can you show on the far upper left corner that the iliac crest, the ilium there? Yeah. There you go. So you can see how that subcostal nerve is going toward the muscle valley of the quadratus lumborum.
So we’ll discuss the subcostal innervation coming up in the treatment section. All right, Brian.
All right. Some of the work we teach quite a bit and work with in the, sports medicine acupuncture program is the Sydney channels. So we’ve really been working for probably 10 years now coming up on 10 years now on really building a comprehensive model for the channel, send news DJing, gen 10 new channels, whatever translation you’re using for the.
And really highlighting the specific anatomical structures that are associated with each channel sinew, how they relate functionally to seeing things like their external internal relationships. In this case, the gallbladder send you a channel or other, correspondences to have they function together.
But for today, just looking straight at the myofascial plane that makes up the liver Sindu channel is quite interesting. Cause this one. A little diverges a little bit from the classical description. The classical description has the liver sinew channel terminating or ending at their groin at the genitals, I think specifically is what it says.
But if you look at the the myofascial plane and it has a much more interesting relationship in that, Line that’s coming up from the foot through the medial thigh, up through the ad doctors doctor longest brevis pectineus Priscilla’s adductor. Magnus is a different one. That’s more in the kidney sinew channel, but this more anterior line of the abductors longest brevis and tineas, that would be then very continuous with that fascial plane all the way up into the iliac.
And as Matt mentioned where the iliac has shares fascial fibers, interdigitates in with the quadratus lumborum. And then up into the tall throne, that would be the liver send you a channel. So if you follow that plane deep into the pelvic structure for the LA axis, it would come out into the QL.
And I know a lot of people might be thinking QL, it’s a back muscle. It seems like that would be urinary bladder maybe, or maybe even. Send you a channel, but if you think about it as being less of a back muscle, which it really isn’t, but more of an abdominal muscle it’s in the abdominal wall, it’s it’s much more of a yin much muscle, much more of a core stabilizing deep structure.
And it starts to make more sense, especially then when you look at that, continuous fascial plane through the abductor line, up into the iliac is QL and The would be a part of that also, especially the distal fibers. , it’s a little more complex than, we can get into today, but we covered this quite a bit in our so as a three hour class and different sort of relationships with the cell ads, but that this, the portion in particular would be part of deliver, send new channel also.
Yeah, Brian was sold me on this one was. Okay. When you gave me a call and you said, Hey, try this liver five points. And I, my practice on every person that day, I palpated their quieter to some warm and then needled liver five. And it was remarkable how well liver five, we will point at the liver channel, soften the quadratus lumborum on not couple, but every single.
And in particular, what we’ve been teaching this for Yon syndrome or the deep layer, which we’re going to actually be talking about just a little bit that y’all, don’t send him, but he was pretty magnificent to be able to feel how liver five and in combination of liver three. And I think I might be jumping ahead with information time.
Yeah, it is. It’s remarkable how well that does work. So I think we’re going into assessment now.
Yep. That is the case. So when I go ahead, no, go ahead.
Okay. So with elevated ilium, this is one thing that we can be able to look for, that we know that the quadratus lumborum, the myofilaments, the actin, and the mind.
Are going to be in a locked short position. It’s not because it’s pulling on the alien pulling upward, but it’s because the glute medius and the amendments have weakened on are allowing that ilium to actually rise up the opposite side. Glute medius and minimus are then shortened and pulling that side down the opposite side.
So it’s it’s the opportunity for this muscle then to become shortened. Now, commonly what we’ll see with this as well is a lateral tilt of the rib cage on the same side, which want to go to the next slide.
All right. So when you get that elevated ilium, what the body wants to do is to compensate. They start to lean to the same size, so it can start to balance itself. So that would be another sign that we can address. I’m looking from the post, your review, an elevated alium always go ahead and measure it with your fingers as well.
Just to confirm your visual findings and then look at the lateral tilt of the rib cage. Usually with the love handles, so to speak, you’ll see a difference between. And left sides and more of an accumulation of tissue when there’s an elevated ilium and a lateral tilt of the rib cage. So in that case, you’ve got the this 12th rib is now going to be actually coming down.
And which means shortening of pretty much all of the fibers of the quadratus from quadratus lumborum I would think making people. Tender to palpation and also Yon tender to palpation, as well as the motor entry point. Let’s go to the next slide. Brian, you want to chime
in on this? Yeah. And this particular image.
It looks like really more just lateral tilt without so much of a elevated ilium, a little tricky to tell. We’d have to almost get in there and get our fingers on. And make sure that what we’re seeing on the exterior surface matches, but just glancing at it. I don’t see a whole lot of elevation of the helium this particular person, but more about the lateral tilt more about that 12th rib being pulled, down.
So you don’t always have to see an elevated ilium with it, but frequently you’ll see these two go together, elevated ilium and lateral tilts with routine. This particular person is a massage therapist. So she leans a lot with her right arm in terms of using a pressure with her right arm quite a bit.
So you can see how that would have a propensity to shorten that right side.
Oh, do you want to say before we move on Matt, that these distal point recommendations are just go-tos that are frequently. Helpful for this condition. There’s ways we apply these in our program and really make determinations of which points to use, but you can just try them out and experiment with them in terms of the part of the full, comprehensive treatment.
In addition to the local points, which we’re going to be getting into, this is just a portion of the treatment, right? This isn’t like a whole treatment is treat the QL out the door. You go in the person. And it might temporarily help, but but you need to be much more comprehensive to get lasting results and, looking again at the fact that the QL across links.
So we need to treat multiple structures and look at his role of communicating between multiple, structures instead of just QL, maybe put a little electrical stem on it, out the door next patient comes in.
Yeah. Yeah. I forgot because we grabbed these slides from the senior channel class, which we have.
So the acupuncture distill those points we’re using as acupuncture is in assessment. We’ve discussed this a few times before, basically trying to be able to change an orthopedic exam and manual muscle test a certain particular posture by using different acupuncture points that will change that myofascial sin, U2.
Before and after and using acupuncture and assessment, it’s just basically seeing, can you make a change in that body using these acupuncture points? And once you can see it and retest it, then you pull those needles out. But you remember to be able to plug those needles back in during the comprehensive treatment of acupuncture, because you saw how it actually makes a difference.
And I think that’s where that’s where this is coming from. Good. I’m glad you explained
that Brian. Yeah. Maybe this is not a great time. I think there was some, a question on the QL and the diaphragm. I see some references to it, but I don’t see the actual question. So we’ll catch that at the end.
If if that hasn’t been answered already,
there it is. We do believe the QL Motorpoint help with help in effect with the diaphragm. Yeah, I would say that I, used the QL personally and I’ll see what Matt has to say. But personally, when I’m working with respiratory issues, I don’t even want to say respiratory issues cause that’s a broader category.
Restricted breathing when breathing seems like it’s a component of the back pain, maybe the person is more of a chest breather and that deep diaphragmatic breath is, and it isn’t filling the low back and massaging the, spinal joints and expanding. And that elastic aspect of the inhale, exhale, expanding the lumbar spine and expanding the soft tissue structures in that lower part.
I definitely go to QL as part of the treatment. It’s
absolutely also the, so as cause we teach we’d be able to see if the low back pain is actually could be. Weakening or an inhibited. So as it’s been constricted in the diaphragm, there’s a manual muscle test that you can use with that. Yeah, for sure.
So add also GB 20 stabbing, you’ll be 17 UV 23 for the kidneys. So as, and also quadratus lumborum I think would be a good idea.
I’ll say one other thing about it then maybe move on unless you have anything else to add. And Matt to it as is, I also think about what’s at the other side of the rib cage. So you have the QL attachment to the total.
And then you have the scalings attaching to the first two ribs. And I find that, especially with people who are more of these chest breathers, who are overusing the scalings is that relationship can be very important as it is speaking to scaling. Especially the anterior scaling is a little hard to needle unless you’ve had specific training on it, but at least some some myofascial work or some, softening manual work to help free some of that excess tension in the scalings.
And. Speaking to the tension at the QL, you’re working on both sides of the ribcage. That can be really useful.
All right, this is great. But how far should we go on this? We’ll start talking about forward head posture and
we got to get going. I can never get. All right. So yes, let’s now talk about needling. These points. And the upper left image, you can see pop patient, the extra point P guns. We know that P guns going to be located at 3.5, some lateral food lower court spot. The process of hell one. Really what I’m going for in this particular case is that the corner pocket I call it, it’s where the Elliot cost Alice also the quadratus.
Lumborum where they attach to that 12th rib. Just palpating along the 12th rib from the lateral aspect up into that corner, you can see a bit of a crease there. So the needle then would be inserted the same direction as my middle. And making sure that it’s not going to go anterior to the 12th rib. So it’s a really good idea to palpate that 12th rib and the topography of that all three, because you don’t want it to go and tear that could cause a pneumothorax.
So you don’t want to insert that and go Antar to the 12th rib caution is advised. Then you can look at the motor point, which is going to be approximately halfway between P gun and Yon. It’s not on every. The directions for finding this motor point, or it’s gonna be just lateral to you be 52 on some people you could find that just slightly more superior from the midpoint being between extra point Pentagon and Yon.
So that’s one aspect that you can get it, or you go slightly higher. If you get, if you can find you be 52, that’s going to put you in the ballpark of that subcostal innervation. So insert the needle, make sure it’s going to end up being parallel to the T. With the quadratus lumborum, I’m sure all of us have gone ahead and needle that quite a bit.
Being an educator and seeing a lot of people that are needing needling, the quadratus lumborum palpation is everything here, and you need to be able to make sure you are actually on that QL and on the deeper. I see a lot of students actually needling the ilial cost Dallas, which is going to get results.
Absolutely. But it’s not dealing the quadratus lumborum so it’s going to be different intent there. And we have in the upper right-hand corner, we have Jaan. This is going to be the deep layer of yang, which would be the quadri Islam. Attachment on that lateral aspect of the pelvis. And it’s amazing how far the lab, the quadratus lumborum actually attaches to the pelvis.
So this particular needle technique is, not going to be on the edge of it, but it is going to be going through the quadratus lumborum in across fiber direction. So you’re influenced in influencing quite a bit of appropriate sectors there, the golgi, tendon, organs, and such Brian, anything to add, or you want to jump to the next.
I know let’s go ahead. And I think the next one just shows some images of the the needling placement.
All right. So we just described that pretty well. I think you guys can be able to that in the images, these images are from the sports medicine, acupuncture, textbook, and now.
Yeah. So we’ve already discussed the liver five.
So when I was talking about the lumbar plexus and there’s nerves that wrap around some of which intervates the QL, the subcostal ilial hypogastric Leland. We know Matt, do you know if it’s the, I was here, it’s the L and L to a anterior division, anterior. For for QL or at least I’ve seen you indicate that, is that branches off the Leo hypogastric Amelia.
We know. Cause I know those are one L region or are they like before the lumbar plexus ranches off?
I didn’t understand your question because it is the illegal hypogastric Ilian wino. And I do agree that it’s the ventral Rami. That’s how it’s talked about, but what is, okay. What was the question?
My question is sometimes I’m just seeing reference to L one and L two and I wasn’t sure if it was before.
If it was the, ventral Ray mine, Aramco Ramey, before they get to the lumbar plexus. And there’s like a motor nerve that branches off before intermingling with the lumbar plexus, or is it post lumbar plexus? gastric then it’s, definitely post lumbar plexus. I don’t know. It’s gonna be one more thing for us to be able to go research.
Anyways, those have an intimate relationship with the QL and it is intriguing. The re pain referral, the trigger point referrals. Many folks here are probably work with trigger points, or maybe use them as, a part of the assessment. I use them. That’s not the air, the only thing that can refer and cause pain.
But I think it’s a a useful thing to look for. Especially QL is so frequently involved with a lot of low back pain patterns. And when you look at the the QL referral pattern pretty much goes to where those sensory divisions of the nerves. To the lateral posterial lateral gluteal region to the greater trocanter region, wrapping around to the suprapubic region and then wrapping around to the groin.
There’s also some divisions that go really more posterior deep into the gluteal SSI joint or into the, kind of deep buttock region. But to me that. It doesn’t really talk about it this way and literature, when you talk about trigger points. But to me, that sort of emphasizes that segment has become irritated.
The QL has maybe the QLC irritating factor. Maybe the QL is part of the irritation of that segment, but the sensory division of that complex, so to speak has, been irritated. Maybe that’s, open to debate. And I haven’t seen it quite some depth that way and discussion of trigger point sensitization, but it would make sense to me because there’s such a neurologically intimate relationship between those nerves and the quadratus lumborum.
But to me that also speaks to the the possibility or at least a possible mechanism of how liver five it’s so effective for the QL is that. Working with that collateral circulation being the the low connecting point, it’s working with that collateral circulation that is referring pain, both to the gallbladder channel distribution and the liver channel distribution.
It’s has a referral that’s between these two internally externally related channels. And it’s interesting that it’s the low connecting point that would have. It’s such a, strong relationship in terms of removing pain from the quadratus lumborum and helping with that pain referrals, sensitization.
And then this is something that I’ve been working with in that I started adding liver three, and that seems to really increase the effectiveness on liver five by itself is quite effective, but liver three, yet the low point on that channel is just even a stronger treatment. So this is a really great disciplined.
Combination that you can use in combination with the local noodling. Let me just covered for that side where the TQL is really a pain generator. Yeah. For something like that.
It’s interesting to see the image, the trigger point image that’s on top there on the upper. You can see where the X’s are at Yan and pagan and that reasonable.
These points have been needled for thousands of years or have been known to be a referring type of point a trigger. And then the points lower. Let’s see the deep ones. Is that around you be 23 regions, that upper one. Cause the other one looks like it’s close to almost. Yeah. So
This, is what first of all, let me give a quick statement that this is the old edition of travails book, because I think that, I think it’s the third edition, the newest.
Addition, they’ve taken out these exes because trigger points can inform anywhere in the muscle. I kinda like the, I kinda the Xs, but it’s around for Lark. Chevelles passed, on now. So the decision was made after the fact that I guess they’re basing it on ongoing research and such, but they made the decision on the third one, which is I understand the decision to take out the Xs.
So I think the X’s aren’t. That this is where the trigger point is going to be in this referral, but it’s just tendencies. It’s if there’s a tendency for that upper, especially more lateral fibers to have this that’s marked one to have this referral, which I find is pretty commonly the case that it refers pain that’s, where that trigger points.
So it lives in more of that lateral edge of Yon tends to have more of that number two district. Then, if you go deeper, you advance the needle deeper. And your question, Matt, I wonder the same thing. Are you actually hitting those medial fibers of the QL? Are you starting to get into attachments of the multi-fit eye?
Cause they blend so much together. We’ve seen that a lot on cadaver specimens, but those are the ones that tend to refer deeper down. And I wonder that same aspect. QL or if it’s the relationship of the QL to the , which are on the same layer that I think that
Be really interesting the next time that we get an opportunity to dissect this, Brian is to follow the subcostal nerve into the motor entry point.
And then if we have time to do this would be great is to see if, and then do intramuscular dissection and just follow where it starts to buy for Kate. Is that smaller, small branch traveling intramuscular going to. Yeah, Yon and P going to be fascinating to see if we could follow it up there. Got you. In our system.
We’re really geeky. That’s why, by the way, that’s why I liked the Xs. Cause I think that’s what the X is. That tendency is probably more intramuscular sort of international
sites. Dr. Trevell is probably rolling in her grave because if they’re going to take those exits, I don’t know.
All right. An interesting that channel discussion, but it’s a really effective treatment.
Pate QL. We’ll give it a try. Yeah. Before you actually needle QL, especially Yon seems to be really highly effective. This way is palpated to get a pain scale from your patient. Let’s say, oh that’s, a seven. When you really get on that, that really gets to the source of the pain needle liver five liver three, and then go back and palpated and see what happens.
And I think you’ll find that if you get a really good cheap response to those disappoints, that in and of itself reduces pain by 50% or more. And then the rest you’re getting the the, local needs. It’s a really big part of the full treatment.
It’s good.
All right. We teach a lot of myofascial release techniques in the program especially like targeted ones that really supplement the treatment. And this is a a myofascial release technique for the quadratus. Lumborum especially getting to that lateral edge. If you try to reach the QL through the erector spinae, good luck.
That’s a really. Layer, especially in the lumbar region of tissues. So it’s maybe you can touch it. But you’re going to have minimal influence on it with your fingers. It’s you can needle in there, but it’s hard to determine the depth, cause you don’t know exactly where you are when you’re just going perpendicular.
That’s why the needle technique matchup is going more from lateral to medial, almost the same way my finger is there, but he was showing it with the person in a prone position. So this will be very much like the the needle technique as well. Anterior to the , I’m pretty much at Yon rubbed up right against the iliac crest.
You can angle your finger. Once you get a really deep contact there and engage the tissue, you can angle that pressure up towards the 12th rib and have the person reach their leg down to bring the hip down. So their thigh, you can’t see it fully in this image, but their thigh is in line with their.
So as they reached their foot, say, let the towards the back wall or something straight in line with the torso downward, that’ll start to pull the hip down while you’re spreading and moving that tissue towards the 12th room. So you’re elongating one direction is there, their forest is going the other direction.
And you can take that up to the tall throne. Then you could change directions because of those different fiber orientations. You can change the orientation then down towards the iliac crest and have them reach their. Upward to pull the rib cage up. So you’re decompressing the tissue away from the 12th rent on, and then bring the tissue down towards the Lem.
Is there having a force in the opposite direction, really effective technique after a needle lane and it can help return that tissue to a really good resting length.
Yeah. There’s a lot of good techniques in that class. Yeah. A lot of good ones to use. Same thing with my techniques and same thing with needle techniques is there’s a lot of good exercise techniques as well, trying to be able to accomplish on reinforce your treatment.
I’m thinking about it still as excess and deficiency is when you have a locked short muscle, it will act like it’s excess, but it will be an underlying deficiency when you have a lock long-term. It acts as a deficiency. So it’s a good idea to once you reestablish the channels and the CIM blood and the axle plasmic flow, and we discuss in the actual muscles and the channels themselves.
It’s a great idea to go ahead and strengthen the. It’s long muscles and then try to be able to stretch those lock short muscles. This is one particular stretch is one of our favorites as well. That’s a patient favorite as well. The figure for spinal rotation, where you have the ability to eat long gate, the quadratus lumborum, you can see on the lower photo that she has crossed over that figure for a position.
So her right foot is on the floor and the lateral aspect of her leg, and also thigh is going to be on the floor. So for her to be able to bring her right knee into hip AB duction that helps to lock down and pull down that ilium that could be elevated and causing a shortening of the quadratus.
Lumborum so great exercise to be able to use, like I said, it’s a patient favorite. It helps to release the quadratus lumborum as well as to activate that glute medius, which is going to end up being part of that lateral sling that we briefly talked about. And we’ll talk about it quite a bit more. Yeah. A two hour lecture coming up in just a couple of months on the quadratus.
Lumborum Brian, I think that’s it, man. We went way over time. I hope that. Okay. We have references as well. You guys, we also have something in the notes that you can buy. You guys can go ahead and take a look. We have a number of different recordings. About 75% of our smack program is now. And also on loss at OMS, which is great.
Also the psoas class, the three-hour class that Brian and I did just this last January, that’s available as well as part of the acupuncture anatomy series. LASA OMS also carries a sports medicine, acupuncture textbook, which is the next slide. And so I think we’re probably good to go.
Brian, anything else that you want to be able to quick?
This has classes is great on a Lhasa and it’s much more comprehensive because we have more. But there was no, we did do a, C a. So as if you want to get a little taste for that class that wasn’t, I knew you remembered November. So if you go on a C’s page, you can search back for the the, so as webinars we did there also, so that’s a give you a sort of a sample of that, class, and then you can see it through AAC’s page,
which we always appreciate them having us on and, a
thank you to both an Acupuncture Council. Yeah, absolutely big, huge. Thank you for having us and supporting us. Thank you so much for that, Brian. That was a good call to be able to bring that back in. So that’s good. Anything else, Brian? Ah, Lauren Brown.
Yes. He’s going to be here next week. Make sure you check him out. He’s. A big professional in our field, a wonderful academic and an amazing practitioner. So check him out. He always has really interesting things to be able to say, thank you very much. American Acupuncture Council Brian, always nice hanging out with you.
I’ll talk to you again soon. All right. Bye everybody.
So today I’m going to talk about. Storytelling for your practice. And this is your introduction to storytelling, which is the science of storytelling to attract new patients who want your services now.
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 folks, Jeffrey Grossman here. And thank you for joining me. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to watch this video and thank you for the American Acupuncture Council for yet again, inviting me back to share some insights and wisdom and knowledge about growing your practice and marketing and business development for acupuncturists.
So today I’m going to talk about. Storytelling for your practice. And this is your introduction to storytelling, which is the science of storytelling to attract new patients who want your services now. And I just want to make one thing. Stories are elaborated patient testimonials and testimonials are short and they don’t necessarily have the triggers and the intrigue or the emotional connection that can really pull a prospect in and communicate to them that indeed, that you are.
Able to help them. And that you’re the solution that they’re searching for. So stick with me and you’ll understand what I’m talking about. So I’m going to share my slide deck with you. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to learn about the three things that every patient thinks before they choose you and why you must consider these as part of your marketing efforts.
We’re also going to talk about the various stories. To share with every patient to build rapport and trust with every prospect and every patient coming into your practice and how to use your stories to attract qualified new patients and more word of mouth referrals. So for those of you that don’t know me, my name is Jeffrey Grossman.
I am the owner and the president of Acupuncture Media Works, Accu Perfect Websites and Accu Downloads. And I’ve taught classes for and am a regular speaker for the AAC for several years. I’ve also taught the 60 hour practice management class at the middleweight acupuncture Institute. I taught at bass year Siam and Neisser and clock.
400 plus hours of online video trainings and marketing and business trainings for other acupuncturists. So I’m in this industry and I’ve been privy to what’s been going on for this industry for a long time. So my goal, our goal, our mission at acupuncture media works is to share the latest marketing insights with you and the techniques and the protocols with you that inspired.
And educate your prospects and your patients so that you can have a fuller schedule, make more money and effect positive change in the world by helping more people. So I started practicing in 98 in height, many of the struggles that many of you have experienced or may be experiencing now. And I took a.
Of $15,000 and started coaching with a chiropractic coach. And my life changed. My practice changed, my income changed. So I want to encourage you to take some chances, make some change if you’re struggling, if you’re not as full as you are, if you’re not making the type of income that you need, something’s got to shift and take that gamble.
Take that shift in order to take those next steps so you can grow. Throughout this year. So this training is about changing your life. It’s about changing your income and just one or two ideas can transform your practice in this year. So most of us think that marketing is hard, but it’s not. And we were went to school to become a healer.
We’re not that adept at becoming a business and marketing person, the honest truth is that you have to wear those two hats that. The hat of business person, and you’re the only person who’s going to be doing your billing and your marketing and your needling, your Grosh on your cupping and your scheduling and all of that.
That’s on you. My friends, you are an entrepreneur and you are a healer. So we’ve got to own that. And we’ve got to tap into marketing and business building strategies for your practice. Oh, I want to encourage you that if you need any help, that you should evaluate your plans to create actionable strategies and feel free to reach out to me, I’ll have my email address at the end of today’s training.
And if you need help, just send me an email, says, Jeffrey, I need some help. I’d love to get together with you and I’m offering free 15 minute consults for that. Also before I go on. I know it was a little late into the Chinese new year, but we’ve got a gift for you, which are if we put together a bunch of Chinese new year, social media graphics for you, we got some newsletters, some Facebook graphics, some Instagram posts, and some blog posts that you could copy and paste and use in your practice.
And you can grab them here at this link on the video. Just go to that link at the end of today’s training and get those graphics and start putting them into your social media strategy. Okay. So one of the foundations of building a sustainable and successful acupuncture practice is to build what I call the know like and trust factor.
And this is something that we will talk about as we go on, but it’s something I want you to remember. And if you want people to know like trust and refer others to you, nothing is more important and nothing is more fundamental than telling your patient’s story. About how you have helped people just like them.
Get better telling stories, build the know like, and trust factor from the moment they’re done reading it. That’s it. If it resonates with them and triggers them to take action. And I’ll tell you about that in a second, but before I do that, I want to tell you how to do it before, but I want to tell you why stories work so well.
Okay, so let’s read this together. Tell me the facts. And I’ll learn, tell me the truth and I’ll believe, but tell me a story. And it will live in my heart. Forever stories are how humans have communicated for tens of thousands of years long before written language ever existed. And the key is how our brains and bodies aligned.
When we hear a story, people know for thousands of years and. Is just now proving it to be a fact that a story can do what facts and statistics can never do, which are inspire and motivate the reader. So storytelling, it’s the most ancient form of marketing. It’s about getting that message through to the listener.
And when a good story is being shared, the listener or the reader, they’re engaged, they’re involved in both their mind and their heart. Okay. So stories do all the hard marketing work for you, and they make our prospects remember and clear and care and story marketing works because our brains are already programmed for stories because it’s embedded in our DNA.
And storytelling also helps with learning because stories are easy to. When we hear a story, we unconsciously take the place of the person in the story and the benefits that they receive become the benefits we think that we’ll receive. So learning which can stem from a well-told story, it’s remembered more accurately.
And for far longer than learning, that’s derived from facts and figures. And that’s from research. That’s been done by a psychologist called peg new Hauser, and there’s another. Researcher, another published psychologist called Jerome Bruner, who suggests that facts are 20 times more likely to be remembered if they are part of a story.
So marketing comes and goes, but your patients will remember the stories that they read and that they heard and relate to for a long time. So having several great patient stories about. A patient’s searing back pain that goes away after true treatments or curing someone’s migraines that they’ve had for over 20 years or helping a woman have a child after not being able to conceive for many years.
It’s like having an. That people were role. Remember for years on end. And the great thing is that it’s zero cost to you. People remember, and they share stories far and wide. So stories create that emotional connection between your prospects and your practice. And they have that psychological effect that adds tremendous power to your marketing.
And this can add ultimate growth to your practice. So this. Yet another reason why I really liked stories because the advertising it’s free and the memories last and last. So hopefully now that you’re seeing that stories can be powerful for your marketing and your patient education process. Okay.
So that’s a very brief look into the science of stories and there’s real documented brain science on why this works. And when we’re done, you can Google a great Ted talk by Henri Hassan. And he did a fascinating study on how people’s brains, literally sync. When they hear the same stories and they put themselves in the story of the other person’s shoes.
So before that study, they’re like, brainwaves are all mismatched and they’re not sinked up. And when they hear that same story, they start thinking up. So do you see how this can be helpful for your practice? People read a well-crafted patient story and they resonate with it. They embody it for themselves and want the same outcome as the person that they just read about.
So I hope that makes sense. So we need to talk about how you will be using them in your practice and which ones to use. But before I go there, Let’s talk about this next aspect, which is the secrets of why people buy and what they really care about. Okay. So we’ve been buying things the same way. For thousands of years, something gets our attention.
It becomes top of mind and our interest is peaked. It increases our desire as we want to learn more. And then we buy, and this is the basic buying system that we all go through. It’s hardwired, it’s ancient human nature. And as we’ve just discussed, it’s better and easier to use the science of human nature than to just simply ignore it.
So the buying process is pretty much the same, no matter what business you are. So something, your triggers, your interest in, let’s say having lunch and you read the menu, your desire increases, and then you buy same process. When you go to see a home that you might be interested in purchasing the realtor increases your desire by demonstrating and discussing why this house is great.
They stage it beautifully. So you can literally picture yourself there and put yourself in the shoes of the owner of that house. You buy it’s the same for your practice in spite of what most people think, no matter how accomplished and brilliant you are at your modality. There’s only one thing our prospects really think about and believe me.
Unfortunately not you and it’s not your credentials and it’s not your modality. So while can it be well, they want to know what’s in it for me. And what’s in it for me is made up of three things. Okay. The three things that every patient thinks about before they choose you, and these are really important to consider as part of your marketing.
And, these are the things that prospects are concerned about. It’s what’s in it for me. And it breaks down into these three different parts. W here’s what I want right now, which is I want to get out of pain. How do I get it right? Who can help them? Okay. And what’s my life going to be like, after I get help and what will they be able to do after they are free of pain that they cannot do now, they want their pain to go away.
How could it possibly get done? And if it does, what is their life going to look like? And this is what’s on people’s mind. Excuse me. And that’s the process people go through over and over again when they’re presented with a buying decision is what’s in it for me. And this is with every single industry.
Okay. So let’s talk about how we use stories in your practice and in your patient’s journey. So right now, For probably 99.9% of you, the people in your neighborhood might not know you as the master healer. What we want to do is to get people’s attention, creating interest and desire by talking about what I, or better yet what they want right now, for instance, They want to get out of that pain, neck pain or whatever their problem is.
And they want to what that is, what I want to know. Okay. Then we want to demonstrate our skills and our success, whether it’s on the tele-health call or getting somebody in your office and sharing how you’re the best choice for them or getting them for an acupuncture happy hour or a stress reduction treatment to get them to devastate.
So you can share with them how your medicine can help them. And by using. This is where they get to know and trust you and they understand how do I get this and how can I get the positive results? W w that’s what’s on their mind too, is you have to present your treatment plan, or you present success stories.
And part of what you’re going to talk about then is how their life is going to change. And w after they received the results, of seeing you. Okay. And if the results are good, they’re going to refer friends. They going to refer neighbors and expand your practice through word of mouth in your community.
Okay. So I hope you’re following me. So now I want to discuss the three basic stories that you should be using in your practice. So there’s the initial. To desire story, which gets your prospect into your office to experience you, gets them interested in you and your services. And what’s great about this is when you use the template and practice it.
A couple of times, it only takes about 10 minutes to create because it’s only about 150 to 200 words and. Since our time is short. I’m not going to show you that what, I’m not going to show you a total interest story here, but I’m going to share a link to a video that walks you through a real world.
Example of a patient story. Number two is the desire to buy. Which is a story that positions you as the healer in your neighborhood. And this helps to create trust and rapport with your prospects. So they accept your treatment plan because they want it. And not because you sold it to them because they’re, they put themselves in the shoes of the person who shared whose story that you shared with them.
And they benefited from your care and their. Synced up with what the other person’s story is, what the other person’s experience is. And the third story that you’re going to need to have is you were own apifany story. And it’s your personal health story as to why you love Chinese medicine, why you love acupuncture, your various modalities that you offer and why you chose to do what you do.
Not about the number of credentials that you have, or the number of acronyms that you have after your name. It’s about realizing that you are human too. Maybe you had your own health struggles that made you seek out acupuncture that eventually led you to be the healer that you are today, or maybe you saw a loved one received acupuncture and it opened up your eyes and you said, yeah, that’s what I want to do.
So whatever it is. You have your own story, and it’s important to share that with your patients. In fact, you’ll be sharing it with whenever you host a class or give a talk or even meet patients for the first time, your story makes you human. It makes you relatable and real, your story should be on your website as your, about you pages.
You wouldn’t believe the, about you pages that I see are the about me pages I see on people’s websites. That’s all about how great I am. How many schools I went to, how many acronyms I do, right? When you meet somebody, you want to be like, hi, my name’s Jeffrey. I went to new Orleans with acupuncture and I have all these acronyms now my name, and these are the types of modalities.
I do know you want a story that’s relatable, that people can connect with. Okay. So what they. Is your story and your appify funny story. Okay. So imagine how much easier or how much is simpler that your life will be when you have the perfect story that makes prospects want to become patients because they instinctively know and trust you and can force the results that they’ll receive.
Just like the person in the story received. Okay. So imagine having the proof that you’re a great healer for allergies or asthma or back pain or neck pain or knee pain or gut pain or surgery, pain, or headaches or stress or not sleeping or infertility or weight loss. Whatever you specialize in your practice, when someone comes in, you have to have stories specific about the key problems that you help your patients solve and your patient’s stories are your library.
It’s your proof of success and your proof that you can address the what did it for me scenario. Okay. So the great news is that crafting the perfect patient story? It’s really not that hard. All it takes is to make it, to make a great story is answering 12 simple questions and these questions you already know the answers to.
So once you create your first patient story, you’ll be able to use it for years. In your practice. So I’m going to quickly review these 12 questions with you. And I reviewed these 12 questions in this video that I’m going to be going through, that I have a link for after this, that you can watch me go through an entire patient success story for yourself.
So the first question is who is. Excuse me, who is this story about? So you’ll be describing a patient’s age. Are they single? Do they have any children? What’s the patient’s health complaint in their words, right? Nonmedical non-technical. How long do they have the problem? What caused the problem?
How does the problem affect their. They’re looking for solutions. What did they tried before? What methods? What modalities, what are the treatments? How did that person use it? What were the results? What are the patient’s biggest fears? What were the patient’s biggest questions? Did the patient have any experience with acupuncture, Chinese medicine?
If so, what were the risks? How did you demonstrate or explain your solution and how would it be helpful? Did you do your occupant or did you do a stress reduction treatment? Did you do some Dr. Tan points? Okay. What did the patients say about the demonstration or the explanation? Did they have any answers?
What were they, did you ask, did you get questions? Did you get any answers to at least one of these questions above that I have here since you had. Had this problem. How many years in your mind would it be? What would it feel like a short-term success to start with your treatment? How will your life be different when this condition is under control?
The question number 10, did they accept your complete treatment plan or was it just a few sessions? What was their treatment timing? What happened the first few weeks or the first few treatments? They have a positive experience. What milestones did they reach? And then finally, did you get a testimonial?
What was it? Did you get a referral or did you start to treat any other family? Okay. So I, you can watch, I don’t have time to show you a real world example of the patient’s story and the 12 questions in action, but you can jot down this link here and watch me re review a real world example of a patient’s story.
And you can even download an example of. At that page as well too. So go to this link here at youmedia.us/story review. And you can watch me review an entire patient story and even download a template. Okay. So now that you’ve written and produced your story in at least one format, you’ll have to decide exactly where to distribute it.
And the goal is to choose a distribution channel that will get your story in front of as many people as possible. So you could put it on your website or your blog. You could use it on social media, you could put it in emails and you can use it for a part of your advertising. If you have. And the budget to do those kinds of things.
Okay. So now, you know why stories are important and how stories work to build an emotional connection and the universal buying decision process that a person goes through, that every person goes through when making a decision. And the one thing that patients think about that you might. Appeal to and when to use your patients’ stories and their journey and how to make a great story by answering 12 simple questions.
Okay. So time to get work on your story. So you could work with some experts, you could work with some writers, you can think about the patient complaints that you solve on a regular basis and make a list and focus on. Story first, or you can consider setting a goal by getting two patients stories done a month until you have 10 or more.
Okay. So here’s the link to the download the graphics. Here’s a link to download or watch the video that I put together for you. You can take a note of these slides here and I want to say thank you for joining me here. And here’s my email. If you want to reach out to me for any questions, if you need any help, a support, if you want a free 15 minute consult, so we can discover where you might need some help, feel free to reach out to me at this email address.
So I hope you are all doing well. I hope you receive some of the answers and the inspiration and the insight that you needed today. And I want to encourage you to reevaluate your plans and make actual strategies. All right. We’re here for you. Stay beautiful. Keep changing the world. One person, one needle at a time and talk to you soon.
So first I’d like to describe how I see Gui Zhi Tang working and. Last time. I talked about the physiology of the shell hung lawn that I think is encoded into the Shang online.
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. I’m so happy to be here. And I want to first thank the American Acupuncture Council for inviting me to do this series on Chinese herbal medicine. And last time I spoke about why I’m so sold on classical Chinese medicine in herbal medicine and defined that to mean working with the formulas from the Shang Han Lun and Jin Gui Yao Lue. And today I would like to express some of the principles that I talked about last time with focusing on the formula. And this is such a useful formula. It’s an inexpensive formula easy to take formula and the way we learned about it in our kind of typical TCM education is as a formula that will dispel wind. And we usually think of it as a formula to use for coming down with a cold or what we might call an external influence or an epi. And what I’d like to do is describe how useful it is beyond just a common cold, because quit your tongue is a formula that I use all the time in my practice for a wide variety of disorders. It’s also a very small formula, so it’s easily modifiable. And actually there are many formulas in the Shang Han Lun that are based on grade your tongue. So hopefully besides my main goal is to get people excited about studying classical formulas and working with them. But I also have a goal today of having the listener. Be able to go home and think oh, I can use this formula that you could use it next week for something you may not have thought to use it for. So first I’d like to describe how I see Gui Zhi Tang working and. Last time. I talked about the physiology of the shell hung lawn that I think is encoded into the Shang online. And that it’s really about being right with time. And there’s this kind of circular movement of heaven going around us while we’re here on the earth. And this same circular movement is going on in our bodies. And so great. Your tongue is, one of the first formulas. So I think the first formula would be mentioned in the Shang Han Lun in the Taiyang section. So understanding a little bit about Taiyang it’s this steaming up movement that goes from the middle warmer up to the surface of the body. And right after the tie young movement, it’s. Going up like the sun rising, it hits noon and now it starts going down. And the downward movement is the beginning of the Yangming Conformation. So when we’re, when our Taiyang is functioning it has this really nice steaming up. And if you think about what steam is, it’s young within yen. So when you have steam. You have this kind of fire that’s inside of water and that fire and water are so mixed that it’s actually steam. It’s this water that rises up because of the fire that’s inside of it. And that’s what Taiyang does is the, has a steam that goes up and how all the way to the surface of our body and that steam creates a nice ozone layer of warmth and protection. And when it functions well, we sweat. Normally we have a nice, comfortable body temperature. And what happens in a greater tongue pattern is you usually think of it as like an invasion of wind cold or an invasion of wind. I’d like to suggest thinking of it a little bit differently, that what happens in a Taiyang pattern is that movement of stinks. Going up to the surface of the body. It resolves too quickly. And so that fire and water separate before they’ve really reached all the way to. Surface of our body. So what do you get from this separation that we also would call a Ying Wei Disharmony, meaning the way that’s the warmth inside should be nice and inside the yang so that it brings it all the way up to the surface, but instead they separate. So you get sweating as the yang droplets lose their relationship with the. They come out as sweating and the young that’s lost its relationship with the yang. We get feverishness or flushing up. That’s what the yang way disharmony is in a way it’s like a premature ejaculation, that you want it to take as long as this, before it results, but instead it resolves too quickly and that becomes pathological. So when we give Gui Zhi Tang, we are supplementing the warmth and the fluid in the middle warmer, and we’re slowing down that process. So the steam rises and makes it all the way. To the surface of the body. And in fact, a Gui Zhi Tang pattern can actually treat premature ejaculation. Know we can explain premature ejaculation with the Gui Zhi Tang pattern because it’s a leaking pattern it’s coming out of relationship. So I said that the Gui Zhi Tang comes from the middle warmer, and you look at the ingredients of Gui Zhi Tang. We have gone. So Sheng Jiang and Gan Cao These supplement and warm the spleen we have Da Zao, which replenishes the nutrition in the spleen. So we’ve got this kind of fire inside of a nice juicy herbs. And that starts that steaming process in the spleen and stomach. Now Da Zao also enriches the blood. And so does Shao Yao. So what I’d like to show is that the Gui Zhi Tang formula, supplements the middle in a warm way, and it also supplements the blood and that the warmth in the middle and the good quality warm blood is what then is the foundation for the harmonized Ying and Wei to come all the way up and out to the surface. So really the Gui Zhi Tang is a supplementing formula, supplementing the spleen and also supplementing the blood. And from that replenishment, it then supports that consolidation of the exterior of the body. So by giving wager tone, we’re not just getting rid of a wind pathogen. Really it’s a healthy body, knows how to get rid of a wind path. Rather than just getting rid of the wind pathogen, we’re restoring this function of the body, the function of the body to have really nice harmonized Ying and Wei. So I want to talk first about this flushing up, that happens in a Gui Zhi Tang pattern and what that can look like. It can look like nausea and vomiting. If the flushing up affects the stomach. Then you can have nausea and retching. And that’s why Zhang Zhongjing put Gui Zhi Tang as the first formula in the pregnancy chapter of the Jin Gui Yao Lue for Pregnancy. In early pregnancy. So that’s one little gem I would like to give you is to really think about grade your tongue as a formula that can treat nausea and vomiting in early pregnancy. And it does it, that the reason that there’s the vomiting is because of the Ying Wei Disharmony and it, by putting that way back into the. It then it’s not flushing up anymore. It’s physiologically rising to the top of the body. So that’s one thing that we can treat with Gui Zhi Tang and it’s right in there in the Jin Gui Yao Lue. The other thing I want to mention is When the Ying and Wei separate from each other. It really means that the surface of our body, instead of getting that nice from ozone layer, that separation means that the surface of our body is too open in the Shang Han Lun. It says aversion to wind. And in my opinion the symptoms that are mentioned in the Shang Han Lun are both literal and symbolic. So the wind can mean that you have an aversion to just too much going on. In other words, you get overwhelmed really easily and you feel really hypersensitive. So imagine a patient who comes in and let’s say, it’s a woman and she’s, you can see that she has blood deficiency. You can see from her complexion, from our. Maybe from your abdominal diagnosis and, she’s got blood deficiency and at the same time, she tends to be a little bit cold and then premenstrually, she becomes very sensitive. We usually think of pre-menstrual syndrome as wanting to move the liver cheese. But many of our patients don’t actually fit that pattern and they don’t benefit from formulas like or something like that. There are many of our patients who come in and they experienced, they have premenstrually is they become hypersensitive. They feel very vulnerable. And if you question them one thing I like to ask is. Do you generally flush when you have emotions, like if you’d get embarrassed or if you have to speak in front of a crowd, do you flush easily? Do you sweat easily? In other words, that kind of person, their Ying and Wei tends to separate. And there, many of my patients have been really helped with Gui zhi Tang for PMS. Because of this. So what the Gui zhi Tang then does is it supplements the blood, it nourishes the spleen and it harmonizes the Ying and Wei. And it really creates a sort of ozone layer of protection on the exterior of the body. So people don’t feel so open and so vulnerable and they can handle more. Knowing that pre-menstrual time. Many women just feel like I can’t handle anything. Someone looks at me the wrong way and I just start crying. And Gui zhi Tang is really good for that. We can think of that also for peri-menopause or menopausal types of symptoms, which. The same kind of experience for people. So we can see that this range of grades, your tongue is really is really broad. There are also lots of modifications of Gui zhi Tang. Expand its usefulness in the clinic. A lot of these modifications are mentioned in the Shang Han Lun. So for example, a really favorite modification for me is a formula that’s called Gui Zhi Jia Shao Yao Tang, but the Shao Yao is doubled, so Zhang Zhongjing is telling us you can actually use more Shao Yao if you want to, and so it’s just great. You’re talking about you’re using more Shao Yao. So what happens to this formula that harmonizes the Ying and Wei? If you add. and there’s a couple of things that this formula is so useful for. Not so often I’m increasing the shadow. So what does the show do? And I, here, I’m talking about by shell. So the Shao Yao is a blood nourishing or, and one of the main indicators for me that I might want to double the Shao Yao is. Abdominal diagnosis. So with abdominal diagnosis, if I find that the rectus abdominis from under the ribs down to the navel are very tight for me, that’s almost always a by shout indication. And so in that case, I will have more by show. The other thing that often goes along with this abdominal finding is so common and it will go with a lot of these PMs kinds of women that I was talking about is neck and shoulder tension. We know that the bladder channel and the small intestine in general, they are on the trapezius and. And by show really nourishes the muscles, especially when we have Bai Shao, like we do in your, that becomes , which is for relaxing spastic muscles. And where are those muscles most likely to get really tense in the Gui Zhi Tang pattern. It’s going to be the tie on channels and the upper body, because there’s. Flushing up called? Nobose in Japanese this, when we talk about it in terms of abdominal diagnosis, so there’s flushing up, so it’s going to affect the upper body and then it’s affecting the Taiyang channels of the trapezius and neck. So very often people will say, yes, I, I carry so much tension in my neck and upper back. It’s always tight and painful for me. That’s an indicator for adding increased Bai Shao to Gui Zhi Tang. Very common. The other indicator for increasing the Bai Shao is related to the fact that Bai Shao is also bitter and it’s. And Bai Shao when it hit like bitter, because I’m putting my hand down this way because the bitter flavor descends in the body and by show is cool. So it’s very good for opening up the Yangming and treating constipation. So it treats constipation both because it’s very lightly purging. But also because it relaxes muscles, one muscles, relax. It’s not just that. It’s not like a muscle relaxer that makes all the muscles all Saudi ends up the way that by Bai Shao works to help the muscles. It helps muscles do what they’re supposed to do. So actually helps normal pair of spouses while stopping cramping. So another indication for adding by show is. Person that you’re seeing that feels so vulnerable and sweats easily and flushes. If they also tend to get constipation, you can increase the by show or abdominal pain. No. So in the Shang Han Lun, that’s what it’s for. ? is for abdominal pain. So that kind of cramping can cause constipation. It can also cause abdominal pain. So that’s a modification of Gui Zhi Tang, so easy and easy to remember because it just makes so much sense. Another modification that’s really listed just right after this Gui Zhi Jia Da Huang. Is if the constipation has gone on for more than three days, so it’s really blocked in there, so what happens when you’re constipated is that it sits in there and gets drier and drier, and then it just makes the constipation worse. So if you want to get. Flush just to break that cycle. In other words, it’s a short-term treatment, but you want that flush to be gentle. You want it to be body temperature, Gui Zhi Tang is body temperature. Then you have Gui zhi Tang plus the little bit of the Da huang And it’s a short term just to give the body an enema, except that it’s going in from the other direction, just to flush that out. And often that formula would be followed by Gui zhi Jia Shao Yao Tang. So I hope this is just a little 20 minute talk and there are lots of other modifications of greater time that are equally as elegant. And useful. My hope is that in this short little talk that at least I’ve given you a sense of how great your tongue can work for chronic illnesses and illnesses that have nothing to do with catching a cold just maybe inspired some people to get excited about classical formulas and studying them. Cause it’s such a beautiful way to work with our patients. And it’s beautiful in large part because it’s so effective. So I would like to also let people know that I’m the founder of the whitepinecircle.org. Which is an organization that promotes teaching such as these, and it’s a really, just a wonderful membership organization. So I’d just like to encourage you to check that out whitepinecircle.org. where there’s lots of teachings, just like this. If this excited you. I also teach a. Graduate mentorship program, where we just go through all of these formulas in a way that discusses them relative to these principles of classical formulas. You can find out about whitepineinstitute.org that’s listed right here. And then finally, I would like to, again, really thank the American acupuncture council. This is such a cool thing. They do. I’m offering short teachings just for us to get to know each other in all the wonderful things that are happening in the world of Chinese medicine. And I really appreciate their service to acupuncturists. And I’d also just like to mention that the next talk is going to be Matt Callison and Brian law. So I hope that you are able to attend that one as well. And I just really appreciate your attention to the things that I love so much. So 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.
Hi everyone. My name’s Michelle Gellis. I am a board certified acupuncture visit. And I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me the opportunity to present to you today. I’m going to go right to my first screen. Thank you. So the topic of today’s talk is the benefits of incorporating facial acupuncture into your practice.
A little bit about me. I was on faculty at the Maryland university of integrative health, formerly the Thaisa FIA Institute since 2004. My undergrad degree is in computer science and I have been published several times in the journal of Chinese medicine. And the Maryland acupuncture society newsletter, the acupuncture desk reference, and several other publications.
Here are some of my publications listed. You can get all of this information on my website, facial acupuncture classes.com. I have listed here. All of the classes that I teach, some are cosmetic acupuncture. Some are treating neuromuscular, facial conditions, facial anatomy facial acupuncture self-care and.
Safety course. And most recently I am offering a course in microneedle Lang for acupuncturists and also. An advanced certificate course in facial acupuncture. So today we are going to talk about incorporating facial acupuncture into your practice. So we’re going to go through an overview of what is involved and incorporating facial acupuncture into your practice and the importance of training.
Documentation safety, red flags. What tools might you need? Is it important? What sort of tools you use when you’re doing cosmetic acupuncture? The benefits of facial acupuncture, not just for your practice, but also for your patients. And also why providing a full body treatment is important. Whenever you are working on the face.
So I’d like to start out by giving a definition of facial acupuncture because most of us think of facial acupuncture as something that is done for cosmetic reasons. Facial acupuncture incorporates both cosmetic acupuncture and also acupuncture for any neuromuscular facial conditions, such as Bell’s palsy, TNJ trigeminal, neuralgia, stroke, ptosis, any conditions that affect the face.
Facial acupuncture can use acupuncture, needles, facial cups, wash Shaw tools, Derma rolling, and or micro-needling. And facial acupuncture is not some new trendy technique. It has been used as early as the some dynasty. There are several historical references in the PSU when regarding treating the face both for beauty and for other reasons.
And there have been some studies done on facial acupuncture, both for cosmetic and for neuromuscular conditions. And I’ve listed some of them here.
One of the questions I get asked all the time is, does it work? So I put up a few before and after pictures. Sometimes I’m reluctant to use before and afters because myself, I don’t have a professional photography studio in my acupuncture practice. So my photos are only. Good as my camera and my lighting.
And so I, as much as possible, I try to use the same lighting when I take pictures. But this actual, this top left picture here was taken in a class. I was teaching. One of my students was doing cupping on someone’s neck. And you can see just from releasing. The SCM, how the lines on the side of the neck relaxed, this is another patient of mine and they had a deep scar right in their nasal labial fold and through treatment.
And over time, the scar dissipated quite a bit another patient who had. Chin wrinkles. And the sides of her mouth will really turn down and through treatment. The chin wrinkles really smooth down and the corners of her mouth started to turn up. And this is a demonstration of using some intradermal needles to help, to break up the melanin that can cause some of the dark spots that we can.
A couple more before and afters. So the patient who had deep four headlines and through treatment, both body points to clear up some stagnant liver Che and some local points. Her far had smoothed out quite a bit, and this patient was concerned because her eyelid. Had started to droop and her eyebrows.
And I just treated one side of her face, the left side of her face. And you can see how much more lifted the one eyebrow is.
So what’s involved in bringing app facial acupuncture into your practice. Many practitioners are reluctant to consider bringing cosmetic acupuncture because they have misconceptions. And one of them is that it’s extremely time consuming. And if done properly, you can actually have two rooms going at once.
With facial acupuncture, you put the needles in one patient while they’re resting on the table, you put the needles in another patient, and then you can go back to your first patient or your cupping and guash Shaw. And then you can go back to your second patient, so you can have two rooms going at once.
And also the pricing should be when you’re pricing cosmetic treatments for. Facial acupuncture. Your pricing should be one and a half to two times what you would normally charge for a regular treatment, depending on what you are offering. For micro-needling you can charge two to three times some, sometimes more what you would charge for the same amount of clock time in the room.
Many practitioners are charging three to $500 for a half an hour microneedling treatment also from a marketing standpoint. Facial acupuncture. It opens up your world. You can convert your patients who are currently coming to see you for whatever they’re coming for, conditions, aches, and pains.
They can become your cosmetic acupuncture patients, and also you can specialize and capture that. Market of people who have neuromuscular facial conditions and specialize in that if the whole cosmetic thing is not what you’re interested in doing
before you begin or embark on a practice of facial acupuncture. It is really important that you get trained. And if the American acupuncture council is who you have your insurance through, they do want you to get trained in cosmetic acupuncture. And part of the reason for that is there are special forms questions.
There is a unique way of documented. Before during and after treatments, when you are working on someone’s face in that capacity, you want to be able to document any previous procedures they’ve had. You want to be able to screen them for any red flags, Contra indications, and this can be really important.
When you’re talking about putting a lot of needles in someone’s face and head unlike most forms of acupuncture although you can cause harm when treating someone just in general, when you’re working on someone’s space, the skin on the face is very thin. The skin, the space. Highly vascularized. And facial acupuncture brings a lot of energy up to the head.
People can suffer a migraine, have a headache. There’s even the potential. If you’re doing techniques. Improperly of the patient having a stroke or fainting, and these are all things you need to be able to pre-screen for also the anatomy of the face. Although we do learn about it in school. Most of us don’t spend a tremendous amount of time noodling the face.
And as I mentioned, the face is highly vascularized. There are over 44 muscles on the face. Far ahead. And then, working into the neck, you’ll probably want to work on the neck as well. So you’ve got veins and arteries, facial vein temporal vein nerves, the two major nerves that go into the face, tiny little capillaries.
And of course we know the face tends to bruise very easily. So learning how to. Take the proper precautions and learn the anatomy so that there’s no danger of harming or even injuring or causing unnecessary bruising to the face. And part of this has to do with needling technique, learning what to look for and.
Also, I’m not using so many noodles I seen, and I think I have a slide in here. I seen untrained acupuncturists take a stab. Pardon the pun at doing cosmetic acupuncture without being trained and sometimes the results or. A little scary looking and really unnecessary. You should not need to put hundreds or even dozens of needles in the face in order to effect a good result.
So here’s some examples of either poor technique or just too many needles. Here, this is a neck and these needles are very deep. And some of them are very close to the juggler vein here on the left. This person’s far ahead, has way too many intradermal needles in it. There are ways to work with lines and wrinkles without using that many intradermal needles here, the intradermals aren’t inserted in a way.
Actually it would be building college in at all. And then over here, this person just has way too many needles. Really just unnecessary. So here’s a couple of pictures I took. My students had needled in class. This is one way that I teach to help, to smooth out a deep line. And this is through submuscular needling and using special needles.
Designed for for the face to work with crow’s feet. And here is a technique I teach and it is submuscular needling to tighten the . I have a quick video. I’m going to show of another skill that I teach and it has to do with the anterior dynastic muscle. So I’m just going to, it might be a little jumpy, but I am going to hop in and get it rolling.
And I’m going to have to talk about. Because the sound is not going to work. So in order to is gastric muscle, let me turn the same. We’ll use one finger, Michelle. The sound is being picked up very pretty well. If you want to leave the sound on the video. Great. Let me start it again. Is.
In order to locate the digastric muscle, you will use one finger and you will locate that mastoid process right here. And you also want to locate the hyoid bone, which was right. But you want to do is draw an imaginary line between the two of them and then using your index finger, you’re going to pal pay along the line and you’ll find a very thin muscle right here.
And that is the posterior die-cast. And if you draw an imaginary line between the hyoid bone and the underside of the chin, you can palpate for the front of the digastric muscle. So the dyad strick goes from the man, the ball, and then it takes a turn here and attaches back here at the mastoid process.
So the part of the gastric muscle that we’re going to needle using submuscular noodling is right here underneath the chin. And this will help with the if someone has a lot of excess or laxity there. To feel the digastric muscle on the, and here, you’re going to ask your patient to open their mask, go ahead and open your mouth and then close it.
And you can feel the underbelly of the digastric muscle. It’s about the width of a pencil. So again, it comes from here and then. Comes up to the height and then it attaches here. So what you’re going to do is once you found the muscle,
you’re just going to grab it with two fingers and you’re going to just use a half an inch red Saron needle and get right underneath like that. And you can usually get two needles and just like that. And then they’re gonna come along on the other side
and you’re going to be right here. No, you get it right underneath the muscle like that. One more
get right underneath like that. And then you’re going to do the same thing on the other side. See how there’s the one muscle is right over here. And then the other one is here. So you would just crisscross the.
Okay.
Oops, sorry. So that is
that is a demonstration of how you would do some submuscular needling under the chin to help tighten the chin area. So let’s see tools. There are tools that you need that are different than you might use. Regularly. Good needles are really important. I love sirens. My experience has always been that they have a very smooth insertion and there are specialized needles for the face.
Really very tiny. Also when you’re doing any facial cupping using glass cups and specially designed guash shot tools. I love Jade very much a part of our tradition and during the lockdown period of the pandemic, I designed a cutting in wash up. And that can be found@acculiftskincare.com. Also, you need tweezers.
I liked the wide grip tweezers. Those are used to put intradermal needles and then arnica gel is my favorite to help. Bruising also, there are things that you can either use in your treatment room, or you can sell to your patients for at-home use like Derma rollers the, these items right here off to the right as a hydro roller in a Hydra needle.
And I don’t want to get into it. Now there’s information about these products. They’re great for infusing CRMs. You can even put Traumeel and different types of homeopathics in them to infuse it into the scan, but it really helps to revitalize and refresh the scan. And you can use these for some of the neuro.
Conditions as well. Microneedling is very popular right now in our profession. In most states, it is within our scope of practice and it works on the skin level to take care of scars. Discolorations fine lines, even on the body for stretch marks. And that is an entire class and topic onto itself.
But there’s just a wealth of information and it’s a great add on, and it doesn’t take a lot of time in your treatment space. So this is a and tool that you’re looking at and two batteries, the cartridges, which are disposable. That’s the new. Tip. And then this particular, the AccuLift micro pen comes with a court, so you can plug it in if you choose the intradermal needle.
Require a little bit of scale to learn how to use. And these are put around this is a picture of some encroached fee and this was a picture I saw on social media of someone trying to teach themselves how to do it. And really again, on necessary way too much. Okay, so just to wrap it up they shall acupuncture can bring a reliable stream of income into your practice.
It’s cash because we’re not working with insurance companies. Insurance does not pay for cosmetic procedures. And people tend to spend money on cosmetic things before they’ll spend money on their aches and pains. And it is a way for you to widen your scope of practice gives you a unique skill set. You can learn facial motor points, scalp acupuncture, specifically designed to help with neuromuscular facial conditions.
And as I mentioned before, you can really capture that niche market and set yourself apart because not all practitioners are going to do cosmetic acupuncture. For your patients, cosmetic acupuncture. Is a way for them to revitalize their appearance with Al injectables or fillers or toxins, they get a full body treatment.
So it helps their digestion. Their immune system helps to reduce inflammation and it’s all done. Naturally. We don’t put anything into the body. We don’t take anything out of the body. It can help with double chins. If they’ve had a facelift, it can help their facelift to last longer. And it stimulates college in naturally.
This was a patient of mine who had eyelid ptosis. And as you can see her one lid is lower than the other. And through treatment, both of her lids became more even, and she was getting married. She was very self-conscious. She didn’t want. To have this drooping eyelid, because especially as she got tired, it would get much worse.
And she was told she’d have to have surgery, but she didn’t need to have surgery. I mentioned things like skin conditions here is someone who had cupping and wash Shaw on one side of their face, not on the other. And you can see just right there on the table, how all that heat dissipated. So things like rosacea molars, melasma acne can all be helped with facial conditions.
Doing a full body treatment is really important because you don’t want to just treat the superficial signs of aging you want to get underneath. And treat the zone and the Fu the substances to help the body to get back out of disharmony and into harmony. Dealing with the emotional underpinnings of why we get some of those facial expression lines.
I have an entire class called the anatomy of expression, which gets into that and looking at something like fear. Which muscles are used. And what points might you use to help to relax the face? Because when the face relax, the body relaxes, there is a feedback system between the face and the body. I mentioned micro-needling.
This was me doing some needle Lang on someone who had sun damage on their chest, a microneedle. Again, it’s very quick. And there are a lot of benefits and the results are very, long-term and they only have to come once a month between treatments. Here is my 2022 practice schedule. All of my classes are.
And then you can come for an optional hands-on practice session if you choose. And if you sign up for my advanced certificate program, the hands-on classes are included. That is all I have for you today. And again, I want to thank the American acupuncture council. For this opportunity to present and give you an overview of bringing facial acupuncture into your practice.
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