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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.
Welcome to my talk today on why cosmetic acupuncture training is important for your practice now.
Click here to download the transcript.
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. Welcome to my talk today on why cosmetic acupuncture training is important for your practice now. My name is Michelle Gellis, and I would like to thank the A- American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak to you today. I am a licensed board-certified acupuncture physician, and I have been teaching cosmetic acupuncture classes for over two decades.
And in that time, I have seen a lot of changes in our industry, and most notably now it… especially in the US, I’ve noticed a lot of the acupuncture schools are closing down, and there has been a, an absorption of our practices and some of the techniques that we use by chiropractors, medical doctors physician’s assistants, physical therapists And the end result is that a lot of people are not joining our industry because they feel that other industries are doing what we’re doing.
So what does that have to do with cosmetic acupuncture? As an educator, I have also noticed that when people are registering for my classes, by and large, one hundred percent of my students are board-certified acupuncturists. Now, when I teach in Canada, there are a few differences. We do have naturopathic students there.
But in Canada, they have different laws and rules, and their naturopaths are trained acupuncturists as well. However, in the United States, most physical therapists and chiropractors are not practicing cosmetic acupuncture. So what that means for us, those of us who are licensed practitioners or who are interested in becoming licensed practitioners, is what sort of subspecialties or what special skills can we have that will enable us to bring in patients, continue to keep our practice viable, and attract people to our practice in a reliable manner.
And so learning cosmetic acupuncture is something that not only treats the wrinkles on someone’s face, but when you learn cosmetic and facial acupuncture, you learn neuromuscular techniques, for example, how to treat TMJ or Bell’s palsy. And also, I am a Worsley trained Five Element acupuncturist, so my cosmetic acupuncture classes have a strong emphasis on treating the spirit.
And right now Especially in our country, people are moving away. There was this huge uptick in people wanting to get filler and Botox and other Western medical treatments to affect their wrinkles and their appearance, and cosmetic acupuncture can do that. However, there has been a real interest in a more natural look, not looking so frozen and filled, and they’re discovering that fillers can migrate.
If you have filler in your cheeks, it can end up down here. If you have filler under your eyes, it can actually cause festoons and puffiness under the eyes, which is not desirable. Not to mention, for the neurotoxins, there are things like droopiness, permanent neuropathy facial sagging, paralysis, and these are not desirable either.
So people wanting to maintain their ability to make facial expressions and wanting to maintain a more natural look are going to look towards acupuncturists because we specialize in lifting the face, but in a natural way. And another thing that happened during the pandemic, especially when TikTok became popular facial cupping and facial gua sha, which are an integral part of my cosmetic acupuncture classes, they became very popular on social media.
So if your patients know that you work with the face and that you are familiar with facial cupping and facial gua sha, they are going to come to you as specialists instead of just trying to do it themselves or go to someone who is less trained in order to affect these sorts of changes and have these sorts of treatments to their face so I had spoken about being a Five Element acupuncturist, and I wanted to get back to that because my Five Element training teaches me that there is a very deep connection between the meridians on our face and our emotions and our expressions and all of our internal organs.
So for example, the liver and how that’s expressed and overexpression, let’s say, of anger and where that might manifest on the face between the eyebrows. Or let’s say you’ve had a neurotoxin like Botox injected into your forehead Your inability to express what you’re feeling and how that might play out in your life.
What can that do to your organs? What does it do to your relationships with people, especially parents with children? You’re trying to express anger and you really can’t. Where does that go in your body? Where do you feel it in your body when you can’t express it? The same with a full expression of joy or grief.
Injecting toxins and paralyzing agents into the face not only affect the face, it is going to affect the entire person. So learning cosmetic acupuncture is not just important so that you can help people get rid of their wrinkles. It’s also important so that you can help someone’s overall health.
Because stagnant liver qi deficient spleen qi, or lung qi, or kidney qi, or liver blood, all of these things are going to show up right here. And this is not just carrying a meat suit around. It is a very important part of the connection between our mind and our body and our overall spirit.
And these are things that are not gonna be taught to other health professionals who might be putting needles in people. So getting back to the original purpose of this talk, why is it important to learn cosmetic acupuncture, especially now? Number one, you have a way to specialize your practice within our field.
Number two, you have a skill set that no one else is going to have. Number three, you are helping your patients not just get rid of their wrinkles or their sagginess, but you’re helping with their overall health and wellness, whether it’s their emotional wellness or their physical kind of physical wellness, the health of their organs And this is all tied together into various recorded and live trainings that I offer, and you can check them out at facialacupunctureclasses.com.
You can follow me, Michelle Gellis, on social media. And I also have a book which I don’t have a copy of with me right now, but it has sold over two thousand copies worldwide. It is a hardcover five hundred-page book on treating the face. Everything from emotional aspects to protocols, techniques, full color images, the spirit of the points on the face, and five element theory and treatments, microneedling, red light therapy, facial cupping, facial gua sha, safety, ethics.
All of these things are an integral part of learning cosmetic acupuncture and facial acupuncture, I should say. So if you are interested in this topic, you can like I said, go to my website or follow me on social. And I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak to you today about why it’s important to learn facial acupuncture for your practice.
Facial acupuncture often brings cosmetic treatment to mind. Clinicians also use facial techniques for movement, neuromuscular function, pain, and expression. In this American Acupuncture Council presentation, Michelle Gellis describes a broader clinical framework. She discusses facial motor points, scalp acupuncture, facial cupping, gua sha, submuscular needling, auricular approaches, and body acupuncture.
Transcript: Keep the existing “Click here to download the transcript” link in this location. The current AAC page identifies the transcript as a downloadable Dropbox asset. The page also notes that the transcript may contain spelling or grammatical errors.
Gellis presents the face as part of an interconnected clinical system. She starts with individual muscles of facial expression. She then expands the discussion to scalp, submuscular, auricular, and body acupuncture. Her framework focuses on assessment and treatment selection. The goal extends beyond cosmetic change.
Facial motor points offer one way to work with individual muscles of expression. Gellis describes both underactive and overactive patterns. A muscle may show weak recruitment. It may also remain tense or overused. This approach encourages careful functional assessment before a practitioner chooses a local technique.
Clinicians should separate this neuromuscular rationale from stronger claims about emotion. The anatomy may support a clinical hypothesis. It does not prove that a specific motor point releases a specific emotion.
The presentation also covers scalp acupuncture and submuscular or intramuscular facial needling. Practitioners may consider these approaches when facial movement changes. Gellis also discusses facial cupping and gua sha. These methods can complement a broader treatment plan.
Each method has a different proposed mechanism. Each also has a different evidence base and risk profile. Practitioners should not treat them as interchangeable.
The lecture places local facial work within a whole-person acupuncture strategy. In traditional Chinese medicine, a practitioner may interpret facial findings through channels, qi, blood, and pattern differentiation. The practitioner may therefore add distal or body points. This framework reflects TCM clinical reasoning. It does not establish a biomedical mechanism.
Researchers have studied links between facial movement and emotional experience for decades. The evidence supports an association, but the effect appears modest. A 2019 meta-analysis reviewed 138 studies. It found a small overall facial-feedback effect. The authors also found substantial variation across experimental conditions.
A large preregistered multicenter study produced a similarly nuanced picture. Some facial-feedback manipulations increased or initiated happiness. Other manipulations produced less consistent results. These findings support a cautious interpretation.
For clinicians, the evidence does not show that one facial muscle reliably stores or causes one emotion. Facial expression can influence emotional experience and social communication. The effect depends on context and experimental conditions.
The strongest related clinical evidence concerns facial nerve disorders. It does not concern cosmetic rejuvenation or emotional transformation. A 2025 overview examined 17 systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The authors found potential benefits for peripheral facial paralysis. However, most underlying evidence had low or very low certainty.
A 2026 network meta-analysis also reported potentially favorable results for acupuncture combined with other traditional interventions. The authors still called for more research. Clinicians should interpret comparative rankings within the limits of the available studies.
Cosmetic facial acupuncture has a smaller evidence base. Recent studies have examined facial acupuncture and acupuncture-based stimulation for outcomes such as wrinkles and skin appearance. These studies do not establish that facial acupuncture reverses aging. They also do not show that every patient will experience durable cosmetic change.
Evidence for facial cupping and gua sha remains less specific. Current research does not justify broad claims about cosmetic or emotional outcomes.
Gellis’s approach offers a useful starting point: assess before selecting a technique. Document facial symmetry, movement, pain, neurologic history, prior procedures, medications, skin integrity, and patient goals.
For cosmetic concerns, clarify the patient’s primary goal. The goal may involve appearance, function, comfort, or several factors. This distinction helps the practitioner set realistic expectations.
For facial weakness, first determine whether the patient needs medical evaluation. Acute facial paralysis does not always mean Bell’s palsy. Professional guidelines recommend evaluation for other causes. Evidence-based Bell’s palsy care may also require timely medical treatment. Acupuncture should not replace appropriate diagnosis or indicated medical care.
Facial treatment also requires clear informed consent. Discuss expected outcomes and uncertainty. Discuss bruising, bleeding, irritation, and other possible adverse effects. Consider referral when a facial concern may reflect an underlying medical condition.
Use sterile, single-use needles. Follow applicable scope-of-practice rules. Follow infection-control requirements. Obtain appropriate training before performing facial needling techniques.
Facial acupuncture can support a functional and whole-person clinical approach. Michelle Gellis presents motor points, scalp acupuncture, facial needling, cupping, gua sha, auricular strategies, and body acupuncture as complementary tools.
The evidence supports a careful interpretation. Facial feedback has a measurable but modest research signal. Acupuncture may help some patients with peripheral facial paralysis, but evidence quality remains limited. Cosmetic and emotional claims require more research.
For acupuncturists developing facial services, start with assessment. Set clear treatment goals. Explain uncertainty. Use appropriate technique and infection control. Refer patients when facial findings suggest a neurologic or other medical condition.
Explore related AAC education:
American Acupuncture Council: Explore AAC educational resources and professional risk-management information for acupuncture practitioners.
Educational disclaimer: This article provides professional education. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or a treatment protocol. Base clinical decisions on the individual patient, current evidence, applicable law, scope of practice, and appropriate consultation or referral. Only appropriately trained and licensed practitioners should perform acupuncture procedures.
“The face is the mirror of the soul.” But what if the relationship goes much deeper than that?
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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 is Michelle Gellis, and I am an acupuncture physician. I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to talk to you today
I want to talk to you today about something I think about every single time I work on a patient’s face. We’ve all heard the expression, “The face is the mirror of the soul.” But what if the relationship goes much deeper than that? What if the face isn’t just reflecting our inner world, but actually shaping it?
Today, I want to explore what I call the emotional feedback loop of the face, the bidirectional conversation between our expressions, our nervous system, our organs, and our qi. I want to show you why this matters profoundly, both as acupuncturists and as people living in a world that is increasingly interfering with that loop.
Let’s start with the Western research, because it’s very fascinating, and it directly validates what Chinese medicine has understood for thousands of years. In psychology, there is something called the facial feedback hypothesis. The basic idea is this. Your facial expressions don’t just communicate your emotions to the world, they actually generate emotional states within you.
The face sends signals back to the brain. It is not a one-way street. This idea goes back to Charles Darwin. In my book, Treating the Face, I talk about research that was done And by Charles Darwin, and it really gained momentum in 1988 when researchers Strack, Martin, and Stepper conducted a now famous experiment.
They asked participants to hold a pen between their teeth, which forces a smile, or between their lips, which prevents smiling. Those holding the pen in their teeth rated cartoons as significantly funnier. They were smiling without knowing it, and their brains responded accordingly. A large international study published in Nature Human Behavior, nearly four thousand participants, nineteen countries, found that when people deliberately mimic a smile, it amplifies and even initiates feelings of happiness.
Think about what this means clinically. The muscles of the face are not just motors for expression. They are afferent transmitters sending information back to the brain, back to the nervous system, back to the organs. When we activate the corrugator muscles, the muscles that are between the eyebrows, we don’t just look concerned, we begin to feel concerned Now here’s where it gets really interesting for our purposes as practitioners.
Botulism toxin, known by the brand name Botox, Dysport, Xeomin, works by paralyzing the muscles of facial expression. Researchers have used this as a natural experiment to study what happens when you interrupt that feedback loop, and the results are striking. When people see a happy or angry face, they unconsciously mimic that expression.
But Botox prevents that muscle reaction, and it scrambles the brain’s ability to interpret other people’s emotions. In one study People who were using Restylane, which is a filler, not a muscle paralyzer, read emotions with seventy-seven percent accuracy. Botox users, only seven– seventy percent. We don’t just see someone else’s expressions, we mirror it micro-muscularly, and that mirroring is how we understand what they feel.
If you paralyze the muscle, you lose part of your emotional translation system. Research also found that Botox to the crow’s feet, those little laugh lines on the sides of your eyes, was associated with increased depression scores and reduced emotion recognition. Freeze the muscles of a real smile. So you only get those when you’re smiling really big, like a genuine smile, and when you freeze them, you reduce the feedback that tells your brain you are experiencing joy.
There is a paradox here, though. If you use Botox in the globu-ellar lines between the eyebrows, it can actually reduce depression because you can’t frown deeply, and they receive less negative feedback associated with worry and sadness. So in some cases, Botox reduces depression, but it also reduces the full range of emotional experience.
It creates what I like to call emotional flattening. If you lose the lows, you also are gonna lose some of the highs, and you lose your ability to fully read the people around you. As acupuncturists, we need to know that when we’re treating patients, if they’ve had these sorts of injections, it can affect them.
Their facial feedback system has been altered, and we can discuss that with them gently and professionally and from a deep place of knowledge. Now, I want to bring this to something even more fundamental. This isn’t just about adults choosing cosmetic procedures. This is about how we develop emotionally as human beings from the very beginning of life.
When children are very young, newborns, they are going to show a preference for their mother’s face within hours of being born. Newborns only hours old have been found to copy facial expressions, making an O with their lips or sticking out their tongues. This is remarkable because they’ve never seen their own face.
They are not learning through language. They are learning through instruction. They are learning through mirroring through the face. Research published in Scientific Reports found how much a mother’s– how much a mother mirrors her baby’s face in the first two months, and the mirroring that goes on between the mother and the child and how much mirroring occurs actually shapes the baby’s developing neural pathways and their ability to process expression for years to come Mirror neurons may be central to this process.
When we observe an emotional state in someone else, the mirror activity occurs in our own emotional center. We feel a version of what they feel through our face. So think about what happens in a family where expression is habitually suppressed. When parents chronically hold tension in their jaw, guard their brow, tighten around the eyes, children are literally learning to hold these same patterns in their own faces, and those muscular patterns are sending feedback to their developing nervous systems, shaping how they experience and regulate emotions for decades.
This is not abstract. This is psychology, and it is something Chinese medicine has always understood. In the Chinese medi– in Chinese medicine, the face is never separate from the whole person. Every zone of the face reflects organs. Every line, every color, every area of tension, it tells a story about the internal landscape.
The brow, the corrugator, the procerus belong to the liver. Chronic furrowing here reflects constraint of liver qi, the holding in of frustration and anger that has nowhere to go. And as Western research now confirms, that muscular tension is not just a symptom. It is perpetuating the emotional state.
It is feeding it back into the system. So this is not just carrying a meat suit around. The expressions that we hold back here are going to have an effect on the health of our organ systems. The area around the mouth, the obicularis oris, the depressor anguli oris, these all belong to our ability to feel joy and express joy.
And if these muscles have been paralyzed, then we cannot fully express joy. And if someone has experienced loss, chronic sadness, unexpressed grief, we can see this here also through the large intestine channel. The corners of the mouth will pull down, and that downward pull is sending information back to the nervous system.
Something’s wrong. Something’s been lost. What we are looking at when we look at the face is not just age. It is the history of a person’s emotional life written in their muscle, fascia, and qi. And what makes facial acupuncture so profound and so different from anything else we do is that we are intervening in that feedback loop.
We are releasing the muscular holding patterns that have been perpetuating emotional states, sometimes for decades. We are restoring the flow of qi through the channels that govern the emotional experience and helping the face and therefore the whole person In part two, we are going to go deeper into specific techniques on how to work with these patterns clinically I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council again for this opportunity to speak to you today and make sure to check out part two
And the topic of my talk today is the importance of clearing blocks before doing cosmetic or any facial acupuncture treatment.
Click here to download the transcript.
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am an acupuncture physician and an international educator, and I am also the author of the book, “Treating the Face.” It is a comprehensive guide for acupuncturists and health professionals. It is a full-color, 500-page book encompassing everything having to do with treating the face.
First, I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today. So what I’m going to talk about today comes from chapter two of my book, which is all about five element acupuncture. And the topic of my talk today is the importance of clearing blocks before doing cosmetic or any facial acupuncture treatment.
So what is a block, and why is it important to treat them and clear them? So a block is the im– is an impediment to the smooth flow of qi throughout the body. It’s if you think about water going downstream if you think of your qi as like a river flowing, and if there were sticks blocking the water from going downstream, that is energetically what a block to treatment is like.
So how might it show up? Blocks can… The effect and how it could show up is it could make symptoms worse, or it could make your treatments not as effective. And this is important to us when treating the face because when we are treating someone’s face we’re not just treating them from here to here.
All of my cosmetic treatments involve a full body acupuncture treatment, and this is because we are treating the whole person. So if the qi is blocked anywhere, then it is going to affect our cosmetic acupuncture treatments, and this can show up in, again, the treatments not being as effective or your patient can have increased side effects from the treatment strange sensations, headaches, dizziness, these types of things.
So it’s really important to clear energetic blocks to treatment before treating the face. The health of the entire body is reflected on the face, and our face is the most yang part of our body. So things like wind and heat and a lot of different stagnations and deficiencies can show up on our face.
They can show up as red spots, dark spots, dryness, puffiness, especially under the eyes. And when we’re thinking about the face and blocks in particular, all of the yang organs, all of the yang channels converge up on the face, and we’ll get back to that in just a second. Thinking about our five element…
I’m a Worsley trained five element acupuncturist I think a lot when I’m designing my treatments, I think a lot about the emotions and how the emotions affect our overall health, and our face is how we express our emotions. And if we can’t or don’t express our emotions due to some sort of blocked channels, blocked qi or perhaps there’s neuropathy somewhere, or your patient has been getting some sort of neurotoxins in order to relax certain muscles, or if your patient has a condition like Bell’s palsy or myasthenia gravis and they can’t express an emotion, then this is not just affecting the face, it’s going to affect our overall health.
So the first thing that I always do when I’m doing a cosmetic acupuncture treatment is I check for and treat any blocks to treatment. So today I’m gonna talk about two blocks to treatment, and one of them is referred to as aggressive energy. So aggressive energy is contaminated, polluted qi that might be circulating through the channels, and it can affect all aspects of our mental, physical, and emotional health, so body, mind, and spirit And there’s really no way just by looking at a person or talking to a person or probably not even feeling their pulses unless you’re highly skilled to know if someone has aggressive energy.
So what we do is we test to see if the person has aggressive energy through an aggressive energy treatment. So the treatment is a test, and the test is also a treatment. So by testing for aggressive energy, you’re treating the person. The points that we use are the AEPs on the back, all the Back Shu points and they are bladder thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, twenty, and twenty-three.
So we’re going to go top to bottom, right to left. We’re going to put the points in, and we don’t push the needle all the way in. You just tap the needle in so that they’re just hanging there, and then you’re going to put in a test needle, one in the upper jiao, one in the middle jiao, and one in the lower jiao.
And if the redness around the acupuncture points, the Back Shu points, is different in size or color than the redness around the test needle, then that is usually a sign of aggressive energy. And the test needles are put either between the inner and outer bladder line or between the inner bladder line and the spine, any place that’s not an acupuncture point.
And you will leave these needles in until the aggressive energy clears. I always leave them in for at least fifteen minutes just in case. And I do this on all of my patients for the first treatment and typically within fifteen or twenty minutes, the AE will clear. Another block that’s very important to check for and to clear when you’re treating the face are entry/exit blocks.
And if we think about the flow of energy in the Chinese clock, the energy goes from heart to small intestine to bladder to kidney, etc., etc., around the Chinese clock. And energy moves that way through the channels. So when you’re feeling the pulses, if you notice that the, let’s say, small intestine pulse, which comes right before the bladder pulse, if that small intestine pulse is really big and pushy and the bladder pulse is very small, then it sh- can be a signal that the energy is not getting from bladder to small intestine, and there is an exit/entry block.
And the way you treat this is by treating the exit and entry points of these two channels. So the exit point for small intestine is small intestine 19, and the entry point for bladder is bladder one What you would do is you would if you feel this on the pulse, then you would treat small intestine 19 by tonifying it, and the way we do that is we put the needle in and we turn it 180 degrees clockwise, and then we take it out.
And then I do bladder one and a half kind of on the bridge of the nose and instead of getting all the way into bladder one, and you are going to tonify that, turn it 180 degrees, take it out, and then you would do the same thing on the other side. And usually, this will clear any blocks. You can also suspect these blocks in addition to the pulse.
People usually report they’re having ear issues with their ears. Some, so something physical, headaches and the headaches that cause you to go like this and it feels better. And this is really important because you don’t want to be treating the face unless the face is completely open and the energy is flowing freely.
Can you put up the slide, please? So there are several other blocks that we check for in five element acupuncture having to do with the Shang cycle and I cover all of these in my book and I go into depth about spirit blocks possession husband-wife imbalances, and all of these have to do with getting the chi to move smoothly throughout the body and the face.
You can take the slide down
That is a little bit about why it’s important to clear blocks before doing any facial treatments on your patients. And if you would like more information, you can visit my website, facialacupunctureclasses.com, and check out some of my recorded classes and my live classes. And I hope to see you in class one day soon.
So for today, I would like to start out with contraindications. And this is a big subject because it takes into account.
Click here to download the transcript.
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, this is Michelle Gellis. I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today. This is part two of the top 10 questions that I get asked about cosmetic acupuncture. A lot of the answers to these questions came from my book, treating the Face. It is a comprehensive guide for acupuncturists and health professionals.
It is a hardcover book and it is about 500 pages, full color book, and I talk in the book extensively. About how to set realistic expectations with a patient and how to answer their questions, whether it’s a potential patient or whether it’s a current patient. And during my training that I offer to acupuncturists and people who are trained and licensed to perform acupuncture.
Is marketing information that they can hand out to their patients or put on their websites because a lot of these questions are questions that I get over and over again. And in my almost 25 years in practice and teaching I have found one of the top 10 questions that. People ask me. So last time in part one I talked about how does it work and how many treatments will I need before I get or before I see results?
How much does it cost last? How long do the treatments take? How long do they last? So if you miss part one, you can check that out as well. So for today, I would like to start out with contraindications. And this is a big subject because it takes into account. Two things. One is physical contraindications that patients might have that can be major red flags or maybe minor warnings before you treat them.
And then the other is things that your patients may have. Had done to themselves as far as any sort of treatments or procedures that can be either a minor or a major contraindication for your treating them. So let’s talk about physical. Contraindications to treatment with cosmetic acupuncture.
And the first one is I break it down into two parts. So it’s high blood pressure and you might be thinking a lot of my patients have high blood pressure. A lot of elderly patients have high blood pressure. How am I ever going to do this if high blood pressure is a contraindication? And what I say to you is this, if someone has treated, medicated or untreated high blood pressure, do not make this person or these people your first patient or patients.
You definitely want to treat a few. Healthy patients before you take on patients who have any sort of health conditions. And the reasons for this are you want to build up your confidence, your skills, your knowledge, and really get an idea of how powerful your treatments are before, you dive into someone who maybe has high blood pressure, it’s well controlled with medication, but you do a treatment on them and your treatment causes their blood pressure to shoot up and why would this happen?
The reason is. Cosmetic acupuncture by nature is designed to open the channels up to the face and head and really increase the blood flow, the flow of qi up to the face and head and left unchecked. If you don’t really have good skills or if you do too much, or if your patient’s blood pressure is a little high that day, you could give your patient a headache or worse.
So let’s assume you’ve been doing this for a while. You’ve done many treatments on many patients, and someone calls you and they say. They have high blood pressure. It wasn’t very high to begin with. It was maybe borderline. They’re on medication. It’s very well controlled In that situation, you could start out very slowly, very few points and check their blood pressure before and after.
Treatment and see how they do. They might be a better candidate for more intradermal needles or microneedling rather than treating a lot of chest, neck, face body points. That are designed to bring all this energy up to the head. In my protocol, I specifically have designed. The point structure so that it will bring that energy up.
But you could potentially leave some of those points out. And I talk about this in my classes. My classes are available, recorded and live throughout throughout the world. I, I taught classes all over the world, and you can check out my schedule on facial acupuncture classes.com and look into some of these concepts and some of the theories behind them.
So that, that is high blood pressure, a big conversation Also, pregnancy. You do not want to be bringing all this energy up to the face, head and neck when someone is pregnant. Also, there are points in my protocol that are designed like large intestine four to release things like impurities that would not be good for someone who’s pregnant.
So pregnancy is a contraindication. People who are just generally unwell you don’t want to be doing cosmetic acupuncture on them. People who are diabetic have seizure disorders. People who are very sensitive to needles. As far as contraindications. In my book, in my classes I have a release form and in it are all the different contraindications and all the reasons for them.
So there definitely are some physical contraindications and you would wanna check those out. Additionally, if someone has had Botox recently, you would not want to treat them for about three weeks after the Botox treatments ’cause they take about two weeks to settle in. I like to err on the side of caution and when I say Botox, any neurotoxin.
Dysport. Xeomin I don’t know the brand names of all of them. And then after that, they need to find out from whoever injected them exactly where the neurotoxin was injected. People sometimes forget, or they’re not quite sure, and you wanna avoid that area completely because. Doing cosmetic acupuncture in that area can cause the neurotoxin to wear off.
As far as other treatments such as fillers, peels, lasers any other surgeries on the face. I would direct my patient to the person who did the treatment, and have your patient ask that person. When is it safe for me to have cosmetic acupuncture? There are so many treatments out there now. It’s impossible for us as practitioners to know for each.
Level of chemical peel or laser specific laser treatment, and their practitioner should know the answer to that question. As far as a facelift, cosmetic acupuncture can make facelifts last longer, but because the face is going to continue to age after the facelift, but the cosmetic acupuncture can help.
So that it happens more slowly. And you definitely want to wait about a year after a full facelift before doing cosmetic acupuncture, mainly because of.
Issues that they might have with vascular issues, neuropathy swelling, those types of things. Okay. The next question that people ask me is do I need any specialized training before I do cosmetic acupuncture? I’m an acupuncturist. I know where the acupuncture points in the face are. And the answer is unequivocably.
Yes. In fact, the American Acupuncture Council does ask on whenever you go to renew your license, if you’re doing anything that is outside of the norm for acupuncture and you’re doing specialized treatments. And if the answer is yes, then they do require you to have specialized. Training.
And there are just a few of us in the US that are registered and certified to do cosmetic acupuncture training. I am one of them, and you can check out my classes@facialacupunctureclasses.com. But the reason for this is understanding safety. Around treating the face and neck and head, understanding all of the myriad of contraindications and precautions.
Also their underlying conditions, needle placement, these, and then having a protocol that you can follow that. Doesn’t require so many needles. I go on social media and people that have so many needles in their face, and it’s so not necessary. So specialized training is a must.
Bruising is another question that I get. If you are trained properly. If you are getting using high quality needles and precautionary techniques, such as using arnica gel and really understanding the anatomy of the face, my book has a whole anatomy chapter. The unique nature of treating the face, because the face is so heavily vascularized and the muscles are layered.
Some are thick, some are thin, some are tiny, some are large. Some are deep, some are superficial. Really understanding how to needle the face, understanding good. Precision needling techniques will really reduce the chance of bruising. I rarely bruise a patient, if ever anymore. And the last thing is, can cosmetic acupuncture help with other conditions?
And the answer is yes. When you know how to treat the face and in my classes I teach about facial motor points, submuscular needling, some scalp acupuncture. For treating the face, you can help with things like TMJ, Bell’s Palsy, trigeminal neuralgia. Stroke ms. Myasthenia gravis even facial herpes and a lot of different skin conditions that affect the face, like acne, rosacea, hyper and hypo pigmentation.
So this all, is included in a really good comprehensive facial and cosmetic acupuncture training. And you can be the facial acupuncture specialist in your area because it is a highly specialized training. I hope that answers some of your questions. Again, if you didn’t see part one, you can check it out.
This concludes part two and I want to again thank the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to speak to you, and I hope to see you in class soon.