So the topics we are going to cover today are facial motor points. Facial cupping and Gua Sha and derma rolling and protocols for treating specific conditions.

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 practicing in sunny Florida, and today I am going to do a presentation. This is part two of a two part. Presentation on an overview of treating neuromuscular facial conditions. I teach a two-day class on this subject, and I am going to be presenting some of the highlights for you today.

So if we can go to the first slide.

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So the topics we are going to cover today are facial motor points. Facial cupping and Gua Sha and derma rolling and protocols for treating specific conditions. In part one, I went through, Scalp, acupuncture and submuscular needling as some techniques that can be used to help with neuromuscular facial conditions such as Bell’s palsy, trigeminal neuralgia, TMJ, stroke, Ms.

Myasthenia Gravis, ptosis, and others. And today I’m going to touch on a couple of other techniques plus, um, some protocol specific conditions. So the first is facial motor points. And facial motor points. I’m sorry, motor points are, places in a muscle where if you needle them, it acts like a reset switch for the muscle.

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So if the muscle is in spasm and it’s lost its ability to function properly, or if the muscle is overly tense or overly relaxed, if you needle into the motor point. It acts like a reset switch and it will bring the muscle back into normal functioning. And motor points are not trigger points or source spots.

And Chinese medicine, we call them Ashi points, but motor point is where the nerve bundle actually enters. Muscle. And fortunately for us, many motor points on the face are actually acupuncture points. So an example of a facial motor point are the. Facial motor points for the mentalis and the mentalis muscles are on either side of, uh, Ren 24.

And what they do are they help to elevate and protrude the up the lower lip like this, and they can also wrinkle the skin of the chin. Like that, and they are a half a soon lateral to Ren 24. And here in the picture you can see I put little diamonds to delineate where they are and where the muscle is.

And you would needle through the skin into the muscle, but not through the muscle itself.

Here is a very short video. I was teaching a cosmetic acupuncture class and in my cosmetic acupuncture class I was doing a demonstration and of cosmetic acupuncture, and my student mentioned that she had Bell’s Palsy many years previously. And as a result, she had lost some of the inability on one side of her face to purse her lips.

And if she, uh, she couldn’t whistle, if she brushed her teeth, uh, she would have trouble spitting ’cause she could only . Do this on one side, drinking through a straw was difficult, and so in addition to doing some of the cosmetic points I put in the motor point for the mentalis and this is what happened.

So you can see as soon as I put the needle in her chin started to twitch, and then once I stimulated it, the muscle really started to fire, which was very interesting. And she reported back to me that after that treatment, some of the issues that she had been having had resolved themselves. So motor points can be very beneficial when in with conditions wherein your patient, it has lost motor function of one of the muscles on the face.

And this is really apparent with the face because. On our face, the skin is directly connected to the muscles, which is why we can move the skin on our face without having to actually move a muscle. I’m sorry. We can move the skin on our face without having to move a joint or a ligament or tendon.

All we have to do is move the muscle and the skin moves.

aNother technique that can be used to help with neuromuscular facial conditions is utilizing facial cupping and guha. Now, facial cupping and guha has many similarities to the cupping and sha that you would use on the body, but you would use specialized tools that are designed for the face.

And you don’t wanna leave any marks on the face or neck when you are practicing. The facial cupping in Gua will bring blood and cheese circulation to the muscles, which will help with muscle movement. Brings qi and blood to the skin, which helps with . Cosmetic conditions and can also help if the fascia is very tight.

If there are fascial adhesions, it can help with that and . Any nerves that have become entrapped in facial tissue or within the fascia, it can help to release them. Facial cupping helps to move out stagnant lymph fluids, toxins. And if your patient has rosacea or any discoloration of the skin, facial cupping can be very beneficial for that.

And lastly, it helps to strengthen the vascular integrity of the face, increasing the blood flow, and helping with both neurological and muscular conditions of the face. So this is what fascia looks like and. Nerves will run through the fascia and they can become entrapped. Within the fascia. So using tiny facial cups and, uh, special oil that’s designed for cupping for the face, you can stimulate

The cup, the facial acupuncture points. You can glide the cups. You can stimulate the points again, and then you can use these xs symbolize a suctioning and releasing down the SCM under the clavicle into the lymphatic system. And this can really help, as I mentioned, with all of these different skin conditions.

And with facial guha, you’re actually taking specialized tools. These are jade, guha stones that are used to break up fas adhesions, stimulate acupuncture points and increase blood flow in the face. So here is a demo. This is a very abbreviated, demo a little facial cupping in Guha. I am a licensed board certified acupuncturist, and today I’m going to be demonstrating how to do facial cupping and guha.

The first step is to do a lymphatic drainage. Just ask your patient to turn the head to the side. And you’re going to start behind the ear and you’re going to work your way down and across underneath the clavicle times. I start right around Triple Energizer 17. Work my way down. right down the SCM. Now, it’s important when you’re doing this to not drag the cup down the neck or up the neck.

You’re gonna be using a suctioning and releasing until you get to the clavicle, and then you go right underneath the clavicle lung. Two area three movements that we’ll do. One is . A kind of a, like a dragging of the cup. So you would suction the cup and then move it and release it. Another one is a suction and release and just on a point.

And the other is would be like here where you’re dragging the cup. So sometimes you drag, sometimes you suction. And drag, and sometimes you just suction depending on where you’re working, like five and six, seven, and get right on up to stomach eight, just like this and up like that. guHa tools that I like to use are

Shaped like thickly, do both sides of the face at once. Whereas with the cupping, I just do the one side and then the other side, I just showed you the one side. With the gua, I do both sides of the face simultaneously, it feels better for the patient sides of the tool, and you’re really gonna sculpt the jawline, massaging acupuncture points along the way.

So stomach four. Stomach five and then coming along just like that. It’s a great way to help with the saggy gels. You can end with a little massage on small intestine 19 and work on the cheeks, and you can sculpt up this way and this way, and then get right into large intestine 20. And into stomach three, out to small intestine right here.

And bring the tools out, do gallbladder too. So essentially everything you’ve done with the cups, you are reinforcing with the guha tools and it can look like this and like this, and it feels really great. . foR your patients, it helps to break up any fa fascia that might be tense and really just those gels that might be sagging.

All the fat that falls down here, you can really move it back up.

I am. So again, this was just a little I am brief overview. I. I teach individual classes on cupping and guha, cosmetic, acupuncture, neuromuscular and all of these are brought together to help, to nourish the skin, the muscles, the nerves on the face. This is these are the tools that . I was using in my demo.

It’s a cupping and guha kit. It comes with glass cups and these jade guha tools. And there’s instructions, um, on the box and under the box. And there are also video instructions that come with it. And, you can learn about all of this@facialacupunctureclasses.com. Derma Rolling is another really wonderful tool.

So the nice thing about the cupping sets is these can be sold to your patients and you can teach your patients how to do self-care at home. In between. Treatments. So if they come to see you, if they can only come in to see you once a week, this is self-care for your patients. And some of my students have even put together little classes for their patients and their patients come and they learn how to use the tools in a group environment, which is fun for them.

But moving on to derma. Rolling. Derma rolling Is . A very effective tool for reeducating the connection between the skin and the muscles and the nervous system. If people have had long-term neuropathy, any sort of nerve damage. Sometimes you can, do some scalp acupuncture or work with the motor points, but this is another level of stimulating both the channels on the face so you can work right along the stomach channel, small intestine gallbladder, large intestine, any of the.

thE zong has meridians on the face. You can roll the roller to wake, not just the points up, but the entire channel. Plus, you’re stimulating the skin, which works in conjunction with the way the brain works. And these aren’t that much different than those . Barrel channel rollers that we might use on the body, but these have tiny needles and they are medical grade, so

These come in 0.5 millimeter or 1.0 millimeter in length, and they’re, you just roll them very gently on the skin. And I sell these to my patients so that they can self-treat at home once I teach them how to use it. And they all come with directions and video demos also. Okay, so Bell’s Palsy is a.

Probably the most common cause of facial paralysis that you will see in your treatment room. And it is typically a temporary condition and it is a result of a disruption of the function of the facial nerve, which is CN seven. And this prevents the messages from the brain. To the muscle, which causes muscle weakness and paralysis, and there can be a multitude of symptoms, uh, pain, neuropathy, muscle weakness.

Hearing loss taste sensations changing, um, changes in smell, vision, eyelids drooping, um, discomfort or pain in the jaw. And, uh, lots and lots of issues. And, but very much on a cosmetic level and typically. People will get this between age 15 and 60, but certainly I’ve seen patients as young as two and as old as 70, um, in my treatment space and the Western medical treatment is acyclovir.

Or an antiviral drug and then a steroid. And it is believed in western medicine that it is from a virus. And in Chinese medicine, we believe usually it is from a wind condition, wind, heat, usually, which affects the face. . the protocol for the exam is you would ask your patient to raise their eyebrows, close their eyes, tightly smile, puff out their cheeks.

If the orbicularis Aus has been affected, or the rosaro, if they try to puff out their cheeks when they close their lips, only one side will puff out and the other side arrow will come out. And smiling frowning. Show your lower teeth. Show your upper teeth. These are going to help you to isolate which muscles have been affected and then you would treat accordingly.

As I had mentioned wind, a wind condition, also blood stagnation or spleen sheet con deficiency. These are, uh, three different . Conditions from a TCM perspective that can, um, cause Bell’s Palsy. And for body treatments on everyone, I’m going to do LI four and stomach 36, and then I will treat the underlying.

dEficiency or stagnation or excess, whatever’s going on. And then I would do local. Points on the face, depending on what has been affected. aS I talked about last time, you can use scalp, acupuncture, ear chen, men, and point for the face. You can do motor points based on which muscles have been affected.

Facial cupping and Gu Shaw definitely to help bring energy into the muscles. Derma rolling . and you want to see the patient. I tell my students at least twice a week three times as ideal, but the more the better when you’re talking about treating a Bell’s Palsy patient. So this was a patient of mine and she had come in right after she was afflicted with Bell’s Palsy and I did an exam on her.

Closed her eyes. Okay. And as you can see, she could not close her right eye at all, and there is no movement in the right side of her face. And I actually misspoke. She had Bell’s Palsy for a while. She was past the point where the doctor said she would get any better and and so I treated her close for about six weeks and we were just starting to get some movement going.

Dry brow, close, dry. So you can see now she’s able to close her eye. nOt a lot of movement on the right side of her face yet the lower part, but she was able to close her lips a little bit. . It really requires patience and and time, but. iT’s just some information about my classes that I teach.

I do have an advanced certificate course, which is comprehensive. All of my classes carry CEUs. They’re all self-paced, recorded. And then you would, um, or can come for a two-day hands-on class. It’s included, but it is not required. And I do monthly live mentor sessions. That is the end of my presentation.

Here’s information about my social media. You wanna follow me on social, and I would like to say thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to present today. I. .

 

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So today’s lecture topics are I’m going to define a neuromuscular facial condition. I’m going to talk a little bit about the theory behind a multifaceted approach, and then I will talk about submuscular needling and scalp acupuncture.

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 Gillis. I am an acupuncture physician practicing in Florida, and today I am going to be speaking to you about treating neuromuscular facial conditions. This is part one of a part two presentation. First slide, please.

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So this is just a little bit about me. I am a former faculty member of the Maryland University of Integrative Health, and I am currently on the doctoral faculty at Yo Sound University, and I. I have been teaching facial acupuncture classes internationally since 2005. Here are some publications that I have completed in the Journal of Chinese Medicine.

So today’s lecture topics are I’m going to define a neuromuscular facial condition. I’m going to talk a little bit about the theory behind a multifaceted approach, and then I will talk about submuscular needling and scalp acupuncture.

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So a neuromuscular facial condition is any group of disorders which can cause weakness or pain on one or both sides of your face, you might lose the ability to make facial expressions have . Pain, difficulty eating, drinking, speaking clearly. You can have ear pain, you can lose your sense of taste, smell, it can affect your eyes, your vision.

And you can also have the inability to sense heat or cold or be very sensitive to the heat or cold. What I have discovered over many years in practice is that using a multifaceted approach to treating these conditions, because some of them can be very difficult to treat, and using a multifaceted approach, can yield a more effective treatment than just using one of these modalities or the other.

Some examples of neuromuscular facial conditions is are Bell’s palsy, Ramsay Hunt syndrome, posis of the eyelids, and this can be one eyelid or both eyelids, synkinesis, which is when you’re trying to move one. Part of your face, but another part moves involuntarily. The side effects of a stroke TMJ Trigeminal Neuralgia multiple sclerosis, and there are many others I.

Part one and two of this presentation represents about an hour of what is usually a two-day class that I teach on treating neuromuscular facial conditions.

So the interesting thing about our face is that our face is the only part of our body where the skin is connected directly to the muscles, which is what gives the. Our ability to move the skin on our face without having to move any bones or ligaments or tendons. So here we have an example. We have skin, and then we have muscle.

And as you can see it, the skin is connected directly to the muscle and then down to the bone.

For example, here is a cross section of a part of the cheek, and you can see the skin and then the fat, and then the fascia and invested inside of this fascial layer is the muscle, and then there is deeper fascia and there is the facial nerve.

When treating the face, there are several things that’s, that are important and you wanna make sure you are increasing the blood flow to the area. I. Increasing the qi to the area and also if there’s any fossil adhesions that exist, that you can break these up because all of this can affect how the face moves and the sensations that we feel.

By using a technique called submuscular needling. In some instances it’s intramuscular needling, but submuscular needling can increase the flow of blood and QI to the area can help to break up any fascial adhesions. And if you are thinking in terms of . Cosmetic benefits. It can also stimulate collagen production to the area.

There are several muscles on the face, head and neck that are really conducive to this submuscular needling approach. And they are the auricular muscles, the temporalis muscle, the platysma, the masseter, the anterior digastric. The frontal, the proces, the corrugator, and the levator muscle. We are only gonna speak about a couple of those today.

And the using submuscular needling is part of this. Multifaceted approach. So in addition to Submuscular needling, we’re also going to talk today about scalp acupuncture, and then next time facial motor points, facial cupping and guha and derma rolling.

So here is another cross section of the face. And as you can see, the facial nerve is invested in this it’s called the SMA layer. It is the superficial muscular AERA system, and the nerve can become entrapped. And when that happens the signal that gets to the muscle, which in turn goes out to the skin, which moves the skin on our face, moves, the muscles in our face can become compromised.

So the first muscle I wanna talk about for Submuscular needling is the frontals and. The frontals muscle goes on either side of the eyebrows. There’s one head on one side of the eyebrow and one on the other. And what you would do is you would take, typically I do half inch needles and I would needle underneath the muscle.

And this is what it looks like here.

So when needling the frontals muscle, the way that you isolate the muscle is you ask your patient to raise their eyebrows. Go ahead and raise your eyebrows, okay? And then relax and you can find the border of the frontals muscle and the way that you needle. Is you’re going to go from the origin to the insertion.

So the origin is up here and the insertion is here.

And typically what I do is I will put in. Usually three needles

on the lateral edge, and I will put in two needles. On the medial side, and when you’re needling, what’s important is that the angle of the tube is the angle that the needle’s gonna go in. So if you go like this, it’s going to go too deep. If you go this is going to be too shallow, I use. My thumb or a finger to help to guide the needle.

So you wanna keep your fingers out of the way when you’re actually inserting. That way you can get to the correct depth right underneath the muscle. That’s the lateral side. Then you’re going to do the medial side, and usually two needles. Will suffice and I do the one side and then I do the other side and I’m using half inch needles.

You can use one inch needles depending on how big your patience forehead is.

The next muscle group. That I’m going to demonstrate for submuscular needling is the temporalis. So the frontalis is used to raise the eyebrows, and it’s also indirectly involved in raising the eyelids, the temporalis muscle, which is a large. Very thin, fan shaped muscle that’s on either side of the skull and it also goes in front of the ear.

It helps us with our chewing and it helps to, so it helps to elevate the jaw and it can be involved with conditions like TMJ. It can also cause head. Pain. If it is too tight, it can be involved in trigeminal neuralgia because nerves can become entrapped underneath the temporalis. I. And this is what this looks like.

So here’s the temporalis muscle, and what you would do is take needles and put them all around the outside of the temporalis. And I have a video for that as well.

So for the temporalis muscle. The idea is to find the outline of the muscle and it tends to be a very large muscle. It runs all the way from the back of the skull all the way around the front of the face. And you’re literally going to take the needles and you are just gonna work your way around.

The entire line of the muscle, and depending on how tolerant your patient is you can use, you can really thread like 20 of these into this area. I’m just doing a little demonstration here I want you guys to get an idea of what this looks like. And it doesn’t really matter which direction you’re going in.

What matters is that you’re getting, again, underneath the muscle and that you’re working your way all around the perimeter of the muscle in order to relax it. And they should have a nice little circle around. A muscle when you’re done, and this will really help to relax the temporalis muscle if they have TMJ.

Pretty much anything that affects the face. The temporalis muscle helps to pull the face up. I use this technique sometimes and facial rejuvenation when I teach my facial rejuvenation classes because the temporalis muscle can really lift up the face. I’m just gonna do one more again. I’m using serum one inch.

Needles. So that’s what that looks like.

So for the temper, the next. Technique that I use when I’m treating neuromuscular facial conditions is scalp acupuncture. Now, scalp acupuncture can be used and it is used traditionally to treat a multitude of. Conditions, everything from phantom pain to speech issues, to inability to move a body part.

But when I use and teach scalp acupuncture, it involves issues concerning the face. So when we when we would incorporate scalp acupuncture. We could use this in conjunction with submuscular needling or as a standalone technique, so any conditions that involve the face scalp, acupuncture can be very effective.

I. Especially when you’re dealing with a condition like trigeminal neuralgia where it’s very painful to needle directly onto someone’s face, you can use scalp acupuncture and this will treat the face without having to directly put needles in the person’s face. So here we have a cross section of the scalp.

We have the skin, we have the close connective tissue, and this is very heavily vascularized with lots of nerves. Then we have the aosis. Right below that is the loose connective tissue, and this is where you would want to insert the needle. Right below that is the perran and that is the skull. The good news is that when you’re trying to find the right depth to needle, if you just go down as deep as you can along the bone.

Then ’cause it, you, it is impossible to put an acupuncture needle through someone’s skull bone. You can needle right along the bone and if you get into the loose connective tissue, it will not be painful. If you go into the close connective tissue, you’re going through vessels and nerves, and it can be very painful.

So the thing that can be the most important thing to learn when you’re learning scalp acupuncture is how to measure. So the, you’re basically going to, these are not acupuncture points. These are areas of the. Scalp that affect different areas of the brain. And the way you measure is you’re going to get your horizontal and vertical planes, and then you will find the area of treatment based on that.

So the first landmark is from the glabella to the occipital protuberance, and the glabella is at the midpoint. Of you’re gonna get to the glabella is between the eyebrows and you’re gonna measure back to the occipital perturbance. And this will give you your line this way. And then you are going to find the midpoint, and that is the midpoint of the midline.

And if you go a half a centimeter. Behind the midpoint, that is where you’re going to be drawing a line. Right here. So you’re going to find the midpoint of the eyebrow and also go back to the occipital protuberance. And when you go back 0.5 centimeters, you’re gonna draw a line that intersects just like this, and you’re gonna break this up into three sections.

So the lower two fifths. Is this is where you would needle for concerns of the face? The upper extremities is the . Middle two fifths and then the upper one. Fifth is the lower extremities. So the lower extremities are the legs, the spine, the trunk, and the neck. And the upper extremities is just the arms and the hands.

And this bottom two fifths is the face. So this is the area that we would want to needle.

The technique for needling looks like this.

When you’re needling the scalp, it’s important to angle the needle properly so that it goes into the loose connective tissue. I like using a tube. You can freehand if you’d like, but I find that the tube helps me to guide the needle to the correct depth. I tap the needle in, remove the tube, and then I use my free hand to guide the needle

if the needle is improperly. Your patient should not feel any pain. So you’ll know that you’re into the loose connective tissue. If your patient doesn’t have any pain, when you needle, once the needle is in, you stimulate it gently for 30 seconds just like this. Or you can use electricity.

So that concludes our lecture today. So we covered Submuscular needling and we covered scalp acupuncture. Next time we are going to talk about facial motor points, facial cupping, GU Shaw, and derma rolling, and then some protocols for specific conditions. And I look forward to seeing you next time.

 

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And I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak to you today about facial cupping and GuaSha for neuromuscular facial conditions.

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 and I am a board certified acupuncture physician. And I would like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak to you today about facial cupping and GuaSha for neuromuscular facial conditions. Can you go to the first slide please?

So a little bit about me. I am a former faculty member and clinic supervisor at the Maryland University of Integrative Health, and I was there for almost 20 years. And I’m currently on faculty, on the doctoral faculty at Yoan University in Los Angeles, California. And I teach facial and cosmetic

Acupuncture continuing education classes and have been for almost 20 years as well. So the, I wanna start out today by giving a definition for a neuromuscular facial condition. So what a neuromuscular facial condition refers. To is any group of disorders that affects the nerves and the muscles that are responsible for moving the face, our facial expressions, and also any sort of pain or neuropathy, any sort of dysfunction or abnormality that affects the neuromuscular system.

Which involves the communication between the facial nerves and the muscles that control the face. And our face is the only place on our body where the. Muscles are directly connected to the skin and as a result, we can move the skin on our face without having to move a joint or any other part of the body.

And this brings with it some very unique . Issues such as particular conditions, which can affect either one or both sides of our face and some of the more common . Common neuromuscular facial conditions that I’ve seen in my practice over the years are Bell’s Palsy and also any sort of facial nerve paralysis.

You’ll see this frequently, people who’ve had facial surgery or an injury, myasthenia gravis, which is a degenerative condition. Involving the muscles and it is almost always noticeable on the face as well. Hemi facial spasm, which is any sort of twitching or spasming of part of the face, T M J, which involves the temporal mandibular joint.

Trigeminal neuralgia, which is a very painful neurological condition involving the trigeminal nerve and posis, which when we’re talking about the face, typically involves one or both of the eyelids. So today I’m not going to go into depth about . Different modalities for treating these diseases or about the diseases themselves.

But I am going to talk about facial cupping and gua and how and why these two modalities can be a wonderful compliment to other . Things that you might be doing, your body points, perhaps some facial motor points, submuscular needling, scalp acupuncture, things that you might be doing to help the face to get back to normal functioning.

So here is just a couple of photos from some of my classes me teaching facial gu Shaw and facial cupping. So first I’m gonna talk about facial cupping and the benefits of facial cupping. Facial cupping helps to bring blood just like . Cupping on the body helps to bring blood and cheese circulation to the muscles.

Facial cupping helps to bring blood and cheese circulation to the muscles and therefore to the skin, which means that when the extra blood circulation comes up to the skin, it . Increases the fibroblast activity, and this will stimulate collagen and elastin production. So this is more of a cosmetic benefit.

I. But having that extra collagen can be beneficial. Also, if someone has had long-term paralysis and they’ve lost collagen in their skin and their wrinkling of the skin, doing the cupping can help with that. It also relaxes any tight fascial. . Fascia fascial tissue that is on the face. And by releasing and relaxing the fascia, the face can move more smoothly and function better.

Facial cupping and gua can release nerves that have become entrapped on the face sometimes. . Wi woven within the nerve, the muscle sometimes within the fascia. Cupping helps to move stagnant lymph out of the face, which can take toxins with it and helps the. Reduce inflammation, which can help the nervous system of the face.

It also helps with inflammation on the exterior of the skin. If your patient has redness, heat signs, rosacea, eczema can help with that. And also, just like with any cupping that you would do on a patient facial cupping helps to strengthen the vascular integrity of the face.

So this is a cross section of the cheek. And you can see here we have the skin and then some subcutaneous fat. And then below that is this . S what is called the SMA layer. It is the superficial muscular aporetic system, and this mimetic muscle helps to get the signals from the nerve into the muscle, out to the skin, and it is what allows the skin on our face to move below that.

We have and it’s invested in various tissue and surrounded by fat, and then below that we have a facial nerve. Then in some areas of the face, on the fattier parts of the face, we’re gonna have more fat and then more muscle. This is a picture of a fass of fascia. If you’ve ever taken let’s say chicken and you’ve pulled it apart, that really tough fibrous stuff that you have to cut with a scissor to get the meat off of.

That is fascia and what can happen, especially if there’s paralysis. But sometimes just with aging, the fascia can become very stiff. It can get moved into a place where it really shouldn’t be. It can pull down and . Nerves can get trapped in there by doing facial cupping and facial guha. You can help to break up some of these adhesions and allow for more free movement in the face.

The cups, when you’re doing facial cupping there’s certainly a lot of options for cups out there. The ones that I like are glass cups. They’re much smaller. You could see the size. I use these two sizes depending on where I’m working on the face. But the cups are . Glass. And the reason why I like glass over silicone or any of the other materials, plastic is one of the most important things when you’re doing cupping, is that the cups can glide.

You don’t wanna leave marks on the person’s face. You don’t wanna leave cupping marks. So it’s not like cupping other places in the body where the person is gonna be left with cupping marks. The cups have gotta be able to move and they have to be able to grab enough of the tissue to make a difference.

So they have to be large enough to actually get in there and get that blood and tissue moving, but not so big that they’re too big for the face. So these are the two sizes that I like. And then the rubber part of these . Cups. It fits well in a hand and is easy to squeeze if you’re doing a lot of facial cupping during the day.

If the cup is too hard to squeeze, then it could be very difficult. Your hands can get sore and no one wants an acupuncturist with sore hands, . The Guha tools that I like are made out of Jade and they have different edges on ’em. And when I talk about Guha in a second, I’ll go over that, but there’s like a use shaped section.

There’s a little nobby section on the tops, and then the sides are flat for working on other parts of the face. , there are some contraindications with facial cupping and gua. You do wanna be cautious if your patient has very high blood pressure that’s not controlled well. It can bring a lot of blood and she and energy up to the face and the head.

If the person is on anticoagulants or just has a condition where they. Bruise easily. This could be an issue because even though you’re trying not to make any marks on the face, I. When you’re dealing with the face, the skin is thinner, the tissues are more delicate, the vessels are thinner and more delicate.

So this is something you need to note. If the patient suffers from frequent severe migraines, then facial cupping and gu. Again, brings a lot of energy up to the face and head. It can be an issue if they have a pustule acne. You don’t wanna be running the cups over that. If they’ve had any sort, I. Of treatment done on their face, microdermabrasion, lace, or Botox fillers.

This is a big conversation and I go through, in, in my classes, I go through all the contraindications and all the different types of fillers, but basically in a nutshell, for the purposes of today, if they’ve had any sort of treatment done on their face. , their skin and their face has to be healed.

And in order for you to start doing cupping and you never wanna do cupping over an area where there’s been a neurotoxin like Botox ’cause it can make it wear off or move it. The, for facial herpes, I have never personally had . A person breakout, but it’s certainly a possibility. And then if they’ve had recent dental work or any sort of facial surgery, you want to be gentle maybe some light cupping, but definitely not using guha tools over the area.

So the symbols that I use in my cupping instruction for the slides that you’ll see, I have an X that I use for suction and release, and O if you’re just suctioning and then a line if you’re dragging the cup. So in this example, when you start out, and I’m not going to go through all the steps of facial cupping, but I’m going to give a few examples.

So the first thing you do is you’re going to do a lymphatic drainage. So you would take the cup and you would suction and release down the neck. When you get to around kidney 27 under the clavicle, then you’re gonna drag the cup. Over to the lymph node, which is right around lung two, and you would do this like three times and then you would move to the next area.

I always work on one side of the face and then the other when I’m doing facial cupping. The next would be a suctioning, and then dragging the cup over different parts of the face that have been affected by the paralysis. Now, if the person is having facial pain, like trigeminal neuralgia, you would not want to be doing cupping over the areas that are tender.

In this example, , If the person had Bell’s Palsy, you would be working the cups along the stomach line to help with any facial movement in those areas. In this picture I’m showing you can suction and release and you can drag the cups around the lips, stopping at different acupuncture points and stimulating them, and this is good.

For patients who have any sort of disharmony around the mouth, whether it’s neuropathy or any sort of tension in the mouth, and this can help to release. The orbicularis oris muscle for issues with the eye, things like ptosis, any sort of drooping with the eye, or any sort of inability to open or close the eyes.

You can work gently inside the orbital rim. You don’t wanna point the cup at the eyeball, but gently working around. The orbital rim in order to bring energy into this part of the face. And the orbicularis oculi if the person can’t raise their eyebrows or if the person has a lot of tension in their eyebrow, in their forehead, if they’re having any sort of

Twitching in this area. Then you can go to yin to and suction and then drag the cup up to do 24. Do the same with you Y up to gallbladder 15 and then San Joo 23 up to stomach ache. Next is facial gu sha for facial Gu Shaw. The benefits are that by doing the gu sha on the face, it helps to clear wind, which is part of the metal element and can help with the skin metal and skin, and can also clear the wind, which

Is involved with facial ticks. Also, it helps to expel fire and invigorates the blood. Harmonizes the blood. The Jade gu sha tools are wonderful. They are very much a part of Chinese medicine. I. Only use Jade on the face for this reason. Works with stagnant blood and also helps with microcirculation and does this by causing some microtrauma, which again helps with collagen production.

So here is that tool I was talking about. This is a Jade guha tool and has different corners, this U shape and then flat sides, and then these massage corners. For specific acupuncture points, the technique that you’re going to use are very large scraping strokes, so you’re going to do it gently, evenly, and steady.

I tell my students, you go for the gu, but not the Shah. You don’t wanna bring up all that redness. They’re not going to look like they’ve had Guha, but it will . If you work in one direction other than in between the eyebrows, you can go a little more vigorously, but you are going to release some of those fascial adhesions, really get into the muscles, stimulate acupuncture points, and this is wonderful for young.

Younger patients, needle phobic patients, people who really need to be treated on their face, but are a little reluctant to have needles put in their face. So here’s an example of what it might look like if you were doing gu guha. Now, when I do facial guha, I use two tools and you’re going to put, for the cupping and guha, you’re going to put

Oil. The oil that I use that I like is all organic and vegan. It has C, B, D and Arnica in it, and it allows the tools to glide well without clogging pores. So you’re going to start at l i 20 and you can. Massage there, and then you’re going to move the tools along the sides of the face, and this will break up any sort of stagnation or disharmony that’s going on within the muscles.

And really invigorate the blood and the chi in that area. Same for the eyes. You can massage a bladder two and then use the U part of the tool around the orbital rim and around the braille. I really like, especially for wrinkles between the eyebrows, but . Even if your patient is just having a lot of tension in between their eyebrows, really getting in there with the in tongue, can I.

Relax, the corrugator muscle, the procerus muscle. It allows everything to ease up. It’s great for your patient’s mental health and my patients that have come to me with various sorts of neuromuscular facial conditions from Ms. Myasthenia gravis Bells. Even ptosis, this really can allow the face to relax and when the face is relaxed, it can function better.

I. One of the last steps that I do is I take the flat sides of the Guha tools and I work all along the temporalis muscle and the trigeminal nerve, the facial nerve they can all . Have some disharmony and dysfunction if the temporalis muscle is tight or tense, if someone has T M J or if they have trigeminal neuralgia and you really can’t get in there and work on their face, you can still work on the temporalis.

Relax the temporalis and this will relax their face and their jaw. The very last step that I do is I turn my patient’s head to the side. I start at the base of the Oput and I work all the way down right to the shoulder, right down the trapezius, pressing fairly hard in one direction, and this will release the back of the neck, which releases the occipital frontals, releases the face, and it really is a very relaxing way.

To end treatment for your patients.

If you have any questions about anything that I talked about today, you can put them below and you can also go to facial acupuncture classes.com. My classes are listed there and there’s also a Contact us button, which you can use. So I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council again today, and if you missed any part of today’s recording, you can go to the link and catch us there. .

 

 

 

I am going to be talking to you about my top 10 facial acupuncture points.

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, and today I am going to be talking to you about my top 10 facial acupuncture points. I am a licensed board certified acupuncture physician, and I teach cosmetic and facial acupuncture classes internationally. Can you go to the first slide? Great.

So when I’m talking about my top 10 facial acupuncture points, these are both for cosmetic purposes, but some of them have spillover into treating neuromuscular facial conditions as well. So the first point I wanna talk about is and you might be wondering, what does this have to do with facial acupuncture?

When you needle shen men, it helps to calm your patient, which is. great when you’re going to be putting needles in their face, and it also relaxes the face itself when we think about our face and our face aging. We might think it’s a good thing to tighten up the facial muscles, when in reality the facial muscles when they’re tight and constricted, then the skin will wrinkle.

So you really want the face to be relaxed when you’re going to work on the face. So my first favorite facial acupuncture point is ear chan men.

My next favorite point when working on the face is gallbladder 41. And gallbladder 41, although it is on the feet, it helps when you are doing cosmetic and facial acupuncture in a couple of ways. Most importantly is it helps to keep your patient grounded because when you’re bringing a lot of energy up to the face and the neck and the head, you wanna make sure you counter that with some grounding points.

So this is always the first body point I put in when I’m doing cosmetic acupuncture. It also helps to relax the liver and spreads chi throughout the liver and the gall bladder channels. And this will help if your patient is very frustrated or angry because frustration and anger can cause a lot of constriction in the forehead and cause lines between the eyebrows.

My next favorite point when doing cosmetic and facial acupuncture is stomach 36 and stomach 36 is probably my most favorite acupuncture point of all of the points if I had to pick one. And the reason for this is, , it covers so many different things. It’s the chicken soup point for acupuncture, and it helps to infuse all of the gifts of the earth to all of the meridians.

It’s a sea of nourishment point, which is really important when you’re working with the skin. You wanna make certain that all of the. Food and drinks that you take in get digested properly, get into your bloodstream and are spread throughout the body. It also helps to tonify chi and blood, which can become deficient as we get older.

We can get blood deficient and chi deficient and by needling stomach 36, it helps tonify the chim blood. . It also helps to fortify the spleen, which is really important because as we get older and the spleen becomes weaker and not as efficient, we can have sagging. So the spleen holds things up and it also is very much integral with.

Creating nice, healthy blood. So holding things up and making sure that our blood is healthy are two of the spleen’s jobs. So by needling stomach 36, you’re fortifying the spleen and the next. Important thing about Stomach 36, which should have been its own bullet, but it calms the spirit. And when you’re doing cosmetic acupuncture, you want your patient to be nice and calm.

My next favorite facial acupuncture point, which is also on the body, is large intestine four, and this is a command point for the face. So I would never do cosmetic acupuncture without needling large intestine for, and it also allows us to get rid of impurities. Not just on a physical level, but also on a mental level.

So really clearing out all of the impurities on a body mind, and spirit level. I. Next is small Intestine six, and the name for small intestine six is nourishing the old. So if you think about where small Intestine channel runs, it runs right up the neck and then up. In front of the ear and it can help with sagging jowls and chin and neck.

It activates the entire channel because it is a sheet cleft point, and it also helps to nourish us in the face of old pain and allows us to. Taken all of life’s lessons from past traumas and it, it really calls on some of our ancestral chi as well. . Next is gallbladder 18. So gallbladder 18, in case you don’t know where it is.

So you go to the center of the brow, and that’s gallbladder I’m sorry, the center of the frontals muscle and. , which is in the middle of the brow and that’s gallbladder 14. Then you find gallbladder 15 and you’re going to go back along the gallbladder line until you are in alignment with do 20, so where the gallbladder meridian and do 20 intersect on the head.

This is where gallbladder 18 is, and you can see it here. And this is the occipital frontal. So the gallbladder 18 helps to benefit the eyes and the forehead, and it has a direct action on that super orbital nerve. So that’s this right here. and the super orbital nerve, which is C N six runs along the Galea epi erotica, which links the occipital and frontal bellies of the occipital frontalis muscle.

So when you needle that point, it helps to nourish the eyes, lift the brow, and lift. The forehead as well.

Next is stomach four, and the name of this point is receive nourishment. So stomach four is right at the corners of the mouth and it helps to treat the mouth area. Lip lines, naso, labial, folds that. Run right into this area. It’s also right on the Modis, which connects the lader muscles on the face. The depressor, anguli, ORs, the resources muscle, all of these muscles.

Calm together right here at Stomach four. So by needling this point it helps to relax the depressor, angular ORs, which can pull down on the corners of the mouth and Ma make us look unhappy when we are not

Next. Next is small intestine 18 and the name of this point. Is cheekbone and very appropriately named, and this helps to lift the cheek area. The way that I like to needle it is I come over the cheek and then I will needle straight up, so I’ll. Go over the cheek and I like to use tubes when I work on the face.

So I come over the cheek and then I will needle straight up right underneath the bone and this will help to lift up the cheek area.

Next is Yu and I do a combination of points in order to lift the brow and the eyelid. I’ll use Yu and Sano. 23 and Blood are two together, and I have a little video here for how I would needle.

Like really like this. What I’ll do is I’ll pull up, but for her I would just use the tube and push underneath the brow like that. So again, I’m not on the lid, I’m underneath the brow. And you know why they called us you? Yeah. Don’t you? . Ouch. Yeah. You. Yeah.

So you could see in the video, I like to pull the brow up above the orbital rim, and then I will just push the tube underneath the brow and then push the needle straight up. I use a half an inch needle. I usually put a little anika gel there because the orbit is very highly vascularized and you don’t wanna bruise your patient.

and then I will push it in almost up to the handle. And this really helps, works on the lader muscle and helps to treat you. Yeah. And then by using some supplemental points around the brow and the forehead, it really can help to lift this area because one of the biggest concerns that. My patients have had over the years is that their eyelids are starting to get droopy or their brows are getting droopy, like really like my last favorite acupuncture point for.

Facial and cosmetic acupuncture is Yong, and Yong is great for a lot of reasons, and it’s right there between the brows. This helps if your patient has any lines between like wrinkles, deep furrows between their brows. You can use Yong. and it also helps to relax your patient and spread the chi in this area.

It calms the mind. It calms the patient. So this is a great point. I use it on almost everyone, even if they’re not coming to me for facial and cosmetic acupuncture. So there you have it. My top 10 favorite acupuncture points for facial acupuncture, and you can follow me on social media. Michelle Gellis on Facebook, Instagram.

TikTok and on LinkedIn, and I also have a Facebook group called Facial Acupuncture, and my website is facial acupuncture classes.com. I hope you enjoyed this, and thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for providing me with this opportunity to share this with you.

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Today I am going to be speaking to you about neuromuscular facial conditions and a multifaceted approach to treating them.

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 and I am an acupuncture physician. Today I am going to be speaking to you about neuromuscular facial conditions and a multifaceted approach to treating them. So a lot of you know me for cosmetic acupuncture.

one of the lesser known things that is really important to have under your belt if you’re doing cosmetic. Acupuncture is a really good working knowledge of the muscles of the face and how they can be affected through different physical conditions. So will you go for the fir to to the first slide?

So I had, many years ago, about 15 years ago, I had started. Researching using some of the different techniques that I was using on my cosmetic patients to help patients with different neuromuscular facial conditions. And I wrote a journal article in the Journal of Chinese Medicine about the topic, so if you’re interested, you can look it up.

It is called a multifaceted approach to treating neuromuscular facial Conditions. And yes, I am outside. I don’t have a bird in my house. I live in Florida, so there are some birds tweeting. So what. Is a neuromuscular facial condition. That is the first thing that we are going to talk about, and then I am going to go through the whole theory of why using a multifaceted approach can be very beneficial.

I’m going to talk about submuscular needling, scalp acupuncture, facial motor points, and then a little bit about facial cupping and guas. So a neuromuscular facial condition is any sort of a disorder that affects the face and it can be muscular meaning it. Prevents you from being able to move any of the muscles of your mouth or your eyes or your cheeks or something that has to do with the neurological system of your face causing pain, twitches a lot of sensation like heat or cold or lack of sensation.

So there’s quite a few different diseases and I’ll touch on some of those that can cause these problems to happen. But the theory that I came up with, that I teach and I’ve been using for many years is that instead of just doing your typical constitutional treatment and maybe a few face points that if you use.

Several different modalities at once. It can really provide for the best results for your patients. So I do a combination of traditional TCM treatment. Then I use facial motor points, sub submuscular, needling, scalp, acupuncture, and , the person is not in too much pain. I can do facial cupping in Gua and even dermal can be incorporated in.

So what are some examples of neuromuscular facial conditions? The most common is Bell’s Palsy. Most of us throughout the course of our treatment career. Through our practice, we will come across at least one patient with Bell’s Palsy and some of them will be, it’ll be a new case and they want help so it doesn’t get any worse or so that it gets better faster.

And for some people they might have had Bell’s Palsy many years ago and they still have some of the residual. Signs and symptoms. Ramsey Hunt Syndrome, which is similar to Bell’s Palsy, but has some additional issues. Ptosis, which is a drooping of the eyelid synkanesis, which is where you try to move one part of your face and another part of your face moves.

Stroke, which can affect the face drooping in the face. Tmj. Any sort of temporal mandibular joint disorder trigeminal neuralgia, which is spatial pain, ms. And there are many others. Okay. . So the face is unique because the face is the only part of our body where the skin is directly connected to the muscle, and that is why we can move.

The skin on our face without having to move any bones. You can blink your eyes, you can smile, you can purse your lips, and you don’t have to move any bones anywhere else on your body if you want your skin to move. You have to actually move a bone in order for it to move. This is a cross section of the face and you can see this is the cheek here.

We have the mimetic muscle, which Goes out to the outer layer of the skin. We have some fat here. And the mimetic muscle is invested in this mass layer. It’s a superficial, muscular, epi neurotic system. And it is what allows the muscles to make our facial express. and the facial nerve is invested deep within the facial fascia.

So by using a submuscular or in some instances an intramuscular needling technique, you can increase the flow of blood and chi in the area. You can break up those fossil adhesions that might exist, and you can stimulate collagen production in the area. . So there are various places in the face where.

Submuscular needling is very beneficial. Not just the face and the scalp. So the auricular muscles, and I incorporate this as part of my cosmetic acupuncture treatments, the temporalis muscles, and this can help a lot with. Headaches and it also can help to get movement back in the face.

It’s very beneficial for T M J and trigeminal neuralgia, the maier. This is great doing submuscular needling underneath the maier for individuals who have tmj. The digastric muscle underneath the anterior digastric, underneath the chin. This can help to lift up underneath the chin area. The frontals can help both with cosmetically, with wrinkles, but can also help.

Lift the eyebrow, get movement going cuz your frontal is connected to your eyebrows. So for individuals who’ve had a stroke or a half bells palsy, by doing the submuscular needling, you can help to get that movement going back in the eyebrows and in turn in the eyelids, the procerus muscle, which. Is in between the eyebrows, the lader muscle, which is underneath the eyebrow, and oh, I missed the platysma.

The platysma, which runs from your jawbone down to your clavicle, and using submuscular needling can help more on a cosmetic level, but with the skin on the. So how this works is I showed you that cross section of the face. The nerves can get trapped, the facial nerve can get trapped and by using needles, let me see if I have it in my next slide.

I don’t using a needle to needle from the skin. Down through the fascia, you are actually helping to break up some of those fascial adhesions and to release any nerves that have been. Entrapped. So for example, let’s say you had a pet patient who had headaches, frontal headaches or ha who had some sort of muscular weakness through MS or Bell’s Palsy in their forehead.

You can take your needles and go right underneath the muscles and do some submuscular needle. . So here is a video, so I gotta get it here.

So when needling the frontals muscle, the,

so when needling the frontals muscle, the. Way that you isolate the muscle is you ask your patient to raise their eyebrows. Go ahead and raise your eyebrows, okay? And then relax and you can find the border of the frontals. Muscle and the way that you needle is you’re going to go from the origin to the insertion.

So the origin is up here and the insertion is here. And typically what I do is I will put in. , usually three needles on the lateral edge, and I will put in two needles. On the medial side, and when you’re needling, what’s important is that the angle of the tube is the angle that the needle’s gonna go in.

So if you go like this, it’s going to go too deep. If you go like this, it’s going to be too shallow. I use. My thumb or a finger to help to guide the needle. So you wanna keep your fingers out of the way when you’re actually inserting. That way you can get to the correct depth right underneath the muscle.

That’s the lateral side. Then you’re going to do the medial side and usually. Two needles will suffice and I do the one side and then I do the other side and I’m using half inch needles. You can use one inch needles depending on how big your patience forehead is.

So as you can see, needling underneath the muscle as I mentioned, will bring energy to the muscle and it can help if there’s any sort of tension in the headache. And on a more cosmetic level, it can help to stimulate collagen in the. Another thing that’s really beneficial to incorporate, and you can incorporate this at the same time you are doing some of your other treatments, is scalp acupuncture.

And scalp acupuncture is part of a class that I teach on treating neuromuscular facial conditions, but I only teach scalp acupuncture as it pertains to the. And neuromuscular conditions with the face. So here is a cross-section of scalp and there are one of the important things when you’re learning scalp acupuncture is how to measure the scalp.

And it is certainly beyond the scope of this short lecture to go through the whole thing. But essentially you when you’re measuring the. it is in different sections. You’re not working with acupuncture points, so you find the horizontal line, you find the vertical line, and then within the motor area or the sensory area, it’s broken up into three sections and the.

Two-fifths is the area that pertains to the face. So you could be needling this and at the same time, so in order to help the motor function, you could be needling this and at the same time doing some local points to help to get some of that movement going.

and this is a short video of what that needling technique looks like

when you’re needling the scalp. It’s important to angle the needle properly so that it goes into the loose connective tissue. I like using a tube. You can freehand if you’d like, but I find that the tube helps me to guide the needle. To the correct depth. I tap the needle in, remove the tube, and then I use my free hand to guide the needle.

If the needle is improperly, your patient should not feel any pain, so you’ll know that you’re into the loose connective tissue. If your patient doesn’t have any pain, when you. Once the needle is in, you stimulate it gently for 30 seconds just like this. Or you can use electricity.

So next up are facial motor points and essentially when. Muscle is not functioning properly. It is either over functioning or under functioning. So it’s either flacid and it’s not firing properly or. It’s over firing and causing too much tension. What the theory behind motor points are is you find the most.

Excitable part of the muscle. It’s essentially where the nerve goes into the muscle and you are gonna place a needle there. Fortunately, for us, many motor points, especially on the face, are actually acupuncture points. So you find the acupuncture point that correlates to the muscle. And in this case, I’ve chosen the frontal.

and the motor point for the frontals is gallbladder 14. So you would needle this, you can stimulate it, and it helps. It serves as a reset switch to get that muscle back into normal functioning.

So I had spoken about Fossil ad Hess. Before, and this is a picture of fascia and here is where the nerve would go. And as you can imagine if you had all of this fibrous fascia, adhesions going on and there was a nerve that was trapped in here, it would be very difficult for. Muscle to function properly for the nerve to do its job.

So one of the things that can really help is facial cupping and facial guha because when you’re moving these small, so these are very uniquely designed glass facial cups, and the rubber part is really easy to squeeze as opposed to. The ones that are more difficult to squeeze and they’re small, and they move around really nicely, they glide on the face and they can help to bring energy back into the muscles to break up the fossil adhesions.

And the same thing with these Jade Guha tools. The Guha tools. When you can use these edges here and you can stimulate different points and you can really get in there up against the bone and help to break up some of the fossil adhesions that might exist.

and I think I just have a picture. There’s no video here, but this would be an example if you were working and you were doing cupping on the face, starting at an acupuncture point, moving the cup up to another acupuncture point. And this has a very lifting effect on the face and. Then going and doing a suction and release down the neck.

You never wanna drag the cup up or down the neck. In my webinar about facial cupping in Guha, I really emphasize safety because it’s so important when you’re working around the neck and the face to be very safe. You don’t wanna cause any bruising. You don’t, you’re working along major vessels, you don’t.

Release any blood clots. So suctioning and releasing down the neck and then just working underneath the clavicle can really have a wonderful lifting, toning, and rejuvenating effect on the face, especially your patients that have some sort of Like degeneration. It’s a wonderful, it’s almost like a massage, and it gets that blood flowing.

It gets the blood up into the muscle and can really help getting that muscle function going again. and the same with Guha. Here’s a picture of me doing some guha along the jawline. This was for cosmetic reasons for sculpting, but can really help to get that movement going. And if a muscle hasn’t been used in a long time, they can get stiff and gua can be.

Now dermal rolling is something that is used on a very superficial, gentle level, but it can help to. Reeducate the nerves and the muscles and the skin, because the skin, if it, let’s say someone has had an injury to the face, maybe they had a facelift and now they have neuropathy and they can’t feel anything.

by doing some of your maybe scalp acupuncture, some body points. And then I sell my patients Dermer rollers and they bring them home and I teach them gently how to use it along some of the channels to stimulate the channel, the meridians, and just to stimulate the skin to reeducate the nervous.

These are some of the publications, my publications, and the one I was talking about was from 2016. It’s a multifaceted approach to treatment of neuromuscular facial conditions, which goes much more into depth about what I was just talking about and. I also teach classes on that and you can find my website, facial acupuncture classes.com if you wanna learn more.

Also on social with my first and last name. And that is it. Thank you for your time. And thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to share with all of you. I look forward to seeing you next time.