So today’s lecture is going to be part one of a comprehensive lecture on how to market your facial acupuncture practice. And part of this is from my upcoming book on Treating the Face and some of the material I learned from Dr. East Phillips and she can be found@dreast.com.

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 License Board Certified Acupuncture Physician. I will be presenting today on Marketing Your Facial Acupuncture Practice. Can we go to the first slide?

So a little bit about me. I am currently on the doctoral faculty at Yosan University, and I am a former faculty member and clinic supervisor at the Maryland University of Integrative Health. I have been teaching facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes since 2005.

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So today’s lecture is going to be part one of a comprehensive lecture on how to market your facial acupuncture practice. And part of this is from my upcoming book on Treating the Face and some of the material I learned from Dr. East Phillips and she can be found@dreast.com. So the topics today are I’m going to do a quick marketing 101, talk about social media, the power of testimonials the importance of before and after photos, and how to set up some accounts.

programs for your facial acupuncture practice. So the first thing to think about when you’re thinking about marketing your facial acupuncture practice, and this really is not just for a cosmetic acupuncture practice, but this can also be for if you’re doing facial acupuncture for, Neuromuscular facial conditions.

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It really falls under the umbrella of educating your audience. When most people now, nowadays, when they think about aging, there’s more of a push towards holistic aging, and aging in a healthy way. We can’t stop the aging process, but we all want to look and feel as good as possible. And the nice thing about acupuncture and Chinese medicine is that we’re not just treating the outside, we’re treating the inside.

So when you are Putting together your brochures or your online presence, any infographics that you’re putting together to talk about your facial acupuncture practice. You want to not only talk about how effective it is, but also The full range of benefits as far as physical health, emotional health and wellness, relaxation, and how it is a holistic approach, you’re not putting anything into the body or taking anything out of the body, as is frequently the case with Western medicine.

When we’re thinking about our marketing in general, one of the first things that we can be struck with is where do I come up with content? How often do I need to post? How much information does someone want at one time? And for a lot of us, we are healers, we are business owners, but we may not have a marketing department and or a background in marketing.

It’s important to know that consistency is the key. It takes the average person about seven times of seeing your ad before they actually take some sort of action. If you’re consistent, then people know that you’re not going to disappear. They can count on you to be there. And if they can’t buy right in that moment, then They’ll see your post again.

So it really is a matter of being in front of someone often enough so that when the time is right for them, they’ve been educated, they like you, get your message, they understand what you’re selling, and that’s when they’re going to hit the button to either call you or to sign up and make an appointment.

So marketing when you’re trying to think of marketing ideas, it can be overwhelming. Like I am just burnt out, I can’t think of a single other idea of what can I do for my marketing. So one idea is to market by the season, right? So each season you are going to come up with a new idea for marketing. So when we’re talking about the skin, maybe it’s a spring detox for the skin or summer skin.

Is your skin getting. Overcooked by the sun or dried out or is the humidity affecting your skin? Is your skin dry in the fall? And what about your winter skin? How is your, how are you tending to your skin during the winter? So you can set your marketing. by the season. Another way that you can set your marketing is holidays.

There’s so many holidays and for each holiday you can work your marketing around that holiday. Also every month of the year, and sometimes for every week of the month, there’s different awareness. So there’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month and Down Syndrome Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Different awareness things that resonate with you, your message. You can look them all up and then you can gear your marketing towards that and offer specials geared towards that.

You can also do your marketing so if you choose a month, or you’re in a month, you’re coming up on a month, let’s say January, you would come up with different discount codes that would relate to January. And then when you’re offering discounts on your services or your products, I strongly recommend if you’re going to be offering cosmetic acupuncture, that you do offer products.

So For example, for January, you could do New Year, or New You, or Beginnings, or New Beginnings, and then that discount code would be worth a certain amount of money. And within the month of January, you can also offer different challenges. This can be on your social media, where you offer a challenge for your patients to to have different activities related to their skin, whether it’s derma rolling or cupping and gua sha at home, or a product maybe that you’re launching.

You could offer a flash sale during the month that only happen during certain times, like if it’s snowing or if the temperature goes below a certain temperature. So this is another way that you can. Set your marketing and come up with different marketing ideas. You can also do it by days of the week.

Motivational Monday, Therapeutic Thursday, Feedback Friday. For example, on Therapeutic Thursday, you would have a discount or a promotion or something related to a specific topic. service that you offer. Maybe it’s red light therapy and Feedback Friday. You can invite people to provide feedback on, the experiences that they’ve had and people love to write and comment.

This also boosts your rankings on social media because the more traffic there is in your website or on your social media, the higher you’re going to rank. And it will also give you an opportunity to gather up testimonials. Something else that is wonderful for your to promote, help to promote your business, to drive people to your website and learn more about you and your practice is to develop a QR code.

And this is actually, Very easy. If your phone is near you right now, you can pick up your phone and scan that QR code and see where it brings you. But a QR code can easily be generated for free if you have Canva. You within Canva there is a QR code generator and Adobe also has a QR code generator.

And then there are a lot of programs and apps that will generate QR codes and you can even, at the bottom, You can even have a, like a little title, the name of your business, so people know when they’re scanning what they’re scanning.

As far as your social media I strongly recommend that you have a presence everywhere. I know a lot of my students say they left Facebook during the pandemic or they just got tired of being on Facebook. However, a lot of your customers, your patients are going to be 45 to 65 and they are on Facebook.

So if you don’t have a presence on Facebook for your business, you really should. And when you design your social media, you don’t want it to always be. the same thing. So it’s good to rotate between something a little more personal because people will like and follow people that they like. So if you make them laugh if they resonate with your message, then they are going, if you’re genuine and authentic people.

are really looking to connect with people that they can relate to on their social media. And so you can have something personal, not too personal. I strongly discourage my students, anyone from complaining on social media. Way back when Facebook was first created if you remember, there was only a like.

So it was really about making people happy. And if you’re complaining, no one, people have enough problems. They don’t want your problems. Keep it personal, not too personal. Educational, teach people something in a short bite within 15 seconds. 30 seconds max. Entertaining is great if you can make people laugh or if you have a skill or a talent and you want to show it to them.

Again, this goes into the personal. Something sales related. It’s okay to promote something that you’re doing. And This is a great place for your before and afters, your testimonials. Always have the closed captions because most people don’t have their sound on their phone when they’re scrolling on their social media.

And then everything that you post on social media has got to link back to your website. Because otherwise people will look at it. They don’t know how to find you. And I actually don’t have my social media on here, but you can find me at facialacupunctureclasses. com. So let’s talk about Instagram and this lecture is part of a much bigger lecture that I do in my masterclass on on marketing and I have my students do exercises and we really go into depth.

We do a deep dive on all of these, but like we’re just going to get some really good ideas now. So for Instagram, you, there is no way for someone to click on a link directly through your Instagram posts. So with Instagram, you have to open up. Linktree account. And in your Linktree account is where you can put links to your websites, your products, anywhere you want to direct your patients.

And that goes up in your bio. And then with your, in your post, you say, go to the link in my bio, and they can click on that. And that will take them to where you want them to go. Stories tend to be seen a lot more than posts, which are just stagnant pictures or reels, because someone has to actually go on to your profile to see that reel, whereas stories get shown.

So I always encourage to, if you’re making a reel, you can also redo it as a story. So having them in both places and having the stories more often. We don’t have time to get into how to make a reel, but reels are a great way to do something that’s a little longer than a story and to really present your message.

Facebook. I like Facebook because in Facebook you can have a conversation. So you can have videos, you can make reels reels. And you can also have direct links to your website, but you can really have conversations with people for better or for worse in Facebook. And it’s a lot more participatory.

There’s a lot of different ways to do you can have a poll where you ask people questions and you can have your personal Facebook and your business Facebook. And for my facial acupuncture classes, I have a group. With over I think we’re at 8, 000 acupuncturists in my Facebook group and it’s called Facial Acupuncture.

And people can ask questions and the nice thing about groups is whenever someone posts something in a group, everyone in the group is going to see it. Whereas posts, you have, they have to be light in order for people to see them. Whenever you’re doing Facebook posts, always have links to your website in there.

TikTok is a little different. You might not think about TikTok for your social media, but a lot of people are using it now. And you just make short, little, videos, you can show something that you’re doing or even something that you have on special. But again, if you make one video, then you can take that same video and show it on your YouTube channel, on your Facebook, on your LinkedIn.

You could just show it across all of your platforms. And the nice thing about TikTok is. It has a huge repertoire of music and the editing is really good within TikTok. And you can also do these things called duets. So you can find like an expert in our field and if they’re doing something like, let’s say I was.

presenting a technique and I allowed for duets in my TikTok video, you could put that up and you don’t even have to make the video. You could just be sitting there pointing to it or commenting on it and you have instant content.

Testimonials you have to check with your the state or area where you’re practicing, not All places allow testimonials. I know they don’t allow them in Canada. But if you’re practicing in a place where you allow them, they are great to have on your website. They’re great to have in your social media and in your waiting room.

If you have a book of articles and information for people to look at. And sometimes people just want to take a break from their phone when they’re sitting and they’re waiting to see you. And if you have a book with letters from patients and testimonials, some before and after pictures, this is wonderful.

But just make certain you have permission and you want to keep the testimonial very specific. What exactly was it that did that person like about the treatment? Did their eyebrows become more raised or their crow’s feet became reduced? If you can get your patients to speak to that, and especially if you have a picture, then that is wonderful.

When you’re taking before and after pictures I always take before pictures. I don’t always remember to take the afters, but it’s great if you can get them. But the important thing, because there’s so much photoshopping going on now, they’re not as credible as they were 20 years ago, but When you’re taking your before and afters, you have to make sure that they’re in a HIPAA compliant app and that the lighting is the same for the before and the after.

So if you’re Treatment spaces, windows, close the curtains. And you have to make sure you’re at the same distance and angle. I always have my patient sit on my treatment table, and if they’re taller, I will raise the camera up so that It’s always at that same angle. And the last thing I’m going to talk about today are programs.

And again, this is a state by state thing. Not every place allows you to sell a program or a package is probably the more common term. But what You can do in many places, you can set up like this is my standard program. With the standard program for this much money you get 12 treatments and Dermaroller for self care.

And then for the silver treatment you get everything in the standard treatment Plus, you get products to use with the roller. And then, you can go a step further, and then the gold treatment. This is everything in the silver, plus red light, etc., etc. And then, You would say to your patient which program interests you, and you can even have a little arrow.

This is our most popular program. And people like to be given choices, not too many choices. And they’re going to choose whichever is in their budget and whichever kind of resonates with them. That is the end of Part 1. And next time in part two of Marketing Your Facial Acupuncture Practice, we are going to talk about direct mailing either through email or through actual mail, and blog posts, community engagement, workshops, and collaborations.

So I look forward to seeing you in part two and thank you for coming today.

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Today’s talk focuses on facial motor points. Last time, if you missed part one, I talked about using facial motor points for cosmetic applications. And today we are gonna be talking about so cosmetic applications like, Crow’s feet or frown lines.

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 is Michelle Gellis and I am an acupuncture physician who teaches facial acupuncture classes internationally. Today, I will be presenting part. Two of a lecture on using facial motor points for facial concerns, and if you would please go to the first slide.

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This is a list of the different classes that I teach. They are all recorded and on my website, and today we will be going over some of the. Topics that I cover in treating neuromuscular facial conditions and some of the advanced techniques from my facial acupuncture class.

Today’s talk focuses on facial motor points. Last time, if you missed part one, I talked about using facial motor points for cosmetic applications. And today we are gonna be talking about so cosmetic applications like, Crow’s feet or frown lines. But today I am going to be talking about using facial motor points for a couple of different types of neuromuscular facial conditions, and the two that I’m going to discuss today are Bell’s Palsy and Ptosis.

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But first I wanna review quickly. What is a motor point? If a muscle. Is not functioning properly. Using an acupuncture needle and putting it into the motor point of the muscle is like a reset switch and it will bring the muscle back into normal functioning. Because on our face, the skin is attached to the muscle.

Using the motor points on the face can help the face to not only look, differently getting rid of tension and wrinkles and lines and folds, but it can also help the face to function properly so that if someone has some sort of a neuromuscular facial condition, using the motor point can help to resolve that.

A motor point is different than a trigger point. A trigger point is like a knot in a muscle, whereas a motor point is, so if this is your peripheral nerve, you have your sensory nerve, and then you have your motor nerve, and the motor point is where the motor. Attaches into the muscle. It is the most electrically excitable part of the muscle where the motor nerve is attached.

The face has two nerve branches that are in charge of the functioning and the sensory of the face. So we have the trigeminal nerve, which is. The fifth facial nerve CN five, and that takes care of sensation. And also mastication, it connects to your massacre, the facial nerve which is CN seven, cranial nerve seven.

Helps the functioning of the face, so your facial expressions and also taste. So you can see the two different nerves. We have the facial nerve and the trigeminal nerve. And the trigeminal nerve has the ophthalmic branch, the maxillary branch, and the mandibular branch, and the facial nerve has five.

Branches, the temporal zygomatic, bcal, the mandibular branch, and then the cervical branches which go down to the platysma.

The first neuromuscular condition we’re going to talk about is Bell’s Palsy and. Be’s palsy is the most common cause of facial paralysis that you will find in your treatment room, that you’ll see in your treatment room typically, and it’s a disruption of the facial nerves, and it can result in facial paralysis, weakness, drooping, inability to keep the eyelid open or closed.

You can patients can get unusual taste sensations, hearing loss, ear pain and normally the symptoms get at their peak within 48 hours and can last for several weeks up through a lifetime.

Palsy is typically in Western medicine. It’s typically thought of as a result of a virus and, mostly it is seen in individuals between the ages of 15 and 60, although I have seen patients as young as two in my treatment room with Bell’s Palsy, and it usually follows some sort of a viral infection.

It is seen. In a very large number of pregnant women and Western medicine treats it with drugs such as Acyclovir. And also usually so the acyclovir is an antiviral, and then frequently they will give some sort of a steroid to help with any inflammation. So the first thing you would do is an exam protocol, and in order to ascertain which of the muscles is not.

Functioning properly. So you would look at, for example, the frontals. The way you would determine if that is working properly is you’d have your patient raise their eyebrows, close their eyes, and you’re going to be looking for any disparity between the two eyes. Have them smile, and this is going to let you know how the zygomaticus major and minor.

Functioning the orbicularis, orus, the lator muscles, and ZOS. Et cetera, et cetera. So you’re gonna go through the exam of the different facial muscles and you’re going to look for any disparity, and then you will know which muscles to treat, and then within that muscle group. Where the different motor points are, and fortunately for us, the motor points on the face, most of them are either on an acupuncture point or they’re right between a couple of acupuncture points.

So it makes it easier for us to find them because the muscle, the face does have a lot of muscles.

So the first motor point that we would use if someone could not pull their eyebrows together and frown would be the motor point for the corrugator muscle, which is just lateral to bladder two.

The next, as I mentioned the frontals that raises the eyebrows and the motor point for that is gallbladder 14. So you would treat the affected side for the orbicularis oculi. This can help with. Closing the eyelids, and that can sometimes be a problem. People with Bell’s Palsy, they have to take their eyelids shut and the motor points.

There’s two for each eye, and one is between Sania 23 and gallbladder one, and then the other is the extra point Q Hoag, which is right on the orbital Ri. It’s between stomach two and gallbladder one. The next is the motor point for the Zygomaticus major, and that is SI 18, and you’re going to needle into the muscle, but not through the muscle.

The Zygomaticus minor helps to elevate the lip and the motor point for that is between stomach two and stomach three. For the levator Labii Superioris, the motor point is between LI 20 and stomach two, and the levator labii Superioris helps to elevate the lip individually as if snarling the Tallis, is on either side of Ren 24 and it is a half soon lateral to Ren 24, and this helps to elevate and protrude the lower lip.

So in addition to ascertaining which muscles you’re going to treat. If you were treating a condition such as Bell’s Palsy, you also would want to do a full body treatment. And so you would do your TCM diagnosis and look for the pattern and treat the underlying pattern. In the case of Bell’s Palsy, it is either blood stagnation, a lung wind invasion, or a spleen chi deficiency.

And then you would do local points and motor points on the face where the person has the deficiency. In addition to any body points, posis is another neuromuscular facial condition that. You will see commonly in your treatment room, and it can affect one eye or both eyes. It’s when the eye lids are not opening fully.

Everyone has a little bit of ptosis, but it can happen as we age. Some people are born that way and for others it can happen after some sort of an injury or even an illness. And this these are different levels of ptosis. This is slight ptosis, very slight ptosis. And this is due to aging. And then this is more severe ptosis.

I already went through all of this. There are many different causes of ptosis again people, sometimes people get ptosis when they have cluster headaches and, some sort of brain injury as I mentioned injury. A brain injury, spinal cord injury can cause ptosis as well. The motor points that you would use ver posis are the orbicularis oi, and also the frontalis can help the major muscle that’s involved.

Is the levator muscle, but there is no motor point for that. There is a way to treat it with cosmetic threading techniques, but I cover that in my cosmetic classes. When you’re looking at posis of the upper eyelid, it’s either a deficiency of spleen. And kidney or and or spleen deficiency with wind phlegm or oh, I’m sorry.

Let me back up a step. The slide is confusing. The it’s either a spleen deficiency with wind phlegm. Or a deficiency of spleen and kidney. And so the, you would do your differential diagnosis based on what the symptoms are, and then you would treat the underlying symptoms accordingly, as well as using the motor points.

This is information on how to find me if you are interested in. More information. You can follow me on Instagram or join my Facebook group, facial Acupuncture and my website for all of my recorded and live classes I do teach internationally is facial acupuncture classes.com.

I wanted to say thank you for today for coming, and thank you to the American Acupuncture Council for giving me this opportunity to spend some time teaching you.

 

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And today I am going to speak to you, I’m doing part one of a lecture on facial motor 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. I’m an acupuncture physician specializing in facial and cosmetic acupuncture classes. And today I am going to speak to you, I’m doing part one of a lecture on facial motor points. Can you go to the first slide please?

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So the title of this talk is Facial Motor Point, use for Cosmetic Applications, and in part two I’m going to talk about a little bit about facial motor points for neuromuscular facial conditions. Here is some of my publications from the Journal of Chinese Medicine. And I’ll put links up at the end to my social where you can actually view some of these publications.

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And these are all the classes I teach today. The Motorpoint lecture will focus on treating neuromuscular facial conditions and some of my advanced techniques. Motor points have been used for a very long time, not just by acupuncturists. They’ve also been used by medical doctors and they. Date way back to the late 18 hundreds.

And more recently some acupuncturists and other physicians have been using facial motor points for neuromuscular facial concerns. So what is a motor point? When a muscle is either in spasm or in a flacid state. It is not firing properly, and if you take an acupuncture needle and insert it properly into the muscle’s motor point, it will cause the muscle to jump and reset it into normal function.

So this is what motor nerve looks like here. So this would be a sensory nerve going out to the skin and here’s a motor nerve going to the muscle, but in. With our face, the muscle is actually connected to the skin, so when you reset the muscle, it can help to enhance the appearance of the skin.

Now, motor points are not trigger points, mo trigger points or sore spots and muscles, but. Fortunately for us, many motor points are acupuncture points on the face. So it makes it easy for us to find them. So here’s a, just a picture of bone and muscle. And on the face, the muscle is connected directly to our skin, which is why we can move the scan.

On our face. So again, if the muscle is pulled tight, then the skin will wrinkle. So when we’re thinking of neuromuscular facial conditions, when we’re looking at the motor points, the face is innervated by two nerves, CN seven, and. Also the trigeminal nerve. So when you’re using facial motor points, they are wonderful for any conditions involving paralysis.

And what you do is you needle into the muscle, but not through the muscle. So on most of the face, you’re going to go on an oblique angle about a quarter to a half an inch into the muscle. And facial motor points will treat the muscle and the fascia, and this can help to enhance the appearance of the skin unless it’s some sort of a skin disease discoloration or a scoring.

So when might you use motor points if you’re doing cosmetic acupuncture? As someone who practices cosmetic acupuncture extensively, I always start with basic cosmetic acupuncture treatments and if they, my patient has a difficult to treat. Concern then I will use these motor points to help to enhance the effectiveness of my facial acupuncture treatment.

So here is what a face looks like as it’s aging. We have nasal labial folds, chin wrinkles. You can get loss of volume in the temples, we get lines between our eyebrows. The face can hollow, the jaw contours change. And we can get wrinkles in our chin and neck and also sagging underneath the neck.

So here would be an example of someone who’s not showing many signs of aging and then coming into their fifties, some signs of aging, and then more advanced signs of aging. So let’s talk about some specific types of wrinkles that you might see in your treatment room and when using cosmetic acupuncture motor points might be beneficial.

So one of those. Would be forehead wrinkles. And frequently an individual will have forehead wrinkles because their frontalis muscle has become very tight. And even when they feel like they’re relaxing their forehead and they’re not making an expression, the muscle itself is very tight. And the. Folds in the skin remain there.

So by relaxing the frontalis muscle, the entire forehead will relax and it will smooth out the wrinkles. Also treating the frontals can help to lift the lid, the eyebrows and also the eye lid at the same time. This was a patient of mine who came to me and she was noticing her brows were starting to descend as she was getting older, and so I treated just the left her left.

Eyebrow and I used the frontals muscle, and you can see after one treatment, when the muscle relaxed, the skin laid flat and it pulled the skin up into a more normal functioning for her.

So here we have the frontals muscle and the motor point for the frontals is fortunately for us, easy to find gallbladder 14. So if you wanted to work with the frontals muscle and the, again, the frontalis muscle wrinkles the forehead, it raises the eyebrows up and. What you would do is you would put the the needle straight in on a very slight oblique angle.

And you’re going to go into the muscle, but not through the muscle. Depending on how thick their forehead skin is, would determine how deep you have to go before you hit the muscle. So here’s a quick video. I had a patient who had Bell’s Palsy and they could not raise their eyebrows and they could not fully open their eye because of the Bell’s Palsy.

So I had put this needle in and stimulated it. And you can see the needle started moving immediately after the needle went in. And I put the needle right in the motor point. Is another example of when you might use a facial motor point would be if someone had very stubborn lines between their eyebrows, either the two or the one we call them frown lines, and we would needle the corrugator.

Muscle and the motor point for that is just lateral to bladder two. And it’s right in the corrugator muscle. The corrugator muscle pulls along with the procerus, pulls the eyebrows together very strongly,

and you would also, whoops. I have a little delay here. You would also needle the motor point for the processis, which is yin tongue, and when you’re using it as a motor point, you’re going to needle it slightly towards the nose.

Another area that. Motor points are very beneficial for is treating wrinkles in the chin. And as we age, these chin wrinkles or chin dimples can be more noticeable because the mentalis muscle and the depressor ang oris muscle, they can become. They don’t function as well. And so by doing the Le Depressor, Labi, inferior Aus and or the Mentalis and or the Depressor, angular Aus, all of these muscles are going to work together to cause that issue.

But. I’m showing you the de depressor, Labi inferiors and the motor point for that is the extra point. One soon lateral to this extra point here. And the way you. Oh. I’ll show you that in a second. And then medial to that is the mentalis and the motor point for that is a half a soon lateral to Ren 24.

So here is a video. And this was a patient, another patient who had Bell’s Palsy. And I had put the needle in the mentalis. And as you can see, when I stimulated the needle, the muscle jumped and my patient reported back to me that. The issue that she had been having with drooling when she was like brushing her teeth, she couldn’t spit she couldn’t drink through a straw and she had Bell’s palsy many years prior.

But still in this one side, she had issues.

Lip wrinkles can be treated very effectively with facial motor points. We would needle the motor points around the orbicularis orus, and there’s two of them on each side of the mouth. One is LI 19, and then the other one is between stomach four and Ren 24. So it’s like right here. Some other uses for facial motor points would be points on some of the muscles pertaining to the levator muscles and the oculis oculi.

So the lator muscles in the face, on the cheeks. Will if they’re not functioning properly, along with some of the tendons and other things, but can contribute to the nasal labial folds, the motor point for the rezos. If you treat that, it can help. With the little marionette lines, there are motor points for the neck that can help with the necklace lines and the neck bands.

And then there are motor points around the eyes, which I go over all of the motor points on the face in my classes. But there’s motor points around the orbicularis oculi that can help with crow’s feet. In part two of this lecture, I will go over facial motor point usage to treat neuromuscular facial conditions like Bell’s Palsy, Ramsey Hunt Syndrome, TMJ Hemi Facial Spasm, and others.

If you’re interested in checking out my classes, you can go to facial acupuncture classes.com and my social is for Instagram, it’s Michelle Gillis and Facebook. You can look up my Facebook group, which is facial acupuncture. Thank you so much.

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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.

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.

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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, 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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