When we’re treating the face, we’re treating the entire person because facial acupuncture impacts not just our appearance, but it affects the function of the face, and it also affects a person’s spirit. So when we think about facial. Cosmetic acupuncture, which is what I’m going to talk about first.
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Hi, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I’d like to thank the American Acupuncture Council for an opportunity to present to you today on treating the face as a whole. And this is part one, so you can go ahead and go to the slides.
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So my presentation today is on a multidimensional approach to facial acupuncture. As I mentioned, my name’s Michelle Gellis. I am currently on the doctoral faculty at Ossan University. I’m a formal faculty member and clinic supervisor at the Maryland University of Integrative Health. And I am a published author and regular contributor to the Journal of Chinese Medicine, and I’m a columnist on acupuncture today, and I’ve been teaching facial inter facial acupuncture classes internationally since 2005.
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This is the cup of my. Book that has recently been published on Treating the Face. It is a hard cover 15 chapter book on all aspects of treating the face. And you can scan that QR code if you wanna check it out. So when people think of facial acupuncture, the first thing that comes to mind is cosmetic acupuncture.
But treating the face is much more than just cosmetic. When we’re treating the face, we’re treating the entire person because facial acupuncture impacts not just our appearance, but it affects the function of the face, and it also affects a person’s spirit. So when we think about facial. Cosmetic acupuncture, which is what I’m going to talk about first.
That works with both the body and the face, bringing blood and cheese circulation up to targeted areas in the face. It stimulates collagen and elast in production, improves the tone of the skin and the of the skin. It enhances circulation and reduces inflammation. So puffiness and increases the natural glow of the face.
So you look rested. You have more color in your cheeks. And additionally, because of the. Nature of the acupuncture points on the face, you are supporting your patients’ overall health, their digestion, their immunity, and their overall circulation. Facial acupuncture can erase five to 15 years off of the face, and it’s great for lifting and treating on a very deep level.
The important thing when you are performing facial acupuncture is to use precision needling techniques, which typically involves training with someone who’s very well experienced, who’s been doing facial acupuncture and teaching facial acupuncture for many years. So how does cosmetic acupuncture work?
Cosmetic acupuncture brings blood flow and oxygen up to the face and it brings nutrients to the skin cells so your skin will look better. It does take about 28 days for collagen to regenerate, and that is increased if someone is older. So you really do have to do a series of treatments. It’s not just a one and done.
And once a person has gone through a series of approximately 12 weekly treatments, then usually they can start to spread their treatments out over time and eventually come once a month or just seasonally for touchups. Cosmetic acupuncture also utilizes motorpoint stimulation, and this can help with the functioning of the muscles in the face, and it will therefore balance.
Overactive muscles. Muscles that are too tight, causing the skin to contract or weak muscles, which can cause the skin to sag. It can help to enhance the jawline, giving a more lifted and supported appearance. And it also helps with the mid-face support. And this all happens through proper engagement of the facial muscles.
So if we just look at the layers of the face, we have the skin, then there’s some superficial fat, and then this mass layer. The superficial muscular AP neurotics, AP neurotic system, which is very unique to the face. We have some retaining ligaments, deeper fat on the lower part of the face, and then we have some deeper fascia and the bones and this mass layer.
Is what enables us to make our expressions because the muscles on the face are connected directly out to the skin. So as we can see, we have bone muscle. And skin. And so what happens is as the muscle contracts, the skin moves, and over time when we’re contracting these muscles, either through smiling or frowning, the skin that’s over the muscle will contract and it will eventually form lines and wrinkles and folds.
So here is someone who doesn’t have a lot of signs of aging, someone who’s a little younger. Then as we get older into our fifties, we can begin to see some signs of aging. And then as someone is progressively older, they’ll start to get forehead lines, bolts and more wrinkles.
In addition to wrinkles from facial expressions, gravity can cause the neck to hang down and jowling, especially around the mouth area and the skin on the cheeks and underneath the neck. The platysma bands start to form the cheeks start to sag.
And different facial expressions related to our emotions will cause different sorts of wrinkles. For example, smiling can cause crow’s feet frowning or being angry can cause these lines in between the eyebrows and cursing the lips a lot. If you were pensive, that’s an expression can cause lip lines.
The forehead is a kind of a zone of anger and frustration. The crow’s feet area, smiling. Sometimes sadness, depending the lips from overuse or estrogen loss can lose their. Plumpness and cause wrinkling the chin, if there’s a lot of fear, the chin can pucker and then jowling and the neck area frequently is a sign of cheat deficiency.
So we have emotions that can cause wrinkles cheap. Blood and body fluid are also related to the skin and how the skin looks. If the chi is deficient, you can get a withered looking appearance. If the chi is stagnant, it can block the flow of blood and fluids. So blood causing discoloration and fluids and cause puffiness, especially under the eye area.
So let’s take the liver, for example. If we’re looking at the liver system, we can see that stagnant liver blood can cause liver spots and liver blood deficiency can cause the skin to be dry. And liver cheese stagnation can sometimes manifest as anger and frustration, and this can show up in between the eyes.
So there’s a lot of different ways with our medicine to treat the emotions. A five element. Treatment. If you’re trained in five element, acupuncture can help to balance the organ systems and the emotions. Additionally, using the entry exit points on the face can be very beneficial for opening the face up, getting a smooth flow of Qi between the face and the body, between the Z and the.
Also allowing for a balancing between the organs, facial motor points can be very beneficial for treating the face, especially expression lines. And there are many muscles on the face and neck, as you can see. Some of them are listed here. This is not. A comprehensive list, but this is these are the muscles that we frequently use motor points for when we’re looking to treat some of the emotional manifestations.
Some of the, of some of the expressions. So here for example, we have the expression of anger. So here we have a relaxed face, and here we have an angry face, and you can see how the muscles get contracted. And by using the motor points or the different muscles, which are the motor points are located. The most electrically acceptable part of the muscle.
So you treat the motor point and it treats the muscle and it allows the muscle to get back into normal functioning. And this can help with not only the manifestation, the external manifestation of the emotion, but it can treat the muscle, it can treat the acupuncture point. Which helps to treat the whole person.
Many motor points on the face are acupuncture points.
This is actually an image from my book. This is from a chapter called The Anatomy of Expression. And it’s a little easier to see here. Side by side, a person making the expression, and then a split view of a relaxed face with the motor points and then the contracted muscles on the right.
Facial Gus Sha can be very beneficial for treating the skin, helping to work with fascial adhesions and tension in the face can help to sculpt the face. It’s very relaxing to the patient. It’s very calming to the spirit. I really love Jade Guha tools. I find that they tonify the skin and they help to nourish the blood.
Facial cupping is also a wonderful technique. These small glass facial cups. That are easy to squeeze, are wonderful for treating the face. And of course, when you’re doing facial cupping or facial gua, you never wanna leave any marks on the face. So if you’re going to do either one of these techniques, protocols, please get properly trained.
And everything that’s happened to us in our life gets etched on our face. Our fla, our face reflects our life story and needling the face helps to release stored trauma and can really transform the she on a very skin level. Related to what we do, but in no way a deep level or a spiritual level treatment microneedling using a device like this, a microneedle pen with microneedle cartridges. This can treat very skin level conditions on the face and on the body chest. Back and other parts of the body as well.
And here’s an example of microneedling. You can see on a very skin level, some wrinkles around the mouth. And then after a few treatments the wrinkles are gone. So if you’re interested in learning more about facial acupuncture. There’s a QR code there for my website, facial acupuncture classes.com, and you can find me on Facebook into Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
Under my name, Michelle Gellis and I have a Facebook group called Facial Acupuncture. Thank you so much.