Welcome to my talk today on why cosmetic acupuncture training is important for your practice now.
Click here to download the transcript.
Disclaimer: The following is an actual transcript. We do our best to make sure the transcript is as accurate as possible, however, it may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Due to the unique language of acupuncture, there will be errors, so we suggest you watch the video while reading the transcript.
Hi. Welcome to my talk today on why cosmetic acupuncture training is important for your practice now. My name is Michelle Gellis, and I would like to thank the A- American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak to you today. I am a licensed board-certified acupuncture physician, and I have been teaching cosmetic acupuncture classes for over two decades.
Click here for the best Acupuncture Malpractice Insurance
Get a Quick Quote and See What You Can Save
And in that time, I have seen a lot of changes in our industry, and most notably now it… especially in the US, I’ve noticed a lot of the acupuncture schools are closing down, and there has been a, an absorption of our practices and some of the techniques that we use by chiropractors, medical doctors physician’s assistants, physical therapists And the end result is that a lot of people are not joining our industry because they feel that other industries are doing what we’re doing.
So what does that have to do with cosmetic acupuncture? As an educator, I have also noticed that when people are registering for my classes, by and large, one hundred percent of my students are board-certified acupuncturists. Now, when I teach in Canada, there are a few differences. We do have naturopathic students there.
But in Canada, they have different laws and rules, and their naturopaths are trained acupuncturists as well. However, in the United States, most physical therapists and chiropractors are not practicing cosmetic acupuncture. So what that means for us, those of us who are licensed practitioners or who are interested in becoming licensed practitioners, is what sort of subspecialties or what special skills can we have that will enable us to bring in patients, continue to keep our practice viable, and attract people to our practice in a reliable manner.
And so learning cosmetic acupuncture is something that not only treats the wrinkles on someone’s face, but when you learn cosmetic and facial acupuncture, you learn neuromuscular techniques, for example, how to treat TMJ or Bell’s palsy. And also, I am a Worsley trained Five Element acupuncturist, so my cosmetic acupuncture classes have a strong emphasis on treating the spirit.
And right now Especially in our country, people are moving away. There was this huge uptick in people wanting to get filler and Botox and other Western medical treatments to affect their wrinkles and their appearance, and cosmetic acupuncture can do that. However, there has been a real interest in a more natural look, not looking so frozen and filled, and they’re discovering that fillers can migrate.
If you have filler in your cheeks, it can end up down here. If you have filler under your eyes, it can actually cause festoons and puffiness under the eyes, which is not desirable. Not to mention, for the neurotoxins, there are things like droopiness, permanent neuropathy facial sagging, paralysis, and these are not desirable either.
So people wanting to maintain their ability to make facial expressions and wanting to maintain a more natural look are going to look towards acupuncturists because we specialize in lifting the face, but in a natural way. And another thing that happened during the pandemic, especially when TikTok became popular facial cupping and facial gua sha, which are an integral part of my cosmetic acupuncture classes, they became very popular on social media.
So if your patients know that you work with the face and that you are familiar with facial cupping and facial gua sha, they are going to come to you as specialists instead of just trying to do it themselves or go to someone who is less trained in order to affect these sorts of changes and have these sorts of treatments to their face so I had spoken about being a Five Element acupuncturist, and I wanted to get back to that because my Five Element training teaches me that there is a very deep connection between the meridians on our face and our emotions and our expressions and all of our internal organs.
So for example, the liver and how that’s expressed and overexpression, let’s say, of anger and where that might manifest on the face between the eyebrows. Or let’s say you’ve had a neurotoxin like Botox injected into your forehead Your inability to express what you’re feeling and how that might play out in your life.
What can that do to your organs? What does it do to your relationships with people, especially parents with children? You’re trying to express anger and you really can’t. Where does that go in your body? Where do you feel it in your body when you can’t express it? The same with a full expression of joy or grief.
Injecting toxins and paralyzing agents into the face not only affect the face, it is going to affect the entire person. So learning cosmetic acupuncture is not just important so that you can help people get rid of their wrinkles. It’s also important so that you can help someone’s overall health.
Because stagnant liver qi deficient spleen qi, or lung qi, or kidney qi, or liver blood, all of these things are going to show up right here. And this is not just carrying a meat suit around. It is a very important part of the connection between our mind and our body and our overall spirit.
And these are things that are not gonna be taught to other health professionals who might be putting needles in people. So getting back to the original purpose of this talk, why is it important to learn cosmetic acupuncture, especially now? Number one, you have a way to specialize your practice within our field.
Number two, you have a skill set that no one else is going to have. Number three, you are helping your patients not just get rid of their wrinkles or their sagginess, but you’re helping with their overall health and wellness, whether it’s their emotional wellness or their physical kind of physical wellness, the health of their organs And this is all tied together into various recorded and live trainings that I offer, and you can check them out at facialacupunctureclasses.com.
You can follow me, Michelle Gellis, on social media. And I also have a book which I don’t have a copy of with me right now, but it has sold over two thousand copies worldwide. It is a hardcover five hundred-page book on treating the face. Everything from emotional aspects to protocols, techniques, full color images, the spirit of the points on the face, and five element theory and treatments, microneedling, red light therapy, facial cupping, facial gua sha, safety, ethics.
All of these things are an integral part of learning cosmetic acupuncture and facial acupuncture, I should say. So if you are interested in this topic, you can like I said, go to my website or follow me on social. And I want to thank the American Acupuncture Council for this opportunity to speak to you today about why it’s important to learn facial acupuncture for your practice.