For more than two millennia, before there were doctors and allopathic medicine was born, traditional Chinese medicine was helping heal people. Compiled during and attributed to the mythical Yellow Emperor Huangdi, the Huangdi Neijing (or, Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor) contained two sections, Suwen (or Questions of Organic and Fundamental Nature) and Lingshu Jing (or, Divine Pivot), which covered what is now known as the canon of traditional Chinese medicine.
It is in Lingshu Jing that the methods of the topic of this article are birthed—acupressure. Here is a description of what acupressure is and how it can help fight pain and other ailments without medication.
What is Acupressure?
We all understand intuitively and naturally the power of trying to remedy pain through our sense of touch. After all, we feel pain through our sense of touch. For instance, we might massage pain in our shoulder with our hand. Or, we may apply pressure with fingers to the temples of our heads to abate the pain. These are forms of acupressure.
Acupressure is based on the same principles as acupuncture but without the use of needles and instead using pressure. It’s the use of light to firm finger pressure on acupoints (acupuncture/acupressure points) on the body to relieve pain and stimulate your qi (or, life energy) according to traditional Chinese medicine.
From the traditional Chinese medicine perspective, dis-ease and disease stem from living life out of balance, and the best medicine is preventative use of multiple modalities of care. So, acupressure would not be used without other forms of wellbeing practices. A frequent argument against ancient healing practices is that they don’t work in seclusion, and that’s because they were meant to be used in combination. The more research of making healthcare integrative the more we see complementary medicines like acupressure and acupuncture show substantive value in healthcare outcomes.
So, by applying pressure and temporarily suppressing blood flow to specific regions of the body, acupressure stimulates the body’s natural immune response to counteract imbalance from pain and illness.
How Can Acupressure Help?
It should be first understood that acupressure, like any traditional Chinese medicine, should not be used to replace effective care or to use as an excuse to avoid care. Acupressure is one tool in the integrative health treatment options available to you and should be used in conjunction with other care, which can include traditional Western medicine. That said, acupressure can be a great way to relieve both pain and stressors.
Pain
If you have ever had a headache, toothache or some other kind of acute pain, you may have used this technique before to alleviate the pain. You pinch the skin between the forefinger and thumb and the pain seems to dissipate into thin air. This is an easy and effective way to temporarily relieve pain without having to take over-the-counter drugs to achieve the same result.
As the video above suggests, by Michael Reed Gach, PhD, author of Acupressure’s Potent Points: A Guide to Self-Care for Common Ailments and founder of Acupressure.com, you can apply this acupressure technique several times a day to mitigate mild to severe pain you may be feeling.
Stress
Dr. Gach provides two foundational acupressure techniques in combination with breathing exercises to reduce stress. He has you press four fingers against the “Sea of Tranquility” point on your sternum (in between the grooves). If you breathe deeply and press into these acupoints, you will start to calm and relieve feelings of stress and anxiety, according to Dr. Gach.
As well, you use the yoga prayer hand post to apply pressure from the base of your thumbs against the same Sea of Tranquility point on your breastbone while breathing deeply. This useful technique can be done while seated in almost any environment to instantly transport you to a calming, stress-relieving space.
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As we discussed in our previous article, “Acupuncture: The Ancient Chinese Healing Practice” under the section entitled, “New Acupuncture Research Ushers It Into the Modern Medical Era,” we discussed the new efforts in scientific research to help us understand how these ancient Chinese healing practices of acupuncture and acupressure work to provide pain relief, balance and stress management to well and sick patients alike.
It will be through the continued integration of these ancient healing practices and study into their abilities complementing traditional Western medicine, that we will be able to fully understand how to prevent more sickness and take control of the healing process ourselves.