Acupressure

You’ve probably heard of acupuncture, or seen a photo of someone receiving the treatment—looking a bit like a human pincushion, with dozens of little needles sticking out of his body.

But how much do you know about acupressure?

With acupressure, you use finger or hand pressure instead of needles. But its goal is the same as acupuncture’s: to stimulate what Chinese medical practitioners call chi—the body’s most basic healing energy.

Acupressure is the older, original technique, a Chinese home remedy that gave rise to the more “technological” approach of acupuncture. (In much the same way, the herb willow bark was the predecessor of aspirin.)

Many American physicians and health professionals say that both of these techniques are powerful methods for pain relief and disease treatment.

“But acupressure can be even more powerful than acupuncture for relieving everyday aches, pains and stress,” says Michael Reed Gach, Ph.D., director of the Acupressure Institute in Berkeley, California, and author of Acupressure’s Potent Points. Those common complaints include headaches, backaches, sinus pain, neck pain, eyestrain and menstrual cramps, he says. Acupressure can also reduce the pain of ulcers, help heal sports injuries, relieve insomnia and alleviate constipation and other digestive problems.

Another advantage of pressure over puncture is that you can do it yourself—all you need are your hands, a little knowledge and some time. It’s also cheap—free, in fact, once you’ve learned the basics. And it’s simple and safe. If you use common sense, the only thing you can do wrong is be a little too vigorous.

Ready to let your fingers do the healing? Well, before you use the acupressure remedies in this book, you might enjoy reading a bit more about the theory and practice of the technique itself. Think of the rest of this chapter as a tour of an exotic foreign country—your body, as understood by Chinese medicine and as healed by acupressure.

The Instinct of Healing

“Acupressure is as old as instinct,” says Dr. Gach. “When your head hurts, you rub your temples. When your stomach aches, you bend over and hold the place where it hurts.”

“These are ancient peasant remedies,” says Betsy Ruth Dayton, founder of High Touch Network, a professional organization in Friday Harbor, Washington, whose members practice acupressure. “Women used these techniques when their kids were sick. Neighbors gave each other treatments. They were gifts anybody could afford to give.”

These basic human impulses—to touch, to heal—were combined in China with the principles of traditional Chinese medicine, which has as its original text the nearly 4,000-year-old Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine. In that text, and over the next two millennia, Chinese doctors discovered a system of channels and points on the body that, if correctly touched or stimulated, would relieve pain and speed healing.

The traditional Chinese doctors said these channels, called meridians, were the invisible wires that conducted the body’s chi, or energy. If these channels were disturbed—if the energy flowing through them was too slow or too fast, too turbulent or too static—the body’s chi was said to be imbalanced. The goal of traditional Chinese medicine was to restore chi to a state of balance, and acupressure (along with diet, herbs, deep breathing, gentle exercises and other methods) was one of its techniques.

“If a person is totally healthy—mentally, emotionally and physically—energy will flow through the body freely, like electricity is conducted through circuits,” says Dayton. “But none of us is totally healthy. We all experience disease, injury and emotional trauma. And there are environmental assaults, too, such as air pollution and noise. You can use acupressure to rebalance or unblock the energy that flows through your body, so your body can begin to heal itself.”

And you can use acupressure not only to ease your aches and pains but also to prevent the development of illnesses, says Subhuti Dharmananda, director of the Institute for Traditional Medicine in Portland, Oregon.

You can also use acupressure to feel better mentally and spiritually, Dayton says.

How to Be a Block Buster

If a block in your body is physical, such as a swollen ankle, you can use acupressure to tone muscles and improve circulation in the injured area. As you gently press acupressure points on the ankle, the muscle tension lessens as the muscle fibers relax and lengthen, and blood flows more freely to the injury. The swelling goes down, and the pain goes away.

Pressing on the points can also free an emotional block by releasing the accumulated tension you hold in your body, says Dayton. In this book, you’ll find points on your back, near your shoulder blades, that can relieve sadness and depression and points on your wrists and in the center of your forehead that can quell anxiety, according to Ayurveda experts.

Even spiritual blocks, such as difficulty meditating, can be relieved with acupressure. Lightly holding a point at the center of your forehead just above the bridge of your nose for one minute with your eyes closed is a wonderful way to help you enter a meditative state, says Dr. Gach. And he says that pressing two points underneath the base of the skull called the Gates of Consciousness not only helps relieve headaches but also makes you more receptive to spiritual wisdom.

Those are only a few of the dozens of acupressure points. Where are the rest?

Well, imagine that your body is a big city, the meridians are the subway lines and the points are the subway stops. In acupressure, there are 14 main subway lines, with 365 stops. But don’t worry about getting lost. You’ll find simplified maps of the most important self-care points beginning on page 564.

We don’t want you to feel like an out-of-towner, however. So here’s a little bit more about meridians and points.

Go with the Flow

First, there are 12 major meridians, each of which is connected to a specific organ, such as the stomach or spleen. Six of these meridians—lung, heart, pericardium, liver, spleen and kidney—flow up the front of the body. Six others—small intestine, large intestine, bladder, stomach, gallbladder and triple warmer—run down the back. (Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of your triple warmer organ; you don’t have one. The Chinese system identifies some connections in the energy system that don’t fit the conceptual framework of Western medicine.)

There is another set of meridians, called the eight extraordinary channels, that run through the body in routes not directly related to the major organs. acupressure points are located on two of these meridians. One, called the governing channel, links the spinal column, brain and nervous system and runs from the tailbone at the base of the spine up the back and over the top of the head to the center of the upper lip. The other, called the conception channel, is linked to the digestive and reproductive systems and flows from the head to the perineum (the space between the anus and the genitals).

In this book, the names of the meridians have been abbreviated. Each acupressure point is identified by the abbreviation of its meridian and a specific number. (In Chinese medicine, the points have poetic names such as Sea of Tranquillity, Wind of Heaven and Welcoming Perfume.) So LI 4, for example, means point 4 on the large intestine meridian, while St 36 is point 36 on the stomach meridian. (For a list of these abbreviations, see “Shorthand for the Meridians.”)

You’ll find that the acupressure remedies usually combine points near the area of pain or tension with points that seem to have no obvious connection to the immediate problem. Chinese medicine calls the nearby points local points and the faraway points trigger points. Trigger points work because the meridian pathways connect the points.

Applying Pressure That’s Just Right

How do you turn your fingers and hands into healing instruments? It’s easy, but you’ll need some basic guidelines: how hard to press, how long, when to knead, when to maintain a constant, light pressure and when to rub. Dr. Gach says you always need to use both common sense and your intuition for what kind of touch you need to apply.

But the basic acupressure technique is: Use firm pressure. To apply the pressure, you can use your thumbs, fingers, palms or knuckles, depending on what is easiest and most comfortable for you. (When you’re applying pressure with one finger, the middle finger is usually the best choice, since it’s the longest and strongest.)

The general guideline, according to Dr. Gach, is that pressure should be firm enough to “hurt good.” In other words, the sensation should fall somewhere between pain and pleasure. Don’t be a masochist; the point of acupressure isn’t to cause pain. But don’t be a wimp, either; if you’re too gentle, you won’t do yourself any good.

Most acupressure points occur in symmetrical pairs—that is, one point is on the left side of your body, and the other is in the same location on the right side of your body. Both points in a pair should be pressed simultaneously, when possible. So if you’re working the Lu 1 points on your chest, for example, you should use your thumbs to press the points on both sides of your chest at the same time. Some pairs of points—such as the LI 4 points, which are located in the webbing between the thumb and index finger of each hand—can’t be stimulated this way, so you need to work first one point, then the other. “Working both sides balances your body and increases the effectiveness of acupressure,” says Dr. Gach.

To relax an area or relieve pain, first press the points gently for 30 seconds. Increase the pressure until it’s quite firm, holding it for one to three minutes. Then release slowly and gently, again taking about 30 seconds to gradually come off the points.

When you’re working on acupressure points in a large muscle group, such as the muscles in your shoulders or calves, kneading is often an excellent warm-up before using acupressure. Use your thumbs and fingers and the heels of your hands to knead the points as well as the areas around them, just like you would knead dough to make bread. But always be gentle. You don’t want to injure yourself.

Quick tapping with the fingertips stimulates muscles that are located just under the surface of the skin. Work gently on acupressure points on sensitive parts of the body, such as the face and abdomen, and on areas where there is very little cushioning between skin and bone, such as the top of the head, recommends Cindy Banker, co-founder of the New England Shiatsu Center in Boston and education director for the American Oriental Bodywork Therapy Association.

If you’re using acupressure to work on a chronic health problem or to relieve muscle tension, be persistent and consistent. Acute conditions such as a flare-up of back pain or shoulder tension may require acupressure two or three times a day. Even after you’ve obtained relief, weekly pressure point stimulation can help prevent recurrences.

Brisk rubbing in general, and especially on the acupressure points, helps increase blood flow. You can use that technique to warm up your body if you’re feeling cold, Dr. Gach says. This technique can be especially beneficial for the bedridden or for older people with sluggish circulation.

For an energizing acupressure workout, try applying pressure to a series of points for short periods of time—say, five to ten seconds each.

You don’t have to be an expert to use your hands as healing tools either on yourself or on others. A hug or a pat on the back can be shared with family and friends; so can acupressure.

“We live in a touch-deprived culture,” says Banker. “I think this is one of the reasons why we have so much domestic violence and so much depression among the aged. I’ve done treatment on elderly people who haven’t been touched in a caring or meaningful way in 30 years. You’d be amazed at how quickly the pulse decreases and how the body relaxes just a few minutes into the treatment.”