When you suffer from stress, anxiety, worry and aligned health conditions such as insomnia or migraine, it’s useful to know that holistic treatments such as acupressure and acupuncture can really help to ease your symptoms and create a feeling of wellness and balance once again.
Let’s take a look at how acupressure and acupuncture for anxiety & stress can be applied in a practical way, by making use of Eastern medicine and understanding more about the natural meridians and energy flows within the body.
Seven pressure points to know for bodily wellbeing:
There are seven important pressure points that natural and holistic therapists use to restore energy flow, balance and a sense of wellbeing in the body. These are:
1. Governing vessel – at the crown of the head. To stimulate it, place your fingers at the top of each ear and trace a line upwards, to the point where your two fingers meet. This regulates yang energy and can treat dizziness, headaches, insomnia and more.
2. Hall of impression – between the eyebrows or the ‘third eye’. This area calms the spirit and tackles anxiety and restlessness whilst treating insomnia and promoting a deep sense of calm. It can also be used to treat the symptoms of a cold!
3. Gallbladder or shoulder well – located in the muscle of the shoulder this is a go-to area for therapists to massage, releasing tension and stress to alleviate everything from migraines to anger.
4. Chest Centre – literally in the middle of the chest, this is great if you feel anxiety or stress in your chest. It’s a chest opener that also releases the diaphragm and regulates ‘qi’ which is known to become stuck and stagnant and cause emotional distress.
5. Spirit gate – on the inner crease of the wrists, this helps to connect with the heart meridian to treat emotional imbalance and to strengthen the blood and heart qi.
6. Spleen – or three yin cross point – located above your ankle on the inside of your leg, this helps to tackle a huge range of disorders such as sleep, emotion, urinary and digestive. It moves stagnant energy away and builds back yin energy and blood.
7. The great surge – located on the feet between your first two toes, this is the point that relieves irritability, stress and anger and regulates the flow of blood and qi to treat pain and release tension.
Using acupressure and acupuncture for anxiety & stress
Trained therapists in acupressure and acupuncture for anxiety & stress will work with these seven key areas using different techniques to release blockages and to optimize the flow of energy in the body. Although the treatments themselves may feel gentle, from light pressure work through to the application of acupuncture needles, the resulting effects can be extremely powerful and clients report a wide range of benefits that encompass the physical, emotional and spiritual.