Patients become their own miracle workers
Acupressure eases pain, muscle tension, anxiety
To aid a young boy in critical condition from an asthma attack, Jill La Rue, RN, CMT, NB, a holistic health practitioner with Earth Touch in Stillwater, MN, was asked to perform daily acupressure. She did acupressure and massage for 10 days, and the boy walked out of the hospital in two weeks. This patient happened to be under the care of a pulmonologist who frequently uses La Rue’s services for his pediatric asthma patients.
However, La Rue doesn’t simply use her skills to ease wheezing and shortness of breath. She teaches the children where the acupressure points are on their own bodies and how to apply pressure to these points for relief. "If you give a child a job or information that somehow makes him feel like he can make the situation better, that is very empowering," says La Rue. She also teaches the patient’s family members how to use acupressure to help ease and prevent asthma attacks.
Acupressure benefits patients who take the time to practice it regularly. The benefits become very noticeable if the patient incorporates acupressure into his or her lifestyle, states La Rue. That is why it is important to give patients the skills to use it on a daily basis, she says.
Michael Reed Gach, PhD, director of the Acupressure Institute in Berkeley, CA, agrees that acupressure is best used as a holistic treatment rather than simply for symptomatic relief. For example, if a person has temporomandibular joint syndrome, acupressure will relieve their jaw clenching and pain but also can be used to prevent those episodes and retrain and rebalance the body. Once the muscle has been retrained, acupressure can be used for maintenance.
"It’s important for practitioners interested in practicing holistic health to learn how to give their patients the tools to help themselves. Then the patient is a team member instead of just a passive recipient," says Gach. (For information on how to teach health care workers to instruct their patients on acupressure, see editor’s note at the end of this article.)
An integral part of Chinese medicine, acupressure is related in principle to acupuncture, in which needles are applied along these same points (known as acupoints) instead of pressure. The Chinese believe that both these techniques establish a balance of energy they refer to as qi (pronounced "key"). Qi flows freely through the body along meridians. When qi is blocked, the energy is imbalanced and illness or an ailment of some sort occurs. Pressure applied to acupoints along the meridians restores the flow of energy so it is balanced and the body is then able to heal. (For more information on acupuncture, see Patient Educa tion Management, July 1999, pp. 79-81.)
"You would use acupressure when the electromagnetic current is blocked due to accident, injury, stress, trauma, or anything unnatural that happens to the body," says Shaun Brown, LCMT, owner of Be Well, a Sacramento, CA-based private massage and acupressure practice.
Acupressure works for a variety of ailments, says La Rue. It can be used to ease anxiety problems such as panic attacks and pain such as low back pain or headaches. It also can be used to boost the immune system when a person is feeling tired.
Muscular tension often implicated
Putting pressure on acupoints relieves a multitude of common complaints, many of which are related to muscular tension in the body, says Gach. For example, a person with asthma who is wheezing and having trouble breathing often has certain muscles that tense and restrict the respiratory system. The same is true for other health problems such as menstrual cramps and carpal tunnel syndrome.
"With carpal tunnel syndrome, there are specific tendons and muscles in the wrist area that develop chronic, muscular tension and restriction, and the acupressure points can be used to retrain those muscles and relieve the pain and pressure," explains Gach. In addition to relief of muscular tension, acupressure can be used to relieve pain, increase circulation, and prevent common ailments, he says.
While acupressure works best if patients learn how to use it regularly, in order to become self-sufficient it is good to start with a person trained in acupressure and master the skills during therapy, says La Rue. For example, La Rue sees young asthma patients once a week for four to six weeks while having the family practice acupressure daily. After that time period, the situation is evaluated.
"I tell parents to have a routine and set aside 20 minutes to do acupressure daily and they will see a difference within two to four weeks," she says. (For information on finding a good practitioner, see source contact information at end of article.)
It’s wise for people to learn self-acupressure from their practitioner or from a trained professional at a workshop so they can learn how to apply the pressure correctly, agrees Brown. She teaches clients during sessions and also regularly conducts classes. "It is the difference between taking a class on hair-cutting and having someone cut hair so you can watch. You need to learn how to breathe correctly if you are going to relieve tension on yourself," she explains.
(Editor’s Note: Michael Reed Gach, PhD, Director of the Berkeley, CA-based Acupressure Institute, conducts training workshops for health care professionals on acupressure and how to teach patients self-acupressure skills. The course is $195 per person if fees are paid in advance and $225 if not. There must be 18 or more professionals enrolled in a workshop before Gach will travel to the institution to teach.
Courses on acupressure are available at the Institute as well. These include advanced acupressure training programs in pain management, women’s health, and emotional balancing including dealing with trauma, abuse, and emotional imbalances.)
You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
- Award-winning Medical Content
- Latest Advances & Development in Medicine
- Unbiased Content