Benefits Of Acupressure

Western consumers are concerned with their reliance on painkillers and invasive medicine. Many recognize the tendency to react to mental and physical illness instead of behaving proactively to prevent disease.

Asian medicine and alternatives to Western practices look at the whole body, offering both non-invasive and preventative forms of treatment and relief from assorted problems.

Acupressure Alternative

Asian practitioners have used the art of acupressure to diagnose and treat conditions of all kinds for thousands of years. These have included inflammation, circulatory problems, mental and physical stress, sexual dysfunction, and even cancer.

Western scientists are unsure of how to regard this form of treatment but there can be no denying the positive impact of acupressure on individual clients.

Without taking pills or undergoing surgery, many North Americans testify that acupressure relieved pain and stress, improved their immunity, and helped them to sleep better after wrestling with insomnia for years. Even beauty regimens have been linked to acupressure.

What is Acupressure?

A body is covered in pressure points but there are places on one’s hands which correlate to all of them. By isolating these points, an expert can determine if there is pain in another part of the body without placing stress on that place.

These areas include the neck, spine, uterus, stomach, head, and more. Charts show how the palm and back of the hand can be divided from finger tips to near the wrist.

Using the tips of his fingers or a knuckle, an acupressurist places pressure on these points, and if there is a reaction in the correlating area of a person’s body, he can either develop treatment or even release blockages at the site or continue to apply pressure at this remote location. Trigger Point Therapy is similar but eliminates spiritual elements in the way that mere stretching is similar to yoga without reference to divine energy.

An acupressurist frees the flow of energy throughout a patient’s body, energy being electricity and circulation. His practice also incorporates emotional elements: training one to release emotional anxiety or stress. His methods are similar to those of an acupuncturist but without needles.

Complementary Practices

Acupressure can stand alone as a method of relieving stress headaches, back pain, blocked digestion, and more, but it is often regarded as a complementary therapy. Certain Asian forms of therapeutic massage would target pressure points throughout the body as identified by an acupressurist.

Acupuncture would sometimes be alternated with acupressure. Chiropractic treatment is another possibility. Yoga enhances one’s sense of internal balance, rhythm, and promotes good breathing practice. Certain non-combative forms of martial arts come alongside these routines to teach breathing, balance, and calmness of spirit while also releasing energy to circulate.

Find a Practitioner

Apart from losing money to a charlatan, being hurt by unskilled acupressure treatment is unlikely because the practice is non-invasive. The greatest damage one is likely to endure would be that an unqualified individual would miss a real condition or misdiagnose a problem.

Acupressurists do not eschew Western medicine where they see a need for it either but would encourage a dualistic approach for the best result. Seek the services of a certified, trained, and experienced person and talk to your doctor if a condition like cancer turns up during a session.

Use Self-Massaging Acupressure Tools

The other thing you can do if you want to work on a few “knots” or tight spots without going the route of seeing an acupressurist would be to use one of the many self-massage acupressure tools on the market. We are partial to the Q-Flex as we talk about here, as we originally saw on an episode of Shark Tank. But, there are certainly many others you can obtain for probably less than $50 or so. Shop around until you find the right thing for you.