When it comes to acupuncture, many think of its use for relief from physical symptoms. However acupuncture can also help to relieve feelings of stress and anxiety, too. I have many stories from clinic where emotions can have a detrimental impact on a patient’s wellbeing; interestingly this is a big issue in infertility patients. There is immense suffering in infertility and it is often not met with much understanding or sympathy. Many think, wrongly, that because these patients often are not physically unwell, they do not suffer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Perhaps the answer is in the emotional picture; the internal stress generated by something that came with an expectation of being easy, turning out to be anything but.
Chinese medicine doesn’t divide physical health and emotional health, they are considered one and the same, and one impacts the other. Different emotions, along with pernicious influences such as the wind and extreme heat are categorised as causes of disease in this system of thinking. The main emotions said to cause injury to the bodies qi (energy) and yin and yang (masculine and feminine energies) are: anger, worry, pensiveness, sadness and grief, fear, shock, craving, guilt and shame. Surprisingly even joy is considered a potentially damaging emotion if it is in excess or ungrounded
Any intense emotion, if prolonged or intense, will disturb the qi of the body and either lead to a stagnation of qi (rather like a traffic jam), a depletion of energy or a scattering of energy. All these states can potentially be problematic and lead to more serious problems.
Equally with serious illness such as cancer, MS and any illness that creates pain and anguish, acupuncture can be a fantastic treatment to give the patient both the opportunity to discuss how they are feeling emotionally, and to help them physically. In my mind there are two kinds of stress, the stress we cannot avoid and the stress of our own making. Here are some of the ways acupuncture can help:
• Through focusing on acupuncture points that help reduce sensitivity to pain and stress, as well anxiety and worry.
• By regulating the hormones serotonin, noradrenaline and dopamine. This changes the brain’s mood chemistry and can help address the physical impacts of negative emotional states.
• By stimulating the body’s own production of endorphins; these are our feel-good hormones and signal to the body that we are safe and we aren’t currently in any danger.
• Through encouraging relaxation.
Stress activates the sympathetic nervous system which creates an alertness, while acupuncture activates the parasympathetic nervous system which creates relaxation. The more regularly our parasympathetic nervous system is activated the more we naturally fall into a relaxation mode and it will become habitual. If we constantly activate sympathetic activity this also becomes habitual, constantly signalling the body that it is not safe and it must defend itself.
Emma Cannon is an integrated women’s health expert, registered acupuncturist and author. Check out more of Emma’s fantastic work at emmacannon.co.uk
