What Are Acupuncture Points?
You might be familiar with Acupuncture as an ancient healing art…
You might have heard of how it can help with various aches, pains, and other symptoms…
But what about the points themselves? To many people’s curiosity, they wonder, “are they even real?”
The short answer: yes. Read on for some scientific & personal insights into the properties these points hold…
What Are They?
Think of Acupuncture points as 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒑𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒔 to the nervous system activating your body’s innate healing mechanisms when stimulated with single-use, sterilized, hair-thin needles.
Whereas skeptics quickly disregard them or the meridians they’re mapped along as imaginary, they’re as much a part of our anatomy as any other feature.
Research has identified Acu points as precise anatomical landmarks with higher concentrations of vasculature (blood vessels), superficial (sensory) nerve fibers, and oxygen pressures.
This makes them highly conductive (albeit mini) epicenters that are exceptionally effective at delivering information from the peripheral nerves to the brain and central nervous system versus other sites along the body. In other words, they’re real.
MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), Infrared methods as well as CT scans and Ultrasound have all verified their existence, each highlighting their unique structural properties and effects seen in the cascade of physiological responses initiated upon placement.
From a biomedical lens, Acupuncture stimulates the production of neurotransmitters endorphins, and numerous other endocrine compounds.
As a result, this is it is known to invigorate circulation, clear inflammation, improve your stress response/mood, and regulate hormones ~ influencing your whole health & being simultaneously.
That’s a lot from such little points.
Well, they’re multifaceted in nature…
What Do They Do?
When skillfully placed, they are not only influencing the local area of the body and meridians they are mapped over, but the internal organ system plus–stay with me here–the emotion and embodied sentience/spirit related with that organ too.
Physically, this is why Acupuncture is such a naturally effective yet gentle therapy for all kinds of physical health concerns. Metaphysically, this is why it is just as a potent of a non-pharmaceutical option for Mental & Emotional Health too.
Afterall, TCM is an ancient mind-body medicine.
There is no separation. Just expressions of energy on a spectrum from material to ethereal.
And herein lies why I think of the points as PORTALS…
How Do They Promote Healing?
Each of the hundreds of points has its own unique function - its own coding that tells the body what to heal and where.
But how to heal? The body remembers. That knowing dwells in the chamber of your bones.
It is etched into the stories contained in the spirals of your DNA. Your essence.
Acupuncture merely increases your access to this ability & awareness of your unique cosmology.
It offers this intrinsic reassurance that it is safe to shift into a state where it can relax… restore… reintegrate…rebalance…
where it can heal.