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People use acupuncture to help with a large range of issues, physical and emotional. These include (but are not limited to): digestive disorders; stiff aching muscles and joints; menstrual and menopausal problems; urinary disorders; insomnia and fatigue; common cold, flu, fever, cough; headaches; nausea, vomiting, acid reflux; constipation and diarrhea; low immune functioning; stress and anxiety; healing from acute trauma such as whiplash from car accidents, or recovering from muscle strain and sprain, sports injuries, and broken bones; arthritis, fibromyalgia, back, neck, joint pain, frozen shoulder; sinusitis, bronchitis, asthma, recurring respiratory problems; infertility; sciatica; feeling overwhelmed, depressed, or having difficulty dealing with life.

Discomfort and pain are the body’s clearest language for letting us know when our lives are out of balance. As such, it is better to honor the message rather than to numb, deny, or disregard it.

Because of treating you in your entirety, it is likely with acupuncture that you’ll find that issues you hadn’t even mentioned to your practitioner also change for the better.

I use high quality, sterile, single-use, disposable acupuncture needles. They are hair-thin, and generally are not felt with insertion. Common sensations once the needles are in include warmth, tingling, distention, numbness, or pressure. If there is pain, the needle will be adjusted or removed. If an acupuncture point is unusually sensitive to needles, other techniques can be used to stimulate the point.

Most people get very relaxed during a session, sometimes even falling asleep.

If you’re wondering whether acupuncture might help you, call or email, and let’s talk.

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Acupuncture and Talk Therapy case study

In February 2000, I met with therapist “Ms. Smith”, MSW, LICSW, to explore the benefits of acupuncture and Zero Balancing in combination with psychotherapy. Over three months, I treated her client “Angela” eight times: weekly for the first five treatments and alternate weeks subsequently. Afterward, I interviewed both client and therapist.

Angela’s primary issues were: anxiety, trouble breathing, feeling vulnerable, wanting to “tell her truth” and find “where her strengths have survived”. She felt she was living at survival level, with a loss of skills, confidence, hope, vision, self-love, self-respect. She wanted to be able to say “yes” to herself and “no” to others.

This is what we found.

Ms. Smith noticed “huge, positive shifts” in how Angela approached the issues she brought to therapy while she was undergoing acupuncture and Zero Balancing treatments. “Suddenly, everything was much more manageable; Angela was centered, able to handle things. Also, she didn’t hit the depths of anxiety and depression as earlier.” She described Angela’s progress as “it used to be like going through a jungle”, while during the acupuncture treatment period this was transformed to an ability to “better negotiate internal states of mind”.

She said the supplemental therapies were “more than helpful – crucial, really important” for her client. She noticed a change in the opposite direction when the treatments ended, “a definite, clear shift, more off-balance…Angela is still doing well, but suffering more now, feeling depressed – the same presentation as before working with you.”

Ms. Smith said she would “highly recommend” this combination of therapies to other therapists and/or clients. She saw no way in which this work could be detrimental to her clients’ therapeutic processes.

After reviewing the original issues that were presented, Angela was asked about her current status with them. She said she no longer felt anxious, nor had trouble breathing; she was less vulnerable to other people’s projections and fears, and was speaking her mind “a lot more, without yelling, more calmly.” She was making improvement in finding her strengths, and did not feel she was living so much on a survival level but in fact had more confidence, faith and inner strength, and was more in touch with herself.

She found the blend of acupuncture and bodywork with her regular talk therapy to be “beyond an A+; a really important combination.” It was difficult adjusting when the treatments ended.

Angela described the benefits of adding this other therapy to the work she did in talk therapy: “The combination of steady work with you and Ms. Smith helped me get back to my original goal of reclaiming myself, and regaining a sense of humor.” She felt she had “enough clarity to find the thoughts in my mind that put things into perspective – telling my truth without hurting someone, not giving over to someone else’s power.” She added, “other people’s stuff stays outside me – that’s the acupuncture.”

Angela felt more in her body; she enjoyed thinking about her artwork and wasn’t cutting off inspiration with the former sense of hopelessness. Being more centered allowed her to “handle the developmental stages of being creative”; she had access to a “fuller process as artist and self”, with the work we did together “opening blocks that had mummified around her.”

Asked if weekly acupuncture/bodywork sessions felt sufficient, too often, or not enough, Angela replied that “given that there are cycles of feeling open to a lot of change, then needing room for integration”, she pictured something like sessions once a week for three weeks, then every other week for a few weeks, then back to weekly. Clearly, frequency is up to the individual and is always open to adjustment.

She didn’t feel that the acupuncture and bodywork sessions were detrimental or redundant to her other therapy, and recommended the combination of therapies.