Trauma and Acupuncture

This morning, my husband and I took a long walk with our dog, Yoda, in the nearby forest.  We were observing different types of trees in the forest, and with somewhat child-like mind, I asked him “How do you think people figured out which wood to use for what purpose?” and my husband simply said “By just trying”. 

Acupuncture is just like that!  One of the things I often hear is that people don't understand how acupuncture works...and yet it makes a difference in their lives.  People have studied, done clinical trials and compiled data over the past 3,000 years. 

If people figured out that cedar is one of the best materials to use for roofing because of its durability and resistance to weather conditions, I’d like to invite you to use the same approach of using acupuncture for helping emotional and physical difficulties caused by trauma. 

As you consider whether you’d be willing to try it or not, let me try to give you a bit of a picture of how acupuncture relates to trauma.

Understanding Trauma from a Traditional Chinese Medicine (“TCM”) Perspective

Dr. Paul Conti, M.D., a psychiatrist, former Chief Resident at Harvard, and expert in treating trauma, talks about trauma as not anything negative that happens to us, but something that overwhelms our coping skills, and then leaves us different as we move forward.  Trauma is anything that causes us emotional or physical pain.

From the perspective of Chinese medicine, trauma disrupts the communication within one’s body, mind, emotions, and spirit, creates disharmony, scatters, stagnates or exhausts the Qi (life force) and inhibits our innate ability to maintain regulations. 

Chinese medicine, particularly acupuncture, can help reconnect your disturbed energy pathways, meridians.  It honors the deeper innate intelligence of your body by working below the level of cognition and helps you feel more present and self-aware. 

Trauma is an energetic disorder, and acupuncture is an energetic medicine for it.

Untreated Trauma, Generational Suffering and the Role of Acupuncture

There was an experiment conducted by Dias and Ressler (2014), examining how the trauma associated with olfactory (i.e. sense of smell) experience of parent mice might influence their offspring. 

The parent mice were conditioned to fear when they smelled cherry blossoms by exposing them to electrical shock, and this fear changed the organization of the parent mice’s nose, leading to more cells that were sensitive to that particular smell.  This structural alteration was also found in the succeeding generations when the mice were exposed to the cherry blossoms smell, they were startled as if they had received an electrical shock. 

This experiment is a part of a larger epigenetics study – a study of how behaviours and environment can cause changes that affect the way genes express.  According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, epigenetic changes are reversible and do not change DNA sequence, but they can change how body reads a DNA sequence.  Epigenetic changes can influence the growth of neurons in the developing brain as well as modify the activity of neurons in the adult brain.  Together, these epigenetic changes in neuron structure and function can have a marked influence on an organism’s behaviour.  

In lay terms, this means that this study shows that we are able to change our response to certain triggers.  We don’t have to be stuck in a specific pattern or rut when it comes to how our body and emotions respond to traumatic events and triggers.

From a TCM perspective, when trauma is not addressed, understood and resolved, you can pass it down to the next generation in the form of “essence” through the meridian system called the Eight Extraordinary Vessels (“8 EV”) which are the precursor of all other meridians.  The 8 EV being the only active vessels up until the moment of birth, it contains all the generational information that has been imprinted in our prenatal level of existence.  During the process of letting any intergenerational trauma go, the 8 EV can help us to bring the impact of this generational transmission into consciousness.  When you can see the information regardless it being a burden or a gift, you can choose whether or not you want to continue to live our lives through that history.  The 8 EV serves us as a link to your original nature and destiny. 

Trauma-Informed Acupuncture

This is where a trauma-informed approach to acupuncture comes in.  As a trauma-informed practitioner, I approach each client with a curiosity about your body, mind and lived experience.  I am always curious about trauma events that you or your parents have experienced and how that might be showing up in your body.

There’s a tendency of strong self-protective response in the body of trauma survivors.  For some of them, physical touch might not be an inviting treatment.  On top of that, using needles during the acupuncture treatment could be viewed as an invasive method of healing.

This is why a trauma informed approach is very crucial during the acupuncture treatment so that the healing is being promoted without re-traumatizing clients.

What is trauma informed acupuncture look like?

·       Understand you as a whole rather than a set of symptoms

·       Validate your needs

·       Clear communication on treatment options and procedures that you can choose depending on your comfort level and boundaries

·       Customize a specific approach for you that might experience nervousness and anxiety

·       Collaborate with you to support the healing journey

·       Empower you through mind-body connection 

 Why Choose Acupuncture as a Part of Your Healing Journey?

"Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything.  Maybe it is about un-becoming everything that isn't really you so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place." By Paulo Coelho.

This quote represents my personal experience and belief in healing journey.  It is not about fixing you with medicine or special procedures.  The journey is about accepting who you are in the moment and realizing the essence of who you are in every experience. 

Acupuncture solely depends on the innate intelligence of the body-mind-spirit.  It is one of the most natural modalities that has been consistently practiced and developed over the history that aims to help you to be who you are meant to be in the first place.

As a trauma-informed acupuncturist it is my goal to help you reach your goals for physical and emotional wellbeing in a way that works best for you.  I would like to invite you to be curious about how acupuncture might help you.  Just like those people who figured out what tree to use for different functions, come and see if acupuncture is one of the ways you want to use to move you forward.  I offer acupuncture in Langley and Surrey, and have immediate availability right now.  Why not book your first session today?

1.      Parental olfactory experience influences behaviour and neural structure in subsequent generations by Brian G Dias and Kerry J Ressler Nat Neurosci 17, 89–96 (2014).

2.      The Eight Extraordinary Channels of Classical Chinese Medicine Lecture Part 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 by Jeffrey Yuen from ACCM on December 31, 2018 on Vimeo