Back in the spring, I demonstrated how to use gua sha to alleviate a cough or shortness of breath and to improve lung health. This tool also has the ability to alleviate muscle tightness!
In this video here, I have a patient who came in with ankle pain and lateral lower leg pain. The source turned out to be a trigger point in the Peroneal Longus muscle. Trigger point therapy can be very intense for some people, so gua sha is an excellent tool to use to loosen muscles up for those that are sensitive.
Gua sha smooths the fascia that encases the muscle allowing the muscle to expand and relax more easily and it pushes lactic acid out providing pain relief in the area. Gua sha also breaks up blood stagnation in that muscle promoting better blood flow to the area.
If you are highly sensitive to needles or trigger point therapy – that’s okay! Gua sha can be a great tool for you as it’s effective, but more comfortable.
Alyx Soesman, Acupuncturist
ead, known as the occipital region. It can also make an already tight neck feel much more painful. Often it feels like all you need is to be cupped or needled in the neck and upper back…but that would only make it worse, because it would increase blood flow to the head. An acupuncturist knows this and will instead do mostly grounding points in the feet to alleviate the headache. This brings more blood flow down to the feet and away from the head, which brings relief. The feet points are called Ba Feng, which means the 8 Winds, which alludes to the way wind is a pathogenic force that can invade and damage the body in different ways. For example “internal wind” in Chinese medicine can damage the body, and a stroke is considered a form of internal wind.
Acupuncture Nirvana 