Acupuncture for Headaches

Kathy Ana: I am Kathy Ana, I am a licensed acupuncturist and the lead acupuncturist at Heavenly Bodies Clinic. Today we are going to be talking about, how you can help yourself, if you are suffering form depression.

The bodys energy is all part of what Traditional Chinese medicine treats. Acupuncture using needles is a valuable source for treating depression, but you can treat yourself at home as well, using the acupuncture points, with acupressure and I have a patient here today who is suffering from depression.

I am going to show you on her, where it is that she can treat herself for the depression. The acupuncture points are very easy to find, on your scalp, at the corners of your hairline and typically your hairline will go down and come up at the point at the corners where it comes up, each one of those points, right in the hairline, just a tiny bits is the acupuncture point.

Then, you go directly in the center of the scalp, at this hairline again thats another acupuncture point. Then, divide this point at the center from the point at the corner of the hairline, midway is the other acupuncture point that we are going to be using.

So, there are one, two, three, four, five points that we are going to be using acupressure for depression. Now, when depression causes different symptoms in different people, sometimes it causes fatigue, other times that causes obsessive thinking where you are just having the same thoughts over and over again.

Sometimes its in the morning, sometimes its in the evening. So, whatever your depression is, you can treat it with these points and you want to take your fingers and just press on those points and hold. Press hard enough that you can feel your fingers creating a slight indentation in your scalp and you can feel it actually on the bone and hold that point, under your fingers, you will begin to feel a pooling of energy.

When you release slowly, the energy will begin to flow through the acupuncture meridians and the points that go around the head and wrap and down into the face, relieving some of the tension from your head internally as well.

So, those were the points at the outside edges. Lets move in to the points midway and do the same process and hold, again, and use your strongest fingers. If you are pressing on yourself, you may even have noticed that you get some relief, if you just take your hand and press like this.

That is using acupressure, its a wonderful technique. When you are laying down, you have a bit more of a relaxation attitude and thats very good as well. If you can get a friend or a spouse or another caring person, to help you with this treatment, thats even better. Alright, lets add a second step to this and turn; we are going to look at, where the hairline follows, again, we want to be just in the hairline on the boney ridge at the back of your scalp. Its called occipital ridge, just follow along, anywhere along that ridge, you are going to find relief, if you just hold, press, keep that pressure on there nice and tight and slowly release.

You will be able to feel the energy begin to flow through that area. The meridians wrap the head many times over and there are lot of points on the head that communicate that energy to the brain. Thats what we want to resolve, we want to get that energy moving through the body to resolve any trapped thoughts in your head. Then, you can continue to move around the occipital ridge, you may notice that your finger will naturally fall into certain areas, where there is a depression in the bones and thats definitely an acupuncture point, thats definitely a place that you want to press, nice and firm, using whatever finger on your hand is the strongest. Depending on the position, sometimes a thumb is stronger. I am noticing as I am demonstrating on this patient that when I get to the occipital ridge, my middle finger is much stronger, much easier and much more comfortable to use in this position.

And thats how you can treat yourself for depression.