Acupuncture for Abdominal Pain

Kathy Ana: I am Kathy Ana, licensed acupuncturist and the lead acupuncturist at Heavenly Bodies Clinic. Today we are going to be talking about abdominal pain and distress. This is something that a lot of people suffer from, some only suffer from it momentarily because they have eaten something bad and then they attributed to the bad food.

Other people suffer for years through their lives, with symptoms such as a bloating sensation, a fiery sensation going up. Maybe some epigastric pain, maybe some gurgling, something lower and may affect the large intestines, may affect belly-movements movements, may effect urination.

Its a severe and serious problem in our country today. Now, you can treat this at home, its commonly treated in acupuncture clinics because when we are treating pain, we are working with the underlying cause being, there is energy that has gathered in this place and its stuck there.

When it tries to move up, like for instance, with this patient, she has heart-burn, her pain gathers here and it starts to move up and it burns as it goes up. Now, any problem with pain in the abdominal region is going to be because the energy, for some region, is not able to either move down, as in constipation, or it is not able to move up, or its, moving up too fast and too hard.

You can deal with that at home. The acupuncture points on the abdominal region run in lines. So, we are going to identify where those lines are. Just make a line down the middle of your body, running through your belly-button and straight up.

Then, take your thumbs and mark on either side, one thumb apart, thats going to be another line and then form that line another thumb apart. That will be another acupuncture line.

Anywhere, on those lines, you are going to find an acupuncture point. So, dont worry about where those points are. Try to be fairly precise about the lines. Now, when you are pressing in, we are going to take each line on the abdomen. Lets define where the abdomen is, first, its not just here, on your tummy under, around your belly-button. Its bordered by bones, your ribs, your hips and your pubic mound.

Now that is the entire region of the abdomen and thats the entire region where you want to be working with your acupressure to get some relief. Lets take the first line, here is our middle line, our second line and our third line, which is going to be at the base of where the ribs come down and the hips come up.

Take all your fingers and press slowly down on that line, until you feel pain, stop, if you dont feel pain, just count to ten and then release slowly, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, at about that speed. Then, lets move to the next line. This line is a little longer, so, we are going to press down, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. If at any point you run into pain, stop and release. Now, moving on that same line, until we get to the pubic mound region and slowly, slowly down and slowly back up, now, what this is doing is moving the organs out of the way very gently, so its your ability to massage your internal organ.

A lot of the abdominal pain is caused by those organs sticking. They almost like stick to each other instead of sliding like they are supposed to and that causes pain. Alright, lets move on to the second step of this acupressure technique, because there are three steps involved in this. The next thing you want to do is actually stimulate the energy that runs at the surface of the body. Cup your hands and go in circles in the entire area, we already defined that area, so, you want to keep going around and around and around. So, we are making small circles in a bigger circle, all the way around. Do this until your arms are tired or you know, they can be which can be ten minutes or twenty minutes, depending on how you are feeling. By cupping your hands, you are stimulating the energy at the surface of the body, you are not pressing on the skin like you would with the traditional Swedish massage. The third step in this treatment is to direct the energy out of this area with a sweeping motion, very simply, just sweep the energy direct it down your limbs. That will move the energy out of the way and as I said, as I explained in traditional Chinese medicine, all pain is due to energy that is stuck somewhere.

Same energy, its the same problem, its stuck in your elbow, if you have elbow pain, its stuck in your shoulders, if you have shoulder pain etcetera. Now, on the abdomen you can also direct that energy out of the way, with a treatment called Gua Sha. Take any oil from your kitchen, smooth it on your abdomen, that can be olive oil, can be a baby oil, can be a bath oil that you like the scent of, smooth that on your abdominal region, take any bottle cap thats curved and thats not sharp and stroke in small movements along the abdominal area following the bones. Strokes are short and they are only as deep as they dont cause pain on the skin, over and over and over, until the skin turns pink in that area. Here you can see the slight pink tone to the skin, so, we are going to move down into the next region and continue stroking in short strokes.

Now, here we are going to follow an outward motion, because thats how the energy of the abdomen naturally flows in circle. So, follow that, right following the ribs, so, lets move here and then you can take this on your own to fix your abdominal pain and be sure and teach this technique to others, its very affective.