Flowers are more beautiful in a pain-free world..........

 Flowers are more beautiful in a pain-free world.........Update on my pain client: Prior to the beginning of treatment, he was taking 2 pain pills every 6 hours, and watching the clock for the last hour. After 1 month of treatment, 2 per week, he's taking meds every 8 hours and cut dosage to 1 1/2 pills! He is also working on some self-help to reduce appt schedule! Other nagging issues like right foot dragging, more pain with weather change has disappeared as well. Acupressure is amazing! And there are no bad side effects.

Acupressure for Pain Management

I have a young man coming to me for chronic pain.   He had an extensive surgery ten years ago, and has been on daily pain medication since then.    He had relief from the first treatment, and after 3 or 4 sessions he has been able to go 8 hours or longer between medications, even forgetting to take his med sometimes.   He has taken pain medication every six hours for years, and he told me that it had gotten so bad, he watched  the clock for his next pill.   That isn’t true anymore;  he still has to take it before the pain gets too bad, or it is harder to get it under control, but the pain isn’t the cutting sharpness that it was before, and so is more tolerable.   The challenge now is to get his body stabilized and teach him to do his own healing treatment.   Acupressure is a powerful, underutilized tool for pain management.    

Vivaxis - is your energetic umbilical cord in balance?

Acupressure is so much more than body work.   I’ve been working with some new modalities that really bring the emotional component into the work.   There is no “counseling” as such, I don’t get tearful confessions, or even know the issues:   it isn’t important to what I am doing.   But people shift, attitudes adjust, and often the client is able to move out of a pattern that has ceased to function effectively.    The most startling example is that of a woman who came to me with a myriad of symptoms – pain here or there, depression over a fading relationship that she’d been stuck in for about a year.   Her job was unsatisfactory and she had lots of “stucks.”     One of the first corrections that came up was for ‘vivaxis,’ which is a person’s connection to his/her place of birth.   

Because we have an energetic connection to our place of birth, when we live far from that place, we sometimes experience a vague sense of not belonging or dislocation.  I asked where she was born (out of state) and whether she suffered from homesickness, or any desire to return.   ‘No, not at all,’ was the reply, and it was somewhat emphatic.

We did the correction, which is a strange process, and one I hadn’t done many times.    In all, she did less than ten sessions over a period of a few weeks.

She called a few weeks after the last session and told me she’d spent a week with her family in her home state,  she’d broken off with her boyfriend and had found some job opportunities near her folks. She would be moving as soon as she could pack.   She sounded more animated than I’d ever heard, and she said she felt at peace and that this was what she’d been needing.  She thanked me and told me she knew that the Body Talk (the modality I’d used) had helped a lot.  

If a doctor told you to get acupressure therapy to decrease the healing time for a broken bone, it would decrease that healing time, and it wouldn’t be a pill that would cause mood swings or stress your heart, in fact it would help those issues.    That’s why I do acupressure.

Where’s the Research in Acupressure and Alternative Therapies?

I was searching for documented alternative therapy cases for an article.  That turned out to be a lot of work and not much reward.  Over and over I read, “results could not be reliably duplicated,”  “results could not be confirmed.”  

When a new drug comes onto the market it has been tested and reviewed ad nauseam - and a lot of money has been poured into that process.    There is a lot of research and development around drugs for the simple reason that drug companies have a lot of money to invest (and a lot of money to gain) from successful testing.  

There isn't a lot of money to invest in acupressure research.  First of all - where would you start?   There are so many modalities, all independent and often independently developed, that the research and "reproducible" elements required for documentation would have to categorized and put into a clear, concise format used by all practitioners.   That alone would require a major organizational effort, but inroads are being made.   The benefits to the health care system are easily recognized – less cost, fewer negative side effects, and increased general well-being. 

Slowly alternative therapies are being included in doctors’ rehabilitation plans.   Our local hospital, Clarinda Regional Health Center, now offers massage therapy and hypnosis, and we are investigating ways to add acupressure to the list.  This is good news on many levels, not least being that there will be more clinically documented results as hospitals and clinics around the country add more alternative therapy options.

My point is that the lack of research isn’t lack of results -  just complications in documentation.   Be your own judge and try acupressure today!

Comments to share?    Just click on the “Comments” button at the bottom,   or do you have a story to share?   Email me at  bethsteeve@gmail.com    I’d love to hear from you!

Beth Steeve, Licensed Acupressure Practitioner

Acupressure Access and Hands-On Health

www.acupressure-access.abmp.com

Every Breath You Take......

Breathing. We do it unconsciously - unless we don’t.  When we’re thinking about breathing, it’s usually because something is wrong.  But how does it really work?  Just a quick primer.   The inhale floods the lungs with oxygen which is then absorbed by the alveoli (tiny air sacs) and ultimately transported throughout the body via the blood in the circulatory system.   This oxygen exchange is the energetic foundation of life. Our molecular bodies are bundles of frequencies, from the low, denser frequency of bones to the highest frequencies which are comprised of our emotions and thought processes.  John Veltheim explains in The Body Talk System® that with every exhale the brain scans all of the body systems held within the lower frequencies.   As we inhale the higher frequencies are scanned. This scanning process alerts the brain to malfunctions within the frequencies of the body, and the brain sends healing to the malfunctioning area.   If this sounds futuristic, Veltheim has a lot of support in the quantum physics camp.   Since I know nothing about quantum physics, I will plod on.   When in pain,  a person tends to breathe more shallowly, which in turn short circuits the scanning process and the brain does not get the message of malfunctioning so it can send the troups to start the healing cycle.  So why am I going on and on about this?   Take a few moments every day and consciously breathe.    Mary Burmeister of Jin Shin Jyutsu, Inc. advocates 36 conscious breaths a day - all at once or in 4 series of 9 throughout the day. (See my note on Facebook/Acupressure Access.)  Deep breathing is the key to better health and the natural healing process that is our birthright.   For more information, this process is explained in depth in the book The BodyTalk System available on John Veltheim’s website   www.bodytalksystem.com  In my sessions, I've found BodyTalk®, an innovative light-touch therapy, to be an amazingly effective addition to my work.   For more information, call or email me:   bethsteeve@gmail.com or (712) 542-1100!   Come see for yourself!

Why Acupressure?

Acupressure:  the Portal where Mind, Body and Spirit Connect.

 Many alternative healing practices have been in use prior to the birth of Christ.   All alternative therapy forms -  whether it is acupuncture, acupressure, aromatherapy, herbology, reflexology or massage -  have survived many changes in political and social climates and the associated validation, or not, by those in power.   
 Currently there is an up-swelling of interest in alternative medical practices for many reasons, including but not limited to, the absence of negative side effects as well as a whole-body sense of well-being.  
 If your symptoms respond to an acupressure treatment, it is a gentle therapy that doesn’t hurt, doesn’t require your liver or kidney to process a medication, doesn’t conflict with another system in your body, doesn’t create an addiction for which you must suffer withdrawal – to name only a few benefits.  If you request treatment for a backache, you may find that your diarrhea also goes away, or a nagging leg cramp disappears.   Don’t be surprised if you complain of shoulder pain, and your shoulder is never touched in the treatment.   The definition of “pressure point” is a place in the body that has a direct link to, or acts on, another part of the body.    It is time for our medical community to take a serious look at Acupressure as another healing alternative.