✨How to Maximize Your Health Benefits Using Acupuncture✨
/An Ancient Medical System
Chinese Medicine has been practiced for thousands of years and treats a wide range of conditions and imbalances.
From the common cold to chronic or acute pain, internal disorders such as gastrointestinal complaints, chronic headaches, sinus issues, asthma and allergies, or any of the numerous physical presentations that result from early developmental trauma or autonomic dysregulation, the Chinese Medicine paradigm offers an ancient system and a therapeutic model that can get you relief and results.
How to Best Utilize Acupuncture + Get Results
I try to connect with every new patient before we begin our work together to talk about expectations and how to best utilize Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine to leverage results.
If you are brand new to Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, OR if you are returning to it after many years, OR if you have a particular goal for your own wellness that has been part of your life for years, it is best to schedule consistent appointments (usually once weekly) for a length of time in order to both:
1) Provide you with enough support to create some level of change
and
2) Get sufficient feedback from you and your body about how Acupuncture is helpful to you over time
I recommend that you plan, at the very least, for 4 weeks in a row of once weekly treatments in order for us to determine:
"How is this helpful?",
"What do you notice after your treatment?"
"Did you get any relief and for how long was relief maintained?"
"Did you experience any negative side effects?"
I like to let people know up front: there is so much room for creativity in terms of how I approach your treatments with Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine.
If something is not working, I have a lot of tools and a lot of options for what we do next. You are always part of the conversation. If you experienced an unpleasant side effect or no relief as a result of treatment it is not your fault. That is actually diagnostic and tells us where to go next and what to try next time. It can also provide us both with a level of understanding of what you are currently processing in life or in your lived history and we can support that. I am always inclined to recommend additional professional supports where they feel appropriate, as well.
If everyone gave themselves 8-12 weeks of once weekly Acupuncture to support a particular goal (if you need to miss a week here or there, everything will be fine!), everyone's experience of their symptoms, their own lives, their own energy and their own stress response would be palpable.
Time + Consistency
If you are trying to improve your health, change habits or establish a routine that most nurtures you to do your work in the world, you may have noticed that consistency over time is the most effective approach to sustainable change and ACTUAL change over time. Most things do not change overnight.
I always tell patients "I'm available for a miracle!" and I am! It is rare but I have seen certain people feel markedly better after one Acupuncture treatment.
Conceiving of how best to apply Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine (and any of the Holistic Modalities), is a lot like how you would apply exercise or nutrition: you don't do fitness once or eat your vegetables one meal per week in order to maintain health or meet a goal - it's an action you take near daily in order to produce results over time.
While you don't need to get daily Acupuncture treatments (bless!), the same framework applies: consistency over time yields better results that last. It can take a long time for a symptom to develop or a tissue change to occur in response to a repetitive pattern or chronic stress or inflammation. It actually is less therapeutic to engage in an intense activity or "cathartic" therapy in order to unwind or rearrange whatever is going on in your body or to heal whatever trauma(s) you may have experienced.*
Offering your body and your nervous system gentle support over time will create lasting change that you can carry forth into your community, your career, your relationships and your own experience of your physical body.
*This is my professional opinion based in the academic and therapeutic trainings I have pursued in my professional career and my clinical experience over the past 17 years. This statement excludes things like necessary surgeries, certain types of complex medical conditions and of course emergent presentations.
Nurturing Clarity
Once we have a well-rounded idea about how Acupuncture is useful to you and your presentation and once you feel well-supported enough to maintain the relief you are seeking, a once per month treatment regimen is a wonderful maintenance routine.
You've heard me say this many times before: coming in around the Solstices and Equinoxes is a great time to seek support. Conditions that were once well-managed will often flare or return around the changes of the season.
And also, sometimes there are "seasons of life" or moments in time when we require more supports and more consistent support to either "break even" energetically or to help ourselves function optimally in our day to day routines.
Clarity is such a gift. When we amass enough experience with any body-based modality, we can make a much more informed choice about how to employ it for our greatest good and our own well-being. It becomes a tool we can utilize at any time with any frequency in order to support ourselves in the present moment but that also carries us forth into the future.
Also: Late-Summer Energetics!
Come the 3rd week of August, we will enter a different Elemental Season in the Chinese Medicine paradigm, that of the Earth Element which corresponds to the organs of the Spleen and Stomach.
Here is the link to a Blog Post I wrote in 2019 regarding the Spleen and Stomach and the Season of Late Summer in the event that you might be curious or want some perspective and tips to support yourself.
It is a wonderful time to receive support before the school year starts and as we begin to move towards the Fall Equinox!
Sending you all well-wishes <3
Warmly,
Katie Fritz