Facial Acupuncture: Cosmetic & Somatic Therapy in One
My favorite thing about Facial Acupuncture is that it is effective as both a cosmetic therapy and a somatic therapy. With Facial Acupuncture (aka “The Acupuncture Facelift”) you have the opportunity to improve your appearance and the health of your skin while also doing deep energetic work that is scientifically proven to improve your whole health.
Somatic therapy explores how the body expresses deeply painful experiences, applying mind-body healing to aid with trauma recovery.
Over time, we wear our experiences on our faces with wrinkles and expression lines. Modern medicine agrees with the wisdom of ancient East Asian medicine: we also ”wear our experiences” in our nervous system. A frown line isn’t just a line to be erased, but a hurt to be healed - a “shen” or “spirit” to be healed. Traditional East Asian Medicine is body / mind medicine. It is the original somatic medicine. Every energy channel has a related organ, sound, smell, taste, color, season and EMOTION. Over centuries this scientific system has developed a complex understanding of the mapping of our energy and how it links our experience of the outside world with the experience of our bodies and with our internal world (the psycho-spiritual or psycho-emotional or non-physical being).
Facial Acupuncture is not only a cosmetic or aesthetic therapy. This treatment can lift your mood while improving fine lines & wrinkles because some points used in Facial Acupuncture can treat the spirit or “shen.” This practice can also address emotions stuck in the body that create the lines. What are these lines? Expressions or expressive tensions stuck in the musculature and fascia of the face. For example:
constant consternation creates 11 lines on the forehead
grief / sadness creates frown lines and jowls
One example of this relationship between expression lines and deep emotions can be explored by understanding the point “Dicang”
“Dicang” translates to Earth Granary. It is located on the Stomach channel on the sides of the mouth where we receive “grain” or food. The name indicates that this point is a “storehouse” for what is vital to our life - what is nourishing.
Physically, Dicang is located lateral to the corner of the mouth and within the line of the naso-labial groove - within the dimple of a frown line. When an acupuncture needle is inserted into this point it causes the muscles to relax. It relaxes the Depressor muscles. The Depressor muscles are what we activate in a frown - when we feel that life is not giving us what we need. These muscles are not only used to frown, but also to SUCKLE. So, as infants, we learn to activate these muscles to receive what we need to live. There is a deeply rooted drive attached to this muscle.
By relieving this muscle we send biofeedback to the processing centers of the brain to relax and let go of not only the muscle but also the correlative emotion. Just like if you are feeling low and you force yourself to smile - the emotion softens. Though the condition that caused the negative emotion may not have changed, with the simple act of smiling we change how we store the experience in our bodies - we lighten our spirits. This is also why I will often guide a patient’s meditation with an instruction I learned from the work of Thich Naht Hanh: smile into your heart and greet every thought and every sensation with an inner smile from your heart.
Dicang is known as the energetic meeting point of the Stomach and Large Intestine (Yang Ming) channels. What does the stomach do? It digests what we physically take-in from this lifetime. What does the Large Intestine do? It releases the “garbage” we don’t need in life. The energy of this point is for processing our experiences of life in this way.
Dicang is also the energetic meeting point of the Yang Motility and Conception Vessels (extraordinary channels). The Yang Motility Vessel is the energy of stepping through life but also, in ancient texts, it is indicated in cases of "attraction to ghosts and demons" and "missing a dead relative excessively". The Conception Vessel is related to motherly energy, yin, and regulating the cycles of life. This Conception Vessel is the gathering of all the body's nourishment to serve our deepest needs, both physical and spiritual. This includes the ability to create and sustain a pregnancy, which is why the channel is often called the "conception vessel," and is an important channel for male and female fertility. So, it’s kind of a meeting point for life and death - the whole cycle - the whole experience of life.
Dicang is just one example of the profound way that Acupuncture considers the body/mind/somatic experience.
Acupuncture calms the nervous system by bringing balance to our energetic channels. This allows you to heal yourself from the energetic imbalance of trauma and stress. According to ancient texts, the health of our body and the health of our spirit are related in this way: the body houses the mind and the mind houses the spirit. So, to lighten the spirit we lighten the mind via the body.
If you have any questions about how Facial Acupuncture can work for you, please sign up for a consultation at RETREATMENT WELLNESS.
And don’t worry! You do not have to believe any of this for it to work. I have treated my share of people who were trying it as a folly but who were changed by the experience - changed with better health.