Flehrad's Operating Plant, Morgue, Range and Dojo: Acupuncture Session

My sister-in-law Emily is a trained/qualified acupuncturist and she gave me some treatment today for my wrist. She asked the usual questions of how it hurts, where it hurts, what I had been doing to it and so forth. She also palpate my wrist similar to the doctor, but harder and more specifically than the doctor did. I personally feel that the doctor earlier in the week really rushed through it, trying to whittle through the patients so he could go on his lunch break or something...

Anyway, she set about the task and put in four needles into me, two on my wrist, one on my thumb and one on my forarm near the elbow. After she did that, she lit a moxibustion stick and heated the pins up with the radiant heat. While all of this was happening, I thought I'd ask a few questions about it all.

In terms of accuracy, it depends on your school of learning. In Japanese acupuncture, they do what is called shadow acupuncture. They stick the needles in lightly and allow the needles to fall flat and tape them on as long as the needle tip is in the meridian. This kind requires you to be very accurate in positioning. The Chinese method sticks the needles deeper so that they can stand up on their own (as you will see in my pictures) and this means that you don't have to be as accurate since the needle depth will cause the effect as long as it is in the meridian of flow.

In terms of the moxibustion, it is made of mugwort plant, and the heat is used to heat the needle so the needle gets hot and transfers the heat to the meridian. The pins don't actually hurt going in unless for two reasons, one you hit a pore, and two the needle isn't as sharp as it should be, which depending on the manufacturing process is not uncommon for one every hundred to not be as sharp as the rest. But once it's in, while they wiggle it about, it can hurt. The needle sizes also differ too, with slimmer and thicker for different parts of the body and flow. The three in my wrist/hand were the small ones, and then the one in the arm was the big one. The needles have a plastic tube slip once you remove them from the hygiene sealed packet (1 needle/packet slot, like pharmacuetical pills). The tube is placed over the point of insertion. A blue stopper is removed and a light tap/flick of the finger, and voila, needle is in. Slide the tube off and then wiggle/push/twist the needle in as deep as required. ~cringe~ XD

Post treatment, I am still feeling weakness in the arm, and this apparently is normal, possibly because the chi flow has been disrupted somewhat. I was also told that you will see redness on the skin, from the treatment and the longer the redness lasts post needle removal, the better because it means the stimulation of chi flow is still ongoing. For me, I had quite a bit of redness running in a 1cm wide band or so from my forarm extensors down to the wrist, and it hung around for about fifteen minutes or so, and while there is a tinge now (about nearly 2 hours later) it's not visible as anything. My wrist does feel less stiff now, but that's not much of an indicator.

I was told to just keep resting it and it does seem to be just over-use, and unless I have to train, don't. I should also keep it in a brace or wrist support if I can and the heat isn't too much of an issue. She'll come back and give me another treatment in a fortnight the next time she's over for lunch if I want it, if I need it, unless I come to her if I need it earlier.

So here are the pictures: Out of all of them, three was taken by me with just my right hand (obviously) and one was taken by my father, the closeup of the three on my hand/wrist.