Anxiety is a part of life, one that virtually everyone experiences at one time or another. At times, anxiety is an appropriate and natural response, while at other times, it can be intense, persistent, and altogether out of proportion with the severity of your stressors.
When anxiety and panic attacks start to rule your life, it’s time to take action. Dr. Ziyang Zhou, L.Ac. of Pine Mountain Chinese Acupuncture & Herb Clinic in Austin, Texas, treats anxiety and stress using Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) techniques, including acupuncture.
Acupuncture uses lines of energy running through your body. Think of the circulatory and nervous systems as biological networks that interconnect from head to toe.
This makes it easier to understand how meridians work and how a needle or pressure in one part of your body can affect conditions in another part. Symptoms for various conditions, including anxiety, result when your body’s energy, called Qi, gets blocked or restricted as it moves through your system.
TCM techniques like acupuncture act to release these restrictions so your body is better able to balance itself, in this case, reducing the negative responses created by anxiety and stress. Acupuncture helps in three ways. Let’s examine these.
Acupuncture for anxiety produces some physical changes to your body that counter the chemical conditions that drive the negative effects of stress, causing your symptoms.
A TCM treatment moves your body out of a chronic state of “fight-or-flight.” The parasympathetic nervous system releases cortisol in response to stress, along with other stress hormones. Acupuncture regulates these levels to balance the chemical reasons for anxiety.
In response, you start to breathe more deeply, your heart rate slows, and you feel more grounded, conditions that help you break the anxiety cycle and regulate yourself. Adding breathwork and mindfulness practices can boost and extend the effects of your acupuncture treatment.
In TCM, anxiety connects with the concepts of imbalance and stagnation, engaging the heart, liver, and spleen meridians. Dr. Zhou stimulates appropriate acupressure points with needles to release tension and irritability and simultaneously stabilize your mood.
This, in turn, can improve your sleep quality, itself a terrific anxiety fighter, as well as relieve the digestive issues that can accompany anxiety. Acupuncture for anxiety treats you on a whole-body basis, not simply the mental aspects.
When you feel physical pain or tension, it adds to your stress burden. Normally, you can navigate these occasional episodes, but on top of anxiety, the stress load could seem insurmountable.
An acupuncture session relaxes tight muscles and boosts blood circulation, two key factors in reducing discomfort and helping your body refresh itself. Inflammation subsides, and digestion improves, other key factors that tie into regulating your mood. Acupuncture interrupts the physical stress/mental stress spiral.
Contact Pine Mountain Chinese Acupuncture & Herb Clinic to learn more about acupuncture for anxiety. Book a consultation online or call our office to schedule your visit today.
