Leta Herman's Alchemy Healing Center - Acupuncture and Acupressure
Transformational Energetic Healing through Acupressure and Acupuncture
Treatments
Treat a Person as They Appear to Be, and You Make Them Worse.
But Treat a Person as if They Were What They Potentially Could Be, and You Make Them What They SHOULD Be.
- Goethe
The Alchemy Healing Center will help you achieve better health but more than that, we focus on helping you reach your full potential. When someone is in pain, it’s imperative to make them feel better first and foremost. After the pain is gone, do you return to the life that created the problem? Or do you grow and evolve your life so you don’t create future pain? Alchemy is the process of cultivating yourself to become a better person. Treatments are geared to addressing the trauma and pain (if it’s present) with the goal of moving on from the pain into a better, more fulfilling life. We recommend first-time clients come in for a one-hour Energetic Acupressure or Acupuncture consultation session to start. Subsequent treatments are usually one-hour sessions. However, Ling Shu Alchemy treatments take a half day (4-6 hours). Please click on one of the treatments above, or scroll down to read more about the types of treatments we provide.
The Nine Stages Of Alchemy
WHAT ARE THE NINE STAGES • WHAT IS ALCHEMY • TREATMENTS
"The Nine Stage of Alchemy take you on a journey of self-cultivation with the goal of helping you truly fly in your life and live your full potential."
What Are The Nine Stages Of Alchemy?
The Nine Stages of Alchemy are a set of linear directions developed by the ancient Chinese Alchemists. The stages are a set of directions… telling you to go left here, right here, etc. I learned them from Dr. Jeffrey Yuen, an 88th generation Daoist priest, and then practiced them on myself and with others for many years in my clinic.
I like to think of the Nine Stages as a spiritual evolution roadmap to a destination with specific directions that say… “Turn right here. Turn left here.” It’s not the only way to get to the destination, but it works. It’s a proven way to get there. The ancient Chinese Alchemists put out all the signposts for us, so why not follow those signs instead of create our own? Buddha created his own path. And that’s fine. It’s not easy or everyone would have done it by now. But if Buddha did it, anyone can theoretically do it that way.
Me? I like the signposts. I like a little linearity. “First do this. Then next do this. Third do this.” These steps can be done in any order theoretically, but in this particular order, everything goes very smoothly.
The Stages of Alchemy have changed my life completely. It’s hard to explain without describing the whole process, but it’s an evolutionary process. It asks you to walk through doors fearlessly—doors that open up new worlds to you, but are difficult to explain or describe to anyone.
What Is Alchemy?
Alchemy can mean many things to many different people. But the Chinese Daoist masters believed that people are like gold—that their spirits can never tarnish and disintegrate like other base metals, such as silver. Even though most people believe we all will eventually grow old, decrepit, and die, these Chinese masters believed humans could become physically immortal!
The Nine Stages Of Alchemy Treatments
We Generally Recommend The 9 Stages Of Alchemy Treatments In The Following Situations:
- When you want to put yourself first in your life but life feels like it’s getting in the way
- When you want to enter the mystery of life
- When life is going really well but you feel like there has to be something more to life
- When you want to really fly in your life and realize your full potential
- Sometimes alchemy is appropriate near the end of life or in cases of severe illness
The Alchemical Stages take you on a journey of self-discovery, a transformative process, opening your portals to see and experience the world differently, so that you don’t need to die and be reborn to experience the innocence of a child.
The Alchemical Stages Include:
- Stages 1-3: Clear out the baggage of this lifetime and anything you brought into this life (genetics, past-lives, etc.) Release rebellious qi so that you can stop fighting for your heart’s desire and start allowing it to be easy.
- Stages 4-6: Change your perceptions so you can fly in your life. Metaphorically, flying is about really living your full potential. The Immortals were purported to actually fly from mountain to mountain in China.
- Stages 7-9: Retreat from the world. Overcome time and space. These stages are for those who are ready to remove themselves from everyday life.
The Alchemical Stages do not have time-based schedules. It is simply entering into the mystery and walking that road. It could take months, a year, or lifetimes. We are in dialogue about where you are in the process. And the process is simply a map of a path that was created by Chinese masters long ago. It may be a path you follow exactly, or you may create your own path.
Ling Shu Alchemy Treatments
THE THIRTEEN GHOST POINTS • THE NINE HEART PAINS • INTERNAL HEART BLOCKWILL BLOCK • MA DA YANG'S STARRY SKY • GRIEVING
WILL BLOCK • MA DA YANG'S STARRY SKY • GRIEVING
The Thirteen Ghost Points Treatment
The Thirteen Ghost Points Treatment Clears Trauma And Removes The Hooks That Are Stuck In You That Can Cause Obsessive Thinking And Unwanted Cellular Patterns.
“In 2010, I was very fortunate to travel with Jeffrey Yuen, an 88th generation Daoist priest and Chinese Medicine master (and my teacher) on a trip to China where we visited the home of the most famous immortal, Sun Simiao, known as the “King of Medicine.” Sun Simiao created a famous treatment called The Thirteen Ghost Points that helps cleanse the soul of guilt, shame, and trauma. Sometimes I call these the skeletons in your closets.”
–Leta
When past experiences of any type still haunt you today, we say you’re not really free to be yourself. We’ve all had the experience of having something bad happen and then wanting to prevent it from happening again. Often we easily move through these problems. Some events are so big that they continue to haunt us throughout our lives: a loss of a lover, the death of a loved one, depression over lost dreams, even physical trauma, like sudden accidents, or coming into contact with some kind of parasite. All of these things can impact our energy and hamper our ability to grow and succeed in our lives.
Thousands of years ago, well-known Chinese Medicine practitioners created different protocols to help us cleanse on all three levels (body/mind/spirit). These techniques have been passed down generation after generation. The word ghost in Chinese has the word “hook” in its character. A ghost is anything that haunts you or has a hook in you. This means you are not free to do what you want because the ghost is convincing you to not be true to yourself.
A Ghost Point Treatment Releases All The Areas That You May Be Hooked, For Example:
- Your eyes - how you see the world
- Your heart - how you love
- Your trust in yourself - do you believe in yourself?
- Your official rules - Do you follow someone else’s rules or your own
We Recommend Ghost Point Treatments In The Following Situations:
- When life just feels like too big a struggle and you’re working too hard to overcome it.
- When you don’t feel free in your life.
- When you are living in a toxic situation.
- When you have past trauma that haunts you.
Typically we recommend a ghost point treatment with anything that feels very hard to overcome. If you are working very hard and not getting any results, that usually means there is something blocking you or haunting you. Most adults have some skeletons in their closet, so it is a good treatment to start with when embarking on a healing path.
4-6 hour Sessions:
A Thirteen Ghost Point treatment takes four-six hours and is typically done in one session. These are not just points we rush through. We take the time that is needed to reestablish your true nature and true qi in each of the areas. You cannot expect something that has been really stuck for a long time to move out in an hour. The result of the treatment is a sense of feeling lighter, like some weight has been lifted off of a person.
The session is an incredible time-out-of-life for your healing. It is life altering on a deep subtle level, though the results are sometimes anything but subtle. Many have been amazed that the time passes so quickly. Music is a required component to the session as a vibrational guide to the energy work. The music is selected at random from an iPod containing 20,000 songs of all genres, and a CD of important songs is provided at the follow-up session. Here is what one client had to say about the music:
“I’m amazed by the music that emerged during our session. Some of it carried substantial implications when coupled with your wise words and insight throughout the course of the session. It’s incredible how many of the songs have significant relevance to my personal history while others served to remind me of my core being, who I am, who I strive to be, and conversely, the person I will not allow myself to become.”
What to Bring: Bring any food you’d like to eat during the time. We will take bathroom/eating breaks as necessary. If you believe any personal objects would be helpful to have in the room, you can bring them, but you are not obliged to in any way.
Follow-Up: The next day or soon after, you will return for a One-Hour session that will be focused on strengthening your true qi.
Three Month Follow-Up: In three months, you will return for a One-Hour session to help you move to the next stage in your personal transformation process. Often we may work on the first Stage of Alchemy.
Ongoing Wellness Sessions: After the initial session, you may want to continue with some ongoing strengthening work, depending on your physical/emotional state. In addition, if you want to continue to work on freeing your spirit, a series of alchemical treatments are excellent for accessing your fullest potential and helping you “fly” in your life. These are also one-hour sessions.
Ghost Point Treatments For Chinese Medicine Practitioners
Leta teaches workshops on Alchemy and the Ghost Points regularly for acupuncturists and other energy healers. The Ghost Points are some of the most mysterious points in Chinese Medicine history. Leta has over 20 years of clinical experience with the ghost points, performing numerous treatments a week. For more information, please sign on the Classes page. Also check out the AlchemyLearningCenter.com for more information about Alchemy and the Ghost Points and our upcoming Livestream Thirteen Ghost Points class (October 31, 2021).
Testimonials:
“I’ve often written in my journal that ‘my heart hurts so much, the pain is physical.’ Now that pain is lifted. Completely lifted! My cholesterol count dropped from 225 to 161, which my doctor told me is unprecedented in so short a time. I consider that small potatoes compared to the emotional healing that I have experienced.”
– Woman who suffered with severe PTSD
“My son was becoming increasingly dark, like a person I didn’t know anymore. Since his treatment with Leta, he is an absolute joy to have in our lives.”
– Mother of 13 year-old boy with Asperger Syndrome
“I’m very pleased with the personal results I’ve experienced since our four-hour session. The acupressure session helped me focus on re-centering myself on the path of humility and altruism, a path I believe to be the fundamental purpose of my journey through this life. It has helped me calm my fears and to stand up for myself and my beliefs. Indeed, I doubt I would have handled recent difficulties handed down in the workplace in the calm, level-headed manner I did. I have become more adept at resisting letting fear control my emotions and how I respond. I have gained tremendous strength and the episodes of emotion that were overwhelming me have diminished. Above all else I work to keep my attitude in check and to remain true to my core being. Thank you for your role in helping me to heal and achieve self-improvement. I look forward to seeing you again in the future so I may proceed to the next level.”
–Darlotte Justice
The Nine Heart Pains Treatment
The Healing Heart Pain Treatment For Addictions And A Life-Long Sense Of Loneliness And Isolation.
Heart pain is an intrinsic component of life. We experience heart pain when a person hurts our feelings or our dreams cannot be fulfilled. Perhaps it’s the pain of not being able to fulfill a career dream. Or maybe it’s the pain of not being wealthy or prosperous. In fact, there are 9 Palaces in Chinese Medicine that relate to the 9 areas of our lives that must be working properly and can be a huge source of heart pain when they are not.
The 9 Palaces Are:
- Career/Knowledge
- Love/Relationship
- Health
- Wealth (having enough)
- Home (a sense of belonging)
- Adventure/Travel
- Children/Creativity
- Wisdom
- Prosperity (having more than enough)
Whenever one of these palaces in your life is majorly struggling, you will often experience and accumulate heart pain. The pain of failed relationships and a sense of not belonging or loneliness are two one of the most common heart pains.
The Chinese believe that heart pain is unavoidable. In fact, one of the 12 meridians of the body is called the “heart protector.” One of its major functions is to heal heart pain.
Heart Pain Treatments Are Used In The Following Situations:
- When you are trying to overcome an addiction
- When you have trouble with self-esteem, self-loathing, or inability to love yourself. (We also call this “The Loving Yourself” treatment.
- When you’ve never felt “at home” in your life.
4-6 Hour Sessions:
A Nine Heart Pains treatment takes 4-6 hours and is typically done in one session. These are not just points we rush through. We take the time that is needed to reestablish your true nature and true qi in each of the areas. You cannot expect something that has been really painful for a long time to move out in an hour. The result of the treatment is a sense of lightness and presence.
The session is an incredible time-out-of-life for your healing. It is life altering on a deep subtle level, though the results are sometimes anything but subtle. Many have been amazed that the time passes so quickly. Music is a required component to the session as a vibrational guide to the energy work. The music is selected at random from an iPod containing 20,000 songs of all genres, and a CD of important songs is provided at the follow-up session. Here is what one client had to say about the music:
“I’m amazed by the music that emerged during our session. Some of it carried substantial implications when coupled with your wise words and insight throughout the course of the session. It’s incredible how many of the songs have significant relevance to my personal history while others served to remind me of my core being, who I am, who I strive to be, and conversely, the person I will not allow myself to become.”
What to Bring: Bring any food you’d like to eat during the time. We will take bathroom/eating breaks as necessary. If you believe any personal objects would be helpful to have in the room, you can bring them, but you are not obliged to in any way.
Follow-Up: The next day or soon after, you will return for a One-Hour follow-up session that will be focused on strengthening your true qi.
Nine Heart Pains Treatments For Chinese Medicine Practitioners
Leta teaches workshops on Alchemy and the The Nine Heart Pains Treatment regularly for acupuncturists and other energy healers. The Nine Heart Pains is one of the most important treatments for addictions and self-hatred in Chinese Medicine. Leta has over 20 years of clinical experience with performing numerous Alchemical treatments a week. For more information, please sign on the Classes page. Also check out the AlchemyLearningCenter.com for more information about Alchemy and the Nine Heart Pains and our upcoming Livestream Nine Heart Pains class (December 12, 2021).
Internal Heart Block Treatment
Clears A Major Internal Heart Block That Prevents You From Being Accessible To Yourself And The World.
Trauma or long-term emotional pain can sometimes have such an effect on a person that the person gets lost. The person can truly not access himself or herself. It’s as if the person has cellophane wrapped around the heart, and no one can get in and the person can’t get out.
Sometimes it’s such a wall that even traditional medicine or therapy can’t penetrate it.
In Chinese Medicine we would say this person has a block in the heart. The heart has a void inside it, where emotions, spirits, and energy can move freely (via the blood). But when the heart is blocked, the person’s spirits and emotions can no longer move freely.
I generally recommend an Internal Heart Block treatment based on the evaluation of someone’s pulses.
However, In General, The Treatment Is Helpful In The Following Situations:
- When you feel like you are inaccessible to yourself and/or others
- When nothing you try has seemed to help
- When you feel walled off from the world
- If you’ve never felt the same after a traumatic event
- If you’ve never felt the same after a long-term emotional upset
You may know people like this. Often their eyes look different. It can be a look like the person isn’t totally home. They behave and function normally, but their eyes look vacant. Or their eyes look a little too intense, like they are buzzing. When we meet someone with this kind of block, we may not be conscious of it, but we know there is something that is wrong with the person.
4-6 Hour Sessions:
An Internal Block treatment takes 4-6 hours and is typically done in one session. These are not just points we rush through. We take the time that is needed to reestablish your true nature and true qi in each of the areas. You cannot expect something that has been really painful for a long time to move out in an hour. The result of the treatment is a sense of lightness and presence.
The session is an incredible time-out-of-life for your healing. It is life altering on a deep subtle level, though the results are sometimes anything but subtle. Many have been amazed that the time passes so quickly. Music is a required component to the session as a vibrational guide to the energy work. The music is selected at random from an iPod containing 20,000 songs of all genres, and a CD of important songs is provided at the follow-up session. Here is what one client had to say about the music:
“I’m amazed by the music that emerged during our session. Some of it carried substantial implications when coupled with your wise words and insight throughout the course of the session. It’s incredible how many of the songs have significant relevance to my personal history while others served to remind me of my core being, who I am, who I strive to be, and conversely, the person I will not allow myself to become.”
What to Bring: Bring any food you’d like to eat during the time. We will take bathroom/eating breaks as necessary. If you believe any personal objects would be helpful to have in the room, you can bring them, but you are not obliged to in any way.
Follow-Up: The next day or soon after, you will return for a One-Hour follow-up session that will be focused on strengthening your true qi.
Will Block Treatment
When You Are Truly Stuck And Cannot Move Forward In Your Life, The Will Block Treatment Will Remove The Barriers To Progress In Your Life.
The Chinese believe your “Will” (meaning the Will to survive and do things) is housed in the Kidneys. And it is the Kidneys’ job to help you know how to do what you need to do.
We Generally Recommend Will Treatments In The Following Situations:
- When you have a good sense of what you want to accomplish but you are unable to do it.
- When you feel like you can’t get anything done in your life.
- When you’ve had someone in your life who has blocked you from doing what you want and need to do over a long period of time (typically parents).
A blocked Will might seriously impair healing in general. The ancient Chinese practitioners developed protocols using the acu-points of the body to energetically clear this type of block and “re-establish your true qi,” which means strengthen your true nature or your connection to your source energy.
Usually this block is more subtle than others. So we need to evaluate your pulses to see if you have a true Will block or something else that might be making life difficult for you. On occasion, this kind of struggle is actually an Internal Heart Block that is much more common in our society than a Will Block.
4-6 Hour Sessions:
A Will Block treatment takes 4-6 hours and is typically done in one session. These are not just points we rush through. We take the time that is needed to reestablish your true nature and true qi in each of the areas. You cannot expect something that has been really painful for a long time to move out in an hour. The result of the treatment is a sense of lightness and presence.
The session is an incredible time-out-of-life for your healing. It is life altering on a deep subtle level, though the results are sometimes anything but subtle. Many have been amazed that the time passes so quickly. Music is a required component to the session as a vibrational guide to the energy work. The music is selected at random from an iPod containing 20,000 songs of all genres, and a CD of important songs is provided at the follow-up session. Here is what one client had to say about the music:
“I’m amazed by the music that emerged during our session. Some of it carried substantial implications when coupled with your wise words and insight throughout the course of the session. It’s incredible how many of the songs have significant relevance to my personal history while others served to remind me of my core being, who I am, who I strive to be, and conversely, the person I will not allow myself to become.”
What to Bring: Bring any food you’d like to eat during the time. We will take bathroom/eating breaks as necessary. If you believe any personal objects would be helpful to have in the room, you can bring them, but you are not obliged to in any way.
Follow-Up: The next day or soon after, you will return for a One-Hour follow-up session that will be focused on strengthening your true qi.
Will Block Treatments for Chinese Medicine Practitioners
In the late summer and Fall of 2017, Leta plans to begin another series of workshops on Alchemy. Will Blocks are some of the most mysterious problems in Chinese Medicine. Leta has over 13 years of clinical experience with these levels of blocks, performing numerous treatments a week. For more information, please sign up on the Classes page. Also check out TheThirteenGhostPoints.com web site for more information about Alchemy.
Ma Dan Yang’s Starry Sky Treatment
Clears The Effects Of Long-Term Emotional Trauma.
Ma Dan Yang created the 12 Starry Sky Points Treatment to better align a person who is out of alignment. The metaphor here is that you must be aligned with the constellation of the Big Dipper. He believed this treatment was the root treatment of all diseases. It especially clears a lot of emotional trauma from the chest.
This treatment is excellent to do when there is a lot of emotional trauma in the past history. We usually consider it after a Thirteen Ghost Points Treatment.
4-6 Hour Sessions:
A Ma Dan Yang Starry Sky Point treatment takes 4-6 hours and is typically done in one session. These are not just points we rush through. We take the time that is needed to reestablish your true nature and true qi in each of the areas. You cannot expect something that has been really painful for a long time to move out in an hour. The result of the treatment is a sense of lightness and presence.
The session is an incredible time-out-of-life for your healing. It is life altering on a deep subtle level, though the results are sometimes anything but subtle. Many have been amazed that the time passes so quickly. Music is a required component to the session as a vibrational guide to the energy work. The music is selected at random from an iPod containing 20,000 songs of all genres, and a CD of important songs is provided at the follow-up session. Here is what one client had to say about the music:
“I’m amazed by the music that emerged during our session. Some of it carried substantial implications when coupled with your wise words and insight throughout the course of the session. It’s incredible how many of the songs have significant relevance to my personal history while others served to remind me of my core being, who I am, who I strive to be, and conversely, the person I will not allow myself to become.”
What to Bring: Bring any food you’d like to eat during the time. We will take bathroom/eating breaks as necessary. If you believe any personal objects would be helpful to have in the room, you can bring them, but you are not obliged to in any way.
Follow-Up: The next day or soon after, you will return for a One-Hour follow-up session that will be focused on strengthening your true qi.
Grieving Treatment
The Grieving Treatment Helps A Person Move Through The Blocks That Can Arise After A Love One Dies.
This Ling Shu Alchemy Treatment Is Suggested In The Following Situations:
- Any recent significantly difficult loss of a loved one.
- Anyone struggling with not getting over this loss.
- The first anniversary of the loss is a very key time for moving out of the grieving stages. So it is a good time to consider a grieving treatment, if you haven’t already had one.
- If you are still impacted by the death of a loved one even years afterward, you should consider this treatment and/or the Ghost Points treatment.
The loss of a loved one is one of the hardest things any of us ever has to face.
The Chinese believe that it’s very important to walk through specific stages of grief in order to fully recover from the loss of a loved one (a process they believe should take approximately one year to complete). They believe that grief gives us a chance to contemplate what we have lost and, as a result, grow and change. For these reasons, they have specific energetic treatments to help anyone who feels stuck in that process.
4-6 Hour Sessions:
A Grieving treatment takes 4-6 hours and is typically done in one session. These are not just points we rush through. We take the time that is needed to reestablish your true nature and true qi in each of the areas. You cannot expect something that has been really painful for a long time to move out in an hour. The result of the treatment is a sense of lightness and presence.
The session is an incredible time-out-of-life for your healing. It is life altering on a deep subtle level, though the results are sometimes anything but subtle. Many have been amazed that the time passes so quickly. Music is a required component to the session as a vibrational guide to the energy work. The music is selected at random from an iPod containing 20,000 songs of all genres, and a CD of important songs is provided at the follow-up session. Here is what one client had to say about the music:
“I’m amazed by the music that emerged during our session. Some of it carried substantial implications when coupled with your wise words and insight throughout the course of the session. It’s incredible how many of the songs have significant relevance to my personal history while others served to remind me of my core being, who I am, who I strive to be, and conversely, the person I will not allow myself to become.”
What to Bring: Bring any food you’d like to eat during the time. We will take bathroom/eating breaks as necessary. If you believe any personal objects would be helpful to have in the room, you can bring them, but you are not obliged to in any way.
Follow-Up: The next day or soon after, you will return for a One-Hour follow-up session that will be focused on strengthening your true qi.
The Five Elements
WHAT ARE THEY • WHY LEARN ABOUT THEM • TREATMENTS • CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS
Discover your true energetic potential through the Five Elements and receive treatments based on your energetic type."
What Are The Five Elements?
What if you could simply watch someone walking towards you, and just by how they move, you could immediately know many things about them? The Chinese believe that we are born with an elemental type that is a theme in our lives.There are Five energies in the Universe. We have all Five Elements within us. However, one element is the guiding force in our life, from birth to death. That Element, the Chinese believe, is our curriculum and directs us to many life lessons. It signifies our greatest gifts and our deepest struggles.
We are energetic beings. We are powered by some invisible force, which is like electricity that makes us talk, walk, move, etc. The way that the beings of this planet move through time and space are explained by Elemental Energies. Each of the Five Elements describes an Elemental Energetic type: Wood moves out and back, a thrusting motion, like a plant bursting through the ground in Spring and then putting out leaves, and then thrusting up again. Fire moves up and down, like the flames of a fire. Earth moves circularly, reaching out and enveloping with caring, like the smell of bread surrounding you. Metal moves upward for a tiny bit and then falls away, like a leaf being lifted for a moment by an air current and then slowly falling to the groundWater moves forward like the forever-running, unstoppable river making its way home to the ocean. Each being on the planet (humans, animals, and plants alike) has all Five Element energetics present within them. However, the Chinese healers of ages old believed there is one predominant Element that from birth to death is the greatest influence on how each of us moves through life. It is your curriculum or lessons of life. It determines your greatest gifts and biggest struggles.
Five Element Treatments
Five Element Chinese Medicine was the brain-child of J.R. Worsley. He created a system of medicine based on the philosophy of the Five Elements and how they manifest in human beings. A Five Element Treatment focuses on getting to the core essence of you and your true nature. Often life forces us to overdevelop parts of ourselves that isn’t really our true nature. Perhaps we had parents who were energetically very different than we were. Or we believe society doesn’t like our way of being. The Chinese believe it’s important to get support for being who we truly are. Once you understand your energetic nature, and you are given permission to truly be you, you can start to really live your true potential. A Five Element treatment will use the energy meridian system to vibrational train your body/mind/spirit to be you…be more you…yes, more you…In other words, through a healing session, your whole body/mind/spirit gets support to manifest your destiny (not the destiny of your parents/boss/partner etc.). It’s about embracing you and walking your own Dao.
Why Learn About The Five Elements?
The benefits of understanding the Five Elements include:Understanding your greatest gifts and what you truly want in life. Realizing your full potentialImproving relationshipsEncouraging your children to truly be themselves (not just a copy of you). Developing the ability to connect with clients in your business based on their energetics
Five Element Classes And Workshops
You can learn about the Five Elements, discover your own Elemental Energetic type, and study how to improve your relationship dynamics in Five Element classes. For more information, see Classes.
Ongoing Wellness Treatments
RELEASING CHAOTIC ENERGY • MOXIBUSTION • DRAGON MOXIBUSTION • GUA SHA • CUPPINGCLEARING MERIDIAN BLOCKS • BALANCING LEFT AND RIGHT MERIDIANS • RELEASING FULLNESS
TONIFYING ENERGY • LUO (Emotional) • DIVERGENT CHANNEL • STONE MEDICINE
CLEARING MERIDIAN BLOCKS • BALANCING LEFT AND RIGHT MERIDIANS • RELEASING FULLNESS
"Classical Chinese Medicine can help you maintain your overall health throughout the years. Ongoing treatment can help with all types of illness and support positive wellness for you and your family."
What Are Ongoing Wellness Treatments?
Ongoing Wellness Treatments can help you maintain your overall health throughout the years. Ongoing treatment can help with all types of illness and support positive wellness for you and your family. They use a combination of all three approaches used at The Alchemy Healing Center to help clients in terms of their health and overall emotional balance through the years.
Releasing Chaotic Energy
One of the first things we check when working with a new client is whether their energy is flowing freely in their energy meridians. Sometimes we have blocks within the meridians that cause various symptoms.
Blocks can be caused by negative emotions or physical injuries. But on occasion, your energy might not be flowing because it has become chaotic.
Usually when we tell clients that their energy has become chaotic, they agree wholeheartedly. They often feel like life is out of control. They may feel stressed or anxious or even paranoid. They may have bizarre unusual physical symptoms that doctors can’t really diagnose as an illness (yet). Generally speaking, they just don’t feel like themselves. And if you asked any family members, they might say that their loved one just isn’t behaving normally.
Chaotic energy causes the energy flow in your body to be stuck in several places. You basically cannot be yourself when this is happening.
The good news is, there is a solution! Chinese Medicine can clear the Chaotic Energy and bring good energy flow back to your body.
We treat Chaotic Energy in Ongoing Wellness sessions whenever it’s needed. It’s one of the first things we do in a new client session.
Moxibustion
The Grieving Treatment Helps A Person Move Through The Blocks That Can Arise After A Love One Dies.
Moxibustion is the act of burning “moxa” on acupressure points or burning moxa over an area (a few inches above the skin).
Moxa is the plant artemisia vulgaris. It grows all over the world and is revered in Chinese Medicine. It even grows almost everywhere.
Moxibustion Is Beneficial For Many Reasons. The Primary Benefits Are:
- Enriching the blood and creating more blood for those with anemia or exhaustion
- Lifting your spirits (for those with depression or malaise)
- For certain types of pain that feel better with the application of heat
- For certain sleep issues, especially the inability to sleep deeply
- For alopecia and general loss of hair
- For Postpartum Depression, especially after difficult childbirth or excessive loss of blood
I use moxa frequently in Ongoing Wellness treatments.
Dragon Moxibustion
Dragon Moxa is a treatment on your back where we burn special moxa on top of ground organic ginger. The organic ginger is excellent for helping the heat penetrate deep into the body while clearing dampness out of the body.
This Is A Superior Treatment For Energizing And Recharging Your Energic “Batteries” In General, BUT It Is Excellent For Anyone Who:
- Is always cold
- Suffers from back pain (chronic, injury or acute)
- Suffers from depression (chronic or newer)
- Has stress (low level or extreme)
- Has difficult digestion (stomach issues)
- Has gynecological issues
- And much, much more!
While Dragon Moxa is appropriate in the Winter to help combat the cold, we use Dragon Moxa in the Harvest Season especially to treat some specific illnesses and then throughout the year depending on the person.
This is an ancient treatment but in modern times, practitioners use Dragon Moxa to treat rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosis spondylitis, chronic hepatitis, asthma, lung diseases, stubborn pain, chronic fatigue, as well as overall health promotion.
There has been a lot of research in recent years on the effects of Moxa treatments, especially in Japan and China. The research points to moxa being helpful for the immune system and the fluid systems of the body, the nervous and endocrine systems, keeping blood pressure regulated, aiding the circulatory system (including white blood cell and platelet functions). It can also help the stomach digest and absorb nutrients, help the respiratory functions, and the reproductive system. It can reduce inflammation, alleviate pain, and promote circulation. Of course we ALREADY knew how AMAZING moxa is!
After treatments, clients tell us they do not want the treatment to end! As the heat from the moxa slowly penetrates deep into the body, the whole body sinks into a deep relaxing state. In fact, it is so deeply relaxing and grounding that we recommend after the treatment, you take it slow and easy for the rest of the day! You will continue to feel the warmth in your body for hours after the treatment.
Gua Sha
Using a ceramic soup spoon (or other similarly shaped tool), Chinese Medicine practitioners lightly scrape the surface of the skin to release trapped energy in the fascia and muscles. This is called Gua Sha.
The “Sha” is the trapped energy (you could think of it as tension or resistance) that gets released. Whenever there is sha present in the body, when the spoon pulls it out through the skin, and a red mark appears that lasts for 24-48 hours. The red mark comes from blood rushing to the surface and is called pitachae.
The Following Conditions Will Often Be Relieved With Gua Sha:
- The common cold or flu, especially on the first day of symptoms
- Repetitive stress injuries
- Recent injuries that have healed (all broken skin has healed)
- Certain types of long-term chronic pain
- Certain kinds of tension headaches
- Some types of psycho-somatic pain (pain that seems influenced by emotional states)
- Certain kinds of rashes, such as poison ivy and even shingles (gua sha is done around the area of the rash, not on the rash itself)
We use Gua Sha frequently in Ongoing Wellness sessions.
You can also learn to do Gua Sha on yourself! We’ve developed a do-it-yourself book and an on-line class for massage therapists and healers. Please visit www.LearnGuaSha.com for more information. We also have a number of interesting posts on the topic of Gua Sha at www.LearnGuaSha.com/blog.
Cupping Therapy
Cupping is a method that applies suction to a small area of the body to release energy trapped deep in the body.
There are several methods of creating a vacuum with cupping. Traditionally, cupping was performed by creating a vacuum with fire in a glass cup. Today, many practitioners use a simpler method of cupping, such as the suction cups pictured here. The vacuum is created with a tool that sucks the air out of the silicone cups.
There are many benefits of cupping. It is most often used for certain kinds of pain and to release stuck energy that can cause some types of illness.
I use cupping frequently for pain in Ongoing Wellness sessions.
Clearing Meridian Blocks
In Chinese Medicine, the meridians of the body are pathways for energy/qi to flow through your body. Good health depends on the smooth flow of qi through these pathways. However, when life gets difficult emotionally or something happens to us physically, these pathways can get blocked. The traffic jams that occur when there is a block can cause all sorts of ailments, from odd sensations and symptoms that aren’t even something most doctors would care about to more serious problems.
With Chinese Medicine, these blocks can be easily cleared and your flowing energy can return. Resistance and stress in the body will also release when the blocks are cleared.
Many blocks have a particular emotional signature signaling that you have a block.
Here Are Some Examples Of The Most Common Blocks And My Silly Nicknames For How They Feel:
- Weepy Cry Baby Block: You can’t stop crying and don’t know why. This is the example of the a Heart block, which causes a sort of existential crisis… Common questions are: Why am I alive? What am I doing with my life?
- Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Block: You’re angry, quick tempered and frustrated by everything, even when you don’t have a reason to feel this way. This is the result of a Liver block, and you feel like you just want to break through obstacles. Thoughts of blame and “if only” statements are common.
- Protect My Heart Block: Someone said something that hurt your feelings. Now you feel shut down and maybe even want to lash out. This is the result of another kind of Heart block called the Heart Protector or Pericardium (the outer lining of the heart). The Heart Protector’s job is to shut down the heart when people are being mean. When this block clears, the tears finally come.
Balancing Left And Right Meridians
In Five Element Chinese Medicine, we evaluate a person’s pulses to determine if the left and right meridians are in balance. We also use a heat test (called an Akabani test) on your fingernail and toenail points to see if the left and right sides are even.
Many people come in with a Left/Right Imbalance, especially when they’ve been having pain on one side. In many cases, they have a number of strange symptoms that are one-sided, often most of them too minor to mention to the doctor. However, these kinds of symptoms are common for Left/Right Imbalances.
The treatment for this is straightforward. One side is deficient in qi and the other has an excess of qi (and causing pain). We rebalance both sides and voila! No more pain.
Releasing Fullness
Occasionally when we have a lot of resistance in our bodies or our bodies are too tired to do everything they need to do, things can begin to accumulate. The stomach, for example, can accumulate too much fluid and food can start to ferment in there and cause Candida/yeast to grow. Or maybe you body is responding to some sort of infection and heating up to kill the bacteria present, causing a number of other negative symptoms to occur. Or even, on a very simple level, you could have slept by a window and a cold breeze may have caused your neck to be stiff.
These are all cases where you have a “fullness.” There is something in your body that is in excess, and you need to release or “disperse” that energy to return back to balance.
Dispersing is the Chinese Medicine term for releasing stuck energy, heat, or fluids that have accumulated in the body. While the majority of people have the opposite problem (they are tired and need to nourish and build their energy), when a person has energy fullness, it is usually responsible for more acute and painful problems.
Dispersing is often extremely imperative for a person to start to feel better. Western Medicine has its own way of calming down some of these issues, for example, in the taking of antibiotics for an infection. Antibiotics cool the system down so that the heat in the body is reduced. This in terms make the person inhospitable for the bacteria. This is a wonderful method for healing many things, however, they don’t always work. Chinese Medicine methods for doing the same thing can sometimes work in cases of antibiotic resistance. In one case, a woman was in the hospital on four days of intravenous antibiotics that had no effect on her infection. One treatment of Chinese Medicine cleared it up in less than 12 hours.
Such is the power of dispersing. Taking energy out of a system that has too much aggravation in it is a huge relief on the system. Everything can then normalize.
Dispersing is a key component to Ongoing Wellness Treatments because maintaining a balance of energy in the body is essential to your health.
Tonifying Energy
When a person feels depleted, cold, exhausted or run-down, they usually need a boost of energy. We call this tonification in Chinese Medicine, which means adding energy into the meridian system.
The majority of adults need a boost of energy. In Chinese Medicine we use points to tonify energy, especially Spleen qi (for poor digestion), Kidney qi (for low energy) and Lung qi (for weak breathing), for example.
We also use Moxibustion to tonify the blood, which will help you sleep better, make you warmer, and lift your spirits.
Tonification is utilized often in Ongoing Wellness treatments.
Luo (Emotional) Treatments
Chinese Medicine has an interesting perspective on spider veins. Spider veins occur when our bodies are overwhelmed by emotional events in our lives. Emotions are believed to be carried in the blood in Chinese Medicine. And as long as our emotions on any given day aren’t too overwhelming, our bodies can handle them. But some days, we are overwhelmed with negative emotion. The body needs to find a place to “put” those toxic emotions. In other words, we need to create storage for toxic energy that these emotions create. Otherwise, these toxic emotions would be floating around in our blood system causing illness. In these cases, our bodies are likely to create little distributaries coming off our main veins. These little offshoots might just be one or two little spider veins. Or sometimes we get a bunch of them all coming out of the same place, like a delta along a river. Or maybe even a large channel that becomes a varicose vein.
In Chinese Medicine, we believe it is good to drain these little offshoots of the emotional toxins to restore optimal health. These spider veins and varicose veins are called “Luo channels” and the treatment for the emotional causes of them is called a “Luo” treatment. If you have spider or varicose veins, that is often an indicator that you would benefit from Luo treatments.
Luo treatments follow an ancient Daoist protocol to release the unexpressed emotions that are stored in the blood. These treatments are typically done with acupuncture needles rather than acupressure because using needles is a better “release” procedure in general for the blood level. Such treatments can bring a deep level of emotional release and with that release those pesky spider veins can often (though not always) disappear.
Divergent Channel Treatments
In Chinese Medicine, the meridians of the body are pathways for energy/qi to flow through your body. Good health depends on the smooth flow of qi through these pathways. However, when life gets difficult emotionally or something happens to us physically, these pathways can get blocked. The traffic jams that occur when there is a block can cause all sorts of ailments, from odd sensations and symptoms that aren’t even something most doctors would care about to more serious problems.
With Chinese Medicine, these blocks can be easily cleared and your flowing energy can return. Resistance and stress in the body will also release when the blocks are cleared.
Many blocks have a particular emotional signature signaling that you have a block.
The Divergent Channels Are One Of The 5 Channel Systems In Chinese Medicine, Which Include:
- The Primary Channels (what most acupuncturists use in treatments)
- The Eight Extraordinary Vessels (that treat the deepest levels of healing, what I like to say is akin to treating DNA)
- The Luo Channels (the offshoots of the blood vessels in the body that are responsible for spider veins)
- The Divergent Channels (for painful joints and other illnesses resulting from a build up of toxins in the body)
- The Sinew Channels (for working with the muscles and tendons)
The Divergent Channels are the body’s brilliant way of dealing with an overload of toxins. At any point, our bodies are processing toxins in the body. But what happens when the amount of toxins in the body is currently overloading the system, and your body cannot process them?
That’s where Divergents come to the rescue. The body has the ability to put these toxins in a safe place, AWAY from the organs of the body. Instead of having those toxins float around and cause havoc, they get stored in the joints, where they can be safely stored until such time that they can be purged. Only, in most cases, they don’t get purged and over time they joints begin to break down due to the toxins stored there.
One of the fascinating things about how the body stores these toxins is that there is a progression. You don’t just wake up with pain in your fingers one day. If you do, it’s probably not arthritis but some repetitive stress issue you’re having. It’s more common that the first joint pains you have are in your knees, low back, and neck. Those areas are associated with the Bladder Meridian, which is the first Meridian that “Diverts” toxins away from the organs to the joints (hence it’s called a “Divergent” Meridian).
The Divergent Meridians are actually a really normal body mechanism for diverging toxins away from the center, to keep you alive and safe.
After the knees, low back, or neck are affected, over time, the situation could possibly worsen (more toxins need to be stored if your body is still unable to cope). Now those toxins must be stored in different joints because the Bladder Divergent Meridian can no longer handle it. So the next stop on the toxins train ride is the hips and shoulders and the Gall Bladder Divergent Meridian. If the Gall Bladder Meridian eventually becomes overwhelmed, then finally it goes into the hands and feet (Stomach Divergent Meridian), which also is when the swellings start. There are further issues. Next comes deformities, and further down the line more impact on your overall health.
The approach in Chinese Medicine then is to remove the toxins from their storage places, slowly over time by doing Divergent Meridian treatments. Gua Sha, a scraping technique that helps release toxins through the skin, is a critical piece of this healing technique.
You can only do this work for your arthritis if you are in a good place in your life (meaning emotional and physical) and relatively strong. Your body is going to have to do the processing and excreting of the toxins that it couldn’t do when you were once overwhelmed. And it’s not only through urination and defecation…but sometimes through rashes on the skin or even extreme emotions that come up and out (like having really bad PMS for a day or two).
The road back from severe arthritis takes time. Anything that affects the shape of your joints is going to need time to recuperate. The Divergent Meridians can only remove the toxins from the joints. There are other techniques that can be helpful as well.
Stone Medicine
Stone Medicine is one of the oldest forms of medicine in human history. The Chinese Medicine approach to stone medicine is to use stones in a variety of ways according to the same evaluation system that is used in acupuncture and herbal medicine. In other words, by assessing a person’s qi and blood, we can choose stones that are appropriate for the specific person.
Stones can be ingested via elixirs, worn as jewelry, placed on acu-points, or crushed up and made into a poultice that is applied to the skin.
At the Alchemy Healing Center, we make custom stone medicine prescriptions for Malas and bracelets.
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