Trauma has been a huge buzzword in the natural healing space in recent years and has only picked up steam post-pandemic.
People are more dysregulated and overburdened than ever.
They’re aware that they have health issues caused by trauma and they’re struggling to find solutions.
You might be feeling the call more than ever to treat trauma in your practice and if you’re like most acupuncturists, you need to feel like you’re truly helping your patients in order to feel fulfilled in your practice.
So what’s an acupuncturist to do? Can you actually help people with their trauma?
Absolutely.
Do most acupuncturists know this?
No.
And are most acupuncturists super intimidated by the idea of treating trauma and totally unsure where to start?
100%.
That’s not your fault! Acupuncture schools (especially TCM based ones) don’t touch on how to treat trauma.
And many acupuncturists are apprehensive because they think they need to approach trauma like a psychotherapist would.
They’re afraid they’ll have to ask their patient to relive the darkest moments of their life. That they’ll have to support them through painful emotions or in confronting their inner child without proper training in doing so safely.
They’re worried they won’t say the right thing or worse, they’ll say something that makes their patient feel worse.
Of course that’s intimidating!
But here’s the secret: acupuncture has been treating trauma for thousands of years.
It does this a couple of ways.
#1 By releasing stored tension in the body and regulating the nervous system.
This is why many forms of bodywork can be effective for treating trauma.
Instead of engaging the rational mind (which trauma responses bypass entirely), bodywork starts with making the nervous system feel safe by soothing the limbic system, which is our subconscious emotional reactivity center (read more about this idea here).
But what makes acupuncture very special is its ability to…
#2 Treat the spirit.
Trauma creates a deep dysregulation of the spirit.
And without treating the spirit, people can hit a wall in their healing.
In Chinese medicine, spirit isn’t necessarily talking about religious beliefs, mysticism, or spiritual awareness.
Those can be part of our spirit, but they’re not the whole picture.
A healthy spirit can openly express love and compassion.
It creates the desire within us to appreciate beauty, like taking time to watch a stunning sunset or listen to music.
It inspires us to search for meaning and achieve our potential.
Your spirit is what makes you uniquely you.
So how would you spot spirit-based issues in your patients?
Spirit-based issues can show up as:
- anxiety or depression
- stagnation or stuckness
- apathy and resignation
- lack of purpose and passion for life
- an inability to see or experience beauty and awe
- feelings of dissatisfaction or constant cynicism
- difficulty connecting with yourself and those around you
- difficulty connecting with nature
I’m sure you can think of many patients and many people in your life who are struggling with these issues.
And boy, these issues look a lot like how trauma shows up in someone’s health, don’t they?
You can see that the way we define mental illness in the West, which includes most of the list above, isn’t really about the mind. It’s about the spirit.
And we’re trying to apply mind-based treatments, like cognitive behavioral therapy, to solve a spirit-based issue.
No wonder many people get stuck in their healing process.
Now you might be thinking, “ok, cool, but I still don’t have the skills to help!”
As an acupuncturist, you actually do have the tools, you just don’t have the framework to understand how yet.
In ancient China, acupuncture was regarded as the primary therapeutic modality for transforming a person’s spirit due to its ability to influence the qi of the individual along the meridians.
And the spirit was regarded as the root cause of health issues.
Here’s a quote from the Ling Shu, a classical Chinese medicine text that focused solely on acupuncture:
“When one applies medical treatment, one must keep in mind first of all, the patient’s spirit.”
And here are a couple from the Su Wen (another classical text):
“How can disease be cured if there is no spiritual energy left in the body?”
“In order to make all acupuncture thorough and effective one must first cure the spirit.”
Many modern Chinese medicine texts and education make no reference to the spirit and often don’t stress that it’s the underlying cause of many physical illnesses.
We’ve lost track of the spirit’s importance in treatment and that’s why it can feel so hard to treat trauma effectively.
Trauma and the longstanding behavioral and psychological patterns it creates are very much a dysregulation of the spirit.
By helping your patients balance their spirit, you can decrease the hold their patterns of trauma have on them and help them make progress in their health.
It’s common to notice changes like these in your patients once you address their spirit:
- kinder language toward themselves/quieting their inner critic
- making long overdo changes that embody their own values in life rather than someone else's
- the gumption to take a new life path or do something they’ve been dreaming about forever but could never execute like moving, changing jobs, leaving a relationship, and more
- deeply reconnecting with themselves and becoming alive in a way they’d forgotten
These transformations are beautiful to watch and they’re my favorite part of practice.
It’s incredibly meaningful to watch someone come out of a traumatized place and walk into the world a better version of themselves.
So how do you learn how to treat the spirit?
5 Element Acupuncture is by far my favorite tool.
Its main purpose is to treat emotions and the spirit so it’s pretty much built to treat trauma.
Plus it easily integrates into your TCM skillset.
No need to go back and get a counseling degree!
After adding 5E to my practice I felt so much more confident supporting people through life transitions, extreme stress and anxiety, depression, addiction, obsession, identity issues, and more.
My patient retention increased and people had better, longer lasting results.
If you’re interested in learning more about 5 element acupuncture and possibly adding it to your practice, check out my free 5 day email course about how 5E can help you be a more effective acupuncturist.
