INTERVIEW

tem which can be visualised via design and fabrication. Pressure points are activated at different depths depending on the body’s density and are also located by measuring the cun – thumb width measurement. This project will not use needles because it is more concerned with highlighting the points to raise the awareness of the body sensation.

interview

J: You’re right it is very tailored to the client. There are hundreds and hundreds of acupoints that you would choose from for a client but the majority of those that you use are more or less universal. We probably use the same thirty or forty points on most people. And then you dip into the wider scope when somebody has something particularly unusual. But when you see most people with stress related things or mental emotional condition, or gut conditions or gynaecological conditions or pain conditions: it’s the same kind of points that come up again and again. There are certain points that are considered the most powerful points to use and you’re always going to get at least a couple of those on pretty much every person. There are points that are beneficial for everyone.

L: Do you mind sharing what those points are? I read this article from an online magazine that mentioned three combinations: small intestine...

J: So that one is here” (gestures to face) “yeah just down from the outside of your eye until it lies just under your cheek bone. In terms of wellness it does affect facial things: sinusitis – that kind of thing – ear pain, face pain. But it’s also a point where the connective tissue or channels of the whole back meridian can bind under the cheek bones. That’s an unusual one for an article to have said... What were the other ones?

L: The other one was hip flexor and yin tang and then the other one

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was stomach... It was just this website called MindBodyGreen. They were talking about the ones you can access yourself for self-acupressure.

J: Well yin tang is dead centre between the eyebrows – where if you were looking at chakras, would be your third eye. The stomach channel is huge: it runs from behind the eye, down the face, all the way down the front of the body, down through the abdomen, down through the groin, all the way down the legs, to the second toe... It’s a long one. The most powerful stomach point that we use is just here on the outside of the knee. So that might work if you were creating leggings or tights that had points for people to push on. There’s a lot of really powerful points on the inside of the lower leg... so a pair of knee-high socks with points printed on them might be interesting.

L: Do you do acupressure as well as acupuncture?

J: I trained in it about 20 years ago and recently did acupuncture 7 years ago. So I was using that when I was a massage therapist. But when you do acupuncture, you’re always going to have to touch to find the places first – so you are using a fair bit of pressure to locate the right point before you put the needle in – when you do acupuncture on the face there’s a lot of that type of thing. Massage on the face so it is included with that. Patients will always say, ‘oh that one hurt’ or ‘that one’s sensitive, what does that one refer to?’ And then they’ll often go home and have a good poke themselves.

[both laugh]

And self treat those areas. But you’ll always find, or typically find that when you hit the actual point, it’s much more significantly tender just 1cm to the side of the point: so you know there’s something there – compared to just randomly pushing on someone’s body.

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L: Is there an element of heating the different points?

J: You can... most of the time – no. But for certain things you can put a substance called moxa – which is a herb and you put it on the end of the needle and set fire to it. It’s not appropriate for every condition but it also puts a lot of smoke into the air so a lot of clinics don’t allow the smokey moxa... We use heat lamps where you put a heat lamp over somebody to put heat into that area. It really depends – that is very specific to the person: whether they need heat in that area or not. You wouldn’t want to put heat into a point where you didn’t want it.

L: Is there an age range of clients that you see?

J: I don’t see children – that’s quite a different speciality. I’ve seen a 19 or 20 year old at least and I think probably my oldest patient was about 97. The majority of people I’d say are mid-thirties to late fifties. It’s not included on the NHS so you have to be able to pay to do it. So when I see those that are younger, either they’ve got a great job immediately or their parents are paying for their treatment. I’ve seen a fair few student who are completely stressed or having headaches with their studies. Usually I see people who are at a point where they’re starting to get issues in their mid thirties and think, ‘I need to sort this out... I’ve abused my body for long enough, I need to sort this out now and I can afford to do it’.

L: What’s the severity of the symptoms that you encounter that you can relieve with acupuncture?

J: It depends. I’ve seen people with back pain or neck pain where they consider it 20/10: they’re in excruciating agony and the doctor can do nothing for them but give them a ton of painkillers; they’re literally at the end of their tether. With that kind of pain, acupuncture can usually sort it out pretty quickly.

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L: That’s incredible!

J: Oh it can be, sometimes it’s a case of a couple of muscles spasming terribly and the nervous system just goes haywire because you’ve got some muscles spasming terribly. Acupuncture’s really good at sorting that out. When people come for headaches, they’re usually pretty extreme for them to come.. Headaches, gut problems. It can be pretty extreme. For some people, we’re the last attempt – so by the time they get to us, by the time they’ve thought to try acupuncture things may have resolved a little bit. I’ve seen everything from a 2/10 patient to a 20/10 pain but people also just seek it for wellbeing, facial acupuncture, fertility... its not always a symptom that they want to tackle but also a method to improve their current state.

L: I tried it once and was just fascinated by how just from listening to the pulse on the wrists the guy just knew... what I was eating, said you run a lot, your heart feels very heavy. And I thought how can you know just from listening to my pulse? Would you say there’s a general area or pressure points you work on more than others?

J: Yes I’ll take screenshots of the areas and send them to you. Primarily from top to bottom: there’s one at the very crown of the head, yin tang, two on the hands, one dead centre just above the bellybutton, on the legs you’ve got those on the outside of the leg, at least three or four on the inside of the leg, a couple on the top of the foot, between the big toe and the second toe. They’re your main common ones. Unless you’ve got somebody face down, then you’re looking at a line on the spine and on both sides – there’s a point down there for every organ in the body. You just pick which one you want to work with and they do tally up with the nervous system: so the point for the heart is directly over the nerve that come out from the spine the relate to the heart, and the same with the kidney, spleen. There’s a

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couple of points in the bum cheek that are really common for helping back pain and sciatica.

L: How deep do the needles go?

J: Entirely dependent on where it is – some points only 2 or 3mm some a few centimetres, some points go in perpendicularly, some go in so transversely that you’re really just skimming under the surface. It depends where they are. For example you can’t go into the top of the head because the skull’s there – so go at an angle. You don’t go directly perpendicularly in anywhere on the torso because of the lungs. If you’ve got someone with sciatica and they’ve got a pretty sizeable bum cheek, you need to go in a fair distance to directly kick it off. You go directly in on the sides of the leg but only about 1cm. It depends on how big someone is. The location of the points is relative to the body that you’re working on. So when we measure the location of the point it’s in relation to an anatomical landmark but in relation to the size of the person. We use a cun measurement which is the width of the first knuckle on the thumb. You get a knack for finding the points and you can find them based on sensitivity but you’re always looking for a landmark.

L: And you said you do massage therapy?

J: I trained in that 20 years ago, I did all the other holistic therapies, aromatherapy, reflexology, indian head massage, massage, acupressure and I worked in spas.

L: Would you say there’s a crossover between the philosophy of acupuncture and massage therapy?

J: In the sense that they’re both holistic: yes. There’s certainly more of a crossover between reflexology and acupuncture. The reflex points on

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the feet are not the same as acupuncture points but it works on the same principle of one area affecting another area. For example, all the points on the foot affect the different points on the body. We might put a point in the ankle to fix somebody’s lower back pain or I might put a point in the hand here to fix somebody’s neck pain. It’s about where it relates to. They’re both holistic treatments and both working very much on the hormonal system in terms of the stress response. We can be very assured now – or at least it’s going that way anyway with research – that most diseases are caused or made a lot worse by stress. And stress hormones can massively be helped with acupuncture and massage. Any time to relax and get rid of those stress hormones, the interactions with those stress hormones with the other hormones affect immunity causing pains and cancers – it definitely ties in.

L: To be honest that’s why I’m researching this because.. Well I read that you’re supposed to have 8 hugs a day and I just thought I’m definitely not...

J: I suspect they were probably talking about that because of the hormone oxytocin which is the bonding hormone and it’s released when we hug. They’ve also discovered when your arteries get smaller from stress, oxytocin is the hormone releasing them again. In general it’s important for health and hugging is a way to get it. The article was probably highlighting how isolating lockdown’s aren’t good for your health.

L: Does massage help release oxytocin?

J: Absolutely, that’s one of the key ways it can because it’s physical touch. Trust creates and releases oxytocin. Studies show that when you have a massage, the person receiving the treatment receives oxytocin but the therapist giving the treatment releases more than double the amount because they are being trusted to help the other. In a non-sexual way it’s the most intimate way to you can touch somebody. You’re literally rubbing their

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