What is Acupuncture?

Being an important tool of Chinese Medicine, acupuncture has been practiced for more than 4,000 years. It has brought about good health to countless numbers of people all throughout history both curatively and preventatively with regards to various kinds of human illnesses. Acupuncture is a form of energy medicine that is based on the balance of energetics of the mind and body to bring about good health. This implies that the treatment lessens or eliminates chronic and acute pain and aids in the recovery of health issues. Acupuncture is grounded in Eastern philosophy and associated with the natural cycles of balancing opposing energetic forces found in the human body , nature, and the universe.

How Does Acupuncture Work?

A unique form of Oriental healing procedure, acupuncture involves the use and insertion of filiform sterile needles into strategic points on the body where underneath lie meridians or energy channels that are stimulated when needles are inserted to initiate healing and ameliorate pain. Acupuncture has been used to restore a person’s wholeness. The practitioner adopts highly complex evaluation methods to understand the patient’s energetic state and then decide on what course to take to bring back the physical and/or emotional health of the patient. Based on a very specific diagnosis following a physical examination, thorough medical history, and observation of the tongue and pulse of the patient, a combination of acupoints are selected to treat the disorder. Acupuncture prescriptions are re-evaluated and re-assessed at each subsequent visit to see if the treatment needs to be changed or not.

An Acupuncture Treatment That Can Benefit Performers

As a type of preventive treatment, acupuncture can be of huge benefit for performers as it helps prepare their body for the wide scope of endurance needs they are faced with in order to properly prepare for a specific performance. By boosting the intake and dissemination of oxygen to the tissues and cells in the body and improving the flow of blood, acupuncture significantly lessens people’s reaction to any physiological, mental, and physical stresses they may encounter and also minimize their risk for muscle cramping and tension. Along with the proper vocal and/or instrumental technique, acupuncture can aid performers to attain optimum and long-term performance sans injury or pain.

However, if the onset of the discomfort develops into pain and causes a limit of body motion, injury oftentimes follows as performer such as dancers or musicians often push themselves beyond their limits, and perform under pain. Factors that may worsen this problem include emotional and mental strain, unhealthy posture, improper eating habits, and inadequate rest. These are signs that tell performers that their body is out of balance, and that something inside is weakened which means they should give themselves an adequate amount of time to heal, rest, and seek professional help. At this stage of their health, performers can try acupuncture along with a doctor-recommended medical treatment to recover.

Acupuncture and Musician Injuries

Performers such as musicians can experiences several possible disorders and injuries, such as anxiety, tendinitis, repetitive strain injury, and physical trauma that seem to arise in frequency these days. Being a thoroughly studied medicine model with hundreds or even thousands of studies behind it, acupuncture is especially especially effective for the treatment of insomnia, headaches, stress relief, shoulder and back pain, focal dystonia, and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. This treatment can be of great benefit to performers as these conditions are common health issues encountered that oftentimes limit and impede their performance. Most performers go for conventional medical treatments, and a number of physical therapies; acupuncture and other forms of Chinese medicine modalities continue to grow in popularity each day.

In terms of impact, acupuncture benefits the physical and psychological aspects of people. More often than not, the problem of the performer can be resolved with just a few rounds of acupuncture treatment. These people may, for example, have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, and also suffer from other issues such as stage fright and anxiety. Chronic neck and shoulder pain may also be plaguing them which give rise to sleeping problems as their levels of stress caused by the pain are high.

Those above-mentioned symptoms are addressed by an acupuncturist who may come up with a specific treatment plan that works best for the performer displaying those symptoms. The acupuncturist will strive to resolve the main cause of those symptoms, and alleviate the presenting symptoms as well, especially the discomfort and pain. It may be necessary for the performer to undergo several rounds of acupuncture treatment to gain marked improvements.

Besides acupuncture, lifestyle and voice and/or instrumental technique changes need to be also made. The benefits of Chinese medicine treatment often last long if these changes are made and integrated into the lives of these performers.

Western Medicine and Acupuncture

Acupuncture is an excellent adjunctive treatment for Western medicine and other natural and alternative modes of treatment. If taken on a short-term basis, medication can help bring about a return to normal vocal and instrumental practice. It is a treatment of choice for a lot of people living in a competitive world of performing. The problem is that regular use of drugs can give rise to further injury, as well as several adverse after effects. These issues can greatly affect the performer’s overall vitality, endurance, and performance. Steroids, anti-inflammatories, and painkillers merely relieve swelling, stiffness, pains, and aches temporarily. These drugs just mask deeper rooted problems. The body uses pain to tell the person that he/she is suffering from a condition that warrants immediate attention in order to prevent further deterioration of the condition.

Apart from being medicine-free and safe, acupuncture treatment provides a person with long lasting health benefits that impacts all aspects of his/her health. Because of the nature of work of performers which is often viewed more as a vocation than as a job, it extremely essential that the mind and body are well taken care of. Conditions that cause pain can often turn acute or chronic if left untreated and the performer may be faced with a long recovery time that may mean a long absence of practice and performance. Acupuncturists often use Chinese herbal medicine along with acupuncture for preventative and curative purposes, to make the recovery period shorter, and the make the person less susceptible to further injury. He/she is treated on a deep, constitutional level, and as a result, the underlying root of the problem and the symptoms are treated leading to an improvement in longevity and general health.

Injuries can greatly impact the performance and well-being of performers. Besides acupuncture, practice, and lifestyle changes need to be made in order for the performer to recover quickly and fully and go back to performing within a short period of time.