How Moxa Can Support You

Moxibustion is the ancient practice of burning mugwort on acupressure points to increase blood flow to that area,. It is based on the principle that where there is stuck energy and stagnation, there is pain. The process of moxibustion generates heat, which improves circulation of energy and blood, reducing pain and promoting healing to the affected area.

Often used in conjunction with acupuncture, moxibustion has its own health benefits. This practice treats along meridians and acu-points using moxa and fire. The meridians are a system of internal pathways that connect limbs to organs, run qi-blood, and regulate the whole body. Acu-points are external, and are stimulated to treat specific diseases internally. In the moxibustion treatment process, acu-points are stimulated by heat, and the stimulation travels along the meridians to the specific part of the body that is being treated. This is the basic principle of acupuncture as well, though TCM states that diseases that can not be cured by drugs or acupuncture need to be treated by moxibustion.

Fire is important in moxibustion because the heat is the element that heals. The heat from burning moxa can expel dampness, warm the Yang and eliminate the cold of Yin, can remove pain or numbness, eliminates stagnation, and warms the meridians, which activates blood flow and qi. There are different techniques to this practice, including placing moxa directly on the skin, burning the moxa slightly away from the treated area, naval moxa, or moxa patches.

Direct moxibustion is the technique of placing the mugwort, or moxa, directly on an acu-point on the skin when burning, and can either be left there until the cone stops burning, or is extinguished. This technique feels like a pleasant warming sensation penetrating deep into the skin, and should not be painful if done right.

Indirect moxibustion is the more common practice, and involves burning the moxa, but holding it away from the skin, but close enough to still feel the warmth. Another way to practice indirect moxibustion is to place moxa on the tip of an acupuncture needle in an acu-point, light the moxa, and then the heat radiates down the needle into the skin.

Navel Moxibustion

In TCM, the belly button holds a significant acupressure point called shen que, or Spirit Gate. This point is considered to be a human’s first mouth, and the focal point for all meridians. During navel moxibustion, mugwort is burned right above the belly button. Moxibustion on this area stimulates stomach gas, clears the meridians, regulates the body’s organ functions, and stimulates healing defenses against various diseases. Because the navel is densely populated by blood vessels, TCM believes that administering medicine via the navel will quickly spread to the meridians and internal organs, and is likely to be gentler on the gastrointestinal system compared to taking medicine orally.

Moxa Patches

Moxa patches are different from moxibustion because while they still produce heat and contain mugwort, they do not use fire. Moxa patches are a safe alternative to moxibustion for people who want the benefits from home. Mugwort, angelica root, and ginger are the medicinal herbs used, and the heat is produced from a layer of iron oxide particles that are activated when exposed to oxygen.

How to use:

• To apply, remove the adhesive flaps on either side

• Place the patch over the desired treatment area

• Once the iron oxide begins oxidizing, heat is produced, which stimulates the herbs

• Heat can be felt for around 8 hours

• Use overnight to aid sleep, or use during the day for pain relief

• Treats sciatica, muscle injuries, frozen shoulder, tennis elbow, ankle sprains, bakers cysts, ganglions, rheumatic joints, menstrual pain, fertility issues

Mugwort

Mugwort, or Artemesia vulgaris, is a flowering plant native to Asia, Europe, and parts of North America. While commonly used for beer-making, mugwort is also used to treat various health conditions, and is also used to make medicinal tinctures, extracts, tonics, teas, powders, and essential oils. Mugwort produces a chemical called artemisinin, which is found in the roots, stem, leaves, and blossoms of the plant. This chemical causes gentle contractions of the uterus, which promotes regular periods, and is also used in TCM to induce labor. When used in the TCM practice of moxibustion, dried mugwort, or moxa, is rolled into cones or balls, and is burned above acupuncture points to increase blood flow to that area and clear stagnation.

Benefits:

• Relieves stress and headaches

• Boosts energy

• Improves sleep

• Promotes blood circulation

• Supports liver health

• Normalizes menstrual cycles

• Eases digestive issues

• Relieves muscle aches

• Repells insects

• Relieves an itch

• Increases urine output

Treatments:

• Anxiety and depression

• Amenorrhea- irregular or absent periods

• Chronic fatigue and insomnia

• Constipation and diarrhea

• Eczema

• Headaches and migraines

• Nausea and vomiting

• Strengthens the immune system

Contraindications

• Though mugwort is safe to use while pregnant, use with caution as it can induce labor or a miscarriage

• Mugwort is related to ragweed, so if you are allergic to ragweed, chances are you could be allergic to mugwort as well

• If you are allergic to celery, birch, or carrot, also proceed with caution, as there is an allergy connection with plants that fall in the Apaiceae family

Products

Make sure to ask your acupuncturist if foot or navel patches are right for you and you can pick up at your next visit!

Wormwood Foot Patches

Qi Ai Warm Foot Patch Box

Mugwort Navel Patches

References

Christiansen, Sherry. What Is Mugwort?” Retrieved from https://www.verywellhealth.com/mugwort-benefits-side-effects-dosage-and-interactions-4767226.

Deng, Hongyong and Shen, Xueyong. "The Mechanism of Moxibustion: Ancient Theory and Modern Research”. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3789413/.

Dharmananda, Subhuti. “Moxibustion: Practical Considerations for Modern Use of an Ancient Technique”. Retrieved from http://www.itmonline.org/arts/moxibustion.htm.

Lade, Heiko. “What is a Moxa Patch?” Retrieved from https://www.theacupunctureclinic.co.nz/what-is-a-moxa-patch/.

Nowakowski, Rachel. “The Healing Power of Moxa”. Retrieved from https://daoisttraditions.edu/healing-power-moxa/.

“Moxibustion in Acupuncture: What You Should Know”. Retrieved from https://www.aiam.edu/acupuncture/moxibustion/.

“Navel Moxibustion, and What It Can Do for You”. Retrieved from https://www.nspirement.com/2017/08/14/navel-moxibustion-and-what-it-can-do-for-you.html.

Lateral Breathing and Immune Support

As we enter Autumn, TCM teaches us that now is the time to turn inward, to finish projects started in summer, to process emotions, and to get our bodies ready for winter. Autumn is associated with the lungs and intestines- the lungs are more susceptible to illness as the weather changes, and the intestines are associated with letting go of stored emotions. By practicing lateral breathing, these organs that are responsible for digestion, elimination, and immune support can be encouraged to function better because they will have room created between them and fresh blood flood to nourish them.

In the heat of the summer, our bodies experience dampness, and eliminating this dampness, especially related to the spleen, is essential to maintain health as our bodies adapt to the season change. Since the spleen fights off colds and infections, which tend to affect the body more in the colder months, supporting the organs responsible for immunity becomes essential to staying healthy. Through lateral breathing, these organs are stimulated with oxygen-rich blood, carrying nutrients directly to them so they perform their best.

What is Lateral Breathing?

Lateral Breathing is a technique used to create more space for blood and oxygen to reach important organs and tissues within the body, going deep to open up spaces that people may not even realize have become constricted. This exercise is so beneficial because it allows the diaphragm to fully expand. If not used properly, like any muscle, the diaphragm can waste away, further limiting the benefits of deep breathing. But, when done right, lateral breathing can bring the diaphragm back to life.

This technique is also beneficial for internal organs like the stomach, spleen, and pancreas, which are tucked up under the rib cage. The gallbladder and liver are close by, and the spaces between each organ are tight. If the rib cage is tight, it can choke out these other organs that digest and metabolize food for energy. By breathing to fully expand the diaphragm, the ribs are opened up, creating more space around the organs, which allows more oxygen rich blood to flow into those organs.

How to Lateral Breathe

• Lie on your back on a flat surface and bring your knees up (keeping your knees up is crucial). If your knees are down, the diaphragm will be constricted in such a way that it will be unable to fully expand, which is the whole intention behind lateral breathing

• Place your left hand on the left side of your belly, covering your ribs, and hold firmly

• Begin to breathe down into the belly, like in Belly Breathing, but this time direct your breath to expand the left side out, or laterally. Use your hand as a guide as to how much that area expands

• This exercise goes deeper than just feeling your lungs expand and ribs rise and fall, you want to feel the relaxed muscles of the ribs rising and falling due to the internal pressure of the breath.

• This area of expansion might not have been used for some time, so this technique takes practice

• It is important to take in more air than usual

• Repeat the same process on the right side

• Full Lateral Breathing is a combination of left and right breathing, and requires even more air intake. As you practice, keep holding the left and right sides to feel which area is tighter, or if it is difficult, remain calm while breathing.

Reconnecting with your Intestines

The intestines are 5+ feet of winding tissue that process food waste, and in all the twists and turns, waste can get stuck and stored. The intestines also are intrinsically connected to stress and emotions, and so it is important to allow this organ to relax, which can be done through lateral breathing. Becoming physically stressed or emotionally upset can cause your breathing to stem from the chest instead of downward into the lower ribcage and diaphragm. This constricts the twists and bends of the intestines and colon, making it very difficult to have a smooth bowel movement.

By laterally breathing with the unwinding technique, the twists and bends of the intestines and colon soften and unravel, allowing for stored materials to pass through and be eliminated from the body. Relaxing the intestines and colon is a direct way of processing emotions and stress.

Using Lateral Breathing to Connect to the Intestines

• Lie on a comfortable surface with your knees up, and keep your shoulders and elbows relaxed, with your left elbow on the floor

• Find the soft place between the bottom of the left rib cage and the top of the left hip bone

• With both hands, alternately use your fingers to gently press into your skin, massaging and loosening the area

• Move down towards the pubis, but not as low as below the navel

• Repeat the same thing on the right side, starting below the right rib cage

• After the area below the right rib cage is loose, work across the center to the left rib, and down to the left hip again

• Now place your hands at a spot halfway between your right hip and navel, and massage until you feel it loosen

• Then, connect all areas by moving from the lower right side, up to the right rib, across, down the left side towards the left hip and pelvis. Repeat as many times as it takes to feel the muscles loosen

• This technique can be uncomfortable at first, particularly on the right side, but as you continue to unwind, it should become more comfortable

Stimulating the Digestive Organs

Lateral breathing can help make contact with the digestive organs that are tucked deep internally underneath the rib cage. Though they are too deep to make direct contact with, they can be stimulated internally by the diaphragm. This encourages the delivery of oxygen rich blood to these organs, expands the space between organs, eliminates waste and emotions, and makes room for supportive nutrients to be delivered in the fresh blood. The enhanced blood flow stimulates digestive and immune functions within your body.

Using Lateral Breathing to Stimulate the Digestive Organs

• Starting on the left side, place your left hand on the left rib cage, and use all 4 fingers of the right hand to massage the area just below the ribs, just left of the center

• Work the area for a while to really feel if there is any pain or discomfort

• Move your hand all along from the bottom of the breastbone down to the last rib on the side. This area will feel similar to the area worked for the intestinal and colon lateral breathing, but this technique goes deeper to work the stomach, spleen, and pancreas

• After a big breath, on the exhale, sneak your fingers up under the ribs and hold them there. Then, inhale and feel the ribs expand outwards. Exhale again, keeping your fingers in the same spot. Repeat this several times

• Next, without pressing on the ribs, move your fingers downward to coax the tissue towards the navel, and repeat this until you feel the rib tissue soften

• Repeat this technique on the right side to contact and clear the liver and gallbladder

• Pay attention to how the tissue and skin feels, if there is pain or discomfort, and be gentle with yourself. Pay attention as well to how other parts of your body react, or if you feel any surges of energy anywhere

Resources

Cavaliere, Stephen and Post, Allison. “Unwinding the Belly: Healing with Gentle Touch.”

Odell, Megan. “Moving into Autumn with Traditional Chinese Medicine”. Retrieved from https://ncim.org.uk/moving-into-autumn-with-tcm#:~:text=Within%20TCM%2C%20Autumn%20is%20the,to%20weather%20this%20seasonal%20change.

Sonmore, Steven. “Enjoy the Energy of Fall: Autumn and Traditional Chinese Medicine”. Retrieved from https://www.acufinder.com/Acupuncture+Information/Detail/Enjoy+the+Energy+of+Fall+Autumn+and+Traditional+Chinese+Medicine.

“TCM: Understanding The Role Of The Lungs”. Retrieved from https://www.euyansang.com.sg/en/tcm%3A-understanding-the-role-of-the-lungs/eystcmorgans4.html.

“How to Nutritionally Adapt to the 3 Stages of Fall With Traditional Chinese Medicine”. Retrieved from https://www.eacuwell.com/blog/traditional-chinese-medicine-stages-of-fall.

Unwinding Your Belly

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, summer is the season between the expansive yang energy of spring, and the inward yin energy of fall and winter. There are a few weeks at the end of August and the beginning of September where we are in what TCM calls late summer or “Indian summer”. This season is all about grounding yourself and digesting or processing your emotions. Emotions often have a physiological effect on the body and can be felt in the belly. The term “go with your gut” implies that intuition can be determined by feelings in the gut, and there is deep truth to this phrase. In “Unwinding the Belly: Healing with Gentle Touch”, Allison Post and Stephen Cavaliere discuss the effects breathing from the belly have on processing and understanding emotions. Late summer is the perfect time of the year to learn these techniques to support the body as the seasons change.

The spleen, stomach, and pancreas are associated with late summer, and there are many ways to support these organs. This includes: proper diet, maintaining balance, exercise, and breathing. Post and Cavaliere also suggest that there is a connection between the belly organs and intuition, and that the notion of intuition is, in a sense, the recognition of emotions and external stimuli felt within the belly. They encourage the following ideas:

• Listen to your body. Since late summer is the time before fall where energy turns inward, now is the time to begin the process of turning inward and processing your emotions.

• The center is essential with health, both emotional and physical, because the center houses the organs responsible for absorption and transportation of nutrients and feelings.

• It is important to nourish our bodies the best we can so that our organs can function their best and so that we feel our best.

• Understanding when the body is responding negatively to an improper diet and then changing your diet to better suit the body is the beginning of reconnecting to our center.

• Emotions are the connection between the brain and gut. The belly digests emotions as well as food and can be either nourished or damaged by what lies there.

• Emotions that we feel in our stomach- butterflies are excitement or anticipation, heartbreak is heartache, fear is felt as the rapid beating of the heart or the desire to urinate, worry eats at the stomach, and jealousy wastes the liver.

• If unresolved negative emotions are held inside too long without resolution, internal tissues, muscles, and fascia become stiff and blocked, inhibiting these organs from functioning their best.

• Unresolved emotions can cause stress, high blood pressure, and even the hardening of arteries.

• Positive feelings like excitement, joy, love, and happiness are also felt within the belly.

• The initial attempt to alter emotions is to change our thoughts, but you can not think feelings away, you have to feel them.

• Exercise the core to strengthen the core.

Post and Caveliere also teach the benefits of breathing from the belly, and how when we hold emotions in, we tend to constrict our breathing as well. Opening up our breathing, breathing fully and deeply, and feeling the belly expand brings all the feelings stored there to the forefront. They believe that changing the way we breathe is another way to reconnect to our core and the benefits are vast.

In her experience, whenever Allison Post met with a patient who was experiencing difficulties with digestion, movement, connecting with her body or emotion, or with healing, there was also an issue with the way the patient was breathing.

• Bringing simple awareness to your belly and how it feels immediately relieves tension and stress.

• Imagine constricting air flow and panting through life, and then imagine allowing yourself a strong and healthy air flow. Breathing is synonymous to living.

• Inhibiting breath is learned, and relearning how to breath is an essential step towards becoming comfortable in your body again.

• Breathing from the belly increases pressure below the diaphragm, creating a vacuum in the lung cavities. This causes air to rush to fill the void, providing ample oxygen.

• Panic breath occurs when the diaphragm is pulled upwards on the inhale, creating a weaker vacuum, filling just the top part of the lungs, allowing insufficient oxygen.

• Using touch is a technique to learn the feel of your belly and the points of tension or where you have difficulty filling with breath.

• The circuit of healing: stimulating the skin accesses subtle energies within the body. The nerves in the skin contain information about the internal stress levels of the body. This information is sent from the fingers to the areas of the brain that process these internal levels. Gentle touch creates a feedback loop between the body and the brain.

• Give yourself time to learn your body, rushing it can break the circuit.

• Delve deeper and stimulate the abdominal lymph nodes. Place your hands to the side of the navel and feel the vertical creases that lie on each side of the torso. Gently press deeper to stimulate the lymph nodes, all the while breathing deeply.

• Stimulating this spot releases waste stored in the nodes, working like a filtration process.

How to belly breathe:

• Lie on your back with your knees up, either on your bed or the floor. Make sure your knees are elevated, but not being supported by the hips.

• First, draw attention to the way you are currently breathing. Are your breaths deep or shallow, do they flow or get stuck in your throat?

• Next, bring your attention to your spine, and connect your breathing to the way your back feels on the floor.

• Then, place your hands on your belly, index fingers pointing towards each other, but keep your elbows on the floor. Inhale and feel your belly rise against your hands, then exhale and feel your hands gently fall.

• Attempt with each inhale to breathe in more air, and feel the expansion from your hips to your rib cage. Try to inhale and exhale without expanding the chest.

• Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth.

In these days between the busy and the slow, take the time to reconnect with your core, breathe deeply, and let yourself feel everything you have been holding inside. Feed your body the proper nutrition to allow proper digestion of both nutrients and emotions. The better you feel physically, the easier it will be to process your emotions. Try bringing attention to your breathing, and see what awareness comes to the forefront of your consciousness to allow yourself to heal.

References

Cavaliere, Stephen and Post, Allison. “Unwinding the Belly: Healing with Gentle Touch.”

Pulsifer, Jeremy. “Late Summer: The Fifth Season”. Retrieved from https://www.yinovacenter.com/blog/late-summer-the-5th-season/.

“Eat with the Seasons: Late Summer”. Retrieved from https://fiveseasonstcm.com/blogs/traditional-chinese-medicine-101/eat-with-the-seasons-late-summer.

“Late-Summer Health: The Chinese Medicine & Taoist Way”. Retrieved from https://www.wuweiwisdom.com/late-summer-health-tcm-taoist-tips/