What is Japanese Acupuncture?
There are a wide variety of acupuncture styles practiced all around the world today. The most common, and the style most patients are familiar with, is the Chinese style. All acupuncture treatments aim to bring the body back to center and balance the systems throughout the body, but the approach and treatment strategies will look and feel different depending on the style administered.
Chinese style acupuncture treats signs and symptoms of an illness that a patient presents with, often relying on questions and answers to get to a diagnosis. With Japanese style acupuncture, the overall emphasis for the treatment is balancing the energy flow in the body and throughout the body’s systems, instead of treating a specific illness or disease. While questions are still asked, Japanese style acupuncture utilizes palpation to effectively ask the patient’s body what it needs that day.
Diagnosis
The Japanese style of acupuncture is heavily based on palpation. Diagnosis for Japanese acupuncture is based on two key parts: the pulse and the abdomen. By listening to the pulse and palpating the abdomen, or Hara, the practitioner is able to detect deficiencies or excesses that have manifested in the patient’s body. The abdomen is divided into different regions, also called reflex zones, that represent the many systems in the human body. While palpating, the practitioner is gathering information about the health and condition of said systems. Palpation of the pulse helps to further diagnose by feeling for overall energy flow throughout the body, and the combination of information gathered from the pulse and Hara make up the patient’s diagnosis for that treatment.
Treatment
A typical Japanese style acupuncture treatment consists of two parts: a front and back treatment. The front treatment usually consists of the root treatment which is determined from the diagnostic stage of palpating the abdomen and listening to the pulse. The root treatment aims to address the underlying cause of the symptoms felt by the patient. The back treatment following is complementary to the root treatment. By doing both a front and back treatment the body is addressed as a whole. Local, or branch, treatments are done concurrently with the root treatment to address certain symptoms directly.
Japanese style acupuncture uses thin filiform needles that inserted into the skin 3-5 millimeters using a guide tube. The Japanese style typically uses fewer needles and this coupled with the gentle insertion results in a more relaxing experience for the patient. Treatments may consist of other modalities such as the use of moxibustion (the burning of the herb mugwort), cupping, or gua sha. There are also non-insertive options for those who are needle-phobic.
