The 3 BEST acupressure points for anxiety

here are the three best acupressure points for anxiety you know people will often come in and they'll say oh I'm feeling so anxious and so I've tried journaling or working with a therapist or counselor and it often leads to this great discussion where I share a very different opinion that I have about how to approach clinical anxiety in my opinion the best results from treating anxiety come through treating the body not through treating the mind because anxiety for so many of us is a somatic sensation and it is not a mental health issue as conventional medicine will have you believe while there are some people with yes just anxious Minds that are worriers the true chronic clinical anxiety is a physical sematic experience so in this video let's talk about three sematic practices you can do right now they free you can do at home that will help with anxiety hey guys I'm Dr Alex hin board licens doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book master of the day so let's jump in personal opinion here based on lots of clinical experience and lots of lived experience with severe anxiety it is much more effectively treated through the body than it is through the mind you know I think we've been given some mistaken messaging from conventional medicine that because clinical anxiety is a kind of mental health issue that therefore you have to treat the mind in order to fix the body I don't agree at all because while yes there are some people who are anxious just because they're worriers but they don't have a fast heart rate or butterflies in the belly or they haven't lost 15 pounds due to feeling anxious yes sure journaling and taking a vacation and talking to a therapist may help but for the people with clinical anxiety that are on medication or considering it treating it through the body regulating the physiology yes the chemicals is more effective than anything you do mentally so yes there's a spectrum anxiety I'm just worried about this test coming up I'm worried about my boyfriend girlfriend spouse child whatever it is my dog and I'm worried over here about these massive heart palpitations I'm having my heart rate going crazy in the middle of the night it from deeply physiological to deeply mental and I think if you marry the two it is the best bang for your buck but also what I found is training through the body just seems to work a lot better but what do you actually do you could exercise you could go to yoga you could go for a long walk you could hang out with friends I found that I think acupressure and somatic tools acupuncture too are some of the most effective that I've seen and so because I can't recommend you doing acupuncture on yourself acupressure is a close second that can help whether you have chronically high anxiety levels or or it can often help whether you have an acute anxiety attack right now some of these points you can use right now to sleep better tonight right now to come off of that metaphorical ledge and right now just feel it come down a couple different notches now the first point is called shanong now shanong literally just means the center of the chest in Chinese and this is the ren Channel Ren Channel just goes down the midline of the body and basically it's equally distant right in the center between your nipples right right in the center of your chest and so what you want to do is just put your hands hand over hand like this and you're going to just do this circular rubbing sensation you're going to rub for maybe 5 minutes if it's really intense anxiety to the left counterclockwise and then you're going to go counterclockwise 5 minutes to the right and this somatic sensation is very soothing specifically to the Heart Right a lot of people with heightened anxiety levels are scared of the sensations they feel in their chest the palpitations the high heart rate those are the things that make them very very nervous and so doing this over the chest over the heart itself is very soothing and it's also something that you can do when you're having a hard time sleeping because of the anxiety itself as well now the second point is a point on the Kidney Channel called yongen now yongen sometimes translated as bubbling spring or gushing spring now this is the first point on the Kidney Channel and it's right in the bottom of the foot if you slide your finger up towards the balls of the feet you'll feel a little divot just behind the balls of the foot and that point is kidney one the kidney channel in Chinese medicine is almost like the grounding rod it's like the grounding station of the body we say the kidneys are associated with the winter phase is sort of the organ that helps downshift the nervous system it is one of the organs we treat in acupuncture Theory to help calm like for example anxiety symptoms insomnia symptoms palpitations and that kind of thing for this point you're going to slide your thumb into the ball there and you're just going to either do a circular motion circling around in the ball of the foot do that for 5 or 10 minutes each side or you can do it even longer while you're watching a show at night if you're feeling too revved up and then you could also push and release push and release and there's a second final Point here that's basically in the center of your heel so in Japanese traditions of acupuncture they will often do moxibustion burning of this mug wart on the heel until the patient feels heat in the heel and this is viewed as a a heightened form of this grounding effect that treatment of the kidney channel has so you can do a number of things at night you can either tap on the heel you can literally Pat it or you can just push and release with your thumb push and release push and release push and release in China a folk tradition is to do a hot foot soak so to do a hot foot bath because they believe that it brings sort of the chi down it brings all of the energy down it's sort of like a grounding station so you can try soaking your feet just in hot water for maybe 20 or 30 minutes the end of the night and that's often besides it being very relaxing and very soothing is something that can help really calm the nervous system activity a little bit now I'm actually doing a one-time live workshop on how to treat anxiety with traditional Chinese medicine coming up in a couple weeks here check out the link below this video uh I'm doing a live 1our Workshop limited to 500 people with a live Q&A afterwards I'll stay as long as you have questions and basically we're going to go through the causes of anxiety five daily practices from traditional Chinese medicine to help downshift your nervous system and your stress hormones and to really do sort of like a functional adrenal reset if you want to call it that check out the link right below this video it's limited to 500 spots last season we filled up all 500 spots so make sure you enroll again I'll stay for as long as you want for the Q&A and that's something I think is going to be very very helpful because we'll go through a bit of my own story as well as practices that can really help now the final acupuncture Channel and point that can help with anxiety is what we call spleen 3 and spleen 4 these points are on the inside of the foot really behind the big ball of your big toe and spleen three is a point called taibi and spleen four is a point called gsun now these two points are often used more for Digestive problems and gynecological problems more than nervous system regulation the inside of the foot are the yin channels the yin channels you treat to deal with a Yang problem a Yang problem would be like upsurging stress hormones heightened your nervous system activity anxiety worry that kind of thing so by treating these leg Yin channels is more effective at Gathering and descending the resources of the body so what you can do is massage the inside of the foot either just by rolling your thumb up the inside of the foot like that you can also just press and release press and release press and release all along the inside of the foot the massaging of the feet in particular has a very very strong grounding effect and a very strong calming effect and again these points are used more for calming overreactions of the nervous system getting your your body out of this really excessively hypervigilant State and to take the whole move the chi down right is what Chinese medicine believes so try these three points see how they work for acupressure for you you'll often notice a very calming Sensation from the very first chest somatic rubbing technique here and then stimulation of the feed is very very effective as well now don't forget guys I work with a limited number of new patients every week in my clinic in Los Angeles or virtually via tele medicine if you want to work one to one just go to Dr Alex hind.com for clinic and reach out or there's information right below this video Clinic phone number email and booking link as well if you want to learn more so check those out all below this video and then before you go I have another really great related acupressure video right up here