Your first visit will be approximately 90 minutes, with return visits lasting typically 50 minutes, but can last up to one hour, depending on the treatment required. 

What is the treatment like?

During your first visit, there will be a detailed consultation and examination before your acupuncture treatment begins. You will be asked many questions, some related specifically to your complaint and others seemingly unrelated. Chinese Medicine requires the entire person be taken into consideration so we can determine what is causing the condition or disease. We treat the whole person, not just the symptom.

Most Chinese medicine practitioners will take your pulse or look at your tongue. We instead employ Neoclassical Acupuncture to balance your elements, remove obstacles, release organ alarms, and open all meridians to helps your body to resolve your chief complaints on its own.

Neoclassical acupuncture employs a palpatory style, meaning that diagnosis is done by palpating different parts of the body to check if meridians, organs or elements are blocked.

Remain relax while we palpate, and let us know if the palpation is in anyway uncomfortable or tender. Your feedback is important, as it will help us to figure out how best to balance your elements and remove any obstacles. Within a few minutes your whole body can be assessed.

The reason why this method is phenomenal, is that through its deep understanding of energetic architecture and structure, the practitioner only needs to place a few needles in the patient to bring about vast and immediate energetic changes in the body, which often equates to removal of pain and harmonization of subtle energies.

Many new patients want to know what to expect during acupuncture treatment.  With the insertion of needles you may feel certain sensations, some of which may be pleasant and others uncomfortable.  You may feel a dull ache, tingling sensation local to the needle or elsewhere in the body, a sensation of fullness, energy moving through the body, relaxation, or a sensation of tightness.  That is all normal.  Also, after treatment you may feel grounded, relaxed, and possibly “spacey”.  That’s normal with acupuncture.

Depending on the diagnosis, electroacupuncture may be used. Electroacupuncture is a form of acupuncture where a small electric current is passed between pairs of acupuncture needles. This practice augments the use of regular acupuncture, and is particularly good for treating pain and certain neurological disorders.

Low-level lasers may also be used. This is the application of red and near infra-red light over injuries or lesions to improve wound and soft tissue healing, to reduce inflammation and give relief for both acute and chronic pain.

Often frequency specific microcurrent will be used. This entails the use of wet towels. Leads are connected to the towels. Patients can leave with areas of dampness on their clothes.

How soon before I see results?

Everyone responds differently to treatment because there are unique factors that can impact the acupuncture treatment. Some individuals experience total or partial pain relief immediately, some after 24 or 48 hours, others will require a couple of treatments, still others will find that acupuncture just doesn’t work for them. Sometimes after feeling better for a few days or weeks, the condition will relapse. This is because your body needs time to adjust to the acupuncture. However, once the problem is successfully addressed, the condition will no longer relapse. Finally, there are those who first get worse before they get better. Let us know how you responded to the previous treatment at the time of your return visits, so that we can adjust your treatment plan accordingly.

How many sessions of treatment will I need?

A typical course of treatment is 10 sessions, and the number of courses required for complete recovery depends on the nature and duration of the condition for which you are seeking treatment. Simple, acute disorders may take just 3 to 5 sessions for full recovery, while chronic or more complex disorders may take several courses over several months, followed by once-biweekly, once-monthly sessions for maintenance.

Although acupuncture and other Chinese medical healing modalities have had a good record of treating many conditions successfully, each case is unique since each individual suffering from any disease can vary greatly in pathodynamics from another individual with the same disorder. Therefore we cannot guarantee a quick fix or a miracle cure, even though these amazing phenomenon have been known to happen.