4 Ways Acupuncture Can Relieve Workplace Stress and Pain
Originally a major component of traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture has found worldwide recognition for its health benefits. It is now practiced worldwide by a lot of practitioners who understand how to alleviate certain pressure points to achieve the desired effect.
How does acupuncture work?
Traditional Chinese medicine holds that the body has two opposing forces: the yin and the yang. To maintain good spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical health, the body’s yin and yang must always be balanced; nothing is ever all just yin or yang!
This ancient medical tradition also believes that when these forces are unbalanced in a person’s body, the body’s life force (or qi) can be blocked at certain points—which thus causes pain! Acupuncture alleviates this pain by releasing the blockage and allowing the person’s life force to flow naturally.
Despite being maligned in much of the Western world as superstition, the continued emergence of acupuncture therapy services around the world points to the fact that many individuals are experiencing its health benefit claims.
Acupuncture as a workplace benefit
Today, many companies are incorporating acupuncture to improve the workplace experience. However, besides relieving pain and stress, employees offered this are experiencing profound health benefits brought about by regular acupuncture therapy.
Here are four ways acupuncture can help improve the workplace:
- Stress and pain relief
As alluded to earlier, acupuncture does a good job of reducing workplace stress that usually manifests in physical pain. Using very thin, almost hair-like needles, acupuncturists will release pressure in common pain points in the back, neck, arms, and hands.
With the blockage gone, your body’s fluids will flow normally and reduce the inflammation that causes pain—which then results in a calm and meditative state.
- Reduced eye strain
Eye strain is a pressing problem for people who spend six to eight hours at their desks and pore over their screens every day. The strain often manifests as a slight discomfort but can accelerate the development of serious and long-lasting conditions, such as shortsightedness, longsightedness, cataracts, glaucoma, astigmatism, amblyopia, and more.
Sometimes, the eye strain can also result in migraine, a debilitating headache that also results in nausea and vomiting. Acupuncture helps relieve these pain symptoms by releasing pressure from qi points near the neck, face, and head.
- Reduced cigarette cravings
Many long-time smokers get hooked on cigarettes because of the stimulating effects of nicotine found in tobacco leaves. It is the pleasurable effects of nicotine that make smokers continue with the habit for years despite its well-documented negative health effects.
Acupuncture therapy can help stave off these cravings by relieving a person of stressors that push them to smoke in the first place. By having a clearer and more relaxed state of mind, the urge to smoke can be avoided. Aside from that, the improved blood flow brought about by this type of therapy promotes lung tissue repair—which helps resolve some of the bad effects brought about by prolonged cigarette smoking.
- Enhanced immune system
In most cases, the pain symptoms people feel are not a result of a single occurrence. Instead, they are an accumulation of stress and toxins that are encountered every day. Acupuncturists can detect these blockages even before they send out pain signals to our brain. This results in much healthier employees who take fewer sick leaves, thus contributing to a more productive workplace.
Conclusion
Acupuncture presents several health benefits that could help you counteract the negative effects of workplace stress. While it can seem daunting to the untrained eye, acupuncture is completely safe—provided that you work with a properly-trained acupuncturist.
While you may experience some sensitivity, acupuncture should not hurt. Instead, it should bring you into a calm and meditative state of mind. Are you looking for a provider of acupuncture therapy services near you?