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"I've had therapy and acupuncture separately- my session with Jeremy was the best of both- visualization and energy work combined with acupuncture and deep tissue massage work. I felt lighter than I have in as long as I can remember after my session- and loved that he combined the letting go of old emotional/mind patterns with their release physically."

Keri L., San Francisco, CA
Yelp.com

"I left my first acupuncture session totally relaxed and focused, a feeling that stayed for about a month. In my second session, he incorporated more pulse reading and energy work that was, in one hyphenated word, MIND-BLOWING."

Allison Y., San Francisco, CA
Yelp.com

Headaches and Migraines

Headaches aren't just in your head. Your whole body is involved.

With acupuncture and treatment of the body’s innate stress response (Somatic Acupuncture), both headaches and migraines can be significantly reduced or eliminated.

While conventional approaches to headaches look for a single mechanism to treat the pain, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) takes a holistic approach.

Acupuncture

According to TCM, energy, or Qi (“chee”) activates life in the body through pathways called meridians. When this free movement of energy is disrupted, pain and ‘dis-ease’ result.

Acupuncture has been proven to provide headache and migraine relief (Acupuncture and Headaches at nytimes.com). By treating points along the meridians, energy is able to freely circulate in the body and headache pain is relieved quickly and without side effects. Regular treatment provides continued pain relief while regulating the body’s energy system so that headaches become less frequent and eventually disappear.

Autonomic Nervous System

Acupuncture is the first level of treatment and can treat and relieve headache and migraine pain by itself. However, in order to get to the root of the problem, it is important to treat the body's stress response.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is an aspect of the central nervous system that regulates your internal organs. It is generally considered to operate below the level of conscious awareness. There are two distinct divisions of the ANS, sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic, or “fight or flight” response, is how your body responds to stressful situations. The parasympathetic, or “rest and digest” response, allows your body to relax and regenerate.

In our deeply stressful world, many people are in the “fight or flight” response too often. Why do we call it “fight or flight?" Because if your meet a lion in the jungle, your body provides you with the energy needed to fight in a way that is stronger than you normally could, or run away faster than you’ve ever run.

But you’re not in the jungle; you’re probably at a desk in an office or in a stressful situation. Your body, however, perceives the same threat and responds accordingly. Being in sympathetic response too long eventually causes strain on the energy system of the body.

Somatic Acupuncture

In treatment, we help to activate the parasympathetic, “rest and digest” response. This happens as a byproduct of almost every acupuncture treatment. As the body relaxes, we can work on a deeper, sub-conscious level to see how the stress response is activated.

With Somatic Acupuncture we can remove these triggers. Over time, your mind-body complex will readjust to stressful situations so that what once caused a migraine no longer will.