Soothing acupressure massage tips for the body and the mind

1. Stimulate head and face upon waking

The head is the convergence point of many pathways. Prior to getting up each morning, lie in bed and tap your head over a large area with your fingertips. This promotes blood circulation, alertness, and clear thinking. This manipulation is known in traditional Chinese medicine as “sounding the skull," after the percussive tapping.

Next, massage the face. Traditional Chinese medicine holds that “the heart controls the mind; its essence is manifested on the face.” Moreover, many bodily channels reach the facial area. Thus, accessing the main facial structural features can regulate optimal flow through the blood and energy channels.

Begin with the area around the eyes. Press the area around the eye sockets with the fleshy side of your thumbs, working from inside out. The area covered includes the zan zhu point just outside the bridge of the nose above the eye sockets at the inside edge of the eyebrows, the jing ming point at the inside corner of the eyes, and the tai yang (sun) point commonly known in English as the temples on either side of the forehead.

Moving downward, rub your hands together to produce heat and cup your nose with your hands to prevent dizziness caused by stuffiness resulting from cold air entering the nasal cavity.

Next, deliberately clamp your teeth together with force, then slowly release. This action activates the blood vessels in the head and neck.

Next, apply pressure to ear points: the ears are a microcosm of the entire body's acupressure points, loaded with various points. Just tugging the earlobes has a salubrious effect.

2. Busy hands at work

There are many acupressure points on the hands. Whether during a meeting, sitting before a computer screen, or even riding an elevator, the simple actions of gripping the hands together at the “v” between thumb and forefinger, clasping the hands with interwoven fingers, or clapping can stimulate points like the hegu (the area at the top of the web of flesh between thumb and index finger) and laoguan (the point accessed by folding the middle finger into the palm) that influence moods.

When you are enjoying a performance and it comes time to applaud, clapping extra vigorously can give you a little boost to the health in addition to showing your appreciation and making the occasion more boisterous.

3. Evening full body massage

Before retiring to bed for the night you can do a full-body massage. Making a fist with your right hand, begin from your left abdomen, thumping lightly as the fist moves upward to the chest, proceeding to the inner and outer sides of the arm, then from the left shoulder to the left side of the waist, outer left side of the leg, and after reaching the top of the foot, returning to the chest along the inner side of the leg. Repeat the same actions with the left hand on the right side of the body.

If you have poor circulation at the joints, strike a few more times for greater benefit.

Translated from CommonWealth Magazine by David Toman.

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