EAR ACUPUNCTURE: THE TREATMENT

Clients are invited to have all five points or choose the ones they want that day. Pregnant clients receive only two points, the Shen Men and Lung.

This August, after water damage from Hurricane Irene temporarily relocated SATU to the main building of the Connecticut Mental Health Center, Bryant and her fellow clinicians set up shop on the Center’s second floor. Along with SATU clients, thirteen CMHC staff members received auricular acupuncture that day. Michael J. Sernyak, MD, the Center’s CEO, participated for the first time. “I had this wonderful, contemplative time,” he said afterward. “It was really unusual.”

Clinicians say Bryant, experience stress too; it’s important that they develop ways to manage their stress. Acupuncture can help. The treatment is available to all CMHC staff members during any of SATU’s regularly scheduled clinics.

SATU also welcomes CMHC clients with mental illness to the acupuncture clinic. “We just need to talk to the clinician to make sure they are psychiatrically stable and have no medical contraindications,” Bryant explains. People with pacemakers cannot receive acupuncture; special considerations are given to those with certain medical conditions such as haemophilia and diabetes.

It takes only a minute or two to insert the paper-thin needles into each ear. At SATU, clients then sit silently for thirty minutes or more in the soft, black chairs with matching footstools in the acupuncture room. The lights are dim. Most clients close their eyes; some fall into a meditative state that Bryant calls “needle sleep.”

The five points are:

(1) The Autonomic Point which calms the nervous system and helps with overall relaxation

(2) the Shen Men or “spirit gate,” which reduces anxiety and nervousness

(3) the Kidney Point, for calming fears and healing internal organs

(4) the Liver Point for detoxification, blood purification, and to quell aggression

(5) the Lung Point, which promotes aeration and helps clients let go of grief.