Acupoint Therapy is an extension of Willy Penzel's APM system (Akupunkt Massage), and it involves the stimulation of acupuncture points or meridians with a therapy stick. This differs from acupuncture which uses needles, or acupressure or shiatsu which both use massage. The traditional Chinese medicine technique known as tui na sometimes uses similar utensils to stimulate meridians, however.

Sweden is one of the foremost countries using and developing this therapy.

Physiology

The starting point is traditional Chinese Medicine, which teaches that along the body runs a series of meridians. Each meridian is said to have a specific function, and each of the points along that meridian is claimed to have a different effect on that meridian and indeed on other parts of the body and the energy system.

Half the meridians are said by Acupoint therapists to be yin, which they say seems to correspond to the parasympathetic nervous system. In this theory stimulating these meridians leads to relaxation, a slower heart, reduced blood pressure, muscular release, etc. The other half of the meridians are therefore yang, which is said to produce increased

Acupoint Therapy focuses on bringing the yin and yang (parasympathetic and sympathetic) back into balance.

Treatment

The therapy stick looks a bit like something a dentist would put into your mouth, but at the end it has a small ball with a diameter of just a couple of millimeters.

One form of treatment involves the stimulation with the therapy stick along a meridian. This causes vasodilation, thereby stimulating the meridian. (You can see this on yourself by running a pointy blunt object (like a match stick) along your inner forearm. After a few minutes, you'll see a red line appearing where you traced the line. Sometimes you'll see a line - which is vasoconstriction.)

Another treatment method involves stimulating individual points, rather than a length of the meridian.

References

• Clinical Journal of Pain, Vol. 12; (1996) 326-239; Felhendler
• "Relationship of Acupuncture Points and Meridians to Connective Tissue Planes"; The Anatomical Record (New Anat.) 2002 269:257-265; Langevin & Yandow