Will it hurt?

It was my patient' first time for acupuncture and she was really nervous. "Will it hurt?" she asked. I was kind of surprised since she was Chinese. I thought most Chinese had been getting acupuncture, cupping (baguan, and scraping (guasha) since they were born but that's just not so anymore.

These days a lot of young Chinese, especially in wealthier families, don't use Chinese medicine at all. It's considered somewhere between uncool and a relic of the past. If it wasn't for her grandmother I don't think she would have come at all. She had some, uh... painful, female problems so her grandmother brought her on in.

In TCM pain is generally caused by stagnation; either blood stagnation or qi stagnation. This pain will manifest in a local point, around the area where you have the problem, and at corresponding points on the acupuncture meridians. In this case the girl had pain in her lower abdomen and at the points yinlingquan and Jiaoxin.

Acupuncture generally doesn't hurt. Heck, if the doctor is good enough you might not even feel the needle go in. This having been said, some points like Hegu (合谷) will always be painful. When you‘re ill and have tender points along the meridians and you needle there, those places often hurt too. Although doctors try to minimize discomfort, some pain is necessary to ultimately be cured.

So what did I tell her? I said, “Yes it’ll hurt, but just a little."