When I have lunch with the director of the OSU Integrative Medicine center, we always come to the same conclusion about health.  When treating chronic medical issues, improving patients’ health boils down to changing lifestyle, lifestyle and lifestyle.  Unlike acute medicine, where drugs and surgery are life saving, chronic medicine treatments just don’t work without making significant lifestyle changes.  I’ve talked about those changes in other posts on this blog so I won’t spend much time or space.

Simply put, adding exercise, a clean diet, more water, much more sleep, stretching, deep breathing, being grateful, releasing old emotional trauma, time in the woods etc. changes your health in large part by improving the flow of energy in and around your body.  Clearly, energy flow is vitally important for good health.  In fact, it is the essence of life and well-being in Eastern Medicine.  Unfortunately, Western Medicine continues to cling to the bonehead notion that fixing organs without addressing the energy component is the only path of medical treatment.  What a myopic miscalculation which is slowly, maybe not so slowly, bankrupting the country.

Those familiar with acupuncture know it is based on the premise of stimulating energy flow, called Chi, along the 12 major energy channels called meridians.  Recently, I started adding different sound modalities to my acupuncture treatments after hearing a Tibetan singing bowls program 6 months ago. The goal was to see if adding different sound vibrations with an acupuncture treatment would enhance and deepen the acupuncture session.  The results have been a resounding yes. 

Three of the sound vibration therapies I use are the Solfeggio tuning forks, my own chanting and Himalayan singing bowls.  The Solfeggio sound frequencies were used in ancient Gregorian chants for healing.  Chanting has been a part of my life since my college days when I learned the benefits while taking a course on Buddhism.  I chant the universal OM chant as another sound vibration.  The Himalayan bowls, forged in Nepal, add a subtle mystical sound quality to the acupuncture treatment.

Because of a lifelong interest in crystals and how different ones affect energy flow, I am beginning to explore the possible use of crystals to stimulate Chi flow.   I’m in the early stages of using the energy frequencies/vibrations of different crystals to again enhance my acupuncture treatments.  These frequencies, I suspect, will be different from those stimulated by sound therapies.

To some people, using different vibratory frequencies with acupuncture for healing may seem “way out there” but then the thought of using four billion microwave frequencies, called cell phones, every day was even more “far out there” 30 years ago.

Not all patients come to me for these different vibrational tools during an acupuncture session.  But those who have feel the vibrational component adds a much deeper healing dimension to the treatment.   I’m trying to combine old and new healing approaches aimed at improving energy flow around the body.  That’s the catalyst for improved patient health and well-being.  That’s the beauty of Eastern medicine.

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Happy Birthday, Mom

Dr. Allan Bazzoli, MD is a practitioner of Acupuncture, Holistic Medicine, and Physical Medicine in the Mt. Vernon/Central Ohio and Columbus area.  He is available for speaking engagements on a variety of holistic medical topics.  This material can be distributed free to the public as long as there is no remuneration and credit is given to the author.