Your Original Face

Many years ago when I was new to my acupuncture practice, I had a patient ask me if I offer facial rejuvenation acupuncture. I think I muttered some polite decline but inside I was thinking, “What a youth obsessed culture we live in! Women don’t owe the world youth and they certainly don’t need to try and freeze their beauty in time. Youth is not a standard, it is a season, amongst many seasons in a woman’s life!”

I still do believe all of that. And embarrassingly, my thinking was pretty black and white on the subject. Some years after that, I had the opportunity to actually try facial rejuvenation acupuncture for myself (duh, I should have done that first without passing judgement!) 

I realized a few things:

1. These muscular masks that we wear on our skulls our entire life hold a huge amount of tension and emotion. Receiving facial rejuvenation acupuncture (especially in a series) clears layer upon layer of emotional, energetic, fascial and muscular “debris” that we pick up from just the act of living. I can’t express how profound this kind of release is.
2. Big events show hard on our faces. Sudden trauma, long-standing grief, a mother’s worry (and much more!), show up in very specific areas of the face.
3. Facial rejuvenation acupuncture is super supportive for all sorts of self-esteem crushing conditions, such as acne, rosacea, eczema, and scars. Softening the impacts of these “marks” on a woman’s face can do wonders to buoy her overall sense of self-confidence which has a ripple effect on her entire life. 
4. It’s okay to want to feel beautiful, especially for yourself. Let’s be real, facial rejuvenation acupuncture is unable to produce miracles. It will not perfectly erase deep, grooved, long-standing lines in your face. But it will also not give you a fake, plasticky look that requires injections or incisions until the end of your life. Instead it clears, softens, uplifts, and creates glow in a gorgeous, healthy way. Who couldn’t use a little more GLOW?

There is a traditional Chinese medicine concept called your Original Face. This idea reminds us that beauty isn’t just about the shape of your facial features. It’s about the glow through your face and eyes, the vibrancy of your qi, and your unique way of being in the world. Facial rejuvenation acupuncture is about coming back to your Original Face, a reflection of your true vitality before stress, tension, and the weight of life began to shape it. In a way, it’s about revealing who you have always been.

Clearly the ancient Chinese understood glow because they hold a long-standing tradition of revering the face. At the beginning of the twentieth century, 1024 prescriptions left by medicine men were unearthed from the Mogoa Grottoes, near the Silk Road of China. Many of these prescriptions included literature about dermatology including many cosmetic recipes. There was also an old tradition amongst the Chinese empresses and concubines, as far back as the Song Dynasty (AD 960-1279) to receive facial acupuncture to aid in overall rejuvenation and anti-aging. During this particular dynasty, many developments were made in unique treatments for the eyes, nose, lips, teeth, hair, as well as more over-riding concerns about the complexion and wrinkles. 

Clearly there is something to this practice because it has stuck around a very long time. One of things I have grown to love about it the most, is how good it feels for all aspects of your being. For example, we can work on dull skin tone and sadness lines embedded on your face while also doing body points to clear prolonged whole-body grief. I can not stress enough how powerful it is to access these many layers together. This is truly whole-body healing. 

May every woman feel her most beautiful self, inside and out! 

You can learn more about cosmetic acupuncture here.