Acupressure techniques: getting rid of psychological problems. G. Vincenzi

Part I
UNDERSTANDING AND USING ENERGY PSYCHOLOGY
Foreword
Your body has the ability to heal itself.
Andrew Weil, MD
"Acupressure Techniques: Getting Rid of Psychological Problems" is a unique book that will teach you how to control your life by influencing the body's energy system. There are several names for this process, but we will use the term "energy psychology". This healing practice is based on the ancient Chinese art of acupuncture, but instead of using needles to achieve transformation at the level of thoughts and feelings, energy psychology offers a simple method that involves stimulating specific points in your body with your fingers. Once you understand the essence of this technique and learn how to find biologically active points (they will be indicated in the figures), you will be able to get rid of the problems that have plagued you for many years. As psychologists who have studied numerous practices and techniques, we have come to the conclusion that energy psychology is the most effective technique to help you quickly deal with emotional and psychological problems and achieve effective results.
Origins of Bioenergetic Medicine
It is not completely clear when bioenergetic medicine was born and at what time it was put into practice. According to legend, it was discovered five thousand years ago in ancient China. In those days when swords and arrows were used in wars, people discovered one strange thing: soldiers who received minor injuries in certain areas of the body noticed that the pains and ailments that had tormented them for many years suddenly disappeared. It is believed that such cases led the Chinese to the discovery of a system responsible for communicating energy information to the entire human body. This system was called qi, and later became also known as ki, prana, that is, "life force" or "vital energy."
Acupuncture
The discovery of the human energy system eventually led to the development of acupuncture, a procedure in which the energy of the human body is changed by stimulating specific points on the body with needles, located on twelve energy channels called meridians. Each of the channels passes through a specific organ, such as the lungs, heart, or stomach. The meridians are interconnected, so that the vital energy qi, following from one to another, circulates throughout the body. The channels also interact with a number of more concentrated energy centers called chakras.
During acupuncture sessions, needles are inserted into certain stimulating (to increase energy concentration) or calming (to decrease energy concentration) points. Through trial and error, this technique was developed and used by Chinese healers to relieve pain and treat a wide variety of ailments. Curiously, in some countries acupuncture is now used as an alternative anesthesia during surgical operations.
More and more people in the United States are choosing this technique as a standalone alternative treatment (though we believe many are hesitant due to fear of needles). The World Health Organization has approved a list of 104 diseases that can be treated with acupuncture, including gastrointestinal disorders and sciatica (Burton Goldberg Group, 1993).
Scientific research
From a scientific point of view, the problem with energy psychology is that it is very difficult to provide concrete proof of its existence. Trying to justify the existence of the energy system of the human body and biologically active points is like trying to prove the existence of gravity or energy of any kind. You cannot see it, but on an intuitive level you understand that it is there and that you can conduct experiments that will confirm its presence.
Some of the first data proving the existence of an energy field or aura around the human body was obtained in the 1970s. Yale researcher Harold Saxon Behr in 1972 measured the electromagnetic fields of trees, animals, people and called them biofields. In his work, he suggested that a living organism develops within an energy field that copies its physical form. For example, if you tear off a part from a leaf of a plant, the shape of its biofield will repeat the shape of the biofield whole sheet. Other studies conducted by Behr in the same 1972 showed that the baby animal has an energy field corresponding in size to the aura of an adult.
Richard Gerber, author of Vibrational Medicine (1988), suggested that energy problems are the source of physical illness, which directly affects the state of the body. Therefore, if various violations of the biofield can be detected before the development of a real disease, there must be methods of treatment that, if applied in a timely manner, can restore the energy balance and thus prevent the onset of the disease. This will not seem so far-fetched to us if we take into account the fact that the human body is completely renewed approximately every four years. This means that not a single atom of our present organism existed four years ago. And some organs of the body are updated even more often. For example, every six weeks the liver regenerates. These facts indicate that the biofield is the basis of our physical form. The aura links the individual parts of the body together and provides the environment in which they are updated.
Louis Langman conducted another study in 1972, the purpose of which was to establish a connection between the disease and the state of the biofield. He found that among 123 women with cervical cancer, five of them had a positive energy charge in the affected area, and 118 had a negative one. When examining women without cancer, the numbers were exactly the opposite. This study does not support the suggestion that negative energy polarity leads to disease, as it is possible that cancer itself causes a negative charge. Nevertheless, this work clearly demonstrates that there are differences between the state of the biofield of healthy and sick people.
Several attempts have also been made to scientifically substantiate the existence of biologically active points. Robert Bakker, an orthopedic surgeon who wrote Cross Current (1990) and co-author of Body Electricity (1985), decided to study acupuncture because people began to take an interest in the technique in the 1970s. The reason for this was the visit of President Nixon to China, as well as the healing of using acupuncture by famous journalist James Reston for post-operative pain. Already the first studies disproved the theory that acupuncture only works as a result of the placebo effect, when the patient believes in the technique so strongly that it is effective (Backer and Seldon, 1985).
Bakker explored the theory that acupuncture points are electrical conduits and that meridians are used as communication routes between the brain and damaged areas of the body to promote the healing process and create awareness of pain. He developed an interesting and quite adequate research approach. Becker suggested that meridians are electrical conductors that transmit information from damaged areas of the body to the central nervous system. He believed that acupuncture needles prevent the pain signal from reaching the brain, forming a short circuit in the meridian. Bakker came to the following conclusion: biologically active points work like amplifiers that are installed on power lines. He noted that the current passing through the meridians has a low frequency, so the linear amplifiers must be located very close to each other (a few centimeters apart). In the case of acupuncture points, this is true.
Maria Reichmanis, a biophysicist and colleague of Robert Bakker, has developed a special device - shaped like a pizza cutter - that can detect electrical resistance zones of the skin along the meridians. Together they suggested that if there really is an electrical charge in the region of acupuncture points, then the resistance of the skin in these places should differ markedly from the areas surrounding them. This discovery was sufficiently substantiated in all respects to convincingly show that biologically active points and energy channels have a place to be. In fact, all these studies confirm that the meridians do exist and are transmitters of information.

Development of Energy Psychology

Development of Energy Psychology началось в начале 1960 х годов, когда Джордж Гудхарт, хиропрактик из Детройта, штат Мичиган, для облегчения болей у своих пациентов при холистическом подходе к лечению стал использовать технику постукивания at various acupuncture points. In 1985, psychiatrist John Diamond and psychologist Roger Callahan tried out a new method of treating mental disorders. They found that stimulating the acupressure points helped eliminate negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, and the feelings of bad memories. Roger Callahan, who developed an effective technique known as Thought Field Therapy, did most of the clinical work. In the 1990s, Fred Gallo and Gary Craig discovered their own, very practical approach - energy psychology - and helped psychiatrists and psychologists around the world master this practice.
These studies show that the same principles used in acupuncture can be effectively applied during the treatment of various psychological disorders. The discovery that transformation at the psychic level can be achieved in such a simple way is a real breakthrough in the treatment of mental illness. It marked a radical departure from the communication therapy that dominated psychology throughout the 20th century.
Most people still believe that the most effective and healthy method of achieving change on an emotional level is communication therapy, in which new knowledge or new life skills are acquired through verbal communication. While it may seem implausible that stimulating the acupuncture points on your hands or face can change how you feel or think, we have not found a technique that compares to energy psychology in terms of effectiveness or speed of action. Nevertheless, many people continue to be skeptical of it, but only until they themselves try