Acupressure
Personnal Painful Points (Ah Shi)
By Darrel Drumright DC, FASA
Jul 19, 2007

Many times a day I am asked, doc it hurts right here for no reason, (and the person points to the spot) why is that?

Each moment your body is in constant communication with you, the driver. It only has a couple of ways to get your attention and pain is the most common method it uses.

Pain itself is never the problem, it is simply a sensor somewhere in your body picking up something and refering this fact on to the central nervous system where it reaches your conscienceness.

Most of the time, you can remember what happened that is causing the bodies alarm bells to ring. But, sometimes there just is no connection. These are the times that the acupuncture technique of Ah shi comes into play. Simply put, an unexplained pain anywhere on your body is the body's attempt to rebalance its energy circuits by causing you to poke on this tender point.

The most effective treatment for this condition is to poke around until you find the "hot spot" and then press on it while taking deep abdominal breaths until the pain subsides. By calming these Ah Shi points you are innately rebalancing your energy systems and stopping a pending problem before it ever developes into a treatable and expensive disease.

Please keep in mind, this technique is not to be used on bruised or otherwise obviously damaged tissue.