ACUPRESSURE FOR FERTILITY FREAKOUTS
WATCH THE VIDEO ↑
A simple 2 - 3 minute auricular (ear) acupressure treatment can feel like flipping a switch on your nervous system — moving you from freaked-out to cool and calm. The points you’ll learn in this video are a fantastic fit for all sorts of stressful infertility situations including:
Waiting for test or lab results
Facing the unknown
Recovering from egg retrievals or other surgeries
Waiting for procedures or to see your doctor
And so much more
In this video you’ll learn.
How to find three key auricular acupressure points
What they're good for and why
The best ways to stimulate them — including longer-term stick-on bead options you can wear to your fertility appointments or in the 2ww
Enjoy!
Nicole
Nicole Lange
LICENSED ACUPUNCTURIST
HOLISTIC FERTILITY EDUCATOR
-
Hello again!
Nicole Lange, acupuncturist and creator of The Baby You Want online fertility program where fertility meets your whole life. And today we are going to cover three acupressure points that are crazy powerful and super easy to do altogether because they're all on your ear.
This is the Acupressure For Fertility Freakouts video.
General auricular or ear acupuncture points have been used for thousands of years but they really gained a ton of momentum when a French neurologist started organizing them into an official system in the 1950s.
Now because they've gotten so much attention in this more modern era of Western medicine, and because they're so easy to get to and do on the fly, these points are some of the very best researched and understood from a Western point of view.
These points are used in ambulances and emergency rooms and after natural disasters and in veterans with PTSD. They are truly the big guns for calming a nervous system that's in freakout mode which makes them great for infertility.
The three of these points that we're going to cover today are called:
Point Zero or the balance homeostasis point, Shen Men or Spirit Gates, and the Heart point. And here's what we're going to cover in this video.
You'll learn how to find them, what they're good for, and the best ways to stimulate them.
Let's take a peek at a diagram of an ear. If we look at the middle we'll see a raised ridge. This is called the crus of helix. And if we find the spot that's right at the dead center of the outer part of the ear right along this ridge line we'll be at our first point.
This is Point Zero.
Turning our attention to the top part of the ear we'll see a vaguely triangular shaped dip up here with the wider base of the triangle closer to the head and the slightly rounded top of the triangle aiming out towards the outer edge of the ear. This dip is aptly enough called the triangular fossa. Fossa meaning depression or dip.
And inside the tip of the triangle is where we put our seconds point called Schen Men or Spirit Gate. And in this point spirit is referring to emotions.
Now looking down at the bottom part of the ear we see a much bigger recess area called the cavum concha or the cave of the outer ear.
The crus of helix where we found Point Zero divides this cave into a top and a bottom part. And as you're looking at the bottom part you'll know you're in the right zone if you also see this is where the ear canal connects.
Moving out from the ear canal and finding the deepest point on the floor of this cave is where we find our third point, the Heart point.
It can be a bit discombobulating going from a diagram to your own ears stuck to your own head. But don't worry, when we get to what these points do I'm going to help you see why you will still get really good results even if you aren't absolutely perfect in your location.
Now if you simply must get these locations perfectly because that's the way you roll, you might have to enlist your partner or a friend and turn this into a team building exercise. Or you can try to take a few pictures of your ear to get the lay of the land.
And speaking of ear photos, every ear is a little bit different. So let's look at just a couple of real ear pictures and find these points for practice.
Here's our first ear.
On this one the crus of helix is nice and pronounced towards the head but it pretty much disappears as you move further out towards the center of the ear. That's okay. We're still going to line up with where the cruise of helix would be if it continued outward and find the midpoint of the ear.
And this is where our balance point or Point Zero is.
This ear's triangular fassa is fairly hidden in the shadows here, but we can still find the pointy tip of the triangle and that's where we'd mark Shen Men.
And in this lower cavum concha you'll see it's much more open because the crus of helix is so small. Still we imagine the divide and we look for the deepest place on the lower part of the cave and there's our Heart point.
Let's do just one more.
Here we got someone with a crus of helix that goes clear across their ear. It's pretty much the opposite of the last person. We simply find the midpoint of the ear on that crus of helix and arrive at Point Zero.
Up top we've got a really easy to spot triangular fossa dip, but it's more of an oval than a triangle. That's okay we still just find the outer tip zone and there's Shen Men.
And down low this cavum concha is totally divided because the crus of helix is so pronounced. So we simply find the deep, fairly centered point inside the bottom part and there again is the Heart point.
Again, I promise it's okay if you don't get these exactly and you'll see why in just a second.
So let's start with the research here since we have so much.
As I mentioned at the start of this video these points are especially easy to study because A, we understand them in a really Western way. And B, you can easily get to them without having to go through a lot of trouble. There's no massage table or taking off clothes necessary here. That means they've been studied on the fly for really, really intense situations.
For example, these points have been shown to decrease anxiety in people who are being transported by ambulance to a hospital. And also in people who are in the waiting areas for going into surgery or waiting in the emergency room.
And one study of patients coming out of surgery also showed that using Shen Men, that's our top point, and Point Zero, the middle one, reliably shifted heart rate patterns as people were being actively monitored into less stressed patterns.
These sorts of studies show us that these points are really good for acute and often intense stress which is fantastic for fertility. These points are perfect for acute stuff like waiting for a procedure like an IUI or an embryo transfer. Coming out of anesthesia after an egg retrieval or other surgery. Or even just sitting in the waiting room at your fertility clinic waiting to talk to a doctor or waiting to read a home pregnancy test.
Other studies suggest that these points are equally useful for chronic anxiety and stress too. Animal studies have shown that they can decrease blood pressure when it's high, but that they won't make it lower if it's already normal or low.
And a systemic review showed that these points can improve sleep quality scores and held up favorably compared with sleep medications like diazepam for insomnia.
So exactly how do these points work?
In a nutshell, each of these points takes your body out of sympathetic, or fight or flight or freeze mode, and moves it directly into parasympathetic, or rest, digest, and reproduce mode. And the way they do this is fairly direct and easy to understand.
Our body has something called a vagus nerve and it's basically the nervous system's main nerve super highway for sending messages and controlling when the internal organs go into calm mode. When you stimulate the vagus nerve it sends messages to your internal organs that it's time to chill out. This means it's time to digest food, lower the heart rate, and slow down your breathing.
Of course this is all super great for mood and for stress perception and gut issues, but also for fertility because rest and digest mode is where the body feels most safe taking a leap into a pregnancy.
Take a peek at this ear diagram now. This shows the parts of the ear that directly connect to a branch of, you got it, the vagus nerve. As you can see it totally overlaps with Point Zero and the Heart point.
It can also help you see that you probably don't have to be perfect in your point location to get the results that we're going for.
Now Shen Men connects to a slightly different cranial nerve called the auriculotemporal nerve which you can see highlighted now here. But it too has been shown to reliably send a strong message to the body to relax and adds messages to relax the face and the head muscles which is great when you've been tense, and say, have a tendency to clench your jaw or grind your teeth or get tension headaches from it.
You can certainly just squeeze and massage and rub your ears in general. If you hit more points than these three you will be totally fine.
It can also be truly lovely to have your partner if you've got one gently massage and squeeze these points when you're groggy and coming out of anesthesia, or just laying in bed trying to settle down.
If you haven't ever tried ear massage, do. It can be pretty darn dreamy.
If you see an acupuncturist you might notice that they sometimes press around with a little probe like this to find the most tender spots on your ear before they needle them. You can buy a probe like this online yourself, just search acupuncture point probe. And then you can use it to stimulate the points for a minute or two and just hold them.
But you can also totally save money and use simple things you already have around the house. Like, say, the pointy tip of a pen cap or the little coated end of a straightened hairpin. Just make sure that whatever you're using isn't so pointy that it's going to break or damage the skin and make sure you don't ever get close to putting anything inside your ear canal.
Another great option, especially if you do get acupuncture already, is to ask your provider about stick-on acupressure options that you can wear home on your ears. Things like ear seeds or beads or even crystals.
Not to worry though, if you don't see an acupuncturist you can also really easily purchase these things online too.
And if you're wondering about which of these options I recommend, I cover this a bit more in the Acupressure Basics video. So be sure to watch that next if you want to explore that idea.
If you buy any of these options do be sure to read their instructions and follow them closely.
One other note that you're going to want to pay attention to if you're using any stick-on options is that ear points can get pretty tender after awhile. So I usually only do one side at a time. You can then alternate sides or you can just stick with the side you don't sleep on as much if you're a side sleeper.
So let's wrap this video up.
You've now got three fantastic auricular or ear acupressure points that are well-researched and proven to reset the nervous system even in the most stressful of stressful situations. Use them as you see fit. And I'm talking about for all the acute fertility freakout moments and for chronic ongoing in fertility stress too.
Now you know how to find them, what they're good for, and what's the best way to stimulate them.
Leave me a comment and let me know how these points go. And if you don't want to miss out on future videos hit the subscribe button.
Of course I would love to invite you to head over and take a tour and learn about The Baby You Want online program. It is literally the only fertility program that's guaranteed to make you feel stronger and better instead of more overwhelmed and burnt out as you face infertility. From finding a good clinic and understanding your hormones, to facing relationship strains and making communication stronger and better.
It's all in the program.
As always, remember I am out in the world cheering you on and thank you for hanging out and for learning with me.
Explaining (almost) everything about acupuncture on Doctor Podcasts: The Cykiert Files.