How does it feel to have an acupuncture needle put in?
Acupuncture needles are very thin, and most people feel no pain or very little pain when they are inserted. They often say they feel energized or relaxed after the treatment. However, the needles can cause temporary soreness.
Sometimes, as I’m walking people through what it’s going to be like, I’ll go ahead and insert the first needle. Then I let them know the first one’s in, and they’re often like, “Oh, I barely even felt that.” Admittedly, it’s a little trickery on my part, but they have this realization that whatever they thought was going to happen is not at all what just happened.
There might be a little bit of prickly sensation at first, and then for most people that sensation either dissipates or remains in a way that is pleasantly dull and achy. It feels like there’s something happening, but it doesn’t feel like you’re lying there with something sharp in your skin.
That dull sensation has a name: In Chinese medicine, it’s called a de qi sensation. The de qi sensation is like a heavy, descending feeling. If I were to make it in a sound, it would be bass-y, like, “Wom, wom, wom.” Like a heartbeat.
That de qi sensation also has an energetic effect that you can feel if you’re sensitive. If the feeling happens to be along a meridian, someone might feel like, Oh my gosh, I felt that kind of move up my leg. Or they might feel it move into their shoulder, or they might identify the feeling of a muscle relaxing. That’s because what we’re doing in acupuncture is getting the qi to move. That dull, achy pain when the needle goes in tells me: Okay, we’ve grabbed the qi. That’s what we want. We did what we intended to do.
Some of the very delicate tissues, like on the face or right on the wrist, will feel a little more sensitive, but it should never remain that way. I’m always reassuring people that if a needle placement feels sharp or uncomfortable, we’re going to move it. Sharpness or discomfort is not the de qi sensation. That’s not our goal.
in bio-medical terms, is that no one has a definitive explanation. There have been many attempts to nail down The One Reason acupuncture works, but to our knowledge no one has got it - yet. Likely there isn't one factor, but that many reactions going on at once involving different systems - including the central nervous system – that allow acupuncture to have such wide, strong, and lasting effects. This can be seen by people predictably being eased out of the “fight or flight” response (sympathetic) into the “rest and recuperate” state (parasympathetic) once needles are placed during a treatment. If you have been told or have read that there is one factor to account for how acupuncture works, that explanation is probably not the whole picture. The most referenced studies on the topic of how acupuncture works have been directed and written by Dr. Bruce Pomerantz, an American physician. Through his ongoing studies, he and his colleagues have found that the body produces measurable amounts of endorphins (natural 'pain-killing' chemicals) when receiving acupuncture. For a time, this was thought to be the breakthrough understanding for the mechanism of acupuncture's effect. In our opinion however, there are limits to this explanation. For instance, his initial landmark study involved some very aggressive acupuncture needling followed by electricity added to the needles. It was only under these circumstances that the measurable amount of endorphins were identified. This does little to explain how much more subtle needling (like the sort seen in most acupuncture clinics) would initiate changes and cause reduction in pain or improve function, for example. Dr. Pomerantz seems to acknowledge that his research conducted to this point, offers partial explanations.5
