TuiNa is a Chinese medical massage and its origins actually predate acupuncture. It is from china and it's been in development for over 2500 years. It is a hands-on type of body work is really the oldest organized form of massage in the world and it's very sophisticated. It uses a lot of different hand techniques as well as accessory techniques such as glass cupping and auricular ear therapy and some other types of Guasha. There are a lot of different tools and it follows the same diagnostic principles as any acupuncturist would use really; an in-depth health questionnaire as well as tongue and pulse examination. Those three components the tongue, the pulses and the full health intake really can allow the TuiNa therapist to get a full picture of what's going on with an individual. In traditional Chinese medicine and in TuiNa the practitioner is always searching for the root cause. Somebody might come to me and say I have these nagging shoulder problems and a general massage therapist would just treat that shoulder as it's own thing and not really look any further than that. Because they are basing all other findings and investigation on traditional Chinese medicine, the TCM is going to delve into looking at all the other issues that might be going on with that person and trying to find out what's the real root. Maybe that individual hit a baseball too hard and tweaked something or could be that there are some other internal imbalances going on. That TuiNa therapist would treat the shoulder. They also will be treating other parts of the body that would be directly related to that shoulder problem. The TuiNa works in that type of capacity. They are always seeking the root cause of the problem. TuiNa can be pretty heavy in intensity as far as hand and finger pressure and often times a TuiNa therapist will be pressing on individual acupuncture points or in what we would think of them as acupressure because we are not using a needle like an acupuncture needle. Also they are using some other body works, some other massage style approaches, and a hands-on approach that is very familiar. When a lot of people in the west would get regular massage treatments, actually some of the hand techniques would be used in TuiNa because TuiNa would have been the one that that came up with those hand techniques and they have been borrowed across the border to other styles of massage. So in essence TuiNa is like acupuncture without using the acupuncture needle.
