You can treat tight muscles by gently stroking the area with the edge of a Chinese soup spoon. Similarly, gua sha uses implements to scrap the surface of the body to stimulate circulation. Cupping creates suction on the surface of the body through a vacuum, which releases stagnation in the superfial soft tissues. Other physical therapies are tui na, which covers many techniques used in massage, myofascial release, osteopathy, chiropracty and other manipulative therapies.
However, you can learn how to locate some of these points and apply finger pressure to elicit a healing reaction. Acupuncture is considered invasive medicine, so it must be applied by a licensed practitioner.
You may be familiar with some but not all of these treatment modalities, so let’s do a quick review: Acupuncture is the insertion of fine needles at particular points on the body to restore the proper flow of qi, the body’s vital energy. This is true especially for practicing qigong, loosely translated as Qi cultivation, a form of physical practice that relaxes and strengthens your body and mind. Some of the techniques used, such as acupuncture, tui na, cupping, gua sha, internal herbal treatments, external herbal applications, moxibustion and nutrition therapy, should be applied or guided by a licensed acupuncturist educated and experienced in these approaches, but many of these strategies can be used in a modified form by the athlete herself.
The types of injuries these methods can treat effectively include bruises, strains, sprains, slow-healing fractures, and the associated cramps, pain, soreness, achiness and fatigue. We are fortunate that this happened because many of those strategies are safe and very effective, and can help not only martial artists but modern athletes from across the spectrum of sports to heal acute and chronic injuries and learn how to prevent them in the future. In the end, some of the last surviving guardians of these powerful medical insights felt the need to preserve and pass along this information before it got extinguished. This knowledge was closely guarded because it bestowed a competitive edge on those in its possession. The Shaolin Temple, the center of the Shaolin tradition of Buddhism in China, played an important role in the Chinese martial arts and was a storehouse of practical information on treating warriors injured during combat or training. But some of this knowledge survived and has found its way to the West. The traditional wisdom and expertise of martial arts masters practicing kung fu medicine were suppressed and had to survive in secrecy, which explains why most university-educated doctors of Chinese medicine don’t know much about treating sports injuries. In China, the official practice of Chinese medicine was reduced to internal medicine during the 20th century, mostly for political reasons too complicated to explain here. Growing interest in the martial arts has been accompanied by curiosity about Chinese sports medicine, and the healing power of Shaolin treatments for traumatic injuries, both acute and chronic, is no longer a secret.