The Practice of Chinese Medicine- What is Moxibustion-.

My name is Mona Chopra. I'm an acupuncturist here in New York City. Moxibustion is one of the techniques used in Chinese medicine by acupuncturists to treat a person using heat. It's a form of heat therapy. An herb known as Artemisia vulgaris, also commonly called mugwort, which has its own heating properties from a Chinese medical point of view, is rolled up like a cigar and the end of it is lit just like you would light a cigar and it's held away from the person's body over a particular acupuncture point or over a particular region of the body in order to either heat up the person if a person has cold in their system or if a person has a deficiency of the yang energy in their body or it may be used simply to tonify for someone whose energy is really depleted. It's very beneficial for tonification. It's also been used historically as a way of supporting the immune system as a preventative for colds and flu through the whole winter season and for any kind of a cold or damp condition like arthritis. Also, if a person has edema, swelling of the limbs, a certain kind of edema responds really well to treatment with moxibustion. In fact, I have treated someone myself who, before my very eyes, the swelling just was reducing from the beginning to the end of the treatment significantly just doing moxibustion on the area of swelling. For bolstering yang, it's very beneficial. You might even think of conditions like hypothyroid, low libido, someone who always feels cold, where there's a lot of weakness, even where there's blood deficiency. If a person is pale and anemic and weak, moxa can be very helpful for helping to boost them because basically you're putting yang into the person. Acupuncture is stimulating the points and promoting the body's own functioning, optimizing its own functioning, but it's not really putting something from the outside in. But moxa is putting something from the outside in. It's putting yang into the person and that can stimulate all body functions. Moxibustion, in fact, is the technique that studies have found is effective for helping to turn a breached baby into a vertex position for delivery, even more than an acupuncture needle. It's actually the use of moxibustion on a particular acupuncture point on the pinky toe of a woman that's used for this. So that's something also that we do in the office and then teach a woman how to do for herself in those last few weeks before delivery to turn the baby. And it's effective. It's so effective. And people begin to feel their baby move inside them while they're doing it often. And, you know, then it's something they can do twice a day, 10 to 20 minutes a day, or have their partner usually do it for them. And imagine it has such potential for reducing the number of C-sections, like profound. It's really profound stuff.