Calm Your Mind: How Acupuncture Helps Re-pattern Your Stress Response
Acupuncture points for stress and anxiety
Modern life can leave even the most balanced person feeling tense, anxious, or overwhelmed. Whether it’s juggling work, family, or the constant flow of information, stress can take a real toll on our body and mind. The good news is, acupuncture offers a deeply effective, natural way to calm your nervous system and help you feel more centred and at ease.
One of the key ways acupuncture helps with stress is by restoring balance to your body’s energy systems. When we experience stress or anxiety, blood flow is drawn away from the brain and into the limbs, part of our instinctive “fight or flight” response. While this was helpful when we needed to run from danger, it’s not so useful when the “danger” is a stressful email or traffic jam. Over time, this constant activation can leave us feeling wired, fatigued, and emotionally drained.
Acupuncture helps to switch off this overactive stress response and bring the body back into a state of calm. By gently stimulating specific points along the body’s energy channels, acupuncture encourages the release of endorphins (your body’s natural feel-good hormones), improves blood circulation, and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the part responsible for rest, repair, and relaxation.
A beautiful way to support this process at home involves holding specific points on your forehead known as neurovascular points, or Gallbladder 14 in Traditional Chinese Medicine. These points sit just above the centre of each eyebrow, you will feel a slight bump in your forehead. Gently rest your fingertips here when you feel stressed or anxious, keep whatever is making you feel stressed in your mind, but with no pressure to solve or change how you feel about it. Take 3 calming breaths, and then repeat whenever you feel your stress response activating. Over time you will begin to notice that the strong stress response you once had has dissipated.
Holding these points helps to keep blood in your forebrain — the part of your brain responsible for rational thinking, emotional regulation, and calm decision-making. When we’re anxious, blood rushes away from this area, leaving us reactive or panicked. By gently holding Gallbladder 14, you help to retrain your stress response: over time, your body learns that it can stay calm and composed, even in challenging moments.
Combining this simple technique with acupuncture treatments can have a profound cumulative effect. Acupuncture doesn’t just relieve the symptoms of stress — it works on a much deeper energetic level to rebalance your body’s systems. Many people report feeling lighter, calmer, and more resilient after a course of treatments. Sleep improves, digestion steadies, and that sense of being constantly “on edge” begins to melt away.
If you want to experience a more natural way to manage stress and anxiety, acupuncture offers a safe and holistic path forward. Whether you’re dealing with tension headaches, poor sleep, or emotional overwhelm, regular acupuncture sessions can help you reconnect with a deep sense of calm and balance.
Ready to feel calmer and more balanced? Book your acupuncture session today and start restoring harmony to your body and mind.
