WARREN KING, L.Ac.

In 1988 I studied and became a practitioner of Zen Shiatsu after studying with David Sergel in Boston. This method of body work was developed by Shizuto Masunaga of Japan. Zen Shiatsu, also known as Masunaga Therapy, is a form of meridian shiatsu. A difference between Masunaga’s Zen shiatsu and earlier forms of shiatsu is that Zen Shiatsu uses not only thumbs and palms but also fists, elbows, and knees. Often the massage table is folded down the ground so the body weight of the practitioner can be use in the pressure.

The primary precept of Zen Shiatsu is the importance of remaining in a Zen-like, present state when practicing shiatsu; nourishing weak , deficient or kyo areas and dispersing excess, tight or jitsu areas; using two-handed technique to better feel the flow of qi (life force); working from the hara (belly), which is the body’s energy center; and using perpendicular pressure to access the qi.

With this type of massage the person leaves their clothes on and the acupuncture meridians are stretched and pressure is giving successively down the meridian. The two hands on the body move alternately, giving an energetic connection between both part of the body that are receiving pressure. This is my favorite form of body work.

Western herbology is a vast study, but everyone should know something about the herbs that are available to us. Unlike in China, in the West many herb are used singly, just by themselves. Some examples are elderberry for viruses, ginger for digestive upset, cinnamon for blood sugar imbalances. Many of the spices in our kitchens are actually medicinal herbs that can be used for healing.

Herbs are often grouped according to their therapeutic actions. A few examples out the of 43 separate actions are: antimicrobial herbs that treat bacterial infections, adaptogenic herbs that act to strengthen the body and increase resistance to stress, cholagogue herbs that stimulate the flow of bile from the gallbladder to the duodenum and nervine herbs that relax and sooth the nerves.

I mostly use herbal remedies in capsule form and sometimes in tinctures. Occasionally when there is not a formula out there for a person’s condition I will make up a custom formula of herbs that they can buy in the store and simmer to make their own tea.

You can buy many kinds of tea bags for various conditions in health food stores for constipation, sleeping, coughs, and pregnancy for example. But besides these kind of infusions there is real tea, meaning the tea plant, Camelia Sinenses. There is black tea, green tea, white tea, oolong tea, yerba mate, pu erh tea and others. Research is always coming out showing how healthy tea drinking really is.

Although I work a lot on helping people with their health issues, we are multi-dimensional beings and often the true healing lies in other, non physical planes. I majored in psychology in college, but the word psyche does not mean mind but soul. The soul is an eternal part of our being, it is wise, it is the part of us that is always evolving.

Sometimes this soul manifests in part in what is called the inner child. When we are traumatized as a child, part of our soul splinters off and maintains a subconscious identity that is stuck at a certain age. With homeopathic and flower remedies and talking we can access that inner child and help it to mature and grow beyond old stuck patterns.

Sometimes information comes up about soul experiences before one’s birth. These past experiences can explain much of why we have to suffer or work through certain issues. Forgiveness of the past is always a key in healing. Connecting to and being honest with feelings is also a key to health. Some people have a hard time feeling their emotions, for others it is harder to express them. These issues are often at the root cause of why people get sick or don’t get better.

I believe that teaching the soul faith in God is very important, this can cure the soul of fear. There are many non physical spiritual beings that are here to help us and when we call to them, help is there and miracles happen.

There are many spiritual tools that we can use to help us grow and to heal. There are important tools such as prayer, meditation, visualization, and affirmation. There are exercises such as yoga, tai chi and qi gong that can help us become more spiritually aware. We are all eternal spiritual beings having a brief physical experience. It is important to carve out time in our schedules to put into spiritual work and a spiritual path.

Reflexology (zone therapy) is a method involving the practice of massaging or applying pressure to parts of the feet or sometimes the hands with the goal of encouraging a beneficial effect on other parts of the body, or to improve general health

Reflexology is a natural healing art based on the principle that there are reflexes in the feet, hands and ears and their referral areas within zone related areas, which correspond to every part, gland and organ of the body. Through application of pressure on these reflexes, the feet being the primary area of application, reflexology relieves tension, improves circulation and helps promote the natural function of the related areas of the body.

I see the body as a hologram, where each part has a map of the whole. There are maps of the body on the tongue, the iris, the nose, the face and actually in every cell. But the foot lends itself well to be able to treat the body through pressure and massage. The area that needs treatment will often be quite sore and as the body part heals, the sensitivity becomes less. I sometimes will give patients a map of the body on the feet and color code certain areas they should work on themselves at home to speed the healing of that area of the body.

Not all supplements are created equal and no one supplement is good for everyone. I recall one patient who literally brought in 4 garbage bags full of pills that he had been reading about for years…only 3 supplements tested beneficial. I try to carry the highest quality supplements available, ones that the body can really use. There are vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes, probiotics, essential fatty acids, anti oxidants, heavy metal chelators and more to choose from. If someone has supplements already, I encourage them to bring them in and we can see what the body wants. Some items that I don’t carry can be found in health food stores or online. I use the pulse testing of auricular medicine to see what is helpful or stressful for the body.

Moxibustion is a technique used in traditional Chinese medicine in which a stick or cone of burning mugwort , Artemesia vulgaris, is placed over an inflamed or affected area on the body. The cone is placed on an acupuncture point and burned. The cones is removed before burning the skin. The purpose is to stimulate and strengthen the blood and the life energy, or qi, of the body.

Moxibustion is used for people who have a cold or stagnant condition. The moxa stick is burned to warm up the blood and qi that are not circulating well. It is particularly known for its ability to turn breech presentation babies into a normal head-down position that is considered safer during childbirth. In a 1998 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 75% of the pregnant women in the study had breech fetuses that turned in the normal position. Moxibustion significantly increases fetal movements in pregnant women.

Moxibustion is also used to treat inflammations. For example, if treating a patient with tendinitis, the moxa stick is burned over the elbow area. It is also highly regarded for menstrual cramps, where the stick is waved over the abdominal area. Often, the cramps disappear immediately. Moxibustion is specifically used for patients with a cold or stagnant constitution. Therefore, if any patient has too much heat, they should not undergo moxibustion treatment.

Since moxa can smoke up the room and smells similar to marijuana I use smokeless moxa in my office. Because of the risk of burning the skin, I don’t use direct moxa right on the skin, but a Japanese moxa where there is a piece of cardboard with a hole in it that is stuck to the skin with the burning moxa on top. The heat goes through the hole to heat up the acupuncture point with no danger of burning the skin.

Qigong (or ch’i kung) is an internal Chinese meditative practice which often uses slow graceful movements and controlled breathing techniques to promote the circulation of qi within the human body, and enhance a practitioner’s overall health. There are more than 10,000 styles of qigong and 200 million people practicing these methods. There are three main reasons why people do qigong: 1) To gain strength, improve health or reverse a disease 2) To gain skill working with qi, so as to become a healer 3) To become more connected with the “Tao, God, True Source, Great Spirit”, for a more meaningful connection with nature and the universe.

In its simplest form, the Chinese character for qi, in qigong, can mean air, breath, or “life force”. Gong means work, so qigong is therefore the practice of “working” with ones “life force”. Qigong can be seen as a set of breathing and movement exercises, with possible benefits to health through stress reduction and exercise. Many practitioners view qigong in more metaphysical terms, claiming that qi can be felt as a vibration or electrical current and physically circulated through channels called meridians Many testify to a reduction or elimination of pain through the use of qigong.

I am trained as a medical qi gong instructor. These are exercises and healing sounds that help to heal the 5 main organs: Liver, heart, spleen, kidney and lungs. You can find the instructions and pictures of these exercises along with their visualizations on my website under “qigong.”

WHAT IS A LASER?
A laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation) is an amplifier of light.

Russian researchers at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine have shown that light applied to the human skin penetrates the body between 2 and 30 mm, depending on the color frequency. The researchers also found that only certain areas of the body were able to transfer light beneath the surface, and these areas corresponded to acupuncture points. Furthermore, the light was conducted within the body along the acupuncture meridians. It appears that the meridians are a light transferral system within the body somewhat like optical fiber.

Overall Effect
Low-level laser photic energy shortens the inflammatory phase, accelerating the repair process, and remodeling after tissue injury. In addition, increased plasma concentrations of certain types of prostaglandins, enkephalins, and endorphins have all been identified and most likely play a major role in the mechanisms associated with pain attenuation

INDICATIONS: 
The following is a partial list of conditions that have shown promising results with laser acupuncture. Laser acupuncture is painless and may be offered to patients with needlephobia and to children.

Acute/chronic pain

TMJ dysfunction

Paresthesias

Cervical/Lumber spine syndromes

Neuralgias

Dermatoses

Allergic rhinitis/sinusitis

Asthma

Frozen Shoulder

Phantom pain

Arthritis/arthrosis

Fibromyalgia

Bursitis/tendonitis

Nerve regeneration

Carpal tunnel syndrome

Wound healing


I have been using lasers to treat people for many years. I use them to treat ear point as well as body points (and even some points off the body, in the energy field). I have some patients who are terrified of needles and find acupuncture with the laser just as effective. I never use needles on small children (and pets) and they respond very quickly to the laser.

The inventive design of the CEPES Laser combines both laser and magnetic field therapy in a single, compact instrument. The CEPES Laser gives the practitioner a powerful tool for treating specific acupuncture points and trigger points . The CEPES Laser generates a pulsing magnetic field in the EEG (Brainwave) range with harmonics up to the megahertz level, along with a 0.5 mW red “soft” laser. In combination, the magnetic field and the laser, acting in concert as carrier waves, create a synergistic treatment effect. The CEPES laser offers deep tissue penetration and maximized cellular healing with none of the side effects often associated with some high power lasers.

Samuel Hahnemann discovered homeopathy about 200 years ago. Although a doctor, he had to stop becauce he felt that the medicine of his day was doing more harm than good. In those days malaria was treated with the bark of the chinchona tree. Hahnemann took the bark himself and it produced alternating fever and chills, a main symptom of malaria. So he found that a substance that produces a symptom in a healthy person, can be given to cure those same symptoms in a sick person. He developed a technique called succusion which is the systematic mixing through vigorous shaking. He also utilized potentization, where the more diluted a substance became, the stronger the remedy.

Homeopathy is very effective, sane and natural. The remedies work with the body and not against it, they are not addictive and address the cause and not the symptoms, meaning the symptoms will often not recur.

There are 3 main principles of homeopathy:

Like cures like. So if the symptoms of your cold are similar to the poisoning by mercury, then homeopathic mercury would be your remedy.

Minimal dose. Remedies are diluted and shaken many times making them extremely dilute. Even after there are no more physical molecules of the original substance, the remedy can even have more potency.

 The single remedy. No matter how many symptoms are experienced, when the one right remedy is found it can be aimed at all those symptoms.

As I use the practice of Auricular Medicine along with homeopathy I can tell if the remedy I have chosen is actually the right one. Instead of just giving a remedy and then wait and see if it works, I can take the pulse and have the person hold the remedy and I can immediately tell if it balance the ear acupoints corresponding to a particular organ. If for example the liver inflammation point shows up and I have the person hold homeopathic nux vomica, if the point is balanced, I know that is the right remedy. I can also test what is the right strength or potency for a particular person and how often the remedy should be repeated. Some remedies I give the person under their tongue in the office, just one time.

Homeopathy is amazing because if doesn’t only work on physical issues, but emotional and mental patterns as well.

Instead of just working with single homeopathic remedies alone, I also work with what is called complex homeopathy. There are remedies made up of a number of single remedies that work together to address a particular problem. There is a style of homeopathy I practice called drainage homeopathy. This involves using remedies with ingredients that functions to open the organs of elimination. By opening the exits you can minimize the healing reactions that can occur when toxins are stirred up in the system. Many of the complex remedies I use have very diluted metals, like copper, silver and gold, that can get inside the cells and cause them to eliminate intracellular toxins. In this way even diseases thought to be incurable or autoimmune diseases can be cured.

Flower remedies are dilutions of flower material developed by Edward Bach, an English physician and homeopath in the 1930s. The remedies are intended primarily for emotional and spiritual conditions, including but not limited to depression, anxiety, insomnia and stress.

Because the remedies are extremely dilute they do not have a characteristic scent or taste of the plant but they have the energetic nature of the flower and that this can be transmitted to the user. Although flower remedies often are associated with homeopathy, the remedies differ from homeopathy in that they do not follow fundamental homeopathic precepts such as the law of similars or the assumption that curative powers are enhanced by diluting and shaking or “succussion”.

 Bach thought of illness as the result of “a contradiction between the purposes of the soul and the personality’s point of view.” This internal war, according to Bach, leads to negative moods and energy blocking, which causes a lack of “harmony,” thus leading to physical diseases.

Bach’s flower remedies were intuitively derived and based on his perceived psychic connections to the plants. If Bach felt a negative emotion, he would hold his hand over different plants, and if one alleviated the emotion, he would ascribe the power to heal that emotional problem to that plant. He believed that early morning sunlight passing through dew-drops on flower petals transferred the healing power of the flower onto the water, so he would collect the dew drops from the plants and preserve the dew with an equal amount of brandy to produce a mother tincture which would be further diluted before use. Later, he found that the amount of dew he could collect was not sufficient, so he would suspend flowers in spring water and allow the sun’s rays to pass through them.

 I have over 100 different flower essences and can make custom combination depending on the emotional needs of the patient. More often lately I have been using flower essence tablets made by Apex Energetics, that use homeopathic and sometimes gem essences along with the flower essences. They have 30 products. Examples of two products I use often are

24: Adpttn (adaptation): For the relief of symptoms related to the feeling of not knowing where one fits. Anguish and restlessness. Inability to adapt to new environment.

 25: Lf-chngs (life changes):For the relief of symptoms related to despondency, sullenness and discouragement. Inclination to constantly criticize. Facilitates the letting go of false self-images which no longer serve any productive purpose.

Flower essences are often used towards the end of healing, after the person has detoxified and are used to balance out the emotional level that may have to do with why the person became blocked or ill in the first place.