Learning to Trust My Hands Again Through Self-Acupuncture

*Sorry this is something I have to add at the beginning of every article I post here so you can be sure you’re safe and we all know MS is highly independent. this article reflects my personal experience only. Herbal medicine involves precise Please consult a qualified practitioner listed in the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM®) directory before using similar formulas. You can take the first step by searching *the (NCCAOM®) directory, available here:

🔗 **https://www.nccaom.org/find-a-practitioner/**

Just Another Maintenance Session

Here I go again, I just never stop talking about this. Mainly because I so strongly feel that all TCM practitioners should be doing acupuncture on themselves for maintenance or maintaining skills and to experience the health benefits that they guide their patients through because hey, if you don't practice what you preach, how good are you really?

One thing that surprised me during acupuncture training was how much needling eventually becomes tactile rather than purely visual. At first, I depended heavily on mirrors, angles, and visually locating points. But over time, I started noticing something different: I could actually feel the point and tissue response through the needle itself. That realization became especially meaningful after concerns I had about tremors and coordination. After one treatment session, my instructor casually mentioned that my tremors seemed calmer than before. Hearing that affected me more than I expected. It made me pay closer attention during later self-needling sessions, and I realized I was becoming much more aware of subtle tactile feedback when inserting needles. Self-acupuncture is awkward in ways people outside training may not realize.

Growing Into Touchand Palpation from Visuals Alone

I guess this is a big reminder of why TCM is a in person treatment type thing, there's no virtual meeting here at least not today even though China is so much more advanced and has AI helping to treat patients. The rest of the world just isn't there as us. Yet. Who knows what's going to happen in the future?

Mirrors reverse orientation, hair gets in the way, lighting is inconsistent, and depth perception becomes strange when working on yourself. Because of that, there’s a point where visual guidance alone stops being enough. You begin relying more on palpation, tissue feel, proprioception, and spatial awareness.

What stood out to me was that I could still accurately locate areas and feel differences in tissue response even without perfect visual control. Instead of feeling like I was blindly poking around, I felt connected to what I was doing. I could sense changes in resistance, sensitivity, and the way certain points responded when touched or inserted correctly.

And believe me as often as I do this, I don't always feel like doing it. This is because of the environment I'm in and sometimes I feel so dead. I don't even want to move, but when it comes to my MS sometimes, one of my main ones is visual weakness when I'm tired as hell or stressed this set of points tends to provide relief.

Scrappy Persistence

Experienced practitioners often describe acupuncture as something partially learned through the hands, and I think I finally understood what that meant. Anatomy knowledge matters, but tactile awareness becomes equally important over time.

For me, the experience was not just about technical skill. It was emotional too. After worrying about tremors and coordination, realizing “I can still feel the point” gave me confidence again. It reminded me that healing and learning are not always dramatic moments. Sometimes they appear quietly through small improvements in awareness, steadiness, and trust in your own body.

Shameless Plug So I Can Remember Forever For Myself

I didn't mean that when I say remember forever because as you can, maybe tell by now, I literally track everything from house to food to fitness. Everything. So I will look back on this o\one day to remember how I went through the various stages in my TCM student journey.

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Self Critique

Because we always need to see where we could've been better to improve. I'm also never afraid to be critical of myself since I'm critical of everything and everyone when it comes to this stuff. The front image shows that I could've been more precise but I wasn't since my tremors were throwing a fit the whole time, but that didn't and never stop me. The points were already a reduced set because normally I would have five points instead of three on each side, but for a sake of efficiency, I made the conscious call to just pass.