Movement Matters.
Movement is the key to healing, but repetitive or dysfunctional movement makes you more vulnerable to injury. Our goal at Boulder Acusport is to get you moving better, inside and out. We use needles, cupping, taping, and other modalities to provide a novel stimulus to the body—to get your nervous system, lymphatic system, and musculoskeletal system moving and healing better. This means you recover faster, are more resilient to injury, and can get back to doing what you love sooner.
Trigger Point Dry Needling
A trigger point is a band of muscle that is stuck in a half-contracted state; fresh blood cannot get in, and waste products cannot get out of the muscle. Trigger point dry needling is the insertion of acupuncture needles into these taut muscle bands, resulting in a local twitch response and the subsequent release of that muscle. Releasing a trigger point removes these blockages and allows the muscle to function fully. It is incredibly effective in easing the lines of pull that are contributing to your injury in the first place.
Electro-Acupuncture
The non-painful application of electricity relaxes hypertonic muscles by altering the signals responsible for contraction and results in a number of beneficial local responses such as increasing microcirculation and thus oxygenation. Flooding a tissue with ions also helps to promote healthy cellular function and increases ATP and protein synthesis. All of these tissue changes are crucial to healing: electro- acupuncture has been demonstrated to reduce inflammation and to speed the healing time of tendons and bones.
Cupping
Cupping is essentially a deep tissue massage in reverse. Instead of downward pressure, cupping pulls the skin and fascia up off the muscles to unwind taut bands and to create space for fresh blood to nourish the tissue. Cupping breaks up myofascial adhesions, increases blood flow and promotes lymph circulation in the body. It increases space between tissue layers and improves tissue gliding.
Auriculotherapy
Auriculotherapy is a powerful tool to help manage pain, heal injuries, ease cravings, and enhance performance. Auriculotherapy can be provided using either ear needles or seeds. Ear needles are much smaller than needles used on the body. Ear seeds or tacs are not needles at all; they are simply a form of acupressure. Auriculotherapy often increases the potency of our regular acupuncture treatments.
Gua Sha
Kinesiotaping
If needles open up a neurological window for you to move better, kinesiotape keeps that window open. Our skin is a powerful conduit to the nervous system, and tape provides a constant stimulus to our skin, and therefore the brain. Wearing tape provides consistent proprioceptive feedback to the brain so your can more easily adapt to the “new normal” of an activated muscle or joint position. Kinesiotape modulates pain and introduces a decompressive load to the tissue which increases circulation and speeds healing.