How can I use acupressure to relieve a headache or other pains?

For simple relief of headaches and stress, try acupressure. The basic principle of acupuncture and acupressure are the same. The traditional Chinese technique is that you actually have energy meridians that go up your arm, and these lines of energy get disrupted sometimes and can cause some of the subtle things that we complain about.

There's a simple acupressure technique that you can try on yourself. Take your hand and pick a spot that's halfway between your thumb and your index finger. If you push there gently with the tip of your finger, there's a little bit of discomfort. Doing this for a few minutes is an effective treatment for headaches.

Do you easily get carsick? To alleviate motion sickness, apply pressure right between the tendons about three finger breadths above your wrist.

In addition to this self-treatment, you can use a motion sickness bracelet. The bracelets actually remind you to press there, which why they work so well.

It might be difficult to try this acupressure technique on your own, but it's well worth finding a partner because it can relieve stress. First, find your trapezius muscle on your shoulder. If you move your finger up your shoulder, to where it becomes your neck, you push down there. Part of the beauty is you've got to be able to relax your shoulders.

There are a number of places on your foot that are perfect spots for acupressure. One is right at the base of the foot, which can get rid of tension. Another is a bone halfway up the side of your foot, good for relieving menstrual pain, bloating, and constipation.

If you push on the part of the foot next to the pinky toe, it can cure blurry vision and other eye problems. The science behind the relationship between the pinky toe and eye function is one of the breakthroughs in understanding the thousands-of-years-old knowledge present in Eastern medicine.

A medical manuscript showed that when pressure was put on that part of the foot, the brain function lit up in the back of the brain. And guess what? The back of the brain controls your eyes. The occipital lobe controls your eyes. There's no connection between those two. There's no way for us with Western medicine to understand how that's possible. But it did light up.