(This post has been adapted from Casa de Karma’s “Ultimate Guide to Moxibustion.”)

What is moxibustion?

Moxibustion (or “Moxa”) is a term derived from the Japanese word mogusa or mo kusa, meaning, “burning herb.” Moxa can be found as a moxa wool or pressed into moxibustion sticks (imagine a charcoal stick). Ultimately, it is always harvested from the mugwort plant. As a practice, moxibustion is a heating therapy steeped in Traditional Chinese Medicineand used for a wide variety of conditions, one of which is digestion.

The benefits of moxibustion.

Moxibustion helps to relieve cold or stagnated conditions within the body – this is both the benefit of the therapy and what moxibustion is used for. Moxa is beneficial to many conditions, unique to the individual; so while it may help relieve bloating or indigestion in one patient, it could also help to invigorate the energy of another.

Moxibustion can be used to:

As well, as…

  • Invigorate and tonify blood
  • Stop pain
  • Calm the fetus (supporting pregnancy)
  • Aid fertility and reproductive health

Why moxibustion works

Moxibustion is tonifying for the body. Let’s take digestion as an example to explain how this is so:

Your digestive system is critical to your wellbeing. It breaks down all the food we consume and soaks up the nourishment that we need to thrive. However, when we make poor food choices, we weaken our stomach’s fire. Poor food choices include all the unprocessed foods which aren’t natural to our body. These choices put stress on the digestive process and weaken your ability to stoke the fire (and absorb nutrients) in the long-term. When this happens, your digestive system can become so weak that it can even start to struggle to digest some natural foods. This can also be exacerbated in people of certain constitutions who have a generally weak digestion and/or condition more internally connected or since birth, than from external sources. For example, people who have always struggled with certain foods or childhood allergies.

Regardless, your digestive system is fragile and can easily become weak, requiring tonification. This is where moxibustion can be helpful. Moxibustion, especially when used on digestion points, can greatly improve our digestive strength.

How moxibustion works

A moxa stick is heated and hovered over a certain set of moxibustion points along the meridian (energy line within the body). The process can take roughly 20 minutes, although it depends on each case and practitioner.

For example, in using moxibustion for bloating or diarrhea, the practitioner could trace the moxa stick over the belly in a diamond pathway which would connect a series of tonifying points:

  • Ren 8 (center of belly button) – this point is commonly used to expel cold, which would be helpful in cases of diarrhea or menstrual pain (if a patient’s TCM diagnosis is due to old stagnation)
  • Ren 6 (2 fingers below the navel) – this point is a Qi strengthener, one can think of it as a good energy point for fatigue (only if the patient’s fatigue is due to deficient Qi rather than something else, like excess heat)
  • Ren 4 (4 fingers below the navel) – this point is great at warming the uterus, so helpful with menstrual pain due to cold stagnation
  • St 36 (lateral to the tibial tuberosity) – this leg point just below the knee is great at strengthening the overall body. In times of a cough or cold, digestive weakness or fatigue. It is a safe and well-rounded moxibustion point (but to be avoided if there is acid reflux)

Because of the nature of this offering (i.e. smoky, smelly), we are only able to offer moxibustion in our private, One on One treatments. If this is something that interests you and you would like to explore whether moxibustion could be beneficial for your digestive health, feel free to contact us!