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podcast

How to Use Traditional Chinese Medicine to Help Your Child with ADHD, Anxiety and Autism

How to Use Traditional Chinese Medicine to Help Your Child with ADHD, Anxiety and Autism

Join me in a conversation with Robin Ray Green as we chat about using Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to help your child with ADHD, Anxiety and Autism. Robin and I dove into the many helpful takeaways I had from her book, “Heal Your Child from the Inside Out: The 5-Element Way to Nurturing Healthy, Happy Kids” and how the use of acupressure can change the way you look at your child’s health.

Things You Will Learn
  • Robin’s journey with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and how she used it to heal her son’s eczema
  • What initially drew Robin in to learning more about acupuncture and TCM
  • The 5 different natural elements and how to interpret what your child’s element is
  • How knowing your child’s natural element will help you not only with understanding their possible challenges, but how to best support their health
  • Each element relates to different organ networks
  • Your child’s health concerns are actually showing you a great purpose or perspective
  • And much more…

Show Notes

  • Robin’s experience using TCM to heal her son’s eczema. (4:23)
  • Robin’s chronic headaches were cured by TCM and how that impacted her life moving forward. (7:45)
  • The 5 elements and how to understand the difference. (10:42)
  • We all have all 5 elements within us and it’s not a linear path to choosing just one to help your child. (16:03) 
  • Using these elements to support your child’s health. (19:35)
  • How each element can help us identify the root cause. (24:15)
  • Seeing the bigger purpose and perspective when your child isn’t in the best health. (27:35)

Resources and Links

Robinraygreen.com

www.instagram.com/pediatrichealingarts

facebook.com/authorRobinRayGreen

5 Element Questionnaire 

Robin’s book: Heal Your Child from the Inside Out 

Get your own Kids Ear Seed Kit! (*affiliate link)

Publications / articles:

https://www.healyourlife.com/7-things-you-need-to-know-about-your-highly-sensitive-child

https://www.robinraygreen.com/blog

 

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More about Robin Ray Green

Robin Ray Green is the CEO and founder of the Center for Acupuncture Pediatrics and one of the world's leading experts in pediatric acupuncture. She provides the tools and training for acupuncturists and licensed health professionals to be successful in helping kids in the treatment room and in their businesses. She’s also one of the co-founders of the AcuPatching™ movement, which uses photobiomodulation on acupuncture points to balance the meridians and the autonomic nervous system. She is the author of Heal Your Child from the Inside Out: The 5-Element Way to Nurturing Healthy, Happy Kids. She loves hanging out with her boys, her dogs, hiking, sauna time, and all things magic, especially Harry Potter!

0:01 Tara Hunkin:
This is My Child Will Thrive and I'm your host, Tara Hunkin, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, Certified GAPS Practitioner, Restorative Wellness Practitioner, and mother. I'm thrilled to share with you the latest information, tips, resources, and tools to help you on the path to recovery for your child. With ADHD, Autism, Sensory Processing Disorder, or Learning Disabilities.

My own experiences with my daughter combined with as much training as I can get my hands on, research I can dig into and conferences I can attend have helped me to develop systems and tools for parents like you who feel overwhelmed, trying to help their children. So sit back as I share another great topic to help you on your journey. A quick disclaimer, before we get started,

My Child Will Thrive is not a substitute for working with a qualified healthcare practitioner. The information provided on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat your child. Please consult your healthcare practitioner before implementing any information or treatments that you have learned about on this podcast. There are many gifted, passionate, and knowledgeable practitioners with hundreds. If not thousands of hours of study and clinical experience available to help guide you.

Part of our goal is to give you the knowledge and tools you need to effectively advocate for your child so that you don't blindly implement each new treatment that comes along. No one knows your child better than you. No one knows your child's history like you do or can better. Judge. What is normal or abnormal for your child? The greatest success in recovery comes from the parent being informed and asking the right questions and making the best decisions for their child in coordination with a team of qualified practitioners in different areas of specialty.

Now on with the show. Today's podcast is sponsored by the Autism, ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit. In order to learn more about the summit and to sign up for free, please go to mychildwillthrive.com/summit.

2:07 Tara Hunkin:
Hi everyone. I want to welcome you back to the My Child Will Thrive podcast today. I'm really excited to have with me,Robin Ray Green. She is the CEO and Founder of the Center for Acupuncture & Pediatrics, and one of the world's leading experts in pediatric acupuncture. She provides the tools and training for acupuncturists and licensed health professionals to be successful in helping kids in the treatment room and in their businesses. She's also one of the co-founders of the AcuPatching™ movement, which uses photobiomodulation on acupuncture points to balance the meridians of the autonomic nervous system.

She is the author of "Heal Your Child from the Inside Out: The 5-Element Way to Nurturing Healthy, Happy Kids." And she loves hanging out with her boys, her dogs, hiking, sauna time and all things magic, especially Harry Potter (you'd get along really well with my daughter.) I have her book. I don't know if you can, you can see here with my good lighting here and those of you listening.

I have her book here "Heal Your Child from the Inside Out." And if you want to grab a copy of that, we will have a link for that in the show notes from today's podcast. So welcome, Robin, I'm so happy to have.

3:29 Robin Ray Green:
Thank you so much for inviting me to be here and I'm really delighted to speak with you about this topic today.

3:36 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah, well, we've met through one of the community of health practitioners and it's taken us a little while to get to where we finally had a chance to have a conversation, but I think it's going to be well, well worth the wait, because you have an area of expertise, which I haven't actually explored on the My Child Will Thrive podcast or the Summit or anything actually up until now. So we're going to dive right in. But what I want to do is get you to talk about the story that you start out telling in your book about your son and your journey with healing his severe eczema. Can you tell us a little bit about that today?

4:23 Robin Ray Green:
Sure. So I had just graduated from acupuncture school and shortly thereafter, I had my son Noah and when he was an infant, he had a severe case of eczema and Western medicine was unable to help him. So of course, like every parent you're taking your baby to the pediatrician and the pediatrician referred me to several specialists and a dermatologist and an immunologist and we had him allergy tested. And at the end of all of it, he was no better and they didn't know what was causing his eczema. Honestly they really didn't have any interest, I believe in figuring out what was causing it.

And I'm sure of it, because they see so many kids that are similar to him with eczema and they left me with just he's going to grow out of it. And as a mom and as an acupuncturist, that was just not a satisfying answer. I couldn't let my child suffer every day and have this skin issue and be okay with, Oh, he'll just grow out of it. And I knew I had to do something.

I knew there had to be a better way. And even though I had trained in acupuncture, I had very little training in pediatrics and zero training in what to do with eczema or how they help with infant eczema. And so I took every possible trainingI could find in traditional Chinese medicine and the treatment of pediatrics.

I had no intention going into pediatrics at that time. I was an orthopedic pain exercise science, that was my background. But in my journey of helping Noah and recognizing that there was so much more we could do to help kids beyond the Western model and that the Western model was failing our children because it was not looking for the root causes and it wasn't doing much beyond managing the symptoms for chronic types of issues.

And it just became my passion and my mission, not only to help my son, which we did heal his eczema, but then to help other children begin to understand, help their parents begin to understand and use Chinese medicine to help their own child heal and that they could incorporate it as part of their healing journey, no matter what was going on and improve their outcomes, speed healing, and get their child and their life back.

6:53 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. I mean, one of the things I do think that a lot of us can relate to is that a lot of people are here because they have tried to get help through the traditional medical system. And not that those practitioners don't want to help, they just aren't taught the tools to help, especially in cases like that other than the normal things that you run through in terms of all the things that they had you do with your son and his eczema.

One question though, wondering is that, I have a lot of people that come on to talk about functional medicine, or it could be a lot of different things, but there aren't a lot of people that go the route of traditional Chinese medicine. What is it about traditional Chinese medicine that really drew you in?

7:45 Robin Ray Green:
When I learned about traditional Chinese medicine, it was actually on my own. I had really terrible daily headaches and I tried chiropractic and massage and had gone to the doctor and everything helped a little bit, but nothing really solved it.

It would immediately, they would immediately come back. And so when I was in college, I saw an acupuncturist and after six visits, and this has been going on for a year, she solved my headaches in six visits. And I was like, what is this? What, what is this medicine? And what really drew me to, it was not only the, like in functional medicine we also look for the root cause, right? That's very much a part of the functional medicine approach, but that's been the approach of Chinese medicine from its inception 4,000 years ago. But what is different about it is I think is that we really take into perspective the constitution of the person.

8:41 Robin Ray Green:
So kind of similar to Ayurveda in Chinese medicine, we have the five elements and we have the different constitution types. And so we, no matter what, could have eight people come in with headaches and each one of them is going to get a different treatment because they each have a different constitution, a different cause for their headaches. And I just thought that was so brilliant because having had many people who, really wonderful practitioners do their best to help me, but it was when I was addressed from the constitutional perspective.

And when we, with acupuncture needles and the benefits that they have releasing neurochemicals and creating biochemical changes and reducing inflammation in a very passive way, we can effect great changes. And it's so beautiful to use this for children because their bodies are in a state of growth and development so they have a lot of energy that can be put towards healing.

When we use Chinese medicine with children, our treatments can be so gentle. They can be so targeted and help them so much. And it works well and plays well with functional medicine and with nutritional and dietary changes and whatever else the parents are doing to help their child heal. So it becomes a part of it where it really magnifies the benefits of everything else that they're doing and that's what really drew me to traditional Chinese medicine.

10:12 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. It sounds amazing and it, I mean, I'm a big fan of acupuncture, so personally, we'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit, because obviously I know there's always apprehension around the idea of acupuncture with children, but we'll get to that. Can you talk to us a bit about your book? You go through the overview of what the five elements are and how they influence our children.

10:42 Robin Ray Green:
Sure. So the five elements are a system of correspondences that we take from the natural world and they are in a continuum. So we have in the order, wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. And on that continuum on one side, we have the very young, which is like active, intense, engaging, enthusiastic, hot, loud kids, right on that side of the continuum. And then on the other side of the continuum, we have more of the yin-side, which comes out, which is like, they're a little more quiet, they're a little more shy and they're not quite as boisterous. They tend to be like the good boys and the good girls when they're little little, and they follow the directions and they're more calm, they're more sedate, they're more relaxed, they're more go with the flow.

And in the very center of the continuum, you have the earth Child, which has characteristics from both the young side, the wood and the wood and fire, and the yin-side, the water and the metal. And so sometimes our earth children can be most difficult to understand in place because they exhibit characteristics from both sides. So the five elements allow us to understand a child's temperament and personality style, as well as what illnesses they are more prone to.

So for example, with my son, Noah, he happens to be a metal wood child and metal corresponds to the skin and the lungs. And so no surprise that a metal child with a metal imbalance ends up with eczema. And so it allows us to kind of make connections that we sort of know. We sort of understand that well. We all understand that each one of our children is different and each child has to be parented just a little bit differently. You parent your sensitive child a little bit differently than you parent your really intense go getter wood child that's go, go, go.

12:48 Robin Ray Green:
We already know this, but once we really know at once we understand our child's five element type and their constitution, it all of a sudden just clicks why this child wants to stay home and be a homebody on the weekends and the thought of running errands and going to their brother's soccer game just makes them miserable. On the other hand, your fire child is ready to go. They enjoy talking to people. They love walking up and down the soccer field and engaging with the other kids and going in playing.

So suddenly we have more information about our child that allows us to parent them in a way that honors who they are, and also catch them in the areas where they might be weak, where their strengths are. We can't let our water child be at home all the time. They need to get out. We need to push them a little bit, cause they will have fun when they get there.

And it's just that knowing and that understanding. And that's what really, the five elements bring to the table in a child's healing journey is that deeper level of understanding. I think sometimes it also helps parents. Like there's mom understands their sensitive child, but dad doesn't get it. But once it's not a thing, like it's not like he's sensitive, but he's just a fire child that has a little bit of an imbalance.

Like somehow it allows mom and dad to click and be on the same page in their approach, because it's not about trying to make that sensitive child less sensitive. It's more about like, how can we bend a little bit, but also push them a little bit so that fire child can really, really thrive.

14:32 Tara Hunkin:
It's a really interesting way of looking at things for sure. And one of the things I like in the book, you, and I'm going to hold this up again. I don't know if it's going to be able to be seen, but you have these great charts that talk about, for example, with your child, the wood child, what types of things they're going to be prone to from a health standpoint, what types of purpose, like gifts they have in terms of the way they go about life, what challenges they might have and emotional tendencies.

So an example, just to give people an idea, there's this, again, terrible lighting for this, but this great chart that says, if they are a wood child, you say they're prone to headaches, muscle spasms and behavioral problems. So, their gifts are curiosity and drive and their challenges are anger, irritability, managing emotions, and their emotional tendency then is anger. I'm a very visual person, so I love a great chart that really summarizes those things because you can see where your child might sort of land.

15:42 Tara Hunkin:
And actually you answered one of the questions that I had in that, which is what happens when your child seems to, you might overlap some of these things like how do you know if is it that it's the thing that describes them the best rather than in terms of most of the time, I'm assuming as how you determine whether there wood, fired earth, metal or water.

16:03 Robin Ray Green:
That is such a great question and I think that in our Western way of thinking, we tend to be very linear, right? And we like, we like boxes and we like people to fit inside a box. But with the five elements, we have all five elements within us and it's fluid, right? When we're going to go on stage, we're going to talk and have a big speech, we're going to draw on our fire element to bring that intensity and that joy for speaking and to show up. And when we need to, we need to think about something.

We need to figure out a problem and be innovative, we're drawing upon, say our water element and so forth. So it goes along with each element. So every child comes into this world with a specific way of being in the way that I think about it is that we have a dominant element that shapes who we are more than every other element. And then we have a secondary element that influences that dominant element. And that's where each person becomes unique.

And I think about all of us having an element around us and maybe like for me, my metal element is my, is my most influential followed by my fire element, which is influencing my metal element. And then earth and wood and water are like smaller in the picture of their influence on who I am and how I show up in the world.

And so each person has their individual five element makeup, which is going to look a little bit different. So when we're, when I'm helping parents decide what element their child is, I have them fill out a whole questionnaire and answer a bunch of questions. And I really encourage them to think about the questionnaire and think about how is your child showing up most often?

17:50 Robin Ray Green:
So every child has a bad day where they're angry and irritable and they're stomping their room and throw their coat down and lay on the bed. They're mad, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're a wood type because they might just have had a really bad day and somebody broke their pencil and stole their Pokemon card.

And you know, they're just having a bad day, but when a child whose response to most everything that doesn't go their way is that little burst of anger is that like frustration beyond like say the terrible twos or the tantrums at three or whatever, when it's persisting beyond those periods of time, then it's something to take a closer look at and see if they have more wood characteristics.

So you might think, okay, this is my child super active, are they goal oriented? Does the wall chart with the little stickers, does that motivate the heck out of them to get themselves dressed in the morning and get to school on time? So you're looking for all those characteristics that really play out, whereas like the water child or even the earth child may not be quite as motivated by the chart because those things aren't, quite as motivating for them as say the wood child. And so I encourage your readers, we can give out the link to the five element questionnaire. If you're curious what element your child is, you can take the questionnaire and it will help you. If you've read the book, it'll help you to determine which element your child is.

19:17 Tara Hunkin: Yeah, for sure. We'll make sure we put those that link in the show notes because it's always, I find it so fascinating to go through those things and get those types of insights. Once you've identified what element your child is primarily, how can this help you support their best health?
19:35 Robin Ray Green:
So from that point, in my book, I talk about the psychological factors and the different foods that you can feed your child. But I think also there, the first thing is the shift that comes with having a better understanding of what is driving the behaviors. So certain things like going with the example of the wood child, their anger isn't necessarily willful misbehavior, right?

And just knowing that your metal child who is just can't handle the routine changing, it's not that they're willfully trying to drive you nuts, it's that they need us to change a little bit so that we can help them be more flexible or handle changes and things when things don't go their way. So the first part is just the aha of who they are and what they need.

And then in the book, I talk about the different ways that we can use it. So how are we showing up for them? What do we need to change in our routines that makes things easier for them?So your wood child or say your fire child, when they get excited about things like they can have a lot of anticipation and anxiety about something.

We may not want to tell them about something that they're going to be anxious or excited about until right before it's going to happen. So then we gradually increase the time to help them understand it. So we start to change our behaviors. We change our routines. We also work on nutrition and what foods are going to support their elements.

21:18 Robin Ray Green:
And then also, I think generally we find a way to weave in mindfulness and gratitude in everything that we're doing, because I think that helps every child, no matter what element they are. But I think that mindfulness and gratitude are so important for each one because it's sort of like the antidote to each of the weaknesses, each of the challenges that each one is going to have when we bring that piece into it. And then it also can guide things like acupressure and massage techniques that will also be balancing for the elements as well.

21:54 Tara Hunkin:
I think actually what you've just talked about is pretty much every element in your wellness wheel, which is also in the book as well, which are natural remedies, elemental parenting, which you just discussed as well. Your eating, so food, acupressure and massage and gratitude and mindfulness. So it's always good to have again, another visual, but also a way to sort of identify all the things that we need to be considering. Because sometimes we do get really focused on one particular thing. Maybe it's just the food right now, or maybe it's just that, but it is a really comprehensive approach in terms of what you're talking about to help our children the best way.

22:35 Robin Ray Green:
I just remember when Noah, we were dealing with his eczema and we were trying to figure out what the food triggers were and I was monitoring his diet like a hawk and I felt like what ended up happening at a certain point was all I could focus on was what was wrong with him.

I was focusing on the foods that he couldn't eat and his skin and what did it look like that day? And it would change from morning to night and I was hyper obsessed and hyper focused on the problem. And just that type of approach is really, it's just heart-wrenching and it sucks the life out of you and the joy out of your, experience with your child and the wellness wheel was my way, my response to that, to bring in pieces of like, if I bring in these pieces in myself and in my child, and I focus on the outcome that I want and that I want him to get better, it restored the balance in our family, in my joy with him that I could let go and trust that I was doing everything I could to heal his eczema, and I didn't need to excessively focus on the problem for it to still be healed in its own time.

23:46 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. You do talk about it in a chapter about how each element can relate to different Chinese medicine like organ networks and how this can help us identify what that root cause might be by identifying their element. Can you explain a little bit more about that?

24:15 Robin Ray Green:
Right. So the five elements, we take it in two parts and the first part we're understanding the elements that drive personality and temperament. And then the second part, we're using the five elements to understand the imbalances that the child has. And so what that can mean is it doesn't always mean that a metal child's going to have eczema, right.

But a metal child who has a fire imbalance might have anxiety. And so then we can look at, okay, well, how can we balance the fire element? We can balance it with food. We can balance it with acupressure or acupoint stimulation. We can balance it with the auricular therapy. We can balance it with supplements and herbs.

And so once we identify where the imbalance is, then we can take the appropriate action to create balance and also incorporate parenting and the things that we need to incorporate from the temperament side of it, because the body and mind are one in Chinese medicine. So if a water child with a fire imbalance, they may need the similar support as a fire child.

So we can start to weave all of this together to create this really comprehensive program that addresses the whole child, body, mind, and spirit, and as body heals, mind and spirit heal and as mind and spirit heal, body heals. And so we can use this as a starting point to begin the process and understand and trust in our own knowing, because I think that's another thing that's often missing when your child has some kind of illness is we are often told not to trust our knowing. Like we know things, we know that this food causes this reaction. We know that these herbs seem to help, or we're willing to try this homeopathic medicine and see if it helps.

And unfortunately, while there are many good doctors out there, a lot of them don't understand this and so they tend to tell people this, you just don't do it or not to trust and believe it. And I feel like this approach allows you to trust and try and do things to support your child's healing, even when it's against or counter to what you might be hearing from other medical providers.

26:36 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. No, it makes a lot of sense. And it's interesting cause it's like what you said earlier about our tendency to think in a linear form, which I do. So I think this is, and I've had conversations with friends and other practitioners about this, I think some of us, even as practitioners and parents that have been doing this for a really long time, we do struggle still with the approach to accompanying we're, we're so focused on the task of fixing this one thing or even an integrative approach where we're, we're working on things from the root cause, but it's not looking at that holistic in the sense, the mind, body, and spirit, like you're talking about. So it's so refreshing to hear this and read this in your book because it really does kind of pull all these things together and answers a lot of questions that I think a lot of us still have, even though we've been on this journey for a really long time.

27:35 Robin Ray Green:
Yeah. And if I can just be super honest and a little bit emotional here, I really feel like sometimes these things happen to our children because we're called to do something more, whether that means that your experience impacts a close friend of yours. Like you go through it and you're able to help her and her child go through it and come out the other end and you're both better for the experience. You both learned something.

And then for some like your sphere of influence and your dedication, I know Tara, neither one of us would be having this conversation right now if we hadn't gone through our own journeys with our children. My son is 17, I think your daughter she's 17 as well.

We started this at the same time and I feel like sometimes our children's illness is part of our own spiritual journey. And when I was able to look at that as like, it has helped my own spiritual, professional, personal growth and development, and it's helped me, it's helped him and it's helped thousands of practitioners and parents.

I wouldn't change a thing. And so I just want to say to parents listening right now, you might not know right now why this is happening and you may feel like it is so unfair that your child has to go through this, but I want to just give you hope that at some point, the purpose will become greater and it will all make sense. And you will see that the impact of what you went through will help so many people as you share your story and your journey.

29:11 Tara Hunkin:
Yeah. I appreciate that so much because it is so true. And I think it's, it is important, especially when you're going through things that are so hard. And there are so many parents that are listening that are going through some really tough things with their kids day in and day out.

And it's hard to keep the faith that there is a reason that they're having to go through what they're going through right now and their children are so I really appreciate that and your perspective on that. Because that is why I do what I do as, and as what my daughter said when I asked her if it was okay, if I did, I started to do this in a more public way, because I knew I would have to share parts of her story in order for it to really make sense to people while I was doing what I was doing and I didn't want to do that without her permission. But she said, if it could help one child not have to go through what she went through, then she was happy for me to do that. So, I mean, our kids want us to mean more than just about them too.

30:12 Tara Hunkin:
So there's one other thing I wanted to talk about. We could talk about a million other things and there's everything it's so well laid out in your book. And I say that in all honesty, I've read lots of lots and lots and lots of books. I love books. And some are better than others. And I think this is really, really worthwhile. And I don't think there's, I haven't come across anything like it. So I'm really grateful to you for writing it because I know how big of a project writing a book is.

And we're going to talk about a couple of things that are in the back of the book, which I think people would be really interested about because you talk about how to balance the five elements with things like massage and acupressure. And then you've mentioned to me too, there's one more thing you'd add if you could update the book right now, why don't you tell us a bit about that?

31:09 Robin Ray Green:
Sure. So when we're using Chinese medicine, if you go in and see an acupuncturist, they use not just needles, but a variety of non needle techniques and I wanted to include them in the book because I wanted tools that parents could use at home that were easy to learn, that were effective and so that's what I included.

And in the book I included auricular therapy, which means the stimulation of points on the ear. And we use these adorable little seeds and also gold and silver or stainless steel beads that are applied to the ear with a little type of adhesive tape. And they have some super cute ones now, they have them in crystals that you can get in multiple colors.

So little girls, especially. So Tara is holding up the deluxe kid's ear seed kit, which has a picture of the little sticker. We have ones that look kind of like band-aids and ones that look like crystals that you can get. And what happens is when we stimulate the ear, we make a connection with the brain and we know that certain parts of the ear are wired to help with certain parts of the body.

And so by stimulating the ear with these tiny amounts of continuous stimulation from the bead or the seed, it stimulates the body to heal itself. It wakes the body up to the areas that are bothered. So it can, it can help with cough. It can help with an ear infection. It can help with pain that in the body, anywhere in the body, any joint. It can help with calming. And I especially love the ear seeds for anxiety, depression, sleep, any kind of autonomic nervous system imbalance because the auricular branch of the vagus nerve comes to the ear and by stimulating it with this, and it's like set it and forget it.

33:03 Robin Ray Green:
You put the little seeds on you forget they're there. Your body adapts to the pressure, but it doesn't adapt to the stimulation so you still get that mild continuous stimulation and it can really support the healing. So in the book I put different points depending on the elemental imbalance the child has, or if you wanted to strengthen our support for the element, you can put, apply the ear seed to the particular spot that's in the chart, in the book. And then I also give the most common acupressure points that I use in the clinic with instructions on how to do acupressure and acupressure is really amazing.

It can cause a whole host of biochemical and neurochemical changes in the body that are well-documented in the research literature, and it's so easy, you can do it anywhere. And I always tell the story of my son. We were at Gilroy Gardens, this little amusement park, and we're on the spinny garlic ride. And he is like, mom, I'm going to throw, I'm going to throw up. And there's no way to stop the ride, we're on the ride. And I'm like, okay, press your pericardium six, this point on your wrist at about two or three fingers up from your wrist crease in between the tendons there and he's like, okay, mom, I'm pressing my P6, I'm pressing it right. Then about 10 seconds. I was like, okay, mom, I'm not going to throw up. And it's like,

I love that. I love that. Like in the middle of a spinny ride, we can stimulate acupressure points to stop nausea and vomiting. And that, at that point, it's also great for calming anxiety as well, which may have been contributing to how he was feeling, but we were spinning.

34:37 Robin Ray Green:
So, and if I were to rewrite my book again, I would add a whole entire chapter on AcuPatching™ which uses phototherapy or photobiomodulation on the acupuncture points to induce biochemical changes and it's similar to using a laser. And I use lasers in my practice all the time. I am a huge fan of light therapy and I was so delighted. And I'll show you a little patch for those who are watching the video.

It's just this little patch, a little sticker and I've got one here on my elbow. That's what it looks like. It's just a little sticker and it reflects back your body's own infrared light, but at very specific wavelengths to initiate different biochemical changes in the body. And we have patches that can do everything from help the body to initiate its own production of glutathione, its own production of STEM cells and balancing the autonomic nervous system. And there's even more, but those are like the top three that are just incredible.

And while the company that makes them is relatively new, the technology is patented and they have almost 90 research studies backing the effectiveness and the safety of the products. And this is like by far my favorite way to stimulate the points. Because with acupressure, you need to do it say two to four times a day to get the benefits, but with the patch, you just put the patch on and you go about your day and take it off at night. And then you put a new one on the next day. So it's really super easy.

35:58 Robin Ray Green:
And for my boys, I will go in and they don't want the patches showing anywhere, they're in high school. I don't want people asking me about this patch mom. So I go into our mudroom and I put them in their shoes. I put them inside the shoe at the bottom of their foot on kidney one, which is a really like grounding, balancing point and they go to school with their patches and they don't even know. So it's a great way to help kids and balanced acupuncture, meridians and the autonomic nervous system.

36:44 Tara Hunkin:
I love that. I mean, we, I am a huge fan of lasers as well and have a great interview on the current version of the Summit with an expert in using lasers. And a lot of people aren't able to use lasers because they're expensive. So to have them for home use super is a very big investment obviously to go into a clinic is also an investment because it can be expensive to get treatments that way to have an option like this, which I, again, I never heard about before talking to you, is really fabulous.

And depending on when you're listening to this, there will be an interview with Robin on that specific topic and a little bit more on acupuncture, pediatric acupuncture in the Autism, ADHD and Sensory Processing Disorder Summit, which you can sign up for at mychildwillthrive.com/summit.

So if you want to learn more about that, good way to do that again, it will just depend on when you're hearing this and when you sign up whether or not you'll get access to that right away or not but I encourage you to do that because there's lots of good interviews there, too.

38:07 Tara Hunkin:
Robin, I can't thank you enough for one writing this book, because like I said, books are a beast to do. So this is a very affordable, accessible way to get a lot of really good information. There's pictures in here, how to do the massage and the acupressure points and all of that. So that it really is a fabulous hand guide.

And if people are looking, you can see, I have just begun, there'll be many more sticky notes coming its way, but it is one that you're going to have lots of sticky notes in. So you can go back and reference the charts and all the other resources that you have in there. So thank you so much. Thank you.

People can find you a number of places. So why don't you just mention them? And we'll put them in the show notes as well.

38:58 Robin Ray Green:
Fantastic. So they can find me at robinraygreen.com and at acupatching365.com or there's more information on the book, on AcuPatching™, on how to help your child with Chinese medicine. Tara, I just really appreciate you creating this platform and allowing me to come on as a guest and share my love for Chinese medicine and helping children heal because together,

I think we are all going to be ushering in the thrive era where children are going to be healthier than ever. So I appreciate everything you do and thank you for having me.

39:34 Tara Hunkin:
I love that. Thanks so much from him. I can't wait to do this again really soon.

39:38 Robin Ray Green:
Me too.

39:39 Tara Hunkin: So that's a wrap. Thanks for joining me this week on My Child Will Thrive. I'm so passionate about giving you the tools and information you need to help your child recover. And as they say, it takes a village. So join us in the My Child Will Thrive Village Facebook group, where you can meet like-minded parents and stay up to date on everything we have going on at My Child Will Thrive. This is Tara Hunkin and I'll catch you on the next podcast or over at mychildwillthrive.com.

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