Ear acupuncture therapy, a method to promote rehabilitation, applies the methods such as acupuncture, needle-embedding therapy and electrotherapy to puncture the corresponding acupoints of the specific sites of the auricle according to certain acupoint selection principles.

The auricle is like an inverted fetus with the corresponding sites of the internal organs, limbs and other tissues and organs of the fetus on it. The location and nomenclature of auricular acupoints mostly correspond with such a distribution and have certain regularity.

The auricular acupoint (also called positive point, sensitive spot, tenderness point, and good conducting point, etc.) has double value in diagnosis and treatment. The commonly-used methods of ear acupuncture therapy include needle-embedding therapy, seed-pressing method, needling method with the filiform needle, electrotherapy, warming needle therapy, etc. Ear acupuncture therapy is commonly applicable to various painful diseases as well as many dysfunctional diseases in TCM life cultivation and rehabilitation such as hemicrania, trigeminal neuralgia, toothache, ischias, hypertension, and insomnia, and aphasia, numbness of limbs, indigestion, gallstone, chronic tracheitis, chronic enteritis, chronic pelvic inflammation, impotence and menopausal syndrome.

Strict measures should be taken for antisepsis during ear acupuncture therapy. Needling is contraindicated on the site with frostbite or inflammation. Immediate treatment is required in case of infection. Besides, needling is contraindicated in pregnant women with a history of habitual abortion; patients with sprain or disturbance of limb movement should move the affected part to improve the rehabilitation effects when the feeling of congestion and fever appears on the auricle after the insertion of the needle. Learn more information, please read Ear Acupuncture.