Gua Sha: A Traditional Technique
for Modern Practice

Gua Sha is a healing technique used in Asia by practitioners of Traditional Medicine, in both the clinical setting and in homes, but little known in the West. It involves palpation and cutaneous stimulation where the skin is pressured, in strokes, by a round-edged instrument; that results in the appearance of small red petechiae called 'sha', that will fade in 2 to 3 days.

Raising Sha removes blood stagnation considered pathogenic, promoting normal circulation and metabolic processes.The patient experiences immediate relief from pain, stiffness, fever, chill, cough, nausea, and so on. Gua Sha is valuable in the prevention and treatment of acute infectious illness, upper respiratory and digestive problems, and many other acute or chronic disorders.

The author details the theory and purpose of Gua Sha and explains precisely how to apply Gua Sha in specific disorders with over 45 case studies documenting successful treatment of pain and illness. The book also explores the history of Gua Sha and similar techniques used in early Western Medicine. The book contains 170 pages with 19 color plates, and 40 black and white photos and illustrations.

Gua Sha is applicable in any hands-on therapeutic practice. The book will be of particular interest to care givers who are presented with disorders involving pain.

German text.

By using historical examinations of East Asian medical texts, cross-cultural historical documents, contemporary scholarly sources, interviews with living elder practitioners and her own keen clinical experience (Arya Nielsen) has brought Gua Sha to the center of Oriental medicine clinical practice. She has found a precious lost ring that might have gone down the drain of disuse.

Ted Kaptchuk, OMD
Harvard Medical School
Author The Web That Has No Weaver

 

Gua Sha book in English:
Redwing Book Co. on the web
or by phone 1-800-873-3946,

Gua Sha book in German:
(VGM: Verlag für Ganseitliche Medizin)
www.vgm.holmed.de