An experiment with the ancient practice of ear seeds
Acupuncture points are meant to target body’s functions and feelings
It feels like the sore beginning of a still-subcutaneous pimple. All the skin and cartilage along my ear is stretched and bothered — tender enough that I wince when I touch it. But I can’t stop fiddling.
It’s been like this for two days, ever since LeilaScot M. Price taped five vaccaria seeds to very specific points on my ear. They’ll stay in for between three and five days when the tape begins to lose its stick, or all my fiddling and rollingaround of these tiny seeds loosen them from the adhesive and they roll out on their own. And to be honest, on this second day, I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand it that long.
But I am amazed at just how intense this experiment is.
Acupuncture has been around since the Stone Age. And auricular acupuncture — that is, acupuncture of the ear — has roots that stretch as far back as the ancient Egyptian and Roman empires. These tiny orbs taped to strategic points on my ears are part of an impossibly old tradition. But they’re just now finding their way to the American mainstream.
“It’s ancient,” says Price, a native Houstonian who earned a master’s degree in traditional Chinese medicine from The American College of Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine and provides wholebody and auricular acupuncture at The Center for Healing Arts & Sciences in Houston. “But it’s new, too, because people are rediscovering it and all the benefits of it.”
The practice of acupuncture hinges on the belief that seemingly unrelated parts of the body are connected by pathways of energy and that stimulating one spot can affect others.
“Have you ever pinched yourself, say, on your arm, and you get a pain somewhere else? It seems completely random, but it’s not random,” Price says. “These things are connected by pathways.”
Though the body is one big system of such interconnected pathways, it’s long been believed that the body also contains several microsystems, including the feet and ears, stocked with trigger points that correspond to the body’s organs. And those organs, in turn, represent different emotions and functions. The seed Price placed above the trigger point for my kidney — the one that I just can’t stop fiddling with — corresponds not just with that organ but also with fear.
“This location has the function of strengthening the kidney itself but also the emotional aspect of the kidney, which is fear,” she tells me as she tapes the seed in place, and I immediately wiggle from the pressure. “If you think about it, your adrenal glands sit just on top of the kidney. And what do they release when we’re afraid? Adrenaline. So kidney and fear are paired.”
I have no idea what I was afraid of during the four days the seed stayed taped inside my ear. But my kidney point was the most tender of the five locations to which Price affixed seeds.
Price decided to place five seeds in each of my ears, in accordance with the NADA protocol, a technique developed by the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association in the mid-1970s. The points used in this system include the kidney, liver and lung, as well as a point that represents the sympathetic nervous system, and another at the Shen Men , which roughly translates to “spirit gate.”
“The Shen Men is a very powerful point,” says Sara Bursac, the executive director of the NADA. “It has a strong relaxant effect and can reduce anxiety. It often helps a person sort of gather themselves in a way — to feel more collected, or connect to their spirit.”
Since the NADA protocol was established by a medical doctor at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx roughly 40 years ago, thousands of people have used the method.
“In the early to mid-1990s, NADA would see as many as 150 to 200 people a day,” Bursac says. “It was extremely vibrant, and thousands of people can credit their recovery to acupuncture.”
Bursac can point to several anecdotal studies in which people who underwent the NADA protocol were able to kick drug addictions, thanks to the strategic placement of the ear seeds. Many are listed on NADA’s website and on various corners of the Internet. But you won’t find large studies about ear seeds in highbrow medical journals.
That’s fine with Price. She knows it works and doesn’t really need the validation of mainstream science.
“There’s more than meets the eye,” Price says. “Even on the scientific level, there are colors and sounds that we can’t perceive. But they’re there. So we have to also believe there are other things going on beyond what the human eye can detect.”
As for me, I didn’t feel anything life changing emanating from my ear after spending the better part of a week with seeds taped to me. But then again, I did feel that soreness and throbbing around one particular point of my ear that had never felt uncomfortable before or since. So I do wonder: Was my body trying to tell me something?