Vaccaria seeds and non-auricular acupressure

I guess they could but frankly I don’t see the point and there are considerations such as body hair, sweat, etc. that would make it somewhat impractical. The purpose of the seed is to be pressed to deliver a stimulation, not to provide a constant stimulation. For points on the body using your thumb or fingers to do acupressure would do the same thing as pressing a seed taped over the point. The points on the ear are smaller than the points on the body which is why the seeds are used there - using your thumb would cover several points instead of just one. Arguably the seeds probably cover more than one point too but that’s another story…

I won’t get into this in as much detail as I would like, but I actually think that clinically seeds, auricular or body, are a bad idea overall except possibly in the mildest of cases. First, it runs too close the viewpoint that acupuncture is a point-to-condition modality which I don’t agree it is in the larger scheme of things. In other words, one off points for specific symptoms don’t have anywhere near the effect that properly designed point prescriptions do. Now that said, I actually feel like doing “self-care” between treatments can disrupt the overall effect of the treatment far more possibly than it would greatly aid it. We never do this in my clinic. Knowing that acupuncture largely stimulates the brain and body to make changes - some of which happen up to 72 hours or longer after the treatment, too many other things in the mix are far more likely, in my opinion, to disrupt this process than aid it. It could easily be argued any which way, and that’s the greatness of our medicine. Just taking it easy and focusing on the parts that do matter - like dietary and lifestyle change, will, again in my opinion, lead to much better clinical outcomes. More often than not, less is more.