Pathways Healing

12/02/2025

12/01/2025

You’ve heard of elf on a shelf, we have a felf (frog/elf) on a shelf 🎄🎅🏻☃️

11/29/2025

https://mailchi.mp/pathwayshealing/updates-9254831

Bonnie is very grateful to everyone who has purchased her books!  If you would like to help her to share her story with others,a review on Amazon would be a great way to help out. You can purchase the book or give a review at the link below:

11/27/2025

We have a couple of spots left!!!

11/26/2025

Vonalee has a few spots left before the holidays.
Bonnie will be accepting new patients in January!

11/25/2025

Acupuncture demonstrates consistent clinical benefit for reducing depressive symptom severity across diverse patient groups, according to a comprehensive systematic review conducted at Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine.

11/24/2025

I said what I said.

11/22/2025

We see posts and articles about this topic all the time. Most of the time these posts are coming from the point of view of physiotherapists and chiropractors. It is time to hear about it from an Acupuncturist.

Bonnie is a Registered Acupuncturist with 15 years of experience. Acupuncture is defined as the use of a sterile needle, inserted through the skin for a therapeutic effect. Therefore, these 2 therapies are coming from the same place. They are 2 different techniques that can be used with needles.

Bonnie thinks that some of the misperception around this question could be because a lot of people, including other health professionals, do not understand the scope of practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine Acupuncture.(TCM)

It is true that most of the time, TCM acupuncturists work on balancing the entire body by choosing points to support the person's organs, and release blockages in their meridians or balance their nervous system. We usually insert several needles and have the patient rest for 20 to 30 minutes. We may incorporate massage, cupping therapy, gua sha, or acupressure as well. With the balanced nervous system (we call it the smooth flow of qi), and relaxed muscles, circulation and lymphatic flow is improved and most of the pain and tightness simply eases away.

IMS or Dry Needling is used to release muscular tension. The needles are inserted, manipulated and then removed. The manipulation basically breaks up the knots and overstimulates the muscle until it stops resisting and relaxes.

Acupuncturists also use needles to release muscular restrictions, in much the same way as IMS or Dry Needling. We just refer to it differently. We might call it “manual stimulation,” or “Sedation,” “Tonification” or “Reduction” of the point we are working on.

We are still releasing muscular restrictions with manipulation of the needle. We work on acupuncture points, but we can also needle wherever there is a tight spot. Like a trigger point. We call these points “Ashi” points.

Acupuncturists don’t use manual stimulation or manipulation of needles as often because our therapy tends to relax the bod