Common Roots Acupuncture

Common Roots Acupuncture Josh Whiteley, RN, L.Ac.

Serving Tucson since 2010.

✨ Traditional Acupuncture
✨Advanced Dry Needling
✨Trigger Point Injections
✨Electro-acupuncture
✨Cupping & Gua Sha

04/22/2026

If you’ve ever felt sharp or aching pain just below your kneecap when walking down stairs, you’re not alone. That area is often the patellar tendon and surrounding ligaments getting irritated from overuse, poor tracking, or muscle imbalance. In this video, I’m showing you a simple way to use gua sha at home to help reduce that tension and improve how your knee moves.

Gua sha works by increasing local circulation, breaking up adhesions, and calming down irritated tissue. When applied correctly along the patellar tendon and ligament attachments, it can help decrease pain and stiffness while supporting the healing process. This is especially helpful for people dealing with things like patellar tendinitis or general anterior knee pain.

Here’s what to focus on when you try this yourself:
• Use light to moderate pressure, not aggressive scraping
• Work slowly along the tendon and just around the kneecap
• Keep strokes in one direction, following the tissue
• Stop if you feel sharp pain, and expect mild redness (that’s normal)
• Consistency matters more than intensity 👍

This is a simple tool you can add into your routine, especially if stairs, squatting, or downhill walking tend to flare things up. If your pain has been lingering or worsening, it’s always a good idea to get it properly assessed so you’re treating the root cause, not just the symptoms.

04/20/2026

Neck and shoulder tension often shows up as more than just stiffness. It can lead to headaches, tingling or numbness, and a noticeable loss of mobility. A lot of this comes from tight, overworked muscles like the upper trapezius, where trigger points can refer pain into the head, neck, and even down the arm.

In this treatment, I’m using a combination of dry needling and acupuncture to target those trigger points directly. By releasing tension in the trapezius, we can improve blood flow, calm irritated nerves, and restore more normal muscle function. Patients will often feel an immediate reduction in tightness and better range of motion after just one session.

Over time, this approach helps break the cycle of chronic tension and pain. Whether your symptoms come from stress, posture, workouts, or long hours at a desk, treating the root of the muscle dysfunction can make a big difference in how your body feels and moves day to day.

Research shows acupuncture can significantly improve fertility by increasing uterine blood flow, balancing hormones, red...
04/20/2026

Research shows acupuncture can significantly improve fertility by increasing uterine blood flow, balancing hormones, reducing stress, and promoting ovulation. At Common Roots Acupuncture, we help women on their journey to motherhood using gentle, proven techniques. Call 520-276-9555 or visit https://commonrootsacupuncture.com to learn more.

04/20/2026

Acupuncturist reacts to global streamer getting acupuncture in China!

Ever notice a twitch, pulse, or subtle movement somewhere totally different from where the acupuncture needle was placed...
04/18/2026

Ever notice a twitch, pulse, or subtle movement somewhere totally different from where the acupuncture needle was placed?

What’s happening is something called ‘’propagated sensation’’ along the meridian. In Chinese medicine, this is a known phenomenon where stimulation at one point creates a response along a connected pathway in the body. This is how we can treat one area of the body while placing the needle in a distal location.

From a modern perspective, the needle is activating sensory nerve fibers like A-delta and C fibers. These signals travel through the nervous system in patterns that often line up with classical meridian pathways. The result is that you might feel a sensation show up in a completely different area.

04/17/2026

Acupuncture is a holistic, evidence-informed approach to health that focuses on improving the body’s natural ability to regulate pain, restore balance, and support healing. In my clinic, treatments are designed with a strong understanding of both traditional principles and modern biomedical science, especially for musculoskeletal pain, nerve related symptoms, stress, digestion, and injury recovery. Each session is individualized based on what your body is actually presenting in the moment, not just a diagnosis name.

Many people come in for chronic issues like neck pain, low back pain, shoulder tension, knee pain, or plantar fasciitis, especially when other approaches haven’t fully worked. Acupuncture can help influence the nervous system, improve local circulation, and reduce pain signaling, which often leads to better mobility, sleep, and overall function over time. It’s not about quick fixes, but about creating real, sustainable change in how the body responds to stress and load.

If you’re dealing with ongoing pain or tension, or just feel like your system is stuck and not recovering the way it should, acupuncture can be a supportive part of your care plan. The goal is always to help you move, feel, and function better in your daily life.

04/16/2026

Motor point acupuncture is a highly specialized approach that blends traditional Chinese medicine with modern orthopedic and neuromuscular understanding. Instead of chasing symptoms, this technique targets precise motor points within muscles to restore function, reduce pain, and improve movement. It’s especially effective for chronic tension, repetitive strain injuries, and nerve-related symptoms that don’t fully resolve with more generalized care.

One muscle that commonly drives forearm and wrist pain is the flexor carpi ulnaris. This muscle plays a major role in wrist flexion and grip strength, especially during lifting, pulling, and rotational movements. When it becomes tight or overworked, it can contribute to inner forearm pain, weak grip, and symptoms that resemble nerve entrapment—like tingling or numbness into the pinky finger.

This tends to show up in people who are constantly using their hands whether that’s in sports like golf, tennis, baseball, climbing, weightlifting, or jiu-jitsu, or in jobs that require repetitive gripping and wrist use like typing, massage therapy, construction, hairstyling, or working with tools. If you’re gripping, lifting, or using your hands all day, this muscle is often working overtime and quietly contributing to your symptoms.
motorpointacupuncture

04/15/2026

Chronic pain doesn’t usually flip off like a switch. When something has been there for months or years, the body has adapted to it. muscles, nervous system, and movement patterns all get used to that state. So when you start acupuncture, change often happens in stages, not all at once.

Pain relief is still the goal, of course. But early on, there are other signs that things are moving in the right direction. This is where a lot of people miss progress because they’re only looking at one metric.

Things I tell patients to pay attention to:

Sleeping more deeply or falling asleep easier
Waking up feeling more rested
Energy improving throughout the day
Feeling less stressed or reactive
Pain being less intense or not lasting as long

Those shifts mean your system is starting to regulate again. And when that happens consistently, the pain usually follows. The key is recognizing that progress doesn’t always show up exactly how you expect it to at first, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

04/15/2026

It always happens when you least expect it!

Elimination diets have their place, but indigestion isn't just about food. Your gut listens closely to your nervous syst...
04/13/2026

Elimination diets have their place, but indigestion isn't just about food. Your gut listens closely to your nervous system, especially the vagus nerve.

Research on people with functional indigestion found that acupuncture improved remission rates and eased symptoms compared to standard care (Li, 2019). Translation: it helps not only what you eat, but how your body moves food along—and how calm you feel while it does.

We use gentle acupuncture at points like ST36, PC6, and CV12 to support healthy digestion and ease that tight "why did I eat that?" feeling. It's nervous-system care your belly can actually feel.

Curious if your gut needs more calm than cutting foods? Reach out to Common Roots Acupuncture at 520-276-9555 or visit https://commonrootsacupuncture.com to learn more.

Source: Li, 2019.

04/12/2026

Pain gets all the attention, but it’s rarely the whole story. What you feel is often just the messenger, not the source. That sharp spot in your low back, your shoulder, or your knee might be where the body is compensating… not where the problem started.

In the clinic, I use orthopedic muscle testing and movement-based assessments to track patterns, not just symptoms. When a muscle tests weak or inhibited, it can point to dysfunction somewhere else along the chain. The body is smart. It will shift load, recruit different tissues, and adapt however it can to keep you moving. But over time, those compensations show up as pain in places that seem unrelated.

That’s where combining this type of testing with acupuncture really shines. Instead of just treating the area that hurts, I’m able to target the underlying imbalance. Sometimes that means working on a completely different region to restore proper function and take stress off the painful area. When you address the root, things tend to change faster and hold longer.

If you’ve been chasing pain from one spot to another without lasting relief, it might be time to look at the bigger picture. Pain is important, but it’s just the signal. The real work is figuring out why it’s there in the first place.

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Tucson, AZ

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Tuesday 9am - 3pm
Wednesday 1pm - 7pm
Thursday 9am - 3pm
Sunday 9am - 3:30pm

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About CRA

Common Roots Acupuncture is a nonprofit clinic founded on the principle that acupuncture should be affordable and accessible to the average person. The benefits of acupuncture are numerous and many people have found it to be useful in helping with various ailments, but if it’s not a cost effective means of receiving healthcare then we lose out on it’s true value. Pain is the most common thing people usually seek out acupuncture for whether chronic or acute, but acupuncture also treats many other conditions including; digestive issues, anxiety/depression, stress, menstrual regulation, headaches, allergies, arthritis, autoimmune conditions, sleep support, and ‘’mysterious’’ or undiagnosable conditions quite well.

Common Roots staff are experienced practitioners of acupuncture and herbal medicine. Come see what acupuncture can do for you!