Gua Sha in Los Angeles

Maybe pain is friction. It doesn’t hurt when things are moving, or when all are still. Pain is the feeling of one part moving against another part that is stuck. It is the gap between where we come from and where we are going. It is the feeling of waking up. The stagnant part is our old world—our past and our old way of being. When we feel pain, its means it is time for something old to dissolve. Perfectly, friction contains is own antidote. The product of friction is heat. And fire is a requisite for alchemy. It is necessary in transforming your lead into gold.

Life force energy flows freely through the body when the system is healthy. This subtle energy manifests as blood and lymph, then tissues and organs. Matter moves more slowly, the more dense it becomes, but it still should be free to flow in its own way. Trauma, imbalanced nutrition, emotion and karma, can cause parts of us to freeze. Stagnation manifests in the body as sepsis, fermentation, muscle adhesions, scar tissue, and tumors. Sometimes stagnation can exist for a long time before we feel it. But when we try to move forward, we notice that some parts are stuck.

Gua Sha is a widely used folk remedy as well as a technique in Chinese medicine. Friction is created with a blade made of Jade or Water Buffalo Horn or simply a soup spoon or bottle lid with a rounded edge. When an area is scraped, if the tissues and related areas are healthy, the skin turns pink, then returns to normal color. But if there is stagnant blood, it rises to the surface as “Sha”. The darker the color, the longer it has been stagnant (less oxygen). It may be yellow, red, purple, or even black or greenish. Treatment effects the area directly scraped and related organ and lines of energy.


In some accounts, Gua Sha has been referred to as pseudo-abuse or pseudo-battery (wiki). This is because it looks like horrible bruises. This makes some people want nothing to do with it. But it is not that something harmful is being added to the body—instead, something that has been there for a long time is being drawn out. It is a demonstration of a healing process. We see the pain as it leaves, no longer hiding it inside of us. If we can look at it, and we can touch it, gradually we can let it go. As the once-frozen places heat up and melt, our cells are free to move again. They are free to find a new position that is in harmony with the present moment.

Practices of awareness and healing are not for those who are fully in the dark. Nor for those fully in the light. They are for those in the waking shadows. Wishing to be blessed by the old world while embracing the new. Those who search for the pain of waking up; knowing that there is something on the other side.

While I was writing this, there was a rolling earthquake. Reminding me that, even the things that I thought were solid, eventually heat up, turn to liquid, and flow.

If you are interested in experiencing this work, please contact me at lifemovesthrough@gmail.com