Short answer - NO.

More nuanced answer: The hands and feet have lots of nerve endings; the back and abdomen far fewer. Different areas of the body have different levels of sensation. You should feel a pinch for a fraction of a second or possibly a sting but it should be fleeting. On some areas you may not feel the needle enter at all. But once the needle is in, it should not provide any discomfort whatsoever.

Your Acupuncturist knows where to needle you to achieve your health goals. Acupuncturists can compensate when they must needle more sensitive areas by having excellent needling technique that is either very quick or very smooth, but please do not over-focus on anticipating possible momentary discomfort to the point you miss out on excellent healthcare.

The less you plan to do on your end to embody a healthy lifestyle, the more treatments you can expect it will take to restore lost functionality and balance. In Alternative Health, the name of the game is living it every day. The more you do on your end, in your daily life to turn away from toxic, toward pure & natural, and away from binging to moderation, and away from a limited palate to eating the organic rainbow of colors, the sooner you will turn your health Woes into health Yeahs!

The longer you have been actively building your current disease state, the longer you can expect it to take to unravel the knot. For instance, the more antibiotics you have done in your lifetime and the more recent your antibiotic use, the longer it might take to restore proper, healthy digestion. If you also invite members of the household to go on the health journey with you, health and well-being could get restored quicker and everyone involved wins. When one person in the household goes it alone, it can be harder to get traction on your health goals because lifestyle choices are usually a shared experience with members of the household.

With those caveats outlined, in general, expect to have a New Patient Exam in which your baseline health snapshot of where you currently stand is recorded for future comparison and your health goals are identified. After your exam, analysis will be done on the information gathered to allow for planning your future treatments to ensure treatment aligns with your health goals and to select a suitable herbal formula for you. After around 5 treatment visits we can reassess progress toward stated goals. We will identify where progress was made and where it fell short. Coming in consistently in the beginning is important to gain momentum. Skipping and postponing treatments can hinder progress. Commit to your health; the results will be worth it.

Flexibility is offered for those who feel drawn to what Acupuncture promises yet feel cautious because it seems strange. You could start out at O.M. Connection with bodywork.

In Florida, Acupuncturists are Oriental Medicine Practitioners. Oriental Medicine contains multiple modalities, not just Acupuncture. We are permitted to do bodywork. At O.M. Connection you can receive multiple bodywork forms: TuiNa Chinese Medical Massage, Cupping, GuaSha, ChiNeiTsang, and Toksen. These are great for general health, overall balance, & promoting a feeling of well-being. But in order to receive acupuncture or herbal medicine, a New Patient Exam must be done to identify the exact nature of your health to avoid moving things in a direction that is not beneficial for your presentation.

Give the bodywork a try if nothing else.

By correctly diagnosing you according to our system of understanding of human health, then treating you according to that diagnosis, Oriental Medicine can correct musculoskeletal issues that are creating pain, reduced range of motion, loss of strength. It can correct organ system function loss such as poor circulation of blood/lymph, poor metabolism of water, poor digestion, discoordinated hormone signaling, inability to self regulate mood & emotions, inability to concentrate when needed, inability to get replenishing rest & sleep. Be aware that there is no one-to-one relationship between Allopathic disease names with Oriental Medicine diagnoses. If you have a diagnosis of High Blood Pressure per Allopathic standards, there is not an equivelent in Oriental Medicine. What you are experiencing body function-wise and what is observable about you is what will get treated. Would you like to have normal, healthy body functioning restored to you or hit a target number on a test through use of prescrition drugs while your enjoyment of your body steadily declines? Receiving well planned & expertly executed Oriental Medicine in conjunction with the Patient reducing the sources of toxicity that cause havoc in his/her body can restore proper body & mind functioning, and assist a person to align with his/her purpose in life.

While the following is not the outcome for every Patient of the Clinic, it is more common than not. Actual Allopathic disease names Patients have brought to the Clinic as an Identity but through treatment, to have such a decrease in the symptoms that are associated with their labels, as to stop identifying with those labels includes: POTS, Hypertension, Pre Diabetes, Hypothyroid, Fybromyalgia, Depression, bulging disc, PCOS, premenstrual syndrome, sciatica, ulcerative colitis. OM Connection has experienced Patients reducing or eliminating medications for: migraine, metabolism, ADHD, pain, neuropathy, controlling blood pressure numbers, controlling blood sugar numbers, sleep, anxiety - because those Patients found they do not need them or could manage with much less dosage. Most of those Patients had an interest from the beginning to see if their medications could be reduced or eliminated, but for some patients who reduced or eliminated medications, they had no expectation Oriental Medicine could do that for them; it came as a surprise. OM Connection has assisted Patients many times to totally side-step & avoid getting prescribed new medications or getting procedures ordered because they are receiving routine holistic healthcare.

During treatment followups, OM Connection has experienced Patients reporting things like arguing less, handling situations better, feeling grounded, letting go of the past, not feeling lost, craving healthier inputs, not getting the same enjoyment out of things that are not healthy, realizing it is time to end a non-productive relationship, or through improvements in the self, a relationship becomes much better. All of the changes the Clinic has witnessed are because Oriental Medicine creates movement where there is stagnation, establishes the ability to hold on to what should not be draining away, the ability to release what needs to go, the ability to make sense of what comes in and transform it into something useful or send it on its way.

If there is a fear of needles, such as a phobia, we can substitute cold laser stimulation of acupuncture points for needles. You can do the New Patient Exam as is normal but when we do the treatments, instead of needles we can use cold lasers to stimulate the points. If and when you reach a comfort level we will try the needles using excellent technique and the smallest needles, very tiny.

O.M. Connection prices are listed on the Online Booking page but you are advised to avoid turning your healthcare decisions into shopping for widgets. Yes, your decision should factor in the cost of the treatments, but you really owe it to your health journey to take the time to do a consultation with the Practitioner you are considering. Having good Patient / Practitioner rapport is important to the healing process.

Read OM Connection Google reviews. Watch OM Connection videos to gauge the level of knowledge, skill, & grace applied in Clinic treatments.

O.M. Connection is based on the philosophy of giving more in value to you than it collects in payment. Prices are comparable to what you pay to engage other licensed professionals to work for you.

There are some who count pennies on health but splurge on cars, trips, handbags, watches. Can the luxury automobile be enjoyed to the fullest if when the owner gets out of the vehicle he or she is bent and limping across the parking lot to the store? Can the trip to a dream location be enjoyed to the fullest if the trip taker is plagued with allergies, sensitivities, & catches sick easily? Can a person trully enjoy a facelift or mommy makeover if it hurts getting out of bed, or they have zero energy? If that person gets compliments on looking good for the age but has stiff joints & hormones all over the place, is that high quality of life?

It's not wrong to have nice things. It's not wrong to look good. But health is the only real asset you have in this lifetime. OM Connection is dedicated completely to your enjoyment of your body to live your highest good. By the way, when Oriental Medicine addresses the cosmetic (face, hair, weight) it achieves it by addressing the underlying health imbalance causing things to drupe or accumulate: inside + outside looks & feels great. Choose wisely.

Your health is your greatest asset. The tighter your budget for spending on Acupuncture/ Chiropractic/ Massage Therapy/ Reiki/ Counseling, etc, the more you must lean on lifestyle modification and detoxifying your & your family’s kitchen & medicine cabinet, which are the sources of most people’s complaints and symptoms. What you stop doing and what you start doing daily is key. As stated previously, the more you do on your end in your daily life, the less treatment is required. A way to make treatment more effective and therefore reduce the number of treatments is to implement a healthy lifestyle. O. M. Connection can provide guidance in this area.

All of the Professions listed above have invested in learning real healing techniques, not to get rich, but to help Humanity. Practitioners want to do what every human wants to do, pay the bills by doing what they love. O.M. Connection charges the amount per treatment session and prescribes the number of treatments that will cover the level of analysis, attention, and effort required to deliver on the health goals you identified, factoring in your current level of health and types of medications you are on.

There are 2 options for people who want Acupuncture but cannot afford any private one-on-one sessions:

1) Community Accupuncture

2) NADA + Groups.

Read about this in a separate FAQ

Community Acupuncture is a delivery method that lowers your cost to receive acupuncture because it lowers the cost to the Practitioner to provide it to you. It does this by

1) restricting the points needled to points located on the ear, head, elbow to fingers, and knee to toes. These areas are easily accessible, but don't be fooled - very powerful treatment can be accomplished with these distal areas.

2) the patient does not need to undress therefore the need for physical privacy is eliminated opening the treatment up to being done in a group.

3) because it is a group setting, discussing Private Health Information is limited. The initial health screening is private and where PHI is freely discussed. The practitioner draws up a treatment plan from this initital disclosure of PHI and sticks closely to the plan. Sticking to the intital plan further reduces costs to the practitioner.

4) the participating patients are seated in chairs in a circle or lying on mats on the floor in a large room with retained needles, listening to soothing music

People who want the health benefits of Acupuncture but who simply cannot afford private one-on-one sessions at all, or who cannot afford one-on-ones as often as needed, so they supplement or alternate one-on-one treatments with Community Acupuncture treatments. Also, healing from acute injury or healing from deep-seated, severe, chronic conditions are best suited for daily acupuncture in 5-10 day increments. In those cases, private, one-on-one sessions would be pricey. Lastly, some patients, once they try Acupuncture in a group setting are going to prefer acupuncture in a group because of the camaraderie and power of being in a circle with other humans tuned into healing.

Community Group Acupuncture is available to you once you start with a private one-on-one Initial Health Screening. Community Group treatments are still geared toward achieving Patient goals, therefore an exam with full medical history and prescription history is needed to design an individualized plan to select which points will be needled for that particular Patient during Community Group sessions.

Group Acupuncture is also available for events such as a de-stress session held at work for employees or families that want healing sessions done together so that the entire household gets a benefit.

The NADA Ear Protocol was developed by an MD named Micheal Smith in the 1970s in Bronx NY in consultation with Acupuncturists specifically to counter the harmful effects of substituting Methidone for Heroine, which was observed to be just as adictive as heroine but without the high. It consists of needles in 5 specific points in the ear. The ear is proven to map to the entire body. Or said another way, the entire body can be found on the ear itself.

NADA is found to be extremely helpful in detoxifying the lungs, kidneys, liver, nervous system, and settling the mind when someone is in the midst of abstaining from substances they are addicted to. The full protocol is to receive needles in the ear into the NADA points on both ears, with needles retained for 30-45 minutes, for 10 days in a row. The person must sincerely desire to quit and actively be abstaining from the substance. NADA supports that person in his or her efforts to stop needing a substance. NADA is usually provided to a group, seated in chairs. It is only on the ear. 10 days is considered the amount of time a person needs support with physical withdrawal.

It does not have to be heroine that a person is trying to kick, or methidone. It can be sugar, alcohol, caffiene, smoking, rigid or habitual thought processes. The "+" indicates that when done by an acupuncturist, a few other points can be added based on individual symptomology if appropriate. This is offered at a low cost per person per day and requires a group to book. It can be your circle of friends, your family, or another group you belong to. To do the full protocol it should be done 10 days straight. It could be used to improve the detoxification effect of a fast you undertake or a juicing diet. When people use the NADA protocol to destress, it is not done for 10 days in a row. In that case, it is a one-and-done treatment. Those can be good for on-the-job-site work groups to give back to employees and acknowledge stress.

VA CCN Veterans Affairs - Community Care Network

Kaiser Permanente CAM Discount Program Plans

UHC Dual Complete (Supplemental Benefit)

UnitedHealthcare - Navigate Plans

UnitedHealthcare - Charter

UnitedHealthcare Medicare Plans

UnitedHealthcare Plans

NexusACO R (referral) accountable care organization (ACO)

For other Coverages, OM Connection provides you documentation for you to get reimbursed by your Carrier. The price of treatment will be the Usual & Customary Pricing of the Clinic.

If you contribute to an HSA or have a Flexible Spending Account, you can pay directly for treatment with those funds.