Ear Seeds Placement Chart

What are ear seeds?

Ear seeds are products used in traditional Chinese medicine. They’re part of auriculotherapy, a staple of traditional Chinese medicine focusing on the ear. It’s also known as ear acupressure or acupuncture.

An ear seed is an acupressure tool and is an alternative to acupuncture if a person doesn’t want their ears pierced by thin needles. They’re used to stimulate spots in the ear called pressure points to benefit our central nervous system and relieve particular ailments that may be bothering us, like anxiety and insomnia.

How do ear seeds work?

People can learn how to apply seeds on their ears, though we recommend that they see acupuncture specialists to learn more about this and have an expert do it to avoid mistakes, especially when placing a seed on a pressure point.

The acupressure specialist handling you will begin by cleaning your ears with swabs. These swabs have alcohol.

Before applying the seeds to your ears, they will ask if you have any allergies to latex, adhesives, or metals or if you have sensitive skin. They will use Vaccaria seeds or ceramic ones to prevent irritations if you have allergies or sensitive skin. They will attach these using tweezers.

That’s it on the side of acupressure specialists! After applying the seeds, they will tell you to massage your ear seeds twice to thrice daily. The massage should be of circular motion and should be gentle.

The person with ear seeds must remove or change them within three to five days. They can remove them using tweezers to pull them off the ear’s pressure points.

People can also buy ear seed kits to apply the seeds independently.

What is an Ear Seeds Placement Chart?

Speaking of buying ear seed kits, these kits come with ear seed placement charts. These are nifty handouts that you can use to study the pressure points of the ears and where you should be placing them.

Acupressure and acupuncture specialists also have these charts to help educate their patients before they undergo ear seed placement procedures.

What information can you expect from this chart?

Ear seed placement charts show a picture of an ear. This picture contains several small circles and lines pointing to specific pressure points in the ear. Each point is labeled with the particular parts of our body to which each pressure point corresponds.

The number of labeled points will differ depending on the kit a person buys. Some have multiple charts to show which combination of pressure points a person should attach seeds to for a particular condition they might have.

How does our Ear Seeds Placement Chart template work?

Our ear seeds placement chart template lists as many pressure points as possible and what part of our body each corresponds to. Each pressure point has a designated number. Beside this picture of the ear is a list with all the pressure points and their corresponding numbers.

This template emulates the version created by TCMTips (Free Ear Seeds Placement Chart - Easy TCM Wisdom : Your Path to DIY Health and Wellness, 2023), which indicates the combination of pressure points one should apply ear seeds to for a specific condition they’re dealing with, so all you need to do is follow the particular arrangement for the particular condition your patient has.

For what reasons would a person need ear seeds?

Some people opt to have ear seeds placed on their ears as an alternative to acupuncture. Since acupuncture entails being pierced by tiny needles, some are uncomfortable with that and would instead go with what they deem to be safe.

As for health reasons, traditional Chinese medicine, especially acupuncture and acupressure, are often considered a choice to help reduce pain and manage particular conditions they might be dealing with, both physical and mental. Examples of these, other than anxiety and insomnia, include depression, appetite regulation, indigestion, and stress.

Those who use ear seeds also use them to whittle down their stress and make themselves more relaxed!

What are the benefits of using ear seeds?

It can help with pain management

According to a study entitled A Randomized Clinical Trial of Auricular Point Acupressure for Lower Back Pain: A Feasibility Study written by Chao Hsing Yeh and company, ear seeds can help reduce the pain felt by those with lower back pain (Yeh et al., 2013).

Their study had two groups, one of which included ear seeds placed in pressure points associated with lower back pain and the other with ear seeds placed in other pressure points.

The former had displayed significant pain reduction (approximately 75% pain reduction).

It can help improve sleep

Those who are dealing with sleep issues like insomnia sometimes lean on traditional Chinese medicine for help. Acupuncture and acupressure are said to help with this.

A study entitled Auricular acupuncture with seed or pellet attachments for primary insomnia: a systematic review and meta-analysis by Ying Lan and company discovered that using ear seeds and acupuncture together “seemingly” reduced insomnia symptoms in those they assessed. Further research is still needed for this (Lan et al., 2015).

It can help people reduce and manage weight

Using ear seeds can yield weight reduction! While further studies need to be conducted, one research article entitled Auricular acupressure for overweight and obese individuals, written by Ching-Feng Huang and their group, observed that ear seeds can help people cut down body weight, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, body mass index, body fat mass, and body fat percentage (Huang et al., 2019).

Are there any risks to using ear seeds?

Using ear seeds comes with some risks, most of them not too bad, but there are two that you want to be careful about.

Earlier, we mentioned that those with allergies or sensitive skin might suffer skin irritations, so the type of ear seed placed on the ears should be considered. That’s why having a professional place the ear seeds for you is also recommended instead of doing things yourself.

Other potential problems include:

• becoming dizzy and nauseous as a result of stimulating the wrong parts of your body;
• the ear seed falling into your ear, which requires a specialist to remove; and
• accidental labor, so it’s best for expecting mothers to wait after giving birth before using ear seeds.