By Regan Foster, The Pueblo Chieftain

Louisa Hansen struck a yogic pose.  She sat perfectly straight in an arm chair, legs folded in a near textbook lotus position and hands on her knees. A serene smile crept across her face as she meditated in the dim light of the St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center’s Dorcy Cancer Center library with 10 fine needles protruding from her ears.

For the past few months, Hansen has been receiving aural acupuncture at the center, administered by a trio of highly trained clinical psychotherapists. Called AcuDetox (an abbreviation of acupuncture detoxification) the program was actually created in the 1970s to help recovering heroin addicts handle the debilitating symptoms of withdrawal.

But over time, said Kari Chandler, the manager of psychiatric assessment services at St. Mary-Corwin, aural acupuncture has proven to relieve stress and anxiety, ease sleeplessness and help manage chronic pain. That’s where Hansen came in.

A petite woman with a big personality and lots of energy, Hansen was a serious cyclist for many years. But the repetitive impact of riding off trail left her with severe nerve damage in her lower back. The pain meant she couldn’t stay in one position for more than a few moments,she said, and it made movement a challenge.

“I couldn’t sit for more than five minutes,” she said. “I was basically locked in my house. “I tried everything that the medical field could give me, short of surgery.” Medication only provided limited relief, so she joined a pain management class at the medical center. It was there that she learned about aural acupuncture.

“That night I slept like a baby,” Hansen said. “Just that sleep gave me hope.” When she started treatment a few months ago, Hansen said, she would lay down. So she was pleased when told she looked like a yogi, perched in the armchair. “It’s so new to me,” she said of the relief. “I could barely walk. “This could change my life.”

AcuDetox has its roots in the mid-’70s, according to the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association website. The staff and other professionals of the Lincoln Recovery Center in the South Bronx spent a decade discovering and developing a therapy program that taps five basic parts of the ear.

They are: the sympathetic point, which helps manage pain, stops sweating and reduces abdominal cramps; the shen men point, which calms the mind, eases nerves, lowers blood pressure and aids in sleep; the kidney point, which Chinese medicine says will improve will power, calm fear, ease back pain and help with digestion; the liver point, which is believed to lift depression, strengthen digestion, help improve blood circulation and ease aches and pains; and the lung point, which practitioners believe controls breathing, cleanses the skin and assists in mentally letting go.

“The entire body, in Chinese medicine, is represented in the ear,” Chandler said. “People report that (AcuDetox) is calming, it’s relaxing . . . they get the best night of sleep they’ve had in years.” And while it is effective, Chandler said, it is not intended to be a stand-alone therapy. Rather, it is practiced in conjunction with other treatment, such as talk therapy.

Chandler first learned of the program following its introduction at the Colorado State Mental Health Institute at Pueblo. She and two members of her team — Susan Scroggin and Shannon McPherson — underwent 30 hours of classroom training and 40 hours of clinical work to prove their mastery of the technique.

Acupuncture and yoga are two alternative treatments that Western medicine has accepted as effective, Scroggin said. And Colorado allows properly trained physicians, registered nurses and mental health professionals with a master’s degree or higher to perform the treatment, Chandler said.

Chandler and McPherson took their first patients in 2014, and as the effects of the treatment became more widely known, sessions became more regular. They provide the treatment, free of charge, at 6 p.m. Wednesday evenings in the Dorcy Cancer Center Library, 2004 Lake Ave. in Pueblo Colorado, on the second floor.

But, fair warning: “It doesn’t fit into that instant gratification mind set,” Chandler said. And while it admittedly isn’t an overnight treatment, the effects of AcuDetox exceed the patient him- or herself.

The stress-, pain- and anxiety-relieving benefits that the patient receives can also have a trickle-down effect on that person’s friends and family, Chandler said. “I can do it for one person and (she) goes home and doesn’t kick at the dog or yell at her husband,” she said. “I love that we’re able to do that.”

For Hansen, the benefits are worth the time investment. She was thoughtful when asked to quantify the impact aural acupuncture has had. “I don’t have a perfect life,” she said. “I can’t do everything, but I am managing. What I get from this is hope — hope that I can be normal. “I went to the movies the other day,” she continued with a grin. “I haven’t done that for years.”