Anonymous"Leslie, how does a tattoo over a part of the area of the body affect my Qi? Specifically, a tattoo over a chakra? Would this do some energy blockage in my system?"
To preface my answer, this is coming from 15 or so years of working with people as a clinician and having seen different things and trends with tattooing along the years being an acupuncturist and working up in there with people’s Qi depending on tattoos.
I personally have never been drawn to tattoos. I don’t have any myself and so this is just my outsider, anecdotal clinician evidence of having worked with people in their Qi and seeing how the tattoos affect it.
We’re going to go over three main points.
There are no Coincidences
My working hypothesis is that there are no accidents.
I’ve found that there is no coincidence to where people actually choose to get tattooed. I think that’s pretty fascinating. I love noticing where and what symbolism people tend to put over different acupuncture points and meridians even when they have no idea what acupuncture point it is.
For example, I remember once getting my car fixed at a new garage and I walked in and the guy at the front desk was not super talkative, as often men who work on cars and garages tend to be, that’s a stereotype.
I looked over and this man had a very large star right over the LI4 acupuncture point. I said, “Hey, you don’t happen to have low back pain. Do you?” He looked up at me kind of funny and said, “Well, yeah, I do. Why are you asking?” I said, “Well, you tattooed yourself on a point that’s actually very appropriate for low back pain”.
Just one could be a coincidence story, but I found over and over again that when you get to know someone, the issues that they’re really working on and their energetic constitutional type, where we tattoo ourselves often has something to do with our healing, our course and our journey in life.
Tattoos Bring Awareness to the Area
I think the benefit of tattooing is that it really brings your body’s attention there.
You are essentially creating micro-injuries to the body. This will get the body’s attention.
Part of the reason why tattoos fade over time is that the body is getting in there to heal it in small ways and it’s like picking out a scab in a certain way. Your attention is going there.
In Chinese medicine, we have a saying that says “Where the mind goes, the Qi flows”. Not only is your Qi and your awareness going there, but presumably you get a tattoo because it has some meaning for you.
It is going to increase the way that you think about it. If it’s something people see and comment on, it brings your attention there as well.
In a positive therapeutic way, if I were making a story in my mind that part of the ancient practices had lots of different meanings, one of them is it does change our attention in the way that our Qi flows by where we actually have a tattoo.
Where the mind goes, the Qi flows.
That’s a positive part I think of having a tattoo over a certain acupuncture point.
To answer the original question of is getting a tattoo over a chakra or an energetic place in the body going to create a block. In my experience, I would say no. I don’t think that it’s that strong, that it’s going to create some sort of energetic block.
More likely, as I mentioned before, maybe there was stagnation or some difficulty in the tattooed area and you unconsciously got the tattoo there to be part of the healing process to bring awareness and transformation to that area.
This is just my working hypothesis, take it or leave it.
Tattoo Pigments
This is the one downside and concern that I have sometimes seen with tattoos, especially colored tattoos.
The pigment that is used in tattooing, especially for colors can have a lot of different substances in there that you are putting into the body.
Now, of course, these things are all approved by the FDA and are proven to be non-toxic enough by FDA standards to be okay for your health.
As a natural health clinician, what I know is that even when something is safe for the general public, sometimes we can have low-level sensitivities or something about that that disrupts the body in a very subtle way that over time can add up.
What I have seen in patients is that sometimes when people have a large color like a sleeve specifically over the gallbladder channel on the leg.
This just could be my anecdotal experience but I had two different patients where I noticed that their gallbladder channel (which is the lateral sides of both legs) have color tattoos over that area. They were wood element-type people. I have seen the body have a little bit of an issue there and need a little bit more supportive acupuncture or other things.
I don’t think in my experience, it was having a terrible, detrimental effect on their health, but the body noticed it enough that it was creating small, subtle disturbances that a medical doctor maybe isn’t going to pick up, but your acupuncturist or your natural health clinician might have deeper, subtle ways of asking the body and seeing that there might be some energetic challenges.
The good news is that we exist, we grow up and continue to thrive even in environments that have a lot of different qi and environmental issues going on, so your body can overcome a lot of things.
This is what brings me to the overall conclusion that I wouldn’t really worry about tattoos, in general, blocking your energy.
Of course, some people might be highly sensitive. There might be some pigment or element that is really pushing your nervous system, or maybe your nervous system is challenged with a lot of other things, and this could just be the straw that challenges or herniates the camel’s back if not breaks it. If that’s you, you do want to take all of those things into consideration, but overall, I wouldn’t worry.
Instead, I would celebrate your emotional understanding and the alignment that you feel with the way that you are interacting with the tattoo and the process of marking that in your system.
What you could also do is do a little research about what’s contained in those pigments and learn ways of asking your body to feel that alignment.
If you have an acupuncturist, it is great to get a sample of different pigments and have someone who’s really good at muscle testing ask your body what it thinks.
This is actually a process that I’ve done working with a natural dentist. He had a kit in his office of all the different possible substances that he could use to patch up a tooth, a cavity, or different things. I took those to a muscle testing practitioner to see which ones my body was more aligned with.
Disclaimer: Muscle testing is not approved by the FDA. No statements that I’m making have been approved or checked by the FDA and are not meant to diagnose, cure, or treat any disease that you are having. This is just for educational purposes, and I hope that it will serve you and give you some ideas and hopefully peace of mind about your tattoos.
You are a soul with a body and you deserve great things!
Disclaimer: This program is not intended to be a substitute for professional mental health or counseling services. No practitioner-patient relationship is established and the training content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and nothing here is intended to diagnose, cure or treat any disorders.