Acupuncture is the use of very thin needles to puncture the skin at specific points. It rarely hurts, rather patients report feeling a throbbing or mild, dull ache. It is used most often to treat pain, and increasingly used to improve overall health and stress management. Traditional Chinese medicine describes acupuncture in terms of balancing energy flow. This is known as qi. It is believed that energy flows through the body’s pathways. Acupuncture can restore balance to energy flow by inserting needles at specific points along these meridians.