Without access to acupuncture I turned to the ancient wellbeing technique of ear seeding

Practitioners say every point in your ear corresponds to another part of your body, so Christine Manby decided to give seeding a go

(Tom Ford)

Back when I was still small enough to be grabbed by the ear in passing, the elderly women of my acquaintance would refer to filthy lugholes as being “dirty enough to grow potatoes in”. So when I first saw the term “ear seeding”, I was immediately taken back to those traumatic childhood days when I lived in fear of a potato plant taking root in my brain. But thankfully ear seeding is not about cultivating a bee-friendly garden in your cerumen (that’s ear wax to us lay people). Also known as auriculotherapy, it’s an ancient wellness technique recently given an Insta-worthy makeover.

Ear seeding originated in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and it uses the same principles as acupuncture. It’s also believed to have been practised in Ancient Egypt. It works like this. You’re perhaps familiar with the concept that every point on the soles of our feet corresponds with a point somewhere else in the body so that, for example, pressing the big toe might give relief for issues related to the spleen and liver. Likewise, practitioners of TCM believe that our ears offer a handy map for the whole body with every curve and bump or the ear corresponding to a body part so that if you stimulate the ear, you can influence the kidneys, the heart, the lungs etc. The Ebers papyrus, an Egyptian medical text which dates from 1550BC, describes a similar system of energy channels.

Instead of using needles to create stimulation, ear seeding uses tiny “seeds” which are applied to the pressure points to get the acupuncture effect over a longer period of time. In traditional medicine, ear seeds were originally exactly that – the seeds of the vaccaria plant, also known as prairie carnation or cowcockle (I don’t know if they can take root in ear wax). As the art of ear seeding developed, the literal seeds were replaced by tiny metal balls or magnets.

The map of the ear was updated in the 1950s by French neurologist Dr Paul Nogier, who decided to investigate the theory behind it after one of his patients revealed that he’d found relief for sciatic pain having had a small area of his ear cauterised. Through experimentation, Nogier went on to map the whole body onto the ear in the form of an upside-down foetus or “homunculus”. Research into auriculotherapy continues today, with a number of recent studies confirming its analgesic properties and effectiveness in treating anxiety-related disorders.

I’ve previously subjected myself to acupuncture for back pain and found it effective. In the expert hands of physio Victoria Holmes the acupuncture needles went in painlessly and quickly helped muscles stuck in spasm to relax. Alas, under lockdown, acupuncture hasn’t been an option and, like dentistry, it’s one of those things you probably don’t want to try at home. I turned to ear seeding as an uninvasive alternative that I could DIY without – hopefully – doing myself any harm.

I eschewed the vaccaria seeds and instead bought a packet of tiny gold-plated magnets from Vie Healing, at such an exorbitant cost that I hoped once I’d finished with them, I’d be able to plant them and grow a field of money trees. There were other, much cheaper, ear seeds on Amazon, but Vie Healing’s offerings were attracting rave reviews.

Vie Healing, which is based in West Hollywood, claims that its ear seeds “keep the nervous system regulated by their constant stimulation, keeping the body from shifting from processing mode (parasympathetic) to fight/flight mode (sympathetic)” by sending signals to the “reflex centres of the brain” so that “endorphins which are the body’s natural opiates are released”. Vie Healing’s customers report needing to use less pain relief.

But quickly the uncomfortable sensation subsided and in its place I felt, well, nothing really. Giving the ear seeds a prod reactivated the sensation of discomfort in my ear

I decided I could use – as usual – some relief for back pain and something to increase my powers of concentration while finishing a book. Something other than drugs.

Vie Healing’s 24 carat gold-plated magnets are held in place by latex-free adhesive. The best part of 30 quid buys you 20. The fancy pack also contains three maps of the ear to show you where to place the seeds according to the results you wish to achieve from pain relief to relaxation to help with addiction (though you should probably consult your GP before relying on a packet of ear seeds described as “tiny accessories”).

The ear seeds are really fiddly. Holding an ear seed in a pair of tweezers while angling a mirror to help you get the seed in the right place is no mean feat. I decided to start with two. The first one I aimed to place in a remedy point that the Vie Healing info describes as “Shen Men”. The Shen Men point is also known as the “heavenly gate”. Sticking an ear seed here “Grounds the body, calms the spirit and increases receptivity”. That was as close as I could get to “helps you finish your sodding book”. The other I tried to put in the spot corresponding with the lower back. After several minutes of faffing about, I had the ear seeds stuck on and have to say they looked rather pretty but whether they were in the right place was hard to tell. They were probably stimulating my knee and sending me to sleep.

The ear seeds are designed to stay in place for up to five days. After which they will probably have fallen off on their own (particularly if you’re diligent about keeping your ears an inhospitable environment for those potatoes my gran was always on about).

Oddly, the immediate sensation as I stuck on both ear seeds was pain. For the first minute or so, the seeds, though not even the size of a pin head or stuck down particularly firmly, were uncomfortable to such a degree that I thought perhaps I should take them off. But quickly the uncomfortable sensation subsided and in its place I felt, well, nothing really. Giving the ear seeds a prod reactivated the sensation of discomfort in my ear but I didn’t get the sense that they were affecting any other part of me.

Were they working? It’s hard to know. Many of the trumpeted benefits of ear seeding are nebulous. A feeling of wellbeing is something that definitely comes and goes at random in these strange Covid times when our summer days are tinged with the constant low-level hum of bad news. With an ear seed on my “heavenly gate” point, I cycled from gloomy to sunny but then, so did the weather. A blast of sunshine seems just as likely to have lifted my spirits.

Likewise, the day after I applied the seeds, my back did feel much better, but that might just be because the stress of my deadline fell away as I finally nailed the first draft of my book. I have previously experienced the almost instant resolution of a month-long bout of disc pain upon hitting “send” on an email to my editor. In the interests of scientific rigour, I persuaded a friend who also suffers from back pain to try an ear seed too. It didn’t work for him.

But the little gold ear seeds from Vie Healing certainly look shimmery so if you’ve got a bit of money to burn, perhaps you’ve got nothing to lose by incorporating them in your ear decoration regime.