Acupuncture for Frozen Shoulder

Frozen shoulder (adhesive capsulitis) causes a gradual, often painful loss of shoulder motion, frequently without any clear triggering injury. It typically moves through stages — pain, increasing stiffness, and eventually a slow return of motion — and can take months to over a year to fully resolve without treatment.

Why It Happens

The capsule surrounding the shoulder joint thickens and tightens, restricting motion in nearly every direction. The exact trigger isn't always clear, but periods of shoulder immobility, certain metabolic conditions, and individual inflammatory tendencies are all associated with higher risk.

How We Treat It

We use acupuncture, dry needling, and electroacupuncture around the shoulder capsule and surrounding musculature to reduce pain and improve local circulation then treat the full kinetic chain — the neck, upper back, and the fascial planes around the chest and shoulder blade — to address the compensation patterns that build as the shoulder loses motion and the body works around it.

Alongside the structural work, we assess for underlying imbalances — in circulation, inflammation, nervous system regulation, and recovery capacity — that may be slowing the healing response or making the tissue more vulnerable to injury in the first place.

Acupuncture also helps restore tissue hydration and nervous system dysregulation that are often present with frozen shoulder.

What to Expect