Most people run in the opposite direction at the sight of bees, but a few patients in China are volunteering to be stung.
It is a cold morning and She Ruitao is wearing a hat with a veil and two pairs of gloves. He is going to catch live bees on an isolated hill in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.
He has raised these bees himself. With a pair of forceps he takes them from their hive and puts them into a glass bottle. Half an hour later, he and 100-plus bees are in his consulting room at Shenzhen Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Hospital.
Catching bees is his first job every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Since last March, he has been offering bee sting therapy to outpatients at the hospital three times a week.
Part natural medicine, part acupuncture, the therapy requires doctors to inject bee venom into points on the patient's body through a live sting.
"Not all patients can be treated with the therapy," he explained.
It is considered a valid treatment for various ailments, in particular, arthritis and rheumatism. Patients need to have X-rays and blood tests before he offers treatment.
Zhan has suffered from arthritis for years. She holds a bee in forceps and uses it to "sting" Zhan on points on his leg. "My swelling has gone down and my pain has lessened," Zhan said.
She does not rely on this type of treatment alone. "Bee sting therapy must be combined with other TCM and Western therapies," he said. Combining TCM and Western medicine has been the norm in China since the 1950s.
"After the bee stings the patient, the venom stimulates acupuncture points," said She, who claims that extracting venom is not as effective as using live bees because many constituents of the venom are volatile.
She treats more than 30 patients a day. A direct sting from a bee may cause minor allergic reactions such as redness, swelling and itching on skin or a serious reaction like anaphylactic shock, so patients stay in the hospital for 30 minutes of observation after the treatment.
Bee sting therapy has a history of more than 2,000 years in China. Proponents claim that there is some evidence of the anti-inflammatory and pain-easing properties of bee venom.
Currently, the therapy is found in hospitals and clinics all over China. In April 2016, the China Medical Association of Minorities established a sub-branch on bee sting therapy.
However, many health professionals claim that there is no orthodox medical evidence that bee venom is an effective medicine.
A Guangzhou-based allergy doctor, who only gives his name as Wang, asks patients to be more rational. "Even though the bee venom has medical properties, it's not a magical cure-all," Wang said.
The bee dies when it stings. At 7 p.m., She buries the dead bees under a tree in the hospital.
"Sometimes I feel I'm very cruel. I keep reminding myself that what I do is to relieve the pain of patients," he said.
With a gut-wrenching wail that rippled from her body, Amber Walcker joined about a dozen screaming people in West Seattle who let their frustrations float away over the Puget Sound.
It was just the start. The two group screams that followed, each one longer and more intense, released the pain from Walcker’s recent job loss. Her added stress from raising two young children dissolved as it blended with the sound of lapping water, and a deep sense of calm descended upon her.
“I had such a sense of feeling grounded. In that same moment, all your senses are heightened,” Walcker said. “From then on out, I was hooked.”
That day in September was the first meeting of Seattle's chapter of Scream Club, one of 17 chapters that have popped up in less than a year around the United States, including in Austin, Texas; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Atlanta; Detroit; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The first chapter, in Chicago, began as a result of a couple’s rough patch.
Co-founders Manny Hernandez and Elena Soboleva had recently moved in together after dating long-distance for a year and a half. They were walking along Lake Michigan when Hernandez, a breathwork practitioner and men’s coach, suggested they let out all their frustrations with a scream at the end of a pier.
When they asked permission of the few people around, everyone decided to scream together, their raw emotion echoing over the water.
“After we did it, some people were crying, including Elena,” Hernandez said. “That’s when we looked at each other and said, ‘This is probably something that we should start.’”
Depending on the chapter, Scream Club meetings can be weekly or monthly, but they always take place in a park or near a body of water to minimize disturbance. Sessions typically begin with participants writing down the thing they want to release on biodegradable paper.
That’s followed by a series of collective deep breaths and vocal warm-ups, such as humming while breathing in and out.
“You can really strain your throat if you just do it,” said Soboleva, a personal brand and business mentor. “So it’s gradual, breathing from your diaphragm and carefully starting off slow and warming up to louder and louder.”
Everyone screams together three times, taking several deep breaths in between, and throws their paper into the water.
“That third scream, you have to feel it in your body,” said Walcker, who started the club’s Seattle chapter. “Get down, be in a primal stance, whatever it feels like to you in that moment.”
The Scream Club's techniques are descendant of primal scream therapy, a theory that Los Angeles psychoanalyst Arthur Janov devised in the 1960s. Janov believed childhood trauma created neuroses in adults, which could be treated by tapping into the pain and releasing it with screaming and crying under a therapist’s supervision.
Research in the decades since, however, has not found scream therapy to be an effective treatment for mental health conditions, said Ashwini Nadkarni, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School.
Still, it’s a fantastic stress reliever.
Nadkarni said the scream itself engages circuits in the amygdala and the hippocampus — “the oldest part of our brain" that is responsible for processing stress and emotion. Screaming also activates the sympathetic nervous system, or fight-or-flight stress response. Once the screaming stops, the parasympathetic system kicks in, which signals the body to rest.
“It’s the same cycle of regulation that happens when you exercise,” she said. “Your heart’s racing, you get short of breath, and then you relax and you feel that calm.”
Besides the physical release, the simple act of getting together to do something with others provides benefits.
“The idea of people getting together to enhance community in ways that help them blow off some steam is incredible,” she said.
Hernandez said it’s not standard practice to publicly share the reasons for coming, but many people linger afterward and talk about their problems. Some at the Chicago chapter recently lost a loved one, one person was battling cancer for a second time and many were struggling with relationships.
Walcker noted that some people even come to scream for joy. Whatever the reason, the Seattle chapter usually meets just before sunset to watch the sun dip below the water afterward.
“It’s kind of like putting everything to rest,” she said. “And that everyone knows that that’s the end of that, and we can all start fresh.”
Albert Stumm writes about wellness, travel and food. Find his work at https://www.albertstumm.com.
Fernando Coria and Sarah Woolson look at the skyline after screaming in Piedmont Park, Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
Sarah Woolson participates in a Scream Club meeting at Piedmont Park, Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
Scream Club participants scream together in Piedmont Park, Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
People participate in a Scream Club meeting at Piedmont Park, Sunday, March 8, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
