hello
hello
hello
is there anybody out there?
The prescient words of Pink Floyd echoed through my head today as i contemplated my head first dive into the practices and wierdness of chinese medicine years ago with my brother's partner. She began going to school for acupuncture, and chinese medicine thus relegating me and my brother (and most of her friends) to voluntary pincushions to which she could practice that ancient art of needles. She loved me as i was a walking contradiction to everything chinese medicine stands for, and hence, a perfect study group all by myself because I had ailments that could keep her busy forever. But because I always lived far away (alaska to oregon to hawaii), she never had much of a chance against my twenty year pains.
One thing I have learned about ancient medicines and practices is that they are based on repetition, routine, and diligence. And one thing my life has never had is those three things, but having moved to Portland six months ago, I have had a schedule, a routine and the diligence to see a practitioner regularly enough to develop not only a working relationship, but a degree of familiarity with the laundry list of herbs and teas I daily injest.
And so, today I went again for my monthly $100 acupuncture. Having been pricked and tweaked for nearly six months now, I have definitely curbed my fear of needles while also increasing my confidence in the healing benefits of chinese medicine. I, like most doubters of anything new and different, harbored large misgivings about these practices actually working. I have always relied on the western version of a medical band-aid, that ubiquitous small orange vial with the white screw/flip top lid, but I am now seeing the very bright light at the end of the long tunnel of pain I have been suffering through for much of the last few years.
Today I sat at Golden Needle, breathing deeply and concentrating on steadying my pulse. Tongue reading, pulse taking (not that pulse,but the under pulses of the various meridians traveling through my wrists), questions about diet, bowels, mucus, snot and various other bodily functions we generally only like to share with good friends and spouses, are all part of the process. I laid down and prepared myself for the the inevitable. Dr. Xin is a small chinese man who takes great pleasure in tweaking these nerves so much so that i involuntarily twitch and gasp, then he apologizes with a sly grin and dials back the 'amperage'. After getting two needles in my feet, two on my calves, two in my knees, four in my hands, two in my forearms as well as two more in my elbow, I was ready to 'relax', as he calls it.
Sometimes I can feel the points connect, like a dot to dot representation of my energy meridians, and other times I only feel a slight electric impulse throbbing in specific areas. Today it all came together and I closed my eyes to focus on this amazing circuitry as Dr. Xin left the room to leave me to listen to some guy in a monastery pick at a zither. Not very comforting, I can tell you right now.
The warmth of the heat lamp sent me sliding down the banks of tiredness and before long I was only holding onto consciousness by a thread. But that is the best thing about acupuncture when it is done right, it pushes the outside world far away and the body rushes forward front and center. "My hand felt just like two balloons", both leaden and airy, resting on my hips with needles twitching above. My feet had warmth coursing through my toes while moving just the slightest bit caused a gasping as the energy became re-focused somewhere else. It's a complete body experience, akin to getting a therapeutic massage in that it's both incredibly beneficial and relaxing at the same time.
The good doctor returns every fifteen minutes or so to tweak, smile, and check to see if I've lost consciousness yet. And then, just like that it's over and he sends me out the door with a buzz and a plastic container full of ancient remedy that I'm to drink twice a day for the next month.
There is a reason chinese medicine has been around for centuries and that's
because it is not an overnight cure but a long road to recovery, which is also part of the reason it is having a hard time gaining a foothold in this fixmefeedmetextmeinformme NOW world of insta-gratification. It doesn't come in a tidy little package or prescribed with dreary ordinariness because every person is different and every treatment is therefore different.
Good things come to those who wait...probably confucious with a back problem.