I am becoming increasingly concerned about how I will integrate my philosophy of healing with the actual practice of it. Acupuncture is so dense and vast that it would be so easy to get lost in its inner workings and become, in essence, a technician. There are always stories of practitioners who put a few needles into the patient or prescribed a few herbs, resulting in a permanent remission of disease. There are many acupuncturists, and physicians of all sorts, who get good results. And after all, as the master of Chinese medicine Dr. Leon Hammer says, we use Chinese medicine because, “It works.”
But still, something doesn’t sit right with me when I imagine myself seeing a patient, asking some questions, putting in a few needles, giving them a bottle of herb pills, and telling them to come back next week. It feels like something is missing.
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Posted at 10:47 am —
As I’ve mentioned many a time (for instance, here and here), the flow of energy between my inner world and my experience of the outer world is not particularly smooth. But some of that is starting to shift, thanks to meditation and introspection, along with my lessons in the Alexander Technique and of course some understanding from my studies in Chinese medicine.
One thing that I’ve been revisiting lately is the Bates method. I mentioned in a post last year that I had taken a course on vision improvement when I lived for a summer in San Francisco, and that I hadn’t made much progress in several years.
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Posted at 2:27 pm —
I’ve started observing treatments in the acupuncture clinic this semester.
I won’t be posting much about specific experiences or observations, though, because of confidentiality and privacy issues. The best I can do is to talk in vague and general terms. However, I will say that it is exciting to start to see things coming together in real life. Medicine and healing are alive. Concepts like spleen qi deficiency or wind-cold invasion are dead if they’re just left on the printed page; they don’t come to life until you see them happening in someone right in front of you. Then it all starts to have some genuine meaning. And when it does, it’s pretty cool.
Recently I saw a stroke victim regain a little mobility in his paralyzed arm. That was a good moment. Moments like that help me to see that all of the learning I’m doing is good for something. The abstractions of points and qi and blood and organs and pulses and tongues and needles and herbs suddenly coalesce, in sharp resolution, in the simple relaxation of a patient’s arm.
Truly mysterious and marvelous.
Posted at 4:38 pm —
