A fascinating experience with Japanese acupuncture:

On Friday I ate a pear that a fellow student offered me. I don’t know why I thought it was okay, as I usually avoid anything that has starches or sugar, even natural sugars, due to my hypoglycemia. Quite soon afterward, I started feeling woozy and fatigued. Since I knew I still had a whole afternoon of classes to get through, not to mention a very busy weekend, I became very concerned. I didn’t know what I would do, I just knew I felt like shit.

Just on a whim, I decided to try this non-insertion acupuncture stuff. Toyohari focuses much more on sensitivity to qi, which is right up my alley; but a hard-science part of me is still skeptical of it. But in a pinch, I thought, why not give a shot? So I got out a 40-gauge silver needle and did a tonification technique on my right foot, at Spleen 3.

I felt qi rising up to my head, giving me a sense of “filling” it with energy. Immediately I felt lighter, my head cleared up, and even though I was still tired, I felt much more stable. I was stunned, and just sat there in amazement at the efficacy of one needle that didn’t even pierce the skin.

Good stuff.

By coincidence, this weekend happens to be a training weekend in Toyohari for me. So I’ve been learning and reviewing stuff all day.

I notice that I’m pretty good at anything having to do with qi, which makes certain aspects of this type of acupuncture ideal for me. Things other people are struggling with, such as relaxation and posture and accessing the qi at a point, are things that I can get relatively easily. So that’s nice.

On the other hand, things that other people get relatively easily, I’m having trouble with, and I notice that they all have to do with taking sensory information and interpreting them. Actual sensations and sensitivities are easy for me. Converting raw data into linguistic form and interpreting those results are difficult.

That’s interesting, because it’s exactly the problem I have in general with self-expression, and with relating to the world and to other people, especially recently amidst these experiences of Great Mystery, where my world simply feelings completely, incoherently untranslatable. In Chinese medicine we talk about a condition called “phlegm misting the orifices of the Heart,” which is a poetic term for any state of consciousness in which one does not experience reality as it truly is. I often feel this way, “bogged down” by phlegm in my mind, when I’m attempting to put multidimensional experiences into simple words.

I wonder if this has something to do with my ability to “digest.” And this brings us full circle to the beginning of this post. Hypoglycemia, in part, is a difficulty with digesting certain types of foods. In Chinese medicine, the Spleen (also associated with the Pancreas) is one of the main organs responsible for digestion — not only digestion of food, though, but also digestion of mental and emotional experiences. It’s one of the organs that “separates the pure from the impure.” So it looks like on a physiological and a psychological level, I have problems with separating pure from impure.

This is something that could use refinement. I’ll need to adjust my practices to include some regular way of piercing through that veil over my mind.