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Why Healing Perspective

What DOES 'perspective' have to do with acupuncture?

Good question! And I'd like to answer with a short sto...

The name came to me as a result of my fascination with a photograph taken by the very talented photographer/graphic artist Bruce Johnson. It was just a picture of the remarkable waters surrounding the island of Bermuda. Every time I went to visit Bruce, I would become mesmerized by the extraordinary turquoise/teal beauty of this particular image. I knew that I wanted a copy of this image in my office (where it hangs today!).
bermuda
photo credit: bruce alan johnson

I knew that it didn't have anything to do with Oriental Medicine, per se. But I have always personally found healing in the presence of the ocean: the color, the sound, the smell, and most especially the scope and vastness of it. It seems to shift my energy away from the chatter and internal 'static' of my stressed out mind and body; out of the mundane, everyday anxiety that I can get caught in, like a hamster on a wheel, and open my mind and heart to other things- things of more intrinsic value, and greater importance to me. It shifts me from 'can't see the forest for the trees' into a broader vision.

Acupuncture does the same thing. These fine needles inserted into a specific combination of points located all over the body has the ability to 're-boot' the autonomic nervous system, and to fundamentally give us the option of moving out of our stressful sympathetic nervous system responses (aka: 'fight or flight') towards the healing space of the parasympathetic response, which allows our bodies to 'rest and digest', allows our bodies to sleep more deeply, and to process the nourishment we take in, to be ready for the next time we need to respond quickly and effectively to stress.

Chinese medicine- including acupuncture, herbs, tui na and gua sha (massage)- as well as qi gong & tai chi, nutritional and other lifestyle therapies- are all very much rooted in the observations of the rhythms and relationship between man and nature; or perhaps better man IN nature.

It's this perspective- of man in the larger setting of the natural world, and his interaction with the ocean, the river, the mountain, the valley, that reminds us that we are healthier when we can acknowledge the energies exchanged between man and the elements.

A more whole, and therefore healing, perspective if you will...

Wax On
falls
photo credit: bruce alan johnson

Before I wax on TOO philosophically... let me speak to the very practical nature of acupuncture.

You may have heard before that acupuncture is a nearly-5000 year old medicine. (Interesting that it's called 'alternative' since it came first...?!).

Acupuncture began gaining a lot of attention in the United States when President Nixon visited China in 1972. Traveling with Nixon was New York Times reporter James Reston, who received acupuncture in China after undergoing an emergency appendectomy. Reston was so impressed with the post-operative pain relief he experienced from the procedure that he wrote about acupuncture upon returning to the United States.

While our medical model was heavily steeped in the technogical, double-blind, placebo controlled study paradigm- with the body treated something like a machine full of replaceable parts, and symptoms to be 'squashed'- it was that visit that created quite a stir because of things witnessed and reported on by the skeptical journalists accompanying the group.

My point: the medicine is PRACTICAL. But it treats the body as a microcosm of the larger paradigm of the natural world that surrounds it... thus, symptoms aren't suppressed, but rather the body is stimulated to 'remember' its original ability to heal, its desire for balance. Nothing is injected with these fine, hair-like needles... but rather thousands of years of observation have taught us that these 'points' on the body work to restore this memory- to increase the flow of naturally occurring substances- lymph, blood, fluids- in order to increase or reduce that which needs balancing.