Anger and dissatisfaction have been stirring within me.
From a place of feeling solid, stable, strong
I want to move forward towards new growth and greater wisdom.
Yet when I seek, reach out, ask
I am faced with nothing new, nothing transformational,
nothing beyond the current paradigms that lock us in and hold us down.
And so I am angered.
Or perhaps, my eyes cannot see new things
and my ears cannot hear new things
Perhaps my mind is what is constrained.
I quest inwards
Seeking the tainted lenses and crystalized screens of mist.
Planning to find hope where they shatter
and joy as they crumble.
Yet when I reach the inner orifices of my mind,
I pause to wonder if perhaps it wouldn’t be more appropriate
to slowly and gently and shine them, buff them, refine them
With the care of a jeweler or a neurosurgeon.
Perhaps the penetrating force of anger brought me here,
And now it is time to move on to the warm transformative
Power of Love.
The warmth that can forge metals and shape a gold stone.
This process, much like the one that forms diamonds in the rough
will take time.
A long slow leaning forward – a powerful but perhaps subtle pressure.
The evolutionary impulse – that vivid and vivacious longing for
a more beautiful living harmony – is the flowering manifestation of potential.
When illness or pain arise, don’t get stuck on figuring out what’s wrong with you, with finding an answer – answers don’t alway promote healing – sometimes they even slow it down. Trust the process, the unfolding, the unknowing – often healing arise from the darkness of the unknown. Recognize that what you don’t know now, you may one day know, but there will always still be more that is not yet understood.
Be curious without being stuck on answers. Appreciate the questions and love and live the questions. There is no end to inquiry.
Learn to be with the unknown, befriend the unknown and don’t let it get in the way of vibrant happy wholesome living.
My business cards are here, and I’m treating my first patients and it feels amazing to be sharing with others who are sharing with me.
This Saturday I’m heading down to Guatemala again on another healing journey so there will be a lot more to share with you all in the coming weeks!
The biblical Noah was forewarned, I was simply prepared. Days before the rain started, my license arrived in the mail. When the true gravity of the situation became clear, I knew I wanted to help in some way, I couldn’t really build an ark, so it seemed only natural to offer up my skills as an acupuncturist to help people settle back into themselves, and come out of their heightened state of shock.
Below is the flier for the events that I’m helping to organize, stories are to come…
It’s been about 6 years since my first acupuncture treatment, which in the scheme of things, isn’t actually all that long. I got acupuncture at first for Bell’s Palsy, paralysis of the half of my face, a purely aesthetic issue, but we all like to put our best face forward and so it felt important. Acupuncture changed my life – it actually brought me closer to myself, it helped me strengthen my connection to who I am and my life’s purpose and, well, landed me here today. Ironically, I never resolved the original symptoms and I stand here today with a somewhat asymmetrical smile.
Every one of us has a story about how we arrived here. Some of us came to Chinese Medicine through martial arts, I know that many of us were disappointed in some way or another by Western medicine, maybe we saw our sister get pregnant and have a child with the help of acupuncture, or a parent get relief from back pain, or a sibling recover from a car accident – we all recognized that this is some special medicine, and we all knew that we wanted to help others, to play a supportive role in people’s journey back to health.
And some of chose SWAC because we were already living in Boulder, or because we toured across the country looking at all the schools and liked it the most, or because we knew someone who went here. I transferred from New York when the city became to much, we’ve got transfers from Florida, and Denver, and Albuquerque and Hawaii . I remember walking in on the first day of class, and thinking to myself, “Oh, everybody already knows each other, I’m the awkward new kid” (I’m still awkard I’m just not new anymore) but then Koji came over and welcomed me in, and slowly but surely the collection of awesome people that make up our class befriended and welcomed me, just as the would any other person, because that’s who we are, and that’s how we roll.
And I sat through my first class with Michael Young, blown away by his insights on dysbiosis and leaky gut, and so my education continued. Tristan would diligently go over each any every acupuncture point, and give us meticulous tests (which I was grateful for when it was time to talk the board exams), and Jia Yu would pound into our brains “don’t treat the symptom! Treat the etiology!” And we poked each other in class and we poked patients in the clinic, and most people got better, but some didn’t, and we learned a LOT. I mean come, on, over 350 points, and over 30 herbs a few hundred herbal formulas, pattern differentiation, 3600 hours of study… lets give ourselves a little round of applause here.
And now, we move on to the unknown.
First, we must take a pause. To rest, to recollect, to replenish and reflect.
And then no do doubt, we will stand up tall, connect to our will power, acknowledge our fears, recognize the wisdom we’ve gained, and move forward. With guile and gall we’ll muster the courage to start a practice, to treat our first patient with a supervisor, and then the second, and the third. And it’s gonna feel awesome!
And there’s a couple of things I hope we can all remember as we head out on our own.
This Medicine is Incredible! It’s so powerful and so diverse in application, and we happen to be in the midst of a changing of conscious which is going to create endless possibilities. We live in a time when our medicine can be Magic AND Science, not either or. Our medicine can speak so many languages, and WE can speak many languages. We can talk in Biomed about hormonal pathways and neurons firing, and we can talk the words of Shaman penetrating through matter and into the world of spiritual vibrations. We can talk about IBS or “leaky gut syndome” or SP Qi Xu or hungry ghosts. We can say that an herb is a diaphoretic or that it releases the exterior – and that’s good, because it’s both! We can hold one perspective in each hand and work with each patient accordingly.
We’ll be able to get rid of a patients back pain so she can go back to teaching at school and treat the children with more kindness and compassion because she’s not constantly taxed by her pain – but maybe we’ll never talk to her about fear or spirit.
And maybe another patient will still have trouble sleeping through the night, but he’s living a brighter and happier and more grounded life than ever before, because for the first time in a long time, he’s had the opportunity to open up a bit and share and discover and process some of his emotional blockages.
We are the makers of our medicine, engaging in an ancient tradition, with our own new modern flare, dancing whichever dance our patients need – sometimes it’s the samba, and sometimes its the waltz – but it’s always a dance towards health and wholeness.
This medicine is also mysterious. We’ve been studying in for four years and only barely brushed the surface. And some patients, respond immediately and dramatically and boom! they’re better. And some patients don’t see any change at all, for weeks, and eventually stop trying – and we don’t always know why. But it’s not just this medicine that’s mysterious, it’s healing, and it’s life – sometimes, we just have to learn how to sit with the mystery.
This medicine came from people who watched nature and the earth – and we still have lots to learn from the natural world. For instance, our recent understandings of ecosystems teach us that diversity is the key to resilience. If we look at the world around us, we will notice (if we pay attention), that there are many many different plants and animals living together in any given environment. They all have different roles to play, different functions in keeping the balance of resources flowing and growing within a system.
I like to go hiking in the mountains, and every time I go I’m blown away about how many songbirds, singing different songs and different insects, pollinating different flowers And it’s important that we don’t forget how similar to the songbirds and the insects we are – and what I’m trying to get at, is that as we all step out into the world we should remember to feel free to be ourselves, different from others, filling a unique niche that will be bring it’s own balance to the ecosystem of humanity.
Some of us may be like honeybees, buzzing around with a communal mentality, “pollinating” many flowers of all shapes and sizes, producing a great sweetness in our community. Others may may, like a particular moth only work with a particular orchid as their one-and-only specialty, which will also bring great beauty to world as well. Without honeybees the world would not be complete, and without moths and orchids the world not be complete and without each and everyone of us the world is not complete.
Friends, or should I now say Colleagues, how about Fellow Acupuncturists!
I think I speak for all of us when I express a great gratitude to be living on this great planet full of an abundance of life, to be living in an era with an incredible abundance of information, to have an abundance access to the resources to acquire a unique and very powerful set of tools that will allow us to transform individual lives and entire communities for the better.
And I really have to say thank you to our teacher, staff, and all those that paved the way for us.
We all dedicated our lives for the past few years to developing a strong foundation to be pivotal members of our communities. Our hard-work and devotion in school and the fact that were all here together today are proof of our ability to persevere and achieve what we have committed to.
I’m at the footsteps of graduation. A couple more tests and a few more clinic shifts and I will receive my Masters of Traditional Oriental Medicine (MSTOM). Four years rigorous years of study later I prepare to step out into the world to practice medicine on my own. There’s a lot to reflect on and process; so much has happened over the past weeks and months. And it’s the perfect time to be engaged in this process of integration and contemplation.
You see, we just began the lunar month of the late summer. In Chinese Medicine the late summer is the season of the Earth element, which in the body corresponds with our digestive faculties. Our garden is exploding with tomatoes, cucumbers, and kale; we’ve harvested carrots and beets and beans too – so much to eat and digest and absorb. The process of digestion involves taking things from the outside world (food) and breaking it down and then integrating what we need from it into our body.
So too, we digest our experiences. We reflect on different things that happen in our lives and how we respond and interact with them and then we figure out what we need to integrate into ourselves. Of course there is a broad spectrum of thought between healthy contemplation and over-thinking and over-analyzing. In Chinese Medicine, we see over-thinking thing as pathological and as harmful to our health and digestive ability (that said, there’s a “chicken and egg” question: is said overthinking causing problems, or are we overthinking things because we’re already out-of-balance – ever noticed how sometimes after eating certain foods your head gets fuzzy and you have trouble thinking clearly?).
It also happens to be the tradition of my ancestors to integrate and contemplate life and how we’re living during this part of the earth’s cycle around the sun. In Jewish mythology we are in the last month of the year, a time to integrate the experiences of the year, a time when we can go out into the fields to be with the Earth and meditate on why we’re here and what we’re doing right and what we could be doing better. This late-summer month is only just beginning, and as we watch the moon wax and then wane we can take a moment to contemplate where we are in our lives, and where we’re going, and how well we’ve been digesting along the way.
As we lift off, I’m drawn away from The New Yorker and to the view out of my window of the texture of Guatemala’s landscape. The hills and mountains, gulches and streams, and trees and fields all depict a fragmented place. This difficult terrain echoes the challenges and suffering the people of Guatemala have faced these past decades and still face today. Maybe one day I’ll have the knowledge and skills to eloquently and accurately describe the details of the history, for now I can only mention that there were externally generated tragically violent atrocities that have scarred a nation of many peoples to a point of questionable return. While every effort from outside and from within to help restore well-being to this country may add to its dignity and functionality, much the way reconstructive surgery may help a burn patient, there is no doubt that the distance from wholeness is far. And yet, there is a tremendously powerful message within that – a reminder that this sometimes tragic reality of brokeness that we live in is part of our Journey and that we can somehow miraculously find hope and light and even joy within and surrounded by the darkness of the present and the past.
I was gifted the opportunity to experience this reality on this jornada (medical mission).
The team I had the honor of joining was profound. Each person a beautiful amalgamation of experience forged in the great furnace of life, often glowing, and always conducting the gift of life and love through them, empowering others on the team. Laughter and smiles abundant, understanding was the general state of being, and cooperation came naturally and honestly. As far as I know, none of us were religious by any means, but I can’t but say that it seemed as if God’s grace was with us every step of the way.
It’s no secret that pain and suffering are a part of life for all of us at some point; for some more than others. For those of us blessed with lives easier than others, being around people who are less fortunate is a healthy and helpful reminder, perhaps even a gift. But having the opportunity to truly serve others, to laugh with them, to look into their eyes and acknowledge their suffering, to touch them with your hands and with your heart and know that you’re doing what you can to give them some relief is an experience beyond words and is worth many tears – tears of joy, of sadness, of overwhelm and of gratitude.
I had questions in my mind about this type of stopping in to another place to help others out. How would I feel about it (it is after all a complex issue)? Can we make a lasting change with one acupuncture treatment? It’s helpful to know that this wasn’t the first trip, and it won’t be the last. Another group will be visiting in April, and this group will be returning next fall and again next spring. This is also a part of an effort working towards a more permanent and sustainable clinic. However, I now believe that even this one time stop in was worth it. There are plenty of one-time experiences in life, and of yearly experiences, that are essential to our emotional, psychological, and physical well-being.
Already during the experience I pondered how I could share it. How could I describe the incredible sense of accomplishment of being a part of a team that treated over 900 people in under a week? Treatments that included more than just acupuncture, but also body movement exercises, bodywork, reiki and NADA (an auricular acupuncture protocol), and many of the patients received herbal medicine as well. How could I talk about the numbers and still honor each individual face or each pair of callused feet? Each acupuncturist treated around 160 patients in the week (to put into perspective is more than twice as many as students at my school will treat in their entire training). Having the opportunity to see so many conditions and see complete treatments put together in minutes is just awesome and exhilarating. But while quantifying helps give a sense of the scope of care, only words (and pictures) can describe the quality. Luciano, local director of the Barbara Ford Peace Center where we spent most of our time explained to us that most of these people rarely see doctors, and generally when they do, they’re treated poorly, more like a burden than anything else. The fact that we did our best to always be there with an open heart and gentle hands means a tremendous amount.
There was one more piece of the trip that had a powerful influence of the texture of the experience: the temascal, or sweat-lodge. Salvador and Sarah, a radiant couple, joined the jornada with the intention of creating a safe ritualistic space for men and for women to open up and heal emotionally and spiritually in a way that is culturally appropriate. We were also fortunate enough to have a couple of opportunities to sweat as a team. Being in the darkness, in the heat, and hearing the songs and prayers transported us to another realm of life – it allowed us to let go of anything we had absorbed (to sweat it out) and also ask for the support we needed. It opened our hearts and spirits and helped us be our best selves and do our best work.
I have returned home renewed. Full of gratitude and with a strong and open heart I move forward.
A few years ago, after starting school, I had a realization that I wasn’t just learning how to help people feel better – I was learning medicine. A lot of responsibility comes along with medicine: the power to heal, the risk of making a mistake and potential severity of the outcomes, the trust people put it you.
This became more of a reality this semester in our Oncology clinic. Just to clarify, we do not treat cancer with Chinese Medicine at our school, but we do treat patients with cancer. Most of them are undergoing western treatment which is benefiting them greatly. That said, chemo and radiation therapy have a lot of side-effects (fatigue and nausea to name a couple) and Chinese medicine is excellent at supporting people’s bodies and thus helping to mitigate the side effects of Western medical treatment of cancer. In our clinic at school, we have patients who are doing great, their cancer is in recession, they feel good, they are happy and lively and enjoying life, and we have patients who are dying. We’re not going to turn things around for someone who’s dying, but we can make things easier for them in the present – and that alone is powerful.
There’s something tremendously humbling about working with people who are facing the reality of death on a regular basis. There’s also something incredibly gratifying about being able give someone some relief from their pain. Those two emotions, create a special open stillness inside that encourages the presence of the divine to join in the treatment. There’s an aligning with the natural flow of things that happens, and that helps the body move back to health.
That’s what this medicine is all about – and I feel very lucky and happy and grateful that I get to be a part of it and it gets to be a part of me.
And so we arrive at another substantial marker of time – a holiday that brings us together for the fullness of the fall harvest – a rich time of year. We celebrate our connections to our People and our Earth, the conclusion of the autumn – the beginning of the Winter.
I use this landmark to reflect and meditate, to harvest thoughts and emotions from the fall and prepare here a dish of the ethereal sorts – nourishment for the heart and mind and spirit – to share.
This great universe of ours has showered me with an abundance of new experience – some more pleasant and enjoyable – but all infused with some sort of medicine (sometimes painfully bitter) for my heart, spirit, and body. I would say that these experiential elixirs have had a theme, the theme of relations and family.
I have traveled a quite a bit this fall, for joyous family events: to support a brother in his journey towards increasing maturity as he prepares to start his own family; to join with cousins in joy as they unite two wonderful people and their families; to see a grandfather and cousins who live far away though they used to be neighbors; and to see friends from a period of life I too often don’t remember.
The thread of loss has also been woven into this story. Because hanging out with Grandpa sharpens the physical absence of Grandma. And because seeing family who I haven’t seen in years reminds of how incredibly wonderful it was to live close and visit frequently, and now that’s been lost as we spread and drift across this large land we live in. And seeing friends from high school elucidates lost innocence and the lack of the lightness that comes with with not having responsibilities as a teenager, and the loss of a bright friend, for whom I still mourn.
But there’s a powerful goodness to the sharp metallic refining energy of the autumn – it shows us that we must let go of some of our leaves and branches to stay healthy and whole. And that the scars of fallen branches are part of the what make a tree beautiful, and part of what make a tree strong. From our grieving we’re able to gain a sense of reverence for the fragility of life – and a deeper understanding of the true value of different things and people in our lives.
As I breathe in the strong medicine of the experiences of this past fall, which included struggles and stress, and joyful celebrations, and remembering losses, I’m left with a deep sense of gratitude to grandfather fire and mother earth, for the warmth and nourishment they provide; and equally to my family, near or far, close or distant, connected by blood, spirit, or both. I give thanks for the many amazing and beautiful people (and creatures) who I get to call brother, sister, mother, father, and cousin.
It’s the beginning of a new semester, the fall semester, and there are a lot of exciting things about this semester, and the coming year, to share.
First of all, a year after moving to Boulder, I feel totally grounded and supported by community and friends here. I would say that the past year, I was perhaps a bit more focused and getting grounded in Boulder and finding community and building friendships than I was on school, and now I feel ready to reinvest more of my energy into learning which is really exciting. This semester also marks the beginning of my last of year of school which feels a bit different – I feel like I’m wrapping things up, gleaning as much of the knowledge and wisdom as I can and preparing to be out there as an acupuncturist and herbalist treating people on my own. This also means I’m thinking about a business plan and starting to explore my options – more on that to come.
This semester seems to mark a shift for me, from focus on acupuncture, to a focus on herbs and herbal medicine. I have more herbally focused classes, one of my clinics is devoted solely to prescribing herbs, and I started interning at the Great Wave Pharmacy here in Boulder. The internship (which I started this week) is really wonderful. Michael, the founder and owner of the pharmacy, is a really wonderful person and I’m super excited about spending more time with the herbs. So do expect to see more posts about herbs (and pictures too!)
That said, there are some exciting developments for me on the acupuncture front as well. Namely, being part of a pilot community acupuncture clinic at our school. For those who aren’t familiar, community acupuncture (CA) is based on the idea that for acupuncture to be more accessible, it must be more affordable, and the way to do that is to treat several people an hour, usually in one large open space with a number of reclining chairs in a circle. There’s a “we’re all in this together” feeling and the ability to help people who wouldn’t be able to afford several $60-$120 treatments (for more check out the People’s Organization for Community Acupuncture). Now, there are some criticisms and pros and cons for CA, but that’s a whole other conversation. The point is, that I now have the opportunity to experiment with this treatment model while in school, to gain some personal hands on experience, and find out if it’s right for me.
Now that’s just a brief overview, we’ll see how much time I’m able to put aside throughout the semester, for writing, and what comes up!
This is the screw that was put in my leg after I broke it. I’m keeping it to remind me of the incredible resilience of the body, mind, and spirit, and how sometimes we need a little help holding things together while we heal.
There is a fruit that grows in Central and South America called the Magic fruit. When you eat it, everything sour tastes sweet! When you bite into a lemon, it tastes like a perfect cup of lemonade. One of our patients brought in a bunch of these fruits to share with us because to him this just like acupuncture, which changes his experience of pain – so it’s no longer sour. He wanted to share with us, what we share with him.
Working with patients this semester has been incredibly powerful so far. I had no idea when coming into this profession what an honor and privilege would be bestowed upon me as part of it – to hear the stories of complete strangers, not just in a superficial way, but with all the details, all of the strength and vulnerability.
This semester I am treating in two unique clinics. One is a guided by a 5 Elements practitioner whose focus is on working with people on a spirit level. Helping them shift and move through whatever is stuck for them on a spirit level creates space and energy for physical healing to happen more effectively. My interactions with patients, perhaps because of my intention and orientation, feels richer and deeper. The second clinic shift is and externship at the Boulder County AIDs Project working with HIV+ patients. First of all, it’s nice to be working with patients in a setting outside of the school, I feel this alone shifts the texture of the experience. These patients are dealing with a whole set of experiences, social and health related, that are different from most of the other people I’ve worked with and I’ve been able to bring with me from my 5E clinic a different intention and openness than I had before.
I’m finding that these clinics call on me to be grounded, centered, and healthy. They’ve been highlighting the need for self-care and self-cultivation that is often left behind the hustle to master information.
I recently compiled (with the help of a friend), a list of Acupuncture Global Public Health initiatives that I’m aware of. I thought it could be nice to share and spread the word.
I was out watering the garden this morning noticing how slowly things actually move in nature. We direct seeded a bunch of root crops and greens a few weeks ago and at first I felt a bit silly watering raised beds with only dirt in them. After a week, then 10 days, I started to wonder if the seeds we used were bad, or if something was wrong with the soil. Then I looked closer, and the tiniest little sprouts were starting to come up.
Now, I water these baby sproutlings with joy, and I know in my mind that in about a month we’ll start eating our own abundant homegrown greens. But in the present a month feels like a long time (though in retrospect I’ll wonder how a whole month managed to pass by). Or, I could go to the grocery store and get a bunch of chard right now.
As I was thinking about how slowly things move in nature, it popped into my head that acupuncture is a natural process that utilizes the body’s own healing ability to get back to a place of health. Yes, often people get immediate relief from pain, and some people even see other immediate results – they might sleep better, or feel less bloated after a meal, or have more energy – but often the relief isn’t permanent, until they’ve had enough acupuncture sessions to really lock the shifts towards health into place.
I think one of the challenges we have being patient to see results, is that often, by the time we’ve seek out intervention, we’ve already been patiently waiting for an issue to resolve itself on its own. We’ve used up our reserves of patience and perseverance and are ready for a quick fix. Ironically, the longer we wait, the deeper most issues have managed to get and the longer they take to fix naturally. It’s like weeding a garden, you want to pull the weeds out as soon as they sprout, the longer you wait, the harder they are to get out and keep out.
Next time your feeling impatient with yourself or with your body – whether it’s how long it’s taking you to lose some weight, or how difficult it’s been to get rid of sinusitis, or how long it’s taking to recover from an injury – go for a walk in a garden, or in the woods, or on a farm. Say hello the fallen tree trunk that is slowly being recycled back into the soil. Say hello to the big tree that’s decades older than you are. Say hello to the flower that took weeks, if not months, to germinate, and sprout, and grow, and bud, and blossom. You can even say hello to the rocks, that over the course of millions of years will be etched down to sand. And smile, and be grateful for the beautiful world around us, for all the reminders we’re given about how to live well, and for the resilience there is in our bodies and spirits.
It’s rather funny, when I started the “Dark Matters” series I knew I intended to write about pain, but I had no idea how or where to begin. I now sit with a broken leg and it’s perfectly clear exactly where to start: with compassion and sympathy.
When I first went down in the snow on the sunny slopes in Steamboat, I knew pretty immediately that I had broken something and I wouldn’t be getting up for a while. I was also immediately grateful that help was nearby. Ski patrol would arrive soon enough and that I didn’t have to attempt to hobble or slide myself out (thanks Pete!) – and that eventually I would get some pain medication. While sliding down the hill on the stretcher, the excruciating pain somehow sharpened the smell of the the exhaust from the snowmobile and enhanced the beauty of the white, gray, and black aspen trees as they stood against the sheer blue sky. And crying, and screaming, and singing all somehow seemed to help.
The medications helped later on to assuage the pain and the warm family love and care helped me feel better, but nothing made the pain go away completely. Going to sleep at night was scary because I knew I would wake up in terrible pain halfway through the night. When the intense pain finally mostly subsided, discomfort lurked constantly, and relief came mostly in the form of a haze, shrouding more than just my pain, and it never lasted.
But I know that through the pain I join the human family, and fortunately, the pain hardly makes me immune to the pleasure in life, from the simple – like a perfect cup of coffee – to the deep grand pleasures of love and friendship.
I also have a newfound respect for people in chronic pain, and I new understanding of my role as an acupuncturist and herbalist and of the greatness of the gift of relief. Somehow, I end up feeling grateful for my experiences – whether they bring me joy or sadness – because they all bring me closer to my humanity – and to the glory of life.
With time healing occurs; wholeness returns. My bones knit themselves back together, my ligaments restitch themselves, and my heart mends its cracks. When it’s all done, I’ll have integrated my previously broken self into a new whole self, changed and stronger for it all and with the scars to prove it.
Anger and dissatisfaction have been stirring within me.
Earthly Acupuncture 