Tag Archives: stories

How “Magic Fruit” is like Acupuncture

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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 am constantly humbled. And grateful.

The Pain of Broken Bones

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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.

Dark Matters: Pain and Suffering

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This is the first of a series I’m calling “Dark Matters” where I’ll be exploring some areas of life that may be a little uncomfortable. Some are taboo, some are awkward, but the idea is that they are important issues to explore and discuss openly – if we bring these issues out into the open and shed some light on them, maybe they won’t be so dark. It feels particularly fitting to be exploring these topics during the darkest part of the year, moving with the season and embracing the things they bring up. Today is after all the solstice, the day with the least amount of sunshine, but the beauty of our world is that the darkest day is also the beginning of the days getting brighter.

I don’t mean to be morbid, but pain and suffering are things we must all confront throughout life. As a healthcare practitioner I’ll become especially well acquainted with them. They are also topics that happen to be showing up in my personal life recently. Pain and suffering are dark and heavy topics, and because they don’t feel good we generally try to avoid them. I’ve learned through experience that there is a lot of important and powerful energy locked up in those dark places and they are therefore very worthwhile places to explore.

When I first started writing this, I was going to explore the different attitudes and perspectives on pain a suffering that come from different religions and cultures. The first and most obvious was Buddhism. The Buddha makes it’s seem pretty simple: Life is suffering, suffering comes from attachment, cessation of suffering is possible, the eightfold path is the way to end suffering. I’ve engaged in Buddhism a bit, mostly on a superficial level, and it hasn’t proven to be an effective way of coping with suffering for me, though this is probably due to the superficiality with which I engaged it.

Another interesting approach that resonates with me comes from a lecture my Classics professor gave my freshman year in college when discussing Greek theater. She said clearly that we gain wisdom through suffering. I like this idea, but it wasn’t really touching me in the right place in this instance.

While sitting and writing in my journal one day, I realized that what I’ve been doing, what I always do when confronted with things that I don’t understand and can’t comprehend, is try to to understand them – what do they mean? I search for a way to make them meaningful – to me that makes it all more manageable and more digestible and easier to experience. What’s the reason? What’s it for? This is the coping mechanism I’ve learned from my ancestors – tell the story, even if the story ends in a question mark. But first you have to find the story. Where is it? You have to weave the story.

I  saw an image of  raw emotions, like wool, and shearing them out of places in my body and spinning them through talk and expression into threads and then weaving them into a tapestry that tells a story.

It’s a power we’ve been endowed with as humans – to make stories out of this nonsensical world – some are tragedies, some are comedies, some inspire, some leave us with a sense of wonder, others with confusion – but they’re all beautiful, each in its own way, and they teach us and move us.

Some people tell their stories through music and other through dance, some through painting or poetry – that’s my understanding of what art is – storytelling. And we’re here on this planet to make art to express the richness of our lives – to share it and touch others with it. I’m not saying that I see all art as a depiction of pain and suffering, rather that all art is an expression of the human experience, and pain and suffering are inevitable parts of the human experience, so at least some art is about going to be about pain or suffering – there’s really no avoiding them. Numbing ourselves and running away from them potentially even takes away from our humanness and generally has a way of creating more pain and more suffering.

The power to tell our stories, to create art, is something many of us have become disconnected from. Many of us weren’t taught a craft and some of us have been busy with work or caught up in consuming the stories of others through the media and we haven’t had an opportunity to write or sing or play or paint our own stories. It’s a process and it isn’t easy and it can be very scary, but part of the beauty is that you can always edit and revise, you can rewrite a paragraph or paint another painting, or dance another dance, or sing a different song. It’s all ephemeral anyway, it’s all changing, and each time we make art, we get a little better, we hone our skills and we gain new insights.

But there’s another piece: we can’t create art without the help of others. Someone else is makes the brushes and canvasses, someone else is playing the music we dance or sing to, or acting out the play we wrote, or printing our story. And even if we could make art all by ourselves, it wouldn’t be worth much without having others to share with.

I happened to watch the latest Woody Allen movie “Midnight in Paris” last night, it’s quite excellent and I highly recommend it. There was a quote that seemed to echo what I’m trying to say here, so I’ll leave you with that:

“The role of an artist is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote to the emptiness of existence.”

To me pain and suffering are potent raw materials that we can turn into art.

Let’s all make some art.

Happy Artful Holidays! May we all be gifted the opportunity to share our stories with loved ones this Holiday season.

Wishbones

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Growing up, whenever my mom made chicken, my brothers and I would always get excited about the wishbone, that strange and symbolic bone from the chicken, that somehow magically releases power to the person holding on to the bigger piece when broken. I have no idea how we decided which 2 of the 3 of us would get to break it, nor do I really remember specific wishes I made or whether or not they came true. I just remember the ritual and the excitement that surrounded it.

Little did I know, a couple of decades later, I would break my shoulder-blade in rather silly bicycle accident on my way home from school and release a tremendous amount of much-needed transformative magic. Three weeks ago, I started a journey of learning, growth, and of course healing. I was forced into dependency, from helper to being helped. I was reminded of the endless generosity of those around me – from the angelic stranger who saw the accident and helped me get to my feet and to the right hospital, to my life partner and soul-mate who graciously nursed me back to health. And I was finally able to re-evaluate my perspectives on and relationships with my performance at school, which had been creating a great deal of anxiety for me.

First a note on perspectives. Breaking my scapula in a bike accident on my way home was a neutral event. Painful, yes. Disruptive to the previous flow of my life, yes. Challenging and traumatic, yes. Bad, no. Could it have been worse, of course, but is that way I should make myself feel better? When people, in their attempt to share sympathy, used phrases like “Bad Luck,” or “that’s too bad” I was reminded of the story of an old man in a village, whose horse runs away. All the villagers come to comfort him, “We’re sorry your horse ran away! It’s such bad luck.” “We’ll see,”  the old man would reply. A few days later his son comes back with the lost horse. All the villagers come over, “What great luck! You got your horse back! We’re so happy for you!” “We’ll see,” said the old man again. The next day, the horse falls on his son and breaks his son’s leg. Once again the villagers run over, “We’re so sorry, such terrible news!” “Maybe,” replies the father. A week later the military comes to draft all young and able bodied men, his son cannot be drafted because he has a broken leg. Such good luck! Who knows. I don’t advocate being dispassionate about life, but I do believe strongly that our attitudes about the things that manifest in our lives are tremendously powerful.

I guess one of the lessons here for me as a future healer is to remember this when treating people. Never to feel sorry for anyone or judge their experience as good or bad. I didn’t want people’s pity, I wanted their assistance and compassion. Maybe there’s a fine line, maybe it’s a difficult space to navigate, but nonetheless I think it may be very important. I also need to remember how hard it was for me to ask for help, even from my teachers and friends, who I’m sure wanted to help me, both so that in the future when I need help I don’t let the challenge of asking for it stop me, and so that I can hold the awareness of the difficulty of asking for help that some of my future patients may have.

Of course there are also a number of lessons here on how Chinese Medicine fits into treating trauma as well. First, let’s remember that I went to a hospital, got x-rays, saw a doctor, and got analgesic medication, and that these are all really important things to do in any case of trauma. However, post-initial Western/Biomedical trauma treatment, there are a number of internal and external herbal treatments that can help increase circulation and reduce inflammation and help the body heal faster and with less difficulty. Acupuncture can also help calm the mind and spirit, and direct the bodies healing potential in ways that can help make the whole experience more manageable (Remember that a lot of this medicine evolved amongst the martial artists who suffered plenty of traumatic injuries in their practicing). So if you, or anyone you know is involved in a traumatic event please consider exploring Chinese Medicinal options. It can also be helpful for caretakers to manage their stress and anxiety related to the experience. I’m currently taking an herbal supplement called bone-knitting powder as well as trying to get a lot of calcium and vitamin D in my diet.

Another interesting thing about this whole episode was it’s timing: the week before finals and two weeks before comprehensive exams and my winter break. I like to do well in school. I have done well my whole life, and I’ve grown to see my performance at school as a reflection of me and my value. Intellectually, I’ve been aware that my grades aren’t really important and reflect only a tiny fraction of my expression of self into the world. The value that they have and thus their power over me (to make me feel anxious and stressed), is value and power that I give to them. This intellectual awareness of this was not enough to translate into an emotional embodiment of it – meaning, even thought I knew that, I would still feel anxious about exams and grades etc. Breaking a bone shook me up enough to allow me to realize emotionally what I already knew intellectually about grades and performance at school – and that is when and how I regained my power to choose what I give value to and how much value each things get.

Apparently, the wishbone is called by many the Thanksgiving bone because the ritual of breaking it is often reserved for that holiday. I have to say that while it may sound strange, my overall sentiment surrounding this experience is one of gratitude. Because this extreme shift in the trajectory of my life has lead to a tremendous amount of the growth and learning, and because it’s a lesson I get to carry with me in my body – my own thanksgiving wishbone. Perhaps it makes sense that all of this happened the day I got back from my Thanksgiving break.

Much thanks to all those who helped and assisted me in my recovery, who had me in their thoughts, who made things easier for me.

Happy Wholesome Holidays full of Light, Love, and Joy to all.

The Healing Power of Storytelling

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Many moons ago, I started to discuss my love of stories. Today, we continue and go quite a bit deeper, only this time I’m taking what began as a letter to a dear friend, and after making a few adaptations, sharing it with the wider world.

“I wanted to address once more our conversation and some of the reasons I think it can be helpful, and sometimes outright healing, to talk about things. First of all, it gets things out. You happen to have a number of emotional outlets, from yoga to music, many people don’t have as many, so simply telling a story can get it out, which is important, because bottling things up can cause all sorts of nasty things (like cancer). Getting it out can transfer the power from the story to the storyteller, which is important. We have a powerful experience, and that experience can have power over us, unless we’re able to confront it and learn to relate to it a way that makes us powerful. The act of telling a disempowering experience can return our power to us from the experience. It can give us new perspective, new understanding, and a new way to relate to the story. For me, writing has always been another way for me to get things out, gain perspective and understanding, and have power from my stories. However, something I’ve noticed is that I often want to share my thoughts and feelings and discoveries with others (even when they initially come from journaling). I think there is something very important about having others witness our experience. Something happens in the process of sharing our stories. For starters we are no longer alone. We have allies, the burden is no longer only on my shoulders (where we hold so much tension).

I believe that this is exactly what stops most of us from sharing: we don’t want to burden others. We’re afraid that others don’t want to be burdened. And indeed there are times when a listener has to go through some processing too, because they’re hearing a story that is hard to hear, maybe because it’s full of pain, or suffering, maybe because it hits close to home; whatever the reason is, it’s challenging. It  is my belief that friends and family members are always here to help and support. To be open (and when necessary compassionately nonjudgmental) listeners. A friend (or parent or brother or sister) is willing the share the burden, to help others become empowered and help others let go. To me, this is a fundamental part of friendship and familial relationships, and it’s an obligatory part.

I want to go back to “sharing the burden” though, because sometimes (perhaps more often than not), something more fantastic happens than just having someone to help take part of the load. Sometimes the burden is transformed, and it no longer has the same weight, it’s no longer a heavy weight on one’s shoulders because once you “get it off your chest” and see it from a new perspective (or just hear it externalized) it diffuses into something else. When this happens, the listener, be they friend, family, or professional, witnesses that transformation, and become a part of the experience of transformation. In these cases, there is no real sharing of a burden, because there is no more burden, there’s only a story, and a whole lot of love and gratitude. So, this is why I believe in the importance of sharing experiences, even when they’re painful yucky experiences, and this is why I hope that all of my friends and family (and one day patients) know that I’m hear to be open and listen. And I give thanks (though probably not as often as I should), to my friends and family members for being here (and there) for me when I’m in a place of need.”

I’d like to also mention that in general, men have more difficulty opening up to share. We’re “supposed” to be strong, we’re not “supposed” to need help, but truth is, we all suffer and we all need to share. If you are a man, take notice, and think about this, if you are a woman, think about your male friends/family members, and if/when you get the chance, be patient and encouraging. That said, there are plenty of women who live out the “everything’s fine” syndrome. Women, who are incredibly supportive of those around them, but don’t know when or how to reach out for support when they themselves are in need. They’ll swallow their grief and their pain, and it will often manifest physically. Sometimes, they’ll even hesitate to pursue physical care. If you know someone like this, try to create the space for them to open up and let go.

It’s interesting to me that this theme is coming up now, in the height of Fall, because Fall is the season for letting go. Just as the trees let go of their leaves, it’s a perfect time for us to let go of our painful experiences, and enjoy the sweetness of love and connection as we prepare to move into the Winter.

So, go somewhere beautiful, look at the leaves changing color as they die, giving one last final performance to pronounce the beauty of the cycle of life and death, and share the stories!

Stories…

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After an interesting weekend Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) celebration I was excited to get back to school today.

In my clinical counseling class, we’ll be discussing a lot about how to hold space for patients, how to listen and engage patients in a therapeutic way, and we’ll learn when and where and how to suggest other therapy options.

Today in class we shared our stories with each other, first in pairs, then in small groups and then with the whole class. I LOVE stories, I think part of why I’m going in to this field is to hear people’s stories (something I don’t think I realized until now). I think our personal narrative is tremendously powerful in shaping our lives, and knowing that we have control over that narrative is probably one of first steps to affect change in our lives. This is why stories are so important, listening to stories, hearing stories, and telling stories (our own or those of others) to me are sources of a tremendous amount of potential power.

One of my classmates mentioned that she came to study Chinese medicine after coming to an understanding of how our emotions affect our bodies through her experience acting. She was saying she wants to help people better understand the story their body is telling, and help them change their story to a more positive one through healing. Once we understand how our story affects our health, we can try to understand our story, and look for what changes we want to make.

Consider this an introduction to a theme I hope to further explore. Please feel free to share a story and maybe over the next few days try to be aware of how you tell stories when you do. Which events do you highlight? Which interactions do you leave out? How do you tell the same story differently to different people? (While you’re at it, pay closer attention to the stories of those close to you, and how and what they tell).

Feel free to share experiences!