What Do I Do?

When I tell people that I am an acupuncturist, they immediately think of the needles. Oddly enough, this always surprises me. It's like saying a poet works with pencils.

In short, my “cocktail party answer” for what I do is that 1) I make grown-ups lie down and 2) I help them – body, mind, & spirit – remember how to respond to life the way they did when they were little.

If you watch a small child, they have what we call a smooth flow of qi. They eat when they're hungry, they sleep when they're tired, they're happy when they're happy, they're sad when they're sad... they experience pain and yet don't suffer from it. They skin their knee and cry while it hurts and when it stops, they're on to the next thing. If you bring it up later, all they have to say about it is, “Look, I got a cool bandaid!” They aren't attached to the past, reliving the pain, or worried about pain in the future. They just roll along in the present.

As we age, we start to get attached to the past or the future. We begin to buy into what people say about us or what we say about ourselves. We learn to override the signals we get from our bodies: “I'll skip lunch and get this done.” “I'll just push through tonight & sleep tomorrow.” etc. And as a result, we no longer roll as smoothly. We begin to clunk along. And those clunks start to show up as physical pain, emotional upset, poor mental habits. 

All the needles & I do is ask experienced, intelligent questions that remind that version of life that is you how much smoother things could be. Really, it's you & your energy that do all the work.