Cup O' Suck (Fun with Needles, Part II)

Yesterday was one of the more interesting days I've had in a while.  I had my second acupuncture appointment with Dr. Li as complementary treatment for my Graves Disease.  My resolve was strengthened this week when something I read reminded me of why I'm pursuing alternative treatment and lifestyle to improve my health  They wrote that the thyroid is the victim of this disease, not the culprit.  If you destroy or remove this vital organ from the body, the disease will find another organ to attack and it's often the eyes and rarely, the skin.  I know this is true and I realize that the affects of this disease would be compounded by destroying my thyroid.  Dr. Li says that most of her Graves patients that come to her have the bulging eyes and seemed surprised that I did not have them.  I would be willing to bet that 99% of those patients have had Radioactive Iodine to kill their thyroid.

In the week since my last appointment, I've felt less fatigued and foggy than I had been feeling for the couple of weeks before my first treatment, and looked forward to my second treatment.  I've been drinking lemon or lime water first thing in the "morning" to help give my liver and kidneys a head start each day upon the recommendation of both Dr. Li and Jennifer, my health coach through my Integrative Nutrition program.  Such a simple thing and it took me until now to discover this!

I arrived for my appointment and sat again with Dr. Li.  She felt my pulse, looked at my tongue and then brought me into the room.  This time she started with five minutes of cupping.  I know what it sounds like, but litigation will not be necessary.  Cupping is actually a method in which suction is created in certain areas in order to stimulate energy flow along certain acupuncture points or meridians.  In the link above, you can see pictures of Gwyneth Paltrow and a Chinese olympic swimmer with cupping marks.  I thought mine looked pretty cool & I showed them to everyone yesterday.  I even took pictures of my own back, which is not as easy as you might think.. even with a mirror (as evidenced by the first photo).  Here's what mine look like:

I have to say this was a painless procedure.  She left the glass bulbs on me for about five minutes and then said:

     "you have looooootttt of toxin.  this help pull toxin out of body.  drink lot of water today."

Then she started with the needles.  Oh boy.  There were a couple of tricksters in this batch..  She began with the bottoms of my feet again and I'm fairly sure she went deeper this time because she asked me to cough each time she drove the needle into my foot.  Again, the rest were relatively painless except for the inside of the back of my knee which almost tickled more than it hurt and then the very bottom of my lower back, maybe the top of my hip bone/gluteal muscle, was very uncomfortable and difficult to describe.  It mostly hurt when she put it in and then I got a couple of shooting sensations through the half hour I lay there, mostly when I breathed too deep that my body moved.  She said this was also an adrenal point.

As I lay there, face down with about 30 needles in my body, I once again began meditation.  I had a big ol' coffee on my way there, so I found that I had to talk myself out of a little anxiety that started to creep in, but this was not difficult.  As I relaxed, I noticed that I started to expect something awesome to happen like last time with the hands.  It didn't take long for me to forget that and just breathe and become present.  I couldn't breathe as deeply this time, as I was on my stomach and when I took a very deep breath, my back expanded and the needle in my adrenal point would send a sharp reminder that it was a part of me at this moment.

My breathing became shallower and I felt myself in that delicious space beneath the thin veil of unconscious at varying depths for maybe fifteen minutes.  I became more awake when my back became extremely warm, as though surging with energy.  The heat extended up to my head and I felt I would sweat a few times even though my toes were chilled from the air conditioning.  Granted, there was a very dim heat lamp above my back, but it was the same one that was above my abdomen last time and I did not feel this kind of extreme heat.  It came on suddenly and intensely and lasted for about ten minutes.  I could focus on nothing but my back (just as I could focus on nothing but my hands last week) until I heard someone's foot drag behind me and I thought perhaps it was time to take the needles out, even though did not hear the door open.  After a few minutes and the sound of feet shuffling a few more times behind me, I realized that no one was in the room with me.  I almost said "hello" but I knew no one would answer back.  I won't deny that a small amount of fear began to well up, but then the room fell empty and other noises encompassed the space until Dr. Li came in to remove the needles.

After my session with Dr. Li, I met up with my new-ish friend Larkin, but that's a story for another day.  Three hours of awesome conversation later and tomorrow I'm going to go to her Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner who does this hand analysis thing that's been passed down for generations that only about ten people in the world do.  I'm a little fearful about what he's going to tell me regarding my health, but awareness can only contribute to healing, while denial and fear are only destructive.

Love and gratitude to you all for coming with me on my quest for health.  I will post pictures soon of all of the wedding favors I've been working on this month.

Poking fun (fun with needles, part I)

In my quest to heal myself of hyperthyroidism with the goal of lasting remission from Graves Disease, I had my first appointment at the acupuncturist today.  It was a positive experience.  Upon meeting with Dr. Lily Li, she spent a few minutes to sit with me and discuss my ailments and immediately suggested that stress has played a key role keeping me in dis-ease; a diagnosis I tend to agree with.  She explained the concept of a few key body meridians and showed me that many of them converge at my throat, where my thyroid is, kind of like the spaghetti junction of my body and the stress has caused two lanes to be shut down on a rainy Friday rush hour, rendering my Qi stuck in a traffic jam.  Her plan, she explained, is to detoxify my body, starting this week with the front; next week the back, and then decide where to go from there based on my response.

I was instructed to partially disrobe and lay on the table, face up.  When Dr. Li came in, I thought I would have some warning before being pricked, but she wasted no time.  A moment later, I felt a quick stab in the bottom of my foot and before I even had time to digest the sensation, she was in full swing, she was rapid-fire explaining which organ was being affected by each needle she expertly drove into my acupuncture points.  Though I had about 22 needles penetrating my skin, I was only conscious of four of them.  Not surprisingly, two were in the bottoms of my feet (adrenal system), one in the top of my left ear and the other in my left wrist, below my thumb.  I tend to have most of my physical ailments on the left side of my body, so when she hooked up the electric pulse machine, she set the left side higher than the right.  In contrast with the myriad physical traumas I've experienced in my life, this was relatively painless. 

She then left me for 45 minutes to absorb or whatever happens during this process.  I hadn't done my not-quite-daily meditation yet, so this was prime time to practice.  I lay there with my eyes closed listening to the pulsing of the electricity being directed through the needles in my abdomen and started taking deep breaths.  During this time, some subtle but amazing things happened.  I should preface this by saying that lately, during the every-other-daily meditation I've been practicing, I have yet to find a space where I can allow my mind to stop its constant racing and worrying and thinking.  I suppose that's why it's called meditation practice.  I resist the urge to just get up and do the stuff I can't stop thinking about.  As I lay there on the table with 22 needles sticking out of me; hooked up to electric stimulation; it was easy to focus on my breath and just be.  My mind became quiet and I was finally able to relax.

As I lay there, I had a very interesting physical sensation that gave me insight analogous to how I might manifest positive change in my life through my thoughts.  My hands were facing up, thumb and forefinger touching, and after a while, I felt like my fingers were pulling back; my hands opening up with my fingers still bent.  The closest thing I can compare this feeling to is this thing that my friends and I used to do as children.  We would take turns standing in a doorway with our arms pressed against each side for about a minute.  Then, we would release them and move away from the door frame and our arms would effortlessly float upwards.  This is exactly what my fingers felt like they were doing.  Each time I'd move my thumb and forefinger slightly to confirm this and was surprised to find that they were still touching.  This cycle repeated several times until eventually the reverse was true.  I was surprised to find that my fingers had moved away from my palms and the feeling became a reality.  I felt as though I'd been given a gift laying beneath the fluorescent lights; a demonstration of the old 'fake it till you make it' philosophy.  If I keep thinking/feeling/believing something, eventually it will manifest. 

 In my thinking, I've encountered some resistance in feeling and believing things for myself; one, because the things don't already exist and two, because I think I struggle with weather or not I believe I am capable or deserving of these things.  I may not have completely mastered the ability of harnessing my thoughts, but I am doing the work and making progress.  A large part of my long time fascination with psychology and more recently with nutrition has in large part to do with healing myself in mind, body, and spirit.  I think it's an important foundation for my future in working with others, coaching them to do the same.