Stillness
Mar 2nd, 2007 by Michael Max
I learn something new about acupuncture all the time.
Sometimes from a book.
Or a teacher.
Or seminar.
But, generally these days these days I learn it from my experience.
And most often, I learn from the experience of my patients.
Acupuncture, like any specialty has its own language which to the uninitiated sounds like…well…Chinese.
Us acupunks, learn to think in terms of “moving qi”, “opening the channels”, and “dredging the collaterals”.
None of which helps our patients, or potential patients to understand what acupuncture does, or how it can help annoying back pain, troublesome digestion, insomnia or the favorite American complain….stress.
Increasingly, I suspect it does not matter.
While there some are people who are interested in how acupuncture effects what happens in petri dishes, double blind studies, MRI’s, gas chromatography, neurotransmitter interactions, and other dances of molecules. For the most part, people that come to Yong Kang Clinic are simply looking for a problem to go away.
Or for their health to become even more vibrant.
Or, to find a way through some trouble that just seems to dog them.
Last night at a Biznik event featuring the ever innovative and thoughtful Joe Shirley, I met a woman who told me about how a source of strength in life for her is the ability to find Stillness.
I just love it when this kind of thing happens.
When someone casually mentions about how healing works from the inside, and it illuminates for me in a deeper way how acupuncture calls forth changes.
Now, Stillness is not something you will find in a petri dish, and while it might show up on an MRI, the mystery of how it helps us to heal is another matter altogether.
Stillness.
I see it in the people I treat everyday.
It always feels a bit like watching a sunrise in a land where you don’t speak the language.