February 3, 2020
Back in the fall, a patient of mine who is in their late high school years came in for a treatment (please note they and their parent gave me permission to tell their story). She were not in a good space. School had become an extremely toxic environment, normal outlets like sports had lost all their fun, and friends had turned on her for reasons that can be simplified as “jealousy”. She was being bullied. This patient and I had a decent relationship that dated back about a year and we’d had many treatments before that had produced solid results. I also had a good relationship with the family. This particular treatment felt different. This wasn’t the same person on my table. She was obviously depressed and was working with a primary doctor and the school counselor to fix it. We talked about her situation and I performed some cupping […]
January 28, 2020
I’ve been reading a good book recently called The Nature Fix by Florence Williams. In it, she explores many of the different aspects of nature and how it relates to health. I am not that far into the book yet, just a few chapters, but it is rather fascinating. The second chapter follows her journey into the western desert of America with a bunch of brain researchers to brainstorm ideas on how to research nature’s effect on stress and the brain. The following quote really spoke to me, as she quotes it from author Daniel Levitin in The Organized Mind: “ The average American owns thousands of times more possessions than the average hunter-gatherer. In a real biological sense, we have more things to keep track of than our brains were designed to handle.” (Williams p.46) It’s a great point both authors bring up. As nomads, we would have owned […]
January 23, 2020
When talking about acupuncture, the difference between a system and a philosophy can be vast but also greatly blurred. The easiest way to explain this is through the five elements. The law of the five elements is an acupuncture philosophy that mirrors life. It is thousands of years old and predates acupuncture as a medicine. The five elements follow the cycle of the seasons, and break down the year into five phases of time that have five different types of energy flow. The cold absoluteness of winter (Water element) is energy that flows straight down, like rain. Water energy represents the life stream where all energy begins and ends. It’s where ideas germinate and conclude as wisdom. It helps knowledge move forward from generation to generation. The exciting burst of growth of spring (Wood element) is energy that forcefully goes out from the center in opposite directions, like how a […]