So, I went to acupuncture today. Acupuncture is magical. Even more magical is the nap you take during acupuncture.
Literally, I would pay good money to just sleep in a quiet room that smells nice and has soothing music.
As my friend, Jocelyn, says, if a yoga class only offered child’s pose and savasana, I’d think I’d gotten my money’s worth.
Anyways, I’ll save the whole “Adventures of a Western Doctor In the Eastern Medicine World” post for a later day because I’m too tired to write it now. However, suffice it to say I’ve tried acupuncture, cupping, Reiki (thanks, Lynn!), and like every form of massage/myofascial release.
Given that the practitioner, is a Traditional Chinese Medicine doctor, there is a medical intake form.
When you ask patient histories essentially a billion times a day, its kind of weird filling out your own.
What is your height and weight? 5’3″ last time I checked. 126 I think? Let me go find a scale in this hospital…
Do you have problems sleeping? No, my problem is not enough.
Do you have any medical conditions? Do you count being generally uptight and sleep deprived?
Is your job high or low stress? I just put the words “Labor and Delivery with a pager – very high.”
Do you have any allergies? Yes, apparently blue dye. Can you fix this? Because my work attire is essentially unchangeable.
My favorite thing to do before I snooze is to ask all about Chinese medicine. When you’re used to talking about blood pressure and lab values and stuff like that all day, its a little hard to wrap your head around yin and yang. But, its kind of fun.
From what I gleaned, Chinese medicine is a lot about opposites. You have yin and yang. One is flow and one is the energy that drives the flow. If you run around like a crazy New Yorker, such as myself, you deplete your yin. Or maybe its your yang. I don’t know. One of them. I think they talk a lot about blood flow and “stasis.” After a post partum hemorrhage, I’d say you really got rid of that stasis and depleted your yin…
I have no idea how this relates to chi (is that how you spell it?) or the meridians or what not.
As an FYI, the kind of acupuncture I get is more musculoskeletal oriented and not so much TCM acupuncture. Its like trigger point acupuncture. Or something. Like the don’t look at my tongue or talk about meridians because I’m really there to get my IT band back in business so I can run again. This is probably diametrically opposed to eastern principles because I’m essentially trying to get my IT band less tight so I can exercise….more.
Look, I said I dabbled in the complementary and alternative medicine worlds. I never said I was a good patient.
That’s all I have for today.
Night night.
Until next time…
Daily coffee tally: 3
The Thinks I Can Think 
My horse gets acupuncture! Helps him a lot.