I was skeptical. How could sticking needles in the body could do anything? Even though the reason I was sitting there in the classroom, the first day of a four year program in Traditional Chinese Medicine school was because those needles had changed my life.
I was a paramedic with BC Ambulance service, teaching the paramedic program and also had completed a clinical counselling degree, hoping to save the world, right after I saved myself…but it hadn’t been working so well. I was burned out, cynical and sick at heart.
The sandwich board sign said, “Student Clinic $10 Acupuncture Come In Please” and so I did. Several different students took my pulses (yes there is more than one pulse!) looked at my tongue, talked to me very kindly and gently inserted sometimes up to forty needles in my body, while I lay there very relaxed and feeling deeply cared for.
Doctor Jenny, one of the school owners and teachers with her husband Dr Mui, were both third generation doctors of Chinese medicine and Dr. Jenny was the one who most often would supervise or treat my shattered nervous system. She’d ask me, “You have stress? You are a young woman. Should be more healthy. I will help you.”
After the first treatment I felt different. I went home and slept deeply, my guts stopped churning, the rash on my elbows and knees went away. I kept coming regularly until a year later I said to Dr. Jenny, “I am going to quit the ambulance service and come to study acupuncture and Chinese medicine!” She did not seem surprised, but looked pleased as she told me, “Good. Learn to look after self.”
So there I was, sitting in the classroom, always the first student to raise my hand to question the logic, the science, the validity of acupuncture, while knowing I was well enough to be there because my body believed the effects of acupuncture helping me finally sleep again, digest properly again, have regular menstrual cycles again and just feel like a healthy thirty-nine year old again…Still, my head need to catch up with what my body already knew, that this ancient modality was the real thing.
I learned there’s more than 500 acupoints on the human body and those points are on “meridians” running along areas on the head, trunk, arms, legs, feet and hands. And there are “micro systems” of points, not on the meridians, where there is concentrated “qi” or energy to tap into when those points are needled or massaged. The ear is one of those micro systems of over 200 points called “auricular acupuncture” made more well known by Dr. Michael Smith, who helped develop an auricular protocol used world wide for all types of substance use disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,(PTSD) known as the NADA (National Acupuncture Detox Association) About – National Acupuncture Detoxification Association
For this protocol five needles are inserted in the outer ear, targeting the lung, liver, kidney, sympathetic nervous system and the heart, known as “she men” point, which means
“spirit gate.”
In case you are reading this, feeling a tiny bit cynical, bear in mind that acupuncture has been around for about twenty- five hundred years, with hundreds of clinical trials, proving it’s effectiveness and validation by the World Health Organization (WHO) for physical and mental health wellness.
The organization Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB) Home | Acupuncturists Without Borders – Acuwithoutborders travels, treats and teaches NADA, also simply known as the five needle protocol all over the world for those affect by war, natural disaster and violence, bringing a simple, non-verbal tool to help care for and regulate nervous systems.
So I completed the four year program, quit the ambulance service, opened my own practice and that was twenty years ago now. I learn something new every day from the people I have the honour of treating. And every day I am grateful having a way to help heal the body, mind and spirit of my patients and myself.