My Acupuncturist Thinks I'm Possessed

Last Saturday I tried acupuncture for the first time. What got me there was a combination of curiosity and convenience. When clients ask for my opinion of acupuncture, I want to have first-hand experience so I can speak intelligently about it. "Oh Stacey did that and she LOVES it," feels a little pathetic if people are asking me for advice and a professional opinion. I was intrigued, too, by the idea of lying around on a table with needles sticking out of me.

But as most know, acupuncture ain't free, and (oddly) the PGW bill is not dwindling, so scheduling an appointment "just to see what it was like" never seemed opportune. However, my massage therapist's wife, Marnie, is nearly finished a grad program at the Won Institute, which runs a student clinic featuring $30 acupuncture appointments. So I tried it...

The appointment lasted about 2 hours - this is standard anywhere you go for a first appointment. Marnie, assisted by another student, interviewed me for the first hour, taking a detailed physical and mental health inventory. Marnie now knows of my battle with depression, the three hip surgeries from my early teens, and the color of my menses. (Hey, she took it there, not me. And boys, they will ask you about your *area* too!) While I entered this treatment with no specific complaints, some people come to acupuncture with a certain need - i.e. please cure my headaches. Regardless, they are going to take a complete look at you. Western medicine will give you a pill for the headaches. Chinese medicine is going to dig a little deeper, so patience will be important.

After the interview, Marnie did a brief physical exam. She checked my pulse from somewhere near my wrist, though I understand this to be completely different from the heart rate I might check with clients. (Apparently, we have pulses that correspond to our other organs...pretty cool.) Then she looked at my tongue, don't know why. Later, she poked around my abdomen to see how my organs were doing - good! - and felt different parts of my body for temperature differentiation. Because this is a student clinic, a licensed acupuncturist came in to double check some of these tests, namely my pulse.

At this point, she left the room to draw up plans for my needle stickin'. The procedure she selected had a lot to do with our interview, though at the time, I had no idea what they were trying to do with me or what to expect. Emily (my gf) goes to acupuncture regularly to treat her allergies. She told me she can't feel the needles at all when they go in, so I am hanging out on the massage table, nice and relaxed...

Listen, I'm not gonna lie...the needles hurt me. They put seven in me, all in the front of my body. I was relaxed for the first one and terrified for the next six. I'm not typically scared of needles unless they're in my mouth, but because I was expecting the kind of needles you don't feel, the needle insertion process was an anxious one for me. Marnie said that the response is different for everyone. She herself winces a bit while Emily's sitting there like, "Is it in yet? Did you put the needle in?" Even I can say the three needles that went in my right side (my feminine side) hurt more than my left, which didn't bother me much. I wonder if there is an implication here that it hurts me to be lady-like...hmmm.

The needles stayed in for about 20 minutes. While the insertion of them was scary for me, the effects were sweet. Your body naturally releases endorphins in response to a treatment so I felt a little high. It's like taking codeine without the need to mask any pain in the first place. I remember feeling a certain lightness. Worries and thoughts passed through without me needing to stew on them - which, for me, is worth about 1,000 needle sticks! As nice as a 20-minute stress relief session is, it was what happened after the needles were removed that made me want to return to the clinic.

Marnie removed the needles, which I did not feel. (I remember thinking, "This is what I thought they would feel like on the way in.") She said she was going to grab her supervisor so that they could take another count of my pulse, and she walked out. Laying there on the table, I felt relaxed and clear-headed, and then all of the sudden, like a wave, tears started to pour from the inside-out. I wasn't trying to hold them back but I don't think I could have if I tried. It felt so cleansing to let them drain from me. Marnie and company came in to find me wiping my eyes, apparently not surprised by the results.

The treatment they performed was called Internal Dragons, used to rid the body of possession. I think this can be mistaken through a western viewpoint as a form of exorcism. But from my thorough research (cough - Google search - cough) and chatting with Marnie for a few minutes about it, it seems possession in my case had more to do with the stagnant state of my spirit and feeling as though I had little control over it. Indeed, in our interview I mentioned slipping into bouts of depression, brought on by something small, yet feeling unable and ill-equipped to lift myself out these moods. The Dragons treatment is used to drive out the "devils" that are possessing you. Perhaps my tears were a measure of relief that Marnie was through sticking me, or maybe it was the escape, the release, of whatever had a hold of me. In any event, I'm convinced that acupuncture will bring positive results for me. My next appointment is Friday...

PS - The picture shows my ankle with a pen mark where they stuck me. I know it's dumb and boring. I'll try to get Marnie to take one next week when all the needles will be in my back, making for a G-rated picture.