Leraning from getting a treatmnet

Sometimes it is a good idea to learn from actually getting acupuncture. Why is that? Because if you don’t know what is is like being a patient, you can’t be a good doctor/practitioner.

Sometimes I see doctors who have been really healthy all through his/her life. Then they don’t know what it’s like being sick. I was sick a lot when I was younger, so I know a lot about being sick. But that’s not enough.

You really have to get an acupuncture treatment if you really learn about acupuncture. By that you can not only feel what it is like to be a patient, but also how the energy flows while the treatment. You know in the theory where the energy flows. But it is a bit different to actually experience it.

If you never got an acupuncture treatment you might not believe it, but you can really feel the energy while the needles are in you body. It is amazing and it is sometimes like a “drug” experience, in a good way of course. You can feel great and you don’t want it to end.

I usually go to get an Rock Solid Health acupuncture in Toronto to get a treatment. I have my own issues and I have had good results from acupuncture myself. The reason why I chose Rock Solid Health is it is in downtown Toronto and it is very convenient for me. The practitioner is good and I can relax there.

As a student it is actually much cheaper to get it at school’s clinic but I choose to do so at a private clinic because by doing so you can sort of learn business as well. After all, you are going to work as a practitioner after you graduate!

Tuina massage

One of the things that annoys me a lot as a student practitioner is that some patients want to have a massage rather than getting acupuncture. For one, acupuncture is much more efficient and works better, so we want them to have acupuncture rather than massage.

It does not mean the massage ( tuina massage) does not work. It does. However, when it comes to efficiency, acupuncture is much better. Another thing, and the biggest thing is that they don’t really know what Chinese tuina massage is and asks to do deep tissue massage.

We don’t really do that. We don’t massage muscles. What we do is massaging the body’s acu points or along the channels. What I mean by channels here is the lines where the energy travels.

When your body is sick, the energy gets stuck and there is no energy flow. When that happens, the diseased area does not get enough energy or blood, and it becomes kind of a vicarious circle. What we do by acupuncture or tuina massage is to get rid of this stagnation and make sure the area has those again. Then the body heals itself. We use massage to do that and not to directly relaxing the muscles. The idea is more holistic and you can’t achieve that by just focussing on the muscles. 

But most patients don’t know this, and asks us to focus on the muscles. That’s annoys me a lot. Well I didn’t know that either before so I can’t really blame them but again I wouldn’t have asked to focus on the muscles…

Acupuncture Student’s blog

I am currently studying acupuncture at school. This is very interesting and I like it. Old Chinese people were seriously clever to find out about the whole meridian system.

Acupuncture is not science. Rather, this is an art. Some people try to make it like a science to be accepted in the western world. This is stupid.

The reason this is no science it to make something science, you have to have the same objects with the same conditions. With acupuncture, everything changes all the time. It is not to cure a “headache” for example. You have to think about how the headache was caused. To determine that, you have to go through the whole process.

Also, science doesn’t believe in experienced or educated guesses, or educated diagnosis, so to speak. Let’s say, a kid is crying. you have to stop him/her from crying. Then what the best person to ask? Their mother or father probably. They know for that kid, showing a story of Simpsons will stop them from crying. That’s not science. It is based on experience. However, it works.

Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine sometimes works that way. It is not an exact science for sure. So it is difficult to convince the western medical world to use acupuncture all the time.

That’s is a cool thing about acupuncture but sometimes confusing. Because it works like a western drug sometimes. people assume that all other points work in the same way. But it’S not quite so.

However, some acupuncture points work similar to western drugs in a sense they work for specific conditions.

For example, the point called neiguan (PC6) works for nausea and vomiting. Some airplane companies use this point when there are any sick patients who have upsetting stomach. Sometimes the flight attendants explain it in front of all the passengers.