If you’re one of the many people that ask me, “How’d you get into acupuncture?” this tidbit is for you.
The Shortest Answer: Divine Luck :D
And a more detailed Answer….
Did you know that I went to a 4-year graduate medical school for acupuncture never having had acupuncture before?
Did you know that I am terrified, that’s right, T.E.R.R.I.F.I.E.D, of needles? We’re talking panic-attack-with-blood-draw sort of freaking out. Yes, I was THAT pipsqueak 7 year-old kid that took five adults to pin me down for the jab, otherwise I would escape the room and hide under waiting room chairs.
So, how on earth did I end up a doctor of acupuncture?
Let me set the stage for you, and take you back to the 90s, to my high school days. That’s right, crop tops, leggings, or big and baggy everything. Hmm… not too different than some trends today… although the music has really changed.
When I now hear songs like:
it makes me realize that I have turned into my mom! You, know….singing along in the middle of the grocery store! Because where else do you hear “the oldies”…. dang you, Trader Joe’s!
If you need a moment to reminisce with me, or if you want to be entertained with your first experience of some the amazing music of my high school days, just click on any of the songs above.
Anyways….back to how’d I get into this acupuncture stuff….
When I was 16, I remember feeling perplexed that I wasn’t being taught how to understand the messages my body was giving me. We covered so many topics in school, but why wasn’t there a class on how to explain what was happening with my body?
Why did I feel so tired all the time? I mean, I thought I ate healthily. I exercised. I got enough sleep. Isn’t that what I “should” do in order for me to feel great? That’s what my health class said I needed to do. So, then why didn’t I feel good?
I was even more disheartened because it seemed that none of the adults around me knew how to do understand the body either. Not only that, it seemed that they weren’t even aware that it even was possible to speak with and understand the body!
While my old-soul self inherently knew my body was trying to communicate with me, that it was all connected somehow, I didn’t know how to interpret what it was saying. And since I didn’t now what it was saying, I didn’t know how to respond to fix it.
It. was. SO. frustrating! I felt so disempowered. Because I really felt like this was a basic information I was supposed to know, that we all should know, just like learning to tie our shoes. Where was my body instruction manual?
My heart longed to have a deeper level of understanding my body, of the familiarity and empowerment that comes when we know “when this happens, do that” sort of thing. I wanted to be able to respond to and remedy the issues that came up. But sadly, the intimate knowledge I was longing for didn’t seem to exist.
So, I tucked away my inner-knowing-that-there-was-more and went about my life. I felt a bit resigned to a life of doing all the right things but feeling like less than awesome. Ugh!
High school finished up. Life had its weird way of twists and turns. I almost ran track for West Point Army Academy, and after some disappointing/fortuitous (it’s all in the interpretation, right?!) events, I found myself instead at a University, Pre-Med, and in an International College pilot program.
There, I was happily befriending people from all over the world, learning multiple languages and all about cultures. I was pre-med until I just couldn’t handle any more cadaver labs. Then I switched to cultural and medical anthropology.
It was there, sitting at a hard, uncomfortable desk, (you know, the ones that look like this:) in a small college classroom that got a glimpse of something that sparked that old longing - the one to holistically understand my body more.
In that medical anthropology class, I learned about how expectations influence our healing process. For example, is healing a one-on-one situation with you and the doctor/healer, or, does your family, or your community, need to be involved in your healing, too? Do you powerfully feel like a key part of your healing process, or, are you more removed and have a passive, reserved attitude of “the doctor knows best?”
Wow! Just wow! I was fascinated that not all people had the same viewpoint for healing and its process! Expectations influence healing…. this really got me thinking! It definitely planted some seeds for my future!
I ended up graduating with my Bachelors degree in Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology, and a minor in Spanish. And to my dismay, I quickly realized I couldn’t really “do much” with it. There were no exciting job offers lined up for me; not even any job offers for that matter.
In fact, none of the many jobs I had at that time (restaurant server, floral designer, and wilderness counselor for at-risk teens) cared whether or not I had a college degree. It wasn’t exactly a moment of the world-of-now-opened-possibilities that I had imagined happening with graduating and spending so many years working and putting myself through college. After facing that humbling let-down, I set out on my next step.
I decided to continue with school, debating two paths - one, get my Masters in Medical Anthropology (the combo of culture and healing = match made just for me!) and become a professor, or, two, dive into one particular culture’s healing system so I could help actual people heal themselves.
Knowing I didn’t want to loop back to Western medicine, I recalled something interesting that happened years ago, back when I was 19. You know, one of those random things that doesn’t make sense at the moment, but later strangely fit oh-so-perfectly into the puzzle-of-your-life.
Well, that day, I was reading a magazine and noticed an ad in its last few pages for a “Masters in Acupuncture.” It really caught my attention.
You see, I had never heard, or even read for that matter, the word “acupuncture.” I literally had no clue what it was. And, yet, whatever “acupuncture” was, it was so significant that you could get a Masters degree in it?! What?!
So, I decided to order a school catalog to see what this “acupuncture” thing was about. The catalog arrived, I skimmed over the content. And, I gotta be honest here, there was no epiphany moment. It was pretty much “in one ear (or should I say eye) and out the other” and, I went on with my life.
Fast forward a handful of years, I’m now at the end of my Bachelors program, debating which of two paths to pursue, and I find myself suddenly wondering if Acupuncture might be that cultural healing system I was to pursue. Hmmm….
Curious, I looked up where the nearest Acupuncture school was, and, lucky me, there was one in Portland, OR - the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. Just over three hours from where I was living. Not only that, it ended up being the top rated school in the country! Lucky, lucky me!
I reasoned that if acupuncture had been around for thousands of years, that meant it had to work. Because things don’t stick around if they don’t work, right? Pharmaceutical drugs get pulled from the market consistently. Why? Because they don’t work or are found to have terrible side effects.
Acupuncture and the other components of Traditional East Asian Medicine had had thousands of years of experimentation and figuring things out…and were still around! So that was really promising to me. It had to work! And it was holistic!
Plus, I figured that whatever I learned about how to help people heal, I could share with you, my family, and community, so that the part of me that wanted to teach and empower would be satiated too. Things were starting to fall together in such a good way!
I remember my first year of acupuncture school, sitting in my Medical Theory class, trying to hold back my tears of joy because I realized I was *finally* learning about the interconnections of the body! They DID exist!
I was actually learning how to understand and interpret the body’s messages! I was elated! It felt like my soul and my heart and my purpose all clicked in to Divine Alignment!
Oh, and by the way, it turned out what I thought was healthy eating, wasn’t healthy for me at all! Not only that, it was directly contributing to the myriad of health issues I was having! After implementing what I learned from my holistic health mentors, my health and energy levels drastically improved! It was humbling to realize I had been going about it all in a well-intentioned, yet unhelpful, way, but so beyond rewarding to implement the knowledge I was learning and to feel and live the rewards of making healthy changes!
So, long story long, that’s how I found myself in acupuncture school - never having had it before, and completely terrified of needles. Yep, I know, I know, it’s soooo ironic!
I still have tremendous anxiety before I get acupuncture myself. AND, I still show up and receive amazing treatments… because it costs me too much to NOT take care of myself, you know?! Plus, all of this makes me incredibly discerning with who I have my treatments with. Thankfully, after the first point is done, I calm down. I really can work myself up in my own mind and thoughts though! Can you relate?
One of the interesting things I learned is that acupuncture needles are as thin as your hair, or even thinner. This is a picture of an acupuncture needle and a strand of hair taken by my dear friend and colleague, Misako Yamamoto.
With a gentle and qualified acupuncturist, your treatment can be relaxing and calming. And, if you’re wary of needles, I SO get it!
When we work together, you’ll be in compassionate hands, and we go at the pace that works for you. You are the one in control of your own healing process, every step of the way.
