Lessons in Acupuncture

My neck has been sore for weeks, and that makes me willing to try anything. The nearest chiropractor is in Pemberton, a 3.5 hour drive one way, so the health centre in Lillooet will have to suffice for some health care help with my aching body. Certainly one of the drawbacks to living in a community of this size is the lack of access to nearby medical care, what we tend to take for granted living in an urban metropolis.

I made the call to see if I could get an appointment for a massage.

“Unfortunately we do not have any spots left for massage, but we do have a couple of openings for acupuncture,” the receptionist was soft-spoken, and I could tell she was smiling on the other end.

“Well, I have never tried acupuncture,” I told her, my thoughts quickly imagining needles being stuck into my neck and back. A quick wince broke my stillness.

“That’s okay, just tell the therapist you…”

“I’m afraid of needles,” I interrupt her mid-sentence.

“Oh don’t worry. Many people swear by it, and she also does cupping,” she said, as if that was supposed to reassure me.

“Cupping?” I had never heard of this.

“She places cups on your back which have a mild suction to them. It’s supposed to help bring blood to the injured area to help with healing,” she said, still smiling on the other end.

“Well, okay. I guess I’ll have to try it. I’ve been hurt for weeks. I guess I’ll take the 3 o’clock appointment on Friday.”

I penciled it in my day timer and tried to put the thought of needles out of my mind for the three days before the appointment.

I get there early after driving in from Gold Bridge in the morning, palms slightly clammy and eyes darting all around the lobby at the vials of different aromatherapy scents and skincare products. I recognize the receptionist from my days teaching in Lillooet and distract myself by talking to her, asking how her year is going, how her husband is, how things at the school are.

As we talk the therapist walks in, and I'm so nervous that I forget to even tell her that I'm afraid of needles.

We walk into her room at the end of the hallway and I point to the places in my neck and back where it hurts, look at the charts of pressure points over the body that are lining her walls.

Before long I am shirtless on the table, my face watching the carpeted floor from the opening for my face in the massage table. She comes in and rubs my back with alcohol pads and tells me that she is going to start. I ask what acupuncture is supposed to do for me, and she tells me that the needle goes into the belly of the muscle and is supposed to stop the muscles from firing. Perfect, I think to myself as I hear her opening plastic packaging above me, just what I need; my neck muscles have felt like they are squeezed up into little balls for weeks.

“What does it feel like? Does it hurt?” I ask, speaking louder than I need to, watching the floor, trying to breathe the blood back into my ghost-white hands.

“You might be able to feel it pierce the skin. It doesn’t hurt,” she answers.

“Like a pinch?” I ask. The noise behind me has stopped and she is now squeezing one of my neck muscles lightly between her thumb and fingers.

Needle in. I feel just a tiny poke at the surface of my skin, really nothing like I am bracing myself for. I breathe out slowly as she slides the needle in further.

I’m not sure when I start to loose the feeling in my fingers, but soon everything is in and my back is covered in cups that are drawing the blood to the surface of my skin with some aggressive suction.

So far it has been an intense procedure, but being the type of person that I am I think it’s almost forcing me to relax, to breathe deeply, to focus only on my breathing to keep myself calm. I have a moment where I imagine myself standing up like a crazy woman and demanding that everything be taken out and ripped off, like one of those crazed hospital patients you see on TV trying to rip out their own IV lines.

She then heats up the needles with some special stuff that I forget the name of, and I have to withstand the heat as long as I can before telling her to stop. One at a time she makes her way through the needles, and I wait until the sting of hot hits each place before I ask her to move on.

I then decide that want to move my arms, which have lost all feeling in them. They are up above my head and I can’t seem to lift them, so she moves them for me. The feeling starts to come back to my fingers as she tapes tiny seeds to my ears with pieces of tan-coloured bandaging tape. I’m supposed to leave them on for five days, to press on them whenever I remember.

Soon the needles are removed, one by one, and the cups are pulled from my skin. I feel warm, and when I get up from the table I am incredibly relaxed. All I want to do is go to sleep.

“Make sure to stay warm,” she tells me as I drift through the hallway towards the door, “your meridians are open, so you don’t want to catch a chill out there.”

I wrap my scarf tighter around my neck, pull the hood of my jacket over my head, walk out into the cool sunshine of an early Lillooet evening.

When I get to my car I phone a friend to ask if I can take a nap in her spare room for a couple of hours. She says “of course!” and I sleep for a while, while the daylight turns dark outside the curtained window of her spare room, waking to the sound of her playing guitar, soft singing lingering in the corridors of her basement, finding me warm and groggy with sleep and my open meridians.

I get groceries, weaving down the isles in a state of mild hypnosis, coming back to her place for dinner and to go through some tutoring supplies she is culling, as she is close to retirement.

After a great meal and some life-inspiring talk I start out on the long dark drive home. I think of the cold house awaiting me after my long drive. I cry a little along the way, and that feels pretty good, so I go with it, reaching up to press the seeds along my little ears. Me and my open meridians. I figure crying is part of the process, part of the experience, part of the opening, and it's been a while.

“Think of the ears like an upside down fetus representing your body,” the therapist had said. “The seeds are in places that resonate with where your body needs the healing.”

I feel a little calmer after pressing along the seeds that are taped along the hard cartilage ridge of my ear. Representing the spine, she had said.

Finally I walk into the cold house, unload groceries, pack them away into the fridge, into cupboards while a bath runs and the fire tastes the dry kindling and eats the balls of newspaper I have laid down for it. It was a big shopping day, lots to restock, lots to put away.

I have a bath and have a wonderful sleep after snuggling up with an electric heating pad. Perfect remedies for staving off the cold house blues.

The next evening, after being out with some friends, I come home and have another bath. Curling up into a little ball, which feels great, so I go with that too. Things crack, and the next morning I feel better than I have in weeks. My spine feels realigned, although the muscles ache from holding on for so long, and my back is spotted with deep purple rings from the cupping.

This was last Friday and I still feel better, although the tight muscles are still clenched, still balling up. I’m getting back into a yoga routine, which I had fallen away from. The balance. More balance needed, more balance found.

All I can say is that perhaps there is something to this acupuncture thing, but I do tend to believe in some pretty alternative healing methods. In talking to people after the treatment it seems that there are many who just love it. I’m not sure if I'm in the camp of the advocates of it, but I’m at least glad I tried it, and I do feel better. And it’s good to try something scary every so often, just to show yourself how brave you can be, and as a reminder of how our minds can paint a false picture of things before we have even given them a try.