A Curious Calm: Acupuncture

CURIOUS:

What do you want to feel like?

What’s stopping you from feeling that way?

What if you stopped suppressing symptoms by gobbling over the counter meds, and started listening to your body’s messages?

Are you worried that you aren’t able to manage your pain or understand your body because you have ‘outsourced’ or ignored your health?

Might there be a connection among your different health problems we can help you identify and alleviate?

Would you like to know what healthy feels like? Be proactive? Be educated to use your own body’s early warning signals to help heal yourself, so you have less discomfort? **

Let’s explore together! **We will work with your existing medical team, don’t stop taking anything prescribed for you!

Are you willing to shake off a little bit of dependency that externalizes responsibility for your health? Try treatment! See for yourself what it’s all about.

Blend a remarkably complete system of ancient wisdom developed over tens of hundreds of years in China, with benefits of modern bioscience. Each system uses a different ‘lens’ to look at you and solve problems. Acupuncture comes from a system that ‘zooms out’ and sees ALL of you, and creates a treatment for YOU, not one for the ‘average’ system. YOUR participation is key

CALM:

Think of the calm water below the surface of the waves – not being tossed around but still moving and flowing with purpose. You can see your true self reflected in calm!

Do you remember what calm even feels like? Come surprise yourself. As a society, we are so often in overdrive, we can’t remember what calm feels like. Acupuncture can provide a quick way to disengage that ‘overdrive’ and let you feel your body’s rhythms and heal from the inside out.

Once you know what calm feels like, it is an easily learnable habit, within reach. You can stop suppressing your body’s messages, and learn to heed them before some problems arise.

This calm listening is where healing, and improved balance, can happen. You can powerfully influence your own health this way.

Your body is a miracle, working to constantly keep all your systems in balance. Most particularly, your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems work together to motivate us and stay safe, as well as ‘rest and digest’. We can be stuck in overdrive and not recognize it. Acupuncture (based upon TCM, Traditional Chinese Medicine) works WITH your body to support its own healing, based upon its desire to create balance, or homeostasis.

Pain (physical and /or emotional) can arise from imbalances in your body/mind from stress, overwork, and constantly ‘consuming’ (to cover pain) whether junk food, binge-watching shows or the bad news cycle…

CONNECTED

All encompassing and focussed perspectives joined: We are starting to re-member what ancient civilizations used to know: our mind, body and spirit are not separate – so to heal, we can’t just look at one discrete part of ourselves. BUT: we can also benefit from the incredibly focussed wealth of knowledge provided by advanced imaging and modern bioscience. Our left brain and right brains merged for health!

Remember that old song we sang as kids? ‘The ankle bone’s connected to the knee bone…’ Let acupuncture open your eyes and mind to the connections within you that can heal

Acupuncture uses a system that looks at you as a whole person (that is also part of community) to keep you healthy. Your treatment is customized for you, however!

For example – if you have a headache, there is not a ‘one size fits all’ pill or treatment… we might treat points on your feet as well as something on your head, depending upon what sort of the 18 or so types of headaches you may have! Your headache may not be your mother’s headache (although you may indeed cause hers)!

Our goal is not to mask the immediate pain, but to solve it and the deeper problem creating the pain (unless your hat is just too tight – we’ll help with that too)!People are starting to get smart about what they eat – but your emotional digestion is also important. Try acupuncture and you may be better able to start making connections!

Healing Strategies:

• What do YOU want to heal? You decide!
• We are here to complement, not compete with, your existing health care, and we often refer you to your western healthcare team
• your treatment is about YOU – not us! No one has all the answers, and we want you to have the best care possible.
• we may just have a different lens (acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine diagnosis training) to look at you and non-drug solutions;
• we often see people with conditions that traditional medicine doesn’t seem to resolve. We have so much to offer as a first line (not just as a last resort, which is common) treatment for a variety of conditions
• we have western healthcare training too so we understand what western diagnoses mean, and what red flags mean we need to refer you – and if we don’t know, we will say so, and ask!
• We DON’T do emergency medical care or primary cancer care, for example… but our treatments can support your western care in those areas
• Our goal is to work WITH your body’s own healing tools,
• we educate you to help yourself and stop suppressing symptoms;
• Nothing happens without your informed consent and curious participation!
• We ask to see if we can create connections among your body systems to create a diagnosis and treatment plan for you
• see the menu for ‘what happens when you come for acupuncture’
• become more proactive about your own health as you gain confidence, and wonder about the amazing container you are walking around in!

wisdom we have in us

‘The thinking that got us into this isn’t going to get us out of this’

-Einstein (attributed)

We treat: Headaches. Clenched Jaw. Shallow Breath. Aches And Or Pains. Feel Numb. Wired And Tired. Poor Sleep, Insomnia, Poor Digestion, Tight Muscles. Sciatica. Chronic Pain. Chronic Fatigue. Poor memory, brain fog, vertigo. Anxious, Feel Flat, Overwhelmed? Painful or irregular periods, Frequent Colds, Injuries, Allergies, Skin problems, alopecia, High Blood Pressure. Burnout. Fatigue. Trauma. Fybromyalgia. Arthritis, stroke recovery. Messages from you to you?

We are “… conditioned to regard sensory information as irrelevant noise, and to repress feelings as confusing and volatile. When faced with uncertainty we turn to thought instead of tuning into our feelings, sensations which are the main avenues of communication…:

Oshiri Hilzenrath, ‘How does it feel to be you – an introduction to Animism’, 2018.

Acupuncture can remind your body, heart and mind that you can be safe in your body. In chronic panic mode, our physical and emotional resources are focused on survival, not healing or thinking rationally about the problems. And that loop of negative self-messages you are on? Getting into the habit of calm in your body, being curious about what your body and mind is telling you, have the ability to get back into balance…. so your heart and mind stop fighting each other.

Susan Kim Paterson, R.Ac.

What is TCM diagnosis and Acupuncture?

TCM Acupuncture is a regulated form of energy medicine that uses needles (or pressure) on different locations on the body, designed to heal imbalances in your mind or body by re-distributing the ‘qi’, or body’s energy. We look at whether you have ‘excess’ energy in one place, which might lead to ‘deficient’ energy somewhere else, if your body has been unable to create the balance itself. We can talk about the neurotransmitters and bioscience ‘proofs’ which are finally catching up to show how this happens, but not here….

An important part of your treatment will be to discover how your body is trying to communicate with you, and how you can help by not covering up symptoms but listening so you can heal the deeper issues.

The scope of Acupuncture at your chiropractor, massage therapist of other professional is restricted to addressing muskoskeletal issues. Not us!

In addition to treating body conditions like sore knees or frozen shoulder, for example, our TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) acupuncture can address so many other imbalances, including but not limited to emotional issues like anxiety, depression, over stress or trauma, digestive issues, menstrual or conception issues, poor memory, post-stroke recovery, chronic pain; the World Health Organization recognizes many treated conditions.

TCM Acupuncture training and treatment includes needles, as well as acupressure, cupping, gua sha, heat therapy, as well as using qi gong (movements paired with breath, a gentle martial art for healing), and dietary suggestions according to season and your body’s needs.

We learn 361 regular acupoints on the body’s 14 meridians, over 40 ‘extra’ points for specific purposes, as well as using ‘ashi’ or OUCH points, and the separate scalp acupuncture too. And so much more!