needle

I can’t help but let out a sound. An ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It is impossible not to such is the release. I am like a deflating bouncy castle, no longer needed to buoy and bounce people around. And inside I catapult through an emotional version of life flashing before my eyes. Fear and worry and stress and being strong and wanting to be cared for. Relief and confusion and worry again. They all surge and then collapse and dissolve in a matter of seconds. It is quite the wave. And the agent of this release? A hair thin needle that stays in me for less than 10 seconds. But it returns me to myself and allows me to let go of emotions and journeys that I no longer need to carry. It is quite the thing.

It makes sense, doesn’t it, that once the panic is over, the adrenaline has legged it, the danger has dissipated, it makes sense that everything kept at bay starts to make its advance. That once I no longer need to be strong and focused and brave my brain can let all those other emotions bubble up. I’m safe, my baby is safe, so I can be vulnerable, I can be sad, I can need to be cared for. I couldn’t before. And physically too my body has to let go of all of that. And of the bleeding, the pain, the punctures, the incisions. The slicing of me from hip bone to hip bone, the lifting out of me of my intestines, the nudging aside my bladder, the hands deep inside me, their tugging and pulling and tearing and raising up my baby boy. It needs to process all that. Realign itself. It makes sense that touching me across my numbed scar sends my belly into rollercoasters.

And sometimes we need a little help to realign. Physical, emotional and mental blows and cuts and slices can interrupt the flow of things. I think of it like twigs and sodden autumn leaves stopping up the bright skip and hop of a stream.

I was stopped up after everything. Cue blinding headaches, sore eyes, a mouth ulcer, the return of violent shakes in bed at night before sleep, my body alive with an electric hum it didn’t know how to earth. Cue a strange and overwhelming flatness and a deep deep need for someone to look after me, carry me, take the reins. I needed a little help to pick out a twig or two so that the stream could move itself on again, clearing the rest of the debris on its own. The simplicity of the treatment belies it’s profundity. These slight hairs breaths that slip into my skin and beneath and beyond recalibrate me, settle me, pull the sticks from the stream.

Not every acupuncture treatment is as profound, of course it isn’t. And not everything is just peachy and perfect after it. But the unwinding freeing release and return that it gives me makes me hugely thankful I have it in my life and also wildly excited that I have these tools to help others when the time is right.

#fiveelementacupuncture