I go to acupuncture nearly once a week. A friend of mine says that acupuncture is like having meditation done to you. Certainly having needles stuck strategically throughout your body and then being left to "cook" sounds less appealing than massage or other forms of body work. But it is no less helpful and can do many things that massage cannot.
Community Acupuncture of Mount Airy (CAMA) is a lovely space right on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia. You enter to a small waiting room where a giant statue of the Buddha sits. There are always fresh flowers near the patient sitting area and on the reception desk and Euro-high-tech hot water dispenser and herbal tea bags encourage you to hydrate. Relaxing music is piped in throughout the building.
The concept behind community acupuncture is to make acupuncture affordable to the masses. This means that your treatment is done in a group setting, on chairs, fully clothed. However, at CAMA, this is not always the case. Frequently treatments are done upstairs in a private room. All treatments are done lying down on a massage table. If you are alone, some disrobing may occur, depending on your treatment. They also have yummy fresh linens on the massage tables instead of the medical paper you see in most offices.
Every treatment room - whether the large group room downstairs, or the smaller upstairs rooms -- are beautifully decorated with Asian spiritual themes.
My acupuncturist is Kim. She has an amazing bedside manner and is able to relax you even before the treatment begins. Kim is a bit of a psychologist and during the pre-treatment interview will frequently offer up metaphors for your current situation that apply to the treatment.
What is acupuncture like? After the interview, Kim decides what you need. You lay on the yummy linens, clothed, with supporting pillows. She might roll up your pant legs or sleeves, or pull up your shirt. Needles are placed in various locations following a prescribed order. Sometimes the needles hurt a little bit going in, but although I am a baby when it comes to pain, I don't mind because I know that in seconds, the pain will be replaced by a feeling of relaxation, calm, and possibly even bliss. Sometimes you can feel the needles acting immediately upon entry. I often feel rivulets of energy coursing down my legs, but most of the time, a profound relaxation settles in after about five minutes on the table.
Last month I came into the office in a very inflamed emotional state. I was upset in the way that takes over your entire body, so that even if your mind gets distracted, you know something is wrong because your body hurts. She did a special treatment that required me to lay on my stomach and take my shirt off to expose my back. She placed several needles strategically on my back -- no pain there, few nerve endings. She may have placed others, I don't remember, because the treatment dissipated the wild influx of emotions and calmed me down within minutes. She noted that around the entry point of the needles, my skin was bright and inflamed -- particularly around the heart (grief) and liver (anger) points. After 20 minutes, the skin was clear and I was clear. It took a night's sleep to fully recover from the emotional onslaught, but the treatment did a lot to relieve the acuteness of the emotions.
And that without drugs or alcohol.
I've had a lot of acupuncture over the years. I consider it to be magical that a few needles here and there can affect feelings and perspective. Personally, I haven't had luck curing long-term ailments such as shoulder or knee pain. But it does affect you nevertheless by promoting healing and natural feelings of bliss. It can also support the body to make major life changes. I love being able to have a weekly acupuncture appointment and CAMA makes that possible.
