MY JOURNEY
 

My experience receiving acupuncture treatment spans over 20 years. I went to my first acupuncture treatment seeking help for a painful skin issue I had for five years. Mainstream doctors told me there was nothing that could be done except to use steroid cream. Although this option helped immensely, I knew that using steroidal treatment long-term would create more ill effects on my health and wouldn’t solve the underlying issue.

My neighbor at the time, Ms. Denise, was getting acupuncture to address her own health concerns and was receiving great benefit. She invited me to come with her to see her Acupuncturist. The evening after my first treatment, the painful symptoms I had been experiencing for five years were gone. I stopped use of the steroid cream and have had no need for it since.

I felt that was magic and began receiving regular acupuncture treatments which supported me through all aspects of my life.

In my work, while I was always consistent with the jobs I held, I never felt fulfilled by any of them. I was consistently late to my jobs and struggled to understand and release my irritability and frustration when I got home. I was regularly quick-tempered with those who knew me best. I had random body pains, stomach cramps, and a long list of other "mysterious" health issues.

Over the years, I had x-rays, blood tests, MRI's, CT scans and doctors giving me medications that didn't help. I was worried and felt lost. I began having panic attacks every couple hours and had difficulties making the two-block walk into work. Doctors told me I was fine, though I felt horrible physically and emotionally. Eventually my health reached a point where I needed to take several weeks off work.

I turned to a holistic practitioner. He asked me what I was passionate about, and was my work my passion. I just started crying. My homework from him was to clean up my diet, use food-based and other natural supplements and begin doing things that brought passion to my life - things that made my heart sing. I reached out to an artist in Baltimore from whom I had been wanting to learn mosaic for several years. She welcomed me exactly where I was on my path, and I began learning more deeply about myself through my own unique artistic expressions.

I began to get better.

Along the way, I began seeing an Acupuncturist who gave me treatments that were very different from my first treatment and those I had received from subsequent practitioners. They were treatments that evoked huge shifts in me on a deeper level. My spirit began to thrive again. Although physical symptoms were often addressed, the treatments were more powerful than any treatment I had experienced previously because they addressed me as a unique individual, on all levels of body-mind-spirit, rather than me as only a set of physical symptoms. I found myself going to that Acupuncturist more and more instead of the practitioners who treated me solely based on my physical complaints. Past traumas and physical symptoms began to heal.

I began to get even better.

Eventually, trusting my intuition and having a few faithful friends cheering me on, I left my job to pursue the path of becoming an Acupuncturist myself. During my years in school, I was fortunate to be taught transformational practices that bring awareness to how my own thoughts affect a large portion of my physical symptoms. I learned that I have a choice in how I relate to life, and therefore, in how my body feels. I learned how I create dis-ease in my body and equally so how I can change that into ease. I learned that my mind is powerful and the inseparable connection between body-mind-spirit.

Commitment to learning how my mind creates my life and how I can control and harness that power as well as understanding what my intuition is, how that feels and keenly observing what happens when I do and don’t follow it, have been the most transformative practices of my life.

It’s definitely not always sunshine and ponies. Sometimes there are dark storms that last longer than I’d like. However, when I commit to meditation, self-inquiry practices and intuition daily, the storms clear faster, and there’s more light and joy. I draw wonderful people and circumstances into my life, and things get better and better ~ life feels magical. If I’m experiencing the opposite, I know I have the tools to turn things around no matter how long it may take.

I always encourage people to know that they are their greatest healer, and with commitment to learning how to be that, anyone can experience a life of more consistent joy and freedom.

Cheers to your wonderful life.