The Art of Contrariness, Acupuncture and Living
I was reading that some people wanted a poster that had some nice graphics about the kinds of problems acupuncture could treat. I’ve also had people want things that explain what acupuncture does. This is a colorful poster that shows the kinds of things acupuncture can do, illustrated by our very own Siamese Mix. We hope that he remains as active and flexible as he is in these photos.
You can find this as a poster here or even on a t-shirt!
Ever consider taking your practice traveling? Recently, on an online discussion several practitioners expressed an interest in working aboard a ship. Marie Veverka, a graduate of Oregon College of Oriental Medicine, shared bits about her experience working as a cruise ship acupuncturist. She was kind enough to give longer responses to me in a private message.
Marie started doing cruise ship acupuncture because she wanted to travel. Unfortunately she didn’t have the money. A friend had worked on a cruise ship. Marie called her and found out how to go about applying. She worked on ships on and off for two years.
I asked Marie how an acupuncturist gets placed and she said, “My first contract was in the Mediterranean working on a Princess ship and my second and 3rd contracts were working for Crystal Cruises which travels all over the world. When you apply for cruise ships, you apply to Steiner and they contract you out to different cruise lines. You can request a region and tell them where you want to go, but that doesn’t mean you will get it. If you have a certain area you want to travel to, you may have to wait until they offer you a ship you really want. The longer you work for them and the better you do on board, the better ship offers you get.”
Having cruised a few times, I knew many of the crew members had other duties around the ship. While acupuncturists will probably have to participate in emergency drills, most duties will revolve around the spa area. An acupuncturist may have to do some reception work or random tasks to fill in. They are also commonly required to give seminars. Marie said, “ If you are not keeping yourself busy enough, they may send you to a common area on the ship to do sample treatments or had out brochures.”
One disadvantage of the work is that sometimes you are required to be part of IPM, which means “in port manning.” The cruise ship has to maintain a certain number of crew on board even while in port in case of an emergency. This prevents the practitioner from being able to have the day to explore. Instead they have to stay aboard the ship.
Many of the crew work very long hours during the cruise. Acupuncturists fair a bit better than the wait staff and cleaning staff. Marie said, “As an acupuncturist, you are required to work 52 hours a week. You work 12 hours on all sea days and other than that, you should be able to make your own schedule. .. I usually saw most ports and I escaped IPM most of the time I worked on board. We often had 12 day cruises so I would take 52, divide it by 7 (this amounts to about 7.5 hours a day), and then multiply that number of days on the cruise so I could figure out my hours per cruise. This sounds like a lot, but keep in mind, sea days eat up hours and you can schedule yourself for a few hours in the morning and a few in the evening, take a morning off entirely, or whatever to coordinate with the hours the ship is in port. ”
Marie was quick to point out that if acupuncturists are required to work more or have difficulties on board, they have a very nice management team on shore to back them up.
Earning potential varies depending upon where you travel. Marie says that you probably earn the most in the Caribbean or Mexico but she wanted to see the world. Her earnings were about $3000 to $4000 per month. She had no rent or food bills while on board either.
Marie says, “I am a small ship girl, but that is because I like smaller ports that are less touristy. Big ships are fun, but less personal and it is much easier to get lost in the mix. I always chose ships on itinerary. I would get offered a ship, look it up online and check to see where it would be going. If I wanted to go there, I was in. Plus, I told them what I was looking for. If you want to make money, let them know. If you want to travel to really exotic places tell them. Unfortunately, you are less likely to make a ton of money traveling to exotic places, but it is oh so much fun!”
I was curious about products and limitations. Moxa is not allowed on board, which is no surprise given that fire is a huge hazard on a ship. There is also no gua sha or cupping. There is an herbal line of products that can be used. Acupuncturists are encouraged to sell the products on board. Practitioners are also encouraged to cross promote other therapies.
So do people use acupuncture on board a ship? If so what sorts of things do they come for? Marie said she saw lots of back pain and sciatic pain on board. On the smaller ships where she worked, most people were older and retired, which meant that there were a lot of kidney issues. She used a lot of kidney tonic formulas. On a larger ship, she theorizes that Spleen qi formulas and Liver Qi stagnation formulas would be the big sellers.
Many people are feeling adventurous on a cruise and try acupuncture for the first time. Marie tried very hard to get them in at least three times. She felt that most people would start seeing some sort of result in those three treatments. Encouraging frequent treatments helped patients understand that an acupuncturist isn’t a miracle worker but it did allow them to see benefit. She encouraged patients to continue with their treatments when their cruise was finished.
The people who had had acupuncture before all saw “the best acupuncturist in the world”. Marie was careful to explain that her style might be different from their regular practitioner. Explaining that each person has a unique style allowed most patients to relax and enjoy the treatment on board. There is always one person though. Marie recalls, “one guy… thought I had terrible technique and didn’t know what I was doing because I only put 14 needles in.”
Many people have practices but would like to cruise. Is it possible to do both? Marie said it can be difficult. She was mostly just cruising and doing some house calls when back at home. She was also resting up for the next cruise, which she says is exhausting.
“One of my biggest recommendations for acupuncturists on cruise ships is get out and about on the ship. I took full advantage of the shore excursion department. You can volunteer to escort excursions on your time off which is an excellent way to go on great tours for free and to meet guests on the ship! As I got to know the shore-ex team, they started sending me on progressively more amazing tours, it was totally awesome. Plus, my manager loved it and encouraged me to go because I was always bringing in new patients that way. I also went to all the cruise events I could. People will recognize you from your picture in the cruise daily, lectures, or even the cruise TV program (if you decide to do it) and they will stop and ask you questions. I would chat with them a bit and often walk to the nearest phone and schedule an appointment for them right there.”
If you’re ready to travel, consider looking into working aboard a cruise ship and see the world!
I was connected to Thomas Jahn, an acupuncturist in South Africa by a mutual acquaintance. Originally I had planned to do an interview more on how acupuncture is viewed in South Africa. I was so taken by Dr. Jahn’s response to his background that I had to cut and paste his email in it’s entirety. I am struck by how many of my classmates dreamed of the education he was able to follow up on. I am also struck by the opportunities that so many practitioners dream of, but he has been able to create in his life. It is my hope that Dr. Jahn will write more on his experiences as an acupuncturist and his thoughts on the profession.
In his words, the rest of this is written by Dr. Thomas Jahn:
“My first exposure to Asian culture came with the time I relocated with my parents to Tokyo, Japan when I was twelve years old. The philosophy aspect started with my study of martial arts about a year later, practicing the Japanese art of Kempo. At age fourteen I started regular classes at an internal martial arts school in Tokyo, practicing Qi Gong, Tai Ji Quan and eventually Xing Yi Quan. The time spent here furthered my sense of how our actions relate to their consequences, and so started to see how the practice of these sorts of disciplines actually support an ever-increasing awareness of this – this is where partner exercises such as ‘pushing hands’ are very insightful.
This I pursued for four years at the end of which I was increasingly frustrated to still not have been able to sense any real ‘internal’ changes in my body after that time. As ‘fate’ would have it, through a good friend of mine I was introduced to a Chinese man who was teaching Qi Gong and Shao Lin boxing weekly on Sundays. Conveniently, he was looking for someone to teach him English.
Consequently I joined his class on Sundays and would meet with him during the week for English classes. From the beginning I was quite curious as to what he did for his livelihood, since teaching a class once a week was not it. It turned out that he is a Chinese medicine doctor, at which point I became even more curious, and so our English sessions subsequently revolved exclusively around Chinese medicine. This relationship developed over three years, during which time I honed an ever-growing desire to pursue Chinese medicine more seriously.
My Japanese language skills were not quite appropriate to allow me to attend school for oriental medicine in Japan, and so on recommendation of a Chinese medicine doctor in Tokyo, I applied to several schools in California, to then move to San Diego in 1997 to eventually attend Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, later receiving my degree, and subsequently my California license to practice Chinese medicine.
The time spent in San Diego was beyond what I had hoped, and must say that I was extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend PCOM, along with all the incredibly meaningful clinical experience gained, especially also the off-site clinics and the voluntary assistantships throughout my time there.
My studies were wonderfully complemented with the tutelage of my martial arts teacher, Dr. Justin Ehrlich, who also exposed me to the specialty of ‘hit medicine’ – Chinese trauma medicine.
I still went to Tokyo every year to visit my family and my mentor, which eventually compelled me to continue my Chinese medicine studies in China once having graduated in the U.S. and had sat for the California licensing examination, to gain more exposure to the medicine in its cultural context.
In 2003 I moved to Beijing, with the intention of attending advanced Chinese medicine studies at the Beijing Chinese Medicine University once having completed one year worth of intense study of spoken Mandarin Chinese – I have been very lucky in that my time spent in Japan had allowed to gain an ever-increasing proficiency in the Chinese written language, so that was one thing I thankfully no longer had to be concerned about. My language studies ensued, during which time I started to regularly meet with a Chinese medicine doctor Dr. Li Xin to start getting some more insight into the medicine from a ‘local’s’ perspective. Through him I was introduced to a colleague of his, Dr. Xu Wen-bo, who in turn introduced me to her brother, Dr. Xu Wen-bing, who founded the Hope Insitute of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, where he runs a busy clinic as well as teaches foreigners various classes in Chinese medicine.
When I met Dr. Xu Wen-bing I was quite taken by his very open and honest account of his experience as a Chinese having grown up with Chinese medicine in China from a young age through his mother, herself a Chinese medicine doctor, to then later study at the very university I had originally planned on attending myself, and work there as an associate professor. He had a definite authentic feel about him which had me realize I was standing at the next crossroads in my life, and whole-heartedly continued with Dr. Xu, and not with the Beijing Chinese Medicine University as initially intended.
Dr. Xu introduced me to my new Qi Gong teacher, Mr. Ma Shi-qi, who guided us through various solo and partner Qi Gong exercises for two hours prior to each class with Dr. Xu, since it was extremely important to Dr. Xu that his students have a sound understanding of Qi in their own bodies before attempting to interpret that of their patients, and must say that this heavily influenced my enthusiasm to take Dr. Xu and Master Ma both that much more seriously. So much so, that after the first few months of classes I devoted myself entirely to my two new teachers. Subsequently, Dr. Xu offered me a personal assistantship, which also included doing a lot of translation work, functioning as teaching assistant to Dr. Xu and also Master Ma during his Qi Gong classes. The following year Master Ma offered me an apprenticeship to be fully included into his circle, as I had expressed many times my wish to some day be able to teach others.
I have practiced with many teachers of martial arts and Qi Gong in the past in numerous countries, and can without doubt say that Master Ma is second to none in his level of personal development of Qi ‘refinement’. With the commencement of the apprenticeship our classes took place on an almost daily basis for almost two years. With my fortune at the time of having no other commitments, I was also able to invest that much more time in the day to practice on my own.
Since my family was in South Africa, and I have had such a long connection with this country, I had already planned years before to move back, which I then did with my wife-to-be in February of 2007. I started working in private practice, relying on house calls, to then eventually sit for the South African licensing examination for Chinese medicine and acupuncture. It was at the exam venue that I met my new friend and soon-to-be colleague, also taking the exam with me, who was telling about a hospital clinic outside of Cape Town where he regularly performs acupuncture treatments. My ears perked up when I heard this, as I had fantasized about at some point in the distant future to being able work in such an environment, and there it just fell into my lap. I tagged along the following week and have been active there on an ongoing basis right up until the clinic was very coldly shut down end of November, 2011. We are currently still involved with legal proceedings and can tell you that corruption is in no short supply.
You had asked about how people in South Africa view acupuncture / Chinese medicine – mind you, I prefer to rather refer to it as ‘Chinese acupuncture’, in that too often ‘acupuncture’ by itself is often misconstrued as purely a physiotherapy tool – well, if you ask the people that came to the hospital clinic, among them diabetics, stroke patients, HIV patients, people with arthritis, kidney disease, liver disease, skin conditions, digestive conditions, addictions, depression, lupus, trauma, asthmatics, post-operative pain, etc., etc., then many will tell you about how their medications were reduced, others will confirm that their prescriptions were not renewed since they were no longer warranted, yet others about no longer needing walking aides such as canes, crutches, walkers and wheelchairs.
In fact, the popularity of this clinic was such, that there were just too many people to treat and not enough people to do the treatments! Originally there were three people active in the clinic, then about six months later two discontinued which left me to run the clinic for another one and a half years until I was joined by a new and very committed colleague. At times we saw 20, sometimes over 50 people during a shift. For a time I also had the chance to treat people in the in-patient wards of the hospital who would be struggling with the consequences of their medications, pain, constipation, phantom limb pain, etc.
We were fundamentally reliant on acupuncture in that the majority of patients simply do not have the financial resources to afford the regular use of herbs, although for several people this was an option at times. This is also where the inclusion of Qi Gong therapy in the form specific postural and breathing principles had proven to also be extremely effective. For a time there was an actual medical Qi Gong clinic that I ran at the hospital which was very popular, giving people a heightened sense of empowerment over their health situation, along with meaningful effects on their health.
Many other people one asks here about acupuncture will have experienced it in the form of ’dry-needling’, which, since the point prescription is not based on Chinese medical diagnostics, has nothing really to do with Chinese medicine per se. Hence why many people in the western world will understandably not associate it with an actually medical modality, particularly in internal medicine.
This is something that greatly bothers me with the legislature in the U.S. – which I must admit am not current with – that one receives the title of “Licensed Acupuncturist” on completing a full-course of study in Chinese medicine. This is obviously extremely misleading to the general public and therefore very undermining to the scope and very legitimacy of our profession – but that’s politics for you. Mind you, it’s obviously not a very lucrative business to actually promote a healthy society.
Interestingly, here in South Africa one is granted the titles of “Doctor of Acupuncture” and “Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine” on fulfilling the respective licensing requirements – certainly does more for one’s sense of credibility in terms of being an actual health care provider.
I have recently been a regular guest on a tv show called “Open Studio” produced by a local NGO tv station Cape Town Television hosted by a great friend of mine, with the topic of health and wellness, using Chinese medicine as a treatment tool and just as much also as a preventative tool, allowing more of the general population to have more access to Chinese medicine. Considering the overall socio-economic situation here in South Africa, modalities like Chinese medicine have HUGE potential in significantly bringing down the burden of illness amongst the masses – my experience at the hospital confirms this. The rest is just a matter of schlepping through all the darned bureaucracy to allow for things to happen!”
What are you offering your patients?
That may seem like an easy question. Most people will say acupuncture or acupuncture and herbal treatments. But what does this do for the patient? What are the patients getting? Are they getting better health? Are they getting stress relief. Are they get someone who is present for the experience they are having with their body?
Sometimes it’s good to sit back and stop thinking about how you deliver something and consider what it is, at heart, that you are delivering. When I had my own practice and practice website my website highlighted that quality of life was important to me. In my life I can easily get overwhelmed with the need for perfection in how I do things, from doing the right amount of acupuncture and herbs to the right amount of exercise and doing it perfectly. My perfect is not everyone’s perfect. As I worked with chronically ill patients I became used to an ebb and flow in their commitment to coming to acupuncture to help their health. In fact, that ebb and flow of commitment often extended to any lifestyle changes. It became important to me to meet patients where they were at that moment in time.
This didn’t mean that I didn’t let them know what would work best. It meant we had an open conversation about what they wanted THAT day. Sometimes they were feeling pretty good and just wanted to feel like a “normal” person who didn’t have healthcare appointments every day. Sometimes it meant getting into the best physical condition they could. For me, it meant being there with the patients as honestly as possible to help the get what it was they needed for their best quality of life at the time they sat in my office.
Other practitioners may focus on delivering a pain-free life, or the healthiest life possible. What do you offer?
Sara Calabro writes an acupuncture blog called AcuTake. Her background in journalism helped her found a site that is written by a variety of people on the subject of acupuncture and health. Recently she has written a book called Acupuncture Matters. Calabro says, “Acupuncture Matters looks at how acupuncture lessons can potentially improve how we approach everything from urban planning to personal finance to relationships.”
Check it out.
I started creating my artwork and marketing materials to reach potential patients who had never tried acupuncture. I started with my midwest relatives in mind. Not all of them. Some of them would happily try acupuncture. A lot of them (and read A LOT because the families were big), would never try it. They have a niece, cousin, and grand-niece who practices acupuncture and can answer all their questions but they would never really grasp it. There was this attitude of, ”There she goes again talking about that weird stuff she does.”
What I didn’t get until recently, nor do many acupuncturists, is that there are people for whom acupuncture is so far out of their experience and their life that they can’t even imagine it being for them. This wouldn’t matter except that there are a lot of them. Those same people are often getting a little older and have lots of chronic health problems that acupuncture could help.
Educating them about how acupuncture works, doesn’t work. After all, they know the basics of illegal drugs but that isn’t part of their experience either, really. They’re “normal” people. They are not a Hollywood star, an Asian immigrant, a university professor, a rich person, a well-traveled person. They are just themselves and they may not even know the kinds of questions you would ask an acupuncturist. They don’t know how to form a bond of trust with the medicine.
There is this story that says when the large ships that Columbus sailed to the New World on, the Natives couldn’t see them. It wasn’t that they were invisible, but the tribes had never seen anything like it so their brain didn’t even register these ships. I have no idea if this is true. However, as an acupuncturist, sometimes it feels like people are often blind to the successes of acupuncture because it’s too different for them.
So how to make that connection? Talking to people in their language is a good start. This means that they don’t have to learn anything new to understand that acupuncture can help them. It’s not about educating them to acupuncture, but habituating them to the idea. It’s about reaching them on an unconscious level. That’s what I seek to do with artwork. I’m a huge fan of having acupuncturists who see a broad cross-section of people having familiar touchstones in their offices, so that the office isn’t all about Asian beauty and Feng Shui. Not everyone is comfortable in that setting. Even one picture or a few magazines that speak a common language can go a long way to making the patient feel more at home.
It’s a tough line to walk to be who you are and embrace all that you are as a practitioner and still make that reach over to the person who has trouble accepting it. If the profession is to grow then more practitioners need to offer that helping hand, to show people that acupuncture isn’t just for other people but that it can be for them.
There are a lot of acupuncturists using Facebook. There are acupuncture groups where acupuncturists can join in discussions about cases, insurance questions and case-law. My school has both a general Facebook group and an alumni group that is closed to all but approved people. I see lots of practitioners with their own Facebook pages.
I find it interesting when practitioners want to share their page with other practitioners. It’s not that it’s a bad thing but is this really the best use of the page?
A Facebook page can be a quick and easy way for patients for find you. You can offer quick tips about what’s happening at your local practice. You can keep updates about the weather. What is happening in your community. It’s probably far more effective for patients for the practitioner to share with local businesses than with acupuncturists from across the country.
I do follow lots of practitioners. I’m looking for acupuncture news. I want to find news that’s unique to practitioners and see who is doing something novel. Unfortunately all this following means that everyone seems to be doing the same thing. I find it ironic given that most practitioners strive to be unique. While many articles are for the general public and talk about acupuncture, often these kinds of articles get tiresome for patients. Patients want something that touches their lives. Finding local news can be a way to engage them and get conversation going. Conversation on the page can be very helpful in the long run, especially if the practitioner can monitor it.
Moving beyond Facebook to other social media is important only if you, as a practitioner enjoy that. The best social media advice I ever got was to do only those things that I liked and forget about the others.
Yang deficient patients need to eat warming foods. We think of foods like chicken or ginger or perhaps garlic to help warm their spleen yang. These foods help digestion. It will warm the body and increase the energy.
I mostly eat okay. This winter, after having a little too much extra food over the holidays I was starting back on a decent diet and limiting my intake of simple carbohydrates when we were hit by a winter storm. At first, as it snowed outside I enjoyed watching. I had some lunch. I decided to treat myself to a kombucha. As the snow continued for the next two days I found myself with the increasing urge to bake.
I grew up in a home where my mother offered baked goods on a daily basis. They were always homemade and she used the best ingredients possible. By best, I do not mean the most healthful, but the best ingredients that would make the best food. At some point in my childhood she discovered that Crisco was easier than lard. By the time I was a teenager a chocolate cake might come out of a box. I remember sitting in the kitchen watching her or at times helping with things that needed extra hands.
The snow brought that back. After fighting the urge for most of a morning and into the late afternoon I baked some simple cookies. And I ate. And ate. I found that I couldn’t get enough of them. I’m yang deficient. I was cold. After feeling badly and wondering what was off on my hormones and how could I correct this, it occurred to me to wonder, as I shivered under covers when the power out later that I was surprised at my chill given the sugar I had eaten earlier. It then occurred to me to wonder, was the sugar craving my body’s way of trying to warm itself when there was cold outside?
This didn’t make the sugar binge okay with me, but it gave me an aha moment. Perhaps our cultural love affair with all things sugar is really our body’s attempt to balance an imbalance. The cold, quick foods so often eaten and the heavy carbohydrates that further inhibit the spleen means that most people in my office were, to a great or lesser extent, spleen qi deficient and often spleen yang deficient. While there are far better foods that would warm my body, sugar is a food my body has found earlier than it has found many of the other warming foods. Perhaps therein lies the craving. Maybe my body is taking its limited knowledge of balancing and attempting to make a balance, despite the fact that sugar will cause so many other problems.
Certainly I know to avoid sugar. Certainly I mostly do. But sometimes something comes up with a strong craving and I give in. This gives me another question to ask myself before giving in. I can consider why now? Maybe it’s the weather. Fats are often helpful to manage sugar cravings. Fats are also very warming. I wonder if that’s one of the reasons they work to limit sugar cravings. Although sometimes, fats just aren’t as good as sugar! Oddly, my choice was peanut butter cookies, so I guess I had some of both!
Small business owners, such as acupuncturists often talk about doing their own website. As someone who runs a small website business sideline, I’d like to point out several reasons not to do that.
First, will you actually create and maintain the website? Lots of people think about making a website. They may buy the domain name and look into hosting but never go any further. If they do create a website, often it is a static site that they then forget to update when things at their practice change. They may have people listed as being at their clinic who left years before. Maintaining a website as well as creating one takes time. Is that what you want to focus on?
Second, do you really know what you are doing? Many people think they know what they are doing, but really no matter how good the template software that comes with some hosting companies, you can’t make it look as good as a professional. The longer I’ve been doing websites, the more easily I can pin point those that are done by a hobbyist and those that are professionally done.
Third, if something goes wrong with your site, can you fix it? Do you want to take the time to fix it? I was reading where one person was certain that an increase in visitors that came from his website was because he changed the name of his clinic. A good webmaster could have made the clinic name work. First they would have made sure all the special keyword tags and descriptions focused on the location of the clinic as that’s how someone would search. Then the webmaster would have made sure there were sitemaps submitted to Google. Finally, if google was still ignoring the site, they could have found out why–direct from Google. Sites do get blacklisted. It’s the domain that gets blacklisted and that can carry over to the new owner of the site.
Say, someone owned mysite.com and it was a spammy site with lots of things Google doesn’t like. It might get blacklisted. The spammer drops the site and moves on. I come along with my clinic named mysite. I find the domain name mysite.com and buy it, having no idea of the history. Google doesn’t know it’s changed hands and it’s going to take a long time and a lot of work move up in the search engines because of that. In fact, many people who make money on the web will change the domain name rather than put up that fight. A good webmaster can think like that. They can advise and work with things like that.
If you’re doing acupuncture do you really want to spend the time learning this and checking it out?
My final issue is this. An acupuncturist trained as an acupuncturist. A webmaster also studied and trained. It becomes disrespectful to think that as a hobbyist you are going to do the same job as well as professional. Both professions are art. A poor website may not be life and death — or maybe if you have a service that will save their life and the patient can’t find you, it CAN be. Hire out to people who do the work. They have the time. You pay them the money. Focus on what you are passionate about.
This is the first in a series of acupuncture stories that are simplified stories about health and disease from the paradigm of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Liberties are taken for the benefit of the modern reader so these should not be used to diagnose or treat oneself, unless one is already an acupuncturist and understands the medicine at a deeper level. These stories are meant to be enjoyed and, perhaps, to make us think of health and dis-ease in a different way.
This is the story of Wind-Heat.
On a warm day in early fall, when the leaves have started to turn but the air is not yet chill with the breath of winter, the squirrels enjoy the sun while packing up the last of the harvest that will see them through the winter. People are walking, turning their heads to the sunshine, taking of jackets to absorb as much sun as possible. Even Wind comes out at this time.
Wind wafts through the trees, into open windows and even a little ways down chimneys. Enjoying the sunshine, it’s not angry or driven but merely playful. Here and there it tickles the back of an exposed neck. And here and there, exposed necks are far more exposed than they think, holding open doors for Wind to enter the body. Like a playful kitten, sometimes Wind inadvertently closes the door behind him and is trapped.
Locked in the body with no way out, Wind hammers at the eyes and the person has a headache. He moves more quickly through the body and after his sun warmed flight, he’s hot.. He sees the narrow passage of the throat as potential way out and runs up leaving behind a sore throat. Alas, he is trapped there too. He tickles the nose and although his friend dampness gets expelled, he is still trapped.
Wind sinks into farther into the body, leaving the body tired and feverish with his heat and despair.
Fortunately for Wind, there are those who know what to do to restore the balance. The acupuncturist and herbalist offer treatments that open the body’s doors so that Wind can escape. As he leaves, he takes away his extra warmth, so that fevers come down and throats are soothed. The body moves into true rest rather than the fatigue of Wind’s despair.
And that is the story of Wind Heat’s Invasion of the Body
