Pimped Out Yurting
I’ll be here this weekend. Pimped out yurting in the catskills. Maybe blogging, maybe not 😉
Sweet Silence
Today I took time to relish how lucky I am. On Wednesdays I work in a space where silence doesn’t reign, yet patients still feel right at home passing out amidst the chatter and banter. 5th Street Clinic’s open clinic space means we as practitioners are sharing ideas, inspiring each other and humbly asking for help when needed. Clients benefit and feed off of the communal healing energy and know that we all consider them 5th street family.
I listen, always. I learned quickly once I began apprenticing with Tom that I gained more by listening and gathering information rather than asking lots of “why?” questions. I preferred sitting with my questions and sometimes, but not usually posing questions to him later down the line. Perhaps I didn’t want to ask stupid questions out of potential embarrassment, but I prefer to believe I valued what Tom had to share so much that I didn’t want to interrupt his thoughts or practice patterns. He has always been very generous with sharing his knowledge and beyond gracious.  I see something different each time I work with him. I get to see deeper into the layers of the body and rejoice when I have those AHA moments and know that my patience has paid off. More has always been revealed.
A few years have passed, and I have begun to start asking his advice in terms of my patients or for him to elaborate on his shared thoughts, but beyond that I still remain quiet. It’s a good practice for me. It’s a challenging practice for me. And believe me there are people firing questions at him all day, so I get to absorb more than I can fit. But having unanswered questions floating in my mind challenges me to come up with my own best conclusions first and to pick up books and fall asleep dreaming about solutions. Many times I do stumble across an explanation from Tom and I am all the more rich for the process involved in getting there.
A little mystery keeps things interesting.
You’re Totally Awesome
I am surprised at how often patients blame themselves for their reported sufferings, challenges and failures. We are taught as acupuncturists to ask what one’s “complaints” are, setting up the patients expectation that what they are sharing are things wrong with them. There is so much negative connotations involved. Perhaps if we can shift the thinking just slightly, or perhaps turn it upside down on its head or look into a whole new dimension, we can begin to see that we show up each and everyday perfect, exactly as we are supposed to be. Opportunities are presented when we feel physical shifts, emotional shifts, and when things don’t happen as expected.
Patients ‘confess’ to me that they know they should be doing this or need to stop doing that, but I am quick to question those notions of guilt and shame. Perhaps they should be doing exactly what they are doing or not doing for that matter. Acceptance is a practice long forgotten in our culture. We are always striving and comparing, when we are always perfectly enough on any given day.
Let’s start loving ourselves again, asking for help, questioning the status quo on “healthy”, and forgiving ourselves for non-existent faults. You are already whole and healthy and radiant.
This is not to say don’t be good to yourself. We can and should still take actions to transform and grow and love ourselves by caring for ourselves, but if we attach guilt and shame and self-hatred to those actions and choices we are not giving ourself a chance to love ourself fully. Let go of that stuff and take it easy!
lots of love,
Beth
Autumn Wishes
Welcoming fall in is like everything, a time of transition. We have reaped our “harvests” and are now starting to internally slow down and hunker down for the winter. But culturally here in the States and especially in New York City, we are asked to gear up again in so many aspects of our life. The workplace, school, and social gatherings surrounding the holidays start to pull at us from all directions; asking us to show up with our “a” game. We often feel overwhelmed, stressed and sacrifice our own self-care rituals. This is the time to honor ourselves by taking time for self to ensure that we are able to be of service in the ways that we are asked. And sometimes that means simply taking a moment to be still, sleep an extra twenty minutes, not say yes to that invitation. And it also means communing with friends to eat warm fresh foods, receive your acupuncture treatments and take that restorative yoga classes you’ve always said you were going to give a shot. Try adding some simple routine into your day. Maybe it’s a qi-gong practice of 10 minutes a day, perhaps simply listening to just one song from your i-tunes library and dancing in your apartment, or smiling at at least one stranger a day even if it feels weird. These routines can keep us afloat in the present during this time of going inward and allow the process to happen while preventing us from getting stuck and sinking. It’s a common saying that Change is the only Constant, but how often do we feel stuck in our life? Acupuncture is a practice of freeing up the flow of energy along meridian pathways and kindly nudging the body, spirit, and mind closer to a harmonious rhythm. If you feel yourself getting stuck, make an appointment or do something that you know gets you out of “you” and reconnected to the larger universal flow. There are so many of us out here to help. Asking for help is a character attribute.
Love and light,
Beth
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