Treatment Ideology

Hello everyone!

It has been a little while since I’ve posted. On the one hand I just didn’t have any more frequently asked questions on the top of my mind. And I’ve been spending my creative writing energies on posts to my personal social media instead of this work blog.

That said, I’m thinking some of the things I post on my personal accounts might be relevant here. Mainly these spiritual-psychological principles I feel are at the core of healing/growth. These perspectives are at the heart of my practice, so lets discuss them.

The following are a list of ideals I have for my practice. Which is to say they’re what I’m striving towards, not necessarily what I can always live up to.

Meet the patient where they’re at.

What this means to me is that I’m not expecting everyone to be a nutritionist, yoga teacher, or ready to make massive lifestyle changes tomorrow. It’s important that people know that they’re accepted first and foremost wherever they’re at in their healing journey and we can make some positive nudges if/when folks are ready.

Adapt to their needs

Very similar to the first, I really want to make space for patients to get the experience they’re looking for. While it is true I’m the one that went to school for this stuff, I think its just as important to recognize the innate wisdom in having lived your own life. If, for example, your nervous system feels a lot better chatting for half the treatment, most of the time I think that’s exactly what we should do. Conversely, I seek to frequently create spaces where we can fall into a comfortable silence as that often seems helpful.

Lets go at the pace of your nervous system

This is one I harp on a lot in practice. While there’s certainly work to do physically or energetically through massage/acupuncture, establishing a sense of safety in your nervous system is my priority. I honestly have a challenging time when patients seem to be asking me to override their nervous system, wanting harder/more intense treatments than I think are ideal. In this case I often try to find a new balance between the request (adapting to where they’re at) and my sense that a gentler approach would be more effective.

Let’s practice listening to your body

While there are plenty of times I’ll use my knowledge of the body to translate for example back pain into a potential hip-origin, or translate leg pain into sciatic nerve pain, very often its helpful to work exactly where the nervous system is pointing. There’s a lot of wisdom inherent to how our systems are set up, so listening to those cues, many patients can tell me when something feels like “exactly what I need” or “a good kind of pain”. Similarly, if someone notices they’re guarding or feeling more tense because of what I’m doing, I want to hear that feedback so we can find a new avenue of approach.

Overall

Zooming out almost entirely, I believe the core of life is loving awareness. Ultimately each of us is responsible for bringing loving awareness to ourselves. But when I’m working, I practice extending that loving awareness to another individual.

To be clear, this “love” is the type known as Metta in Pali, which translates to “loving-kindness,” “benevolence,” or “friendliness”.

I think this combination of witnessing and accepting is at the core of the healing process. And I think practicing giving metta to ourselves helps us give it to others and practicing giving metta to others helps us give it to ourselves.

That said,

I didn’t go to school for nothing. There’s still specific points and techniques I’m performing each visit. I look to assess your needs and provide the best treatment I know how, drawing on my knowledge and experience. And this really is good news because it means even if I’m having a rough day, the acupuncture points and massage techniques do have their own distinct effects. Thankfully, treatment outcomes ultimately do not depend on me having perfect vibes with every patient every day. Sometimes the best I can do is just let the practice speak for itself.

Bonus

Just wanted to share that while I’ve used ChatGPT to help fill out the majority of my blog posts, this one is AI-free. So the formatting a readability takes a bit of a hit, but I am happy to share that this one is straight from my heart to the keyboard to you.