Using acupuncture to increase your capacity to hold two opposing views at the same time.
Eastern medicine takes things as systems.
Western medicine focuses on specifics.
“INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON THE CHANGES IN A SINGLE AREA OF THE BRAIN, RESEARCHERS SHOULD FOCUS MORE ON THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG THE FUNCTIONAL CONNECTIVITY NETWORK OF BRAIN AREAS.”
When you examine one under the microscope of the other, it’s not going to yield the same results.
When I went to Rutgers for a post baccalaureate in Psychology (that’s when you go back to undergrad for another undergrad degree, in this case to assure that you have the proper training to move forward in a masters and doctorate program only to switch tracks yet again and land on acupuncture, obviously), I had a professor in a psychology and religion class who made a matter of fact point that has stuck with me:
YOU CANNOT COMPARE TWO THINGS THAT ARE ROOTED IN DIFFERENT PARADIGMS.
The basic tenets that are required to believe in the rest of the system are always different. So you can’t go on comparing religion and science, for instance, when they are based in two completely different paradigms.
Then he gave an example of belief within mathematics, in that you must accept the basic principles of the point, line, and plane in order for geometry to make sense.
You cannot question what a 90° angle is.
You cannot question what a 90° angle is. If you do, the rest of it is constantly uncertain and to a degree, nonsense.
So I brought this idea into my career in acupuncture and I look at research around acupuncture through this lens.
Western medicine consistently questions or is ignorant of the basic principles of Eastern medicine, and yet insists on studying from its own perspective.
When people say “I don’t believe in acupuncture,” I often respond with, “That’s ok, because it’s not a faith based medicine.”
But in a way it is, because all medicine is based in things you believe, so much so that they become fact.
Atoms. Molecules. We must take these as fact in order for biology to make sense, and in the quest for facts, we’ve developed science which many erroneously believe to be the creation of facts found in nature.
But that’s not even what science is. Science is the constant evolution of observing what is going on in nature, and nature is always changing and evolving. You see this spanning from human evolution on the whole to a micro level of spike proteins changing during viral mutations.
There’s a lot of “I believe in science” going around now, and there’s also a lot of “science is always changing” going around.
So want to know something wonderful? They are actually the same thing! Someone exasperatingly exclaiming that they don’t believe in science because it’s always changing is just a basic mistrust and lack of willingness to accept that one of the basic tenets of science is that it changes, based on new findings.
Chinese medicine too can be held in the same space, if afforded the flexibility we give to science, but not compare to it. That doesn’t lessen the efficacy of an acupuncture treatment. It just acknowledges the basic fact that the things that Eastern and Western medicine are rooted in are different.
And I hate to be the bearer of bad news for those of you who are generally unwilling to acknowledge structural inequality, so it’s unpopular opinion time: we also need to keep in mind that this whole idea that Western medicine is better than Eastern is rooted in patriarchy, racial superiority, and colonialism.
Western medicine tests Eastern medicine through its own standards and points of view, but we all know that if a mathematician is charged with drawing the sunset and then compared to a professional artist, that mathematician will leave a lot to be desired. And the opposite is true: we’re not expecting artists to do our taxes.
Einstein said that “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid,” and I can’t help but see that as the exact limitation western medicine is placing on its eastern counterpart, precisely because of institutionalized patriarchy which is an umbrella term for racism, colonialism, and misogyny.
So if you find yourself listening to the research on acupuncture: hey, believe me. I get it. I want to know the broken down ways in which it works, too. But I also examine the why behind that impulse. Why is a study that does away with the personalized aspect of the medicine in favor of systematized standards something that I’m going to look to in regards to if the medicine itself works?
Acupuncture lives in the space of nuanced experience, and how to experience acupuncture both in the moment in addition to how it builds on itself and affects your mind, body, and life are the real meat of the study.
Are you feeling better?
Is the pain less?
Are you more free of your anxiety?
Has the weight of depression lifted?
Can you think more clearly?
Can you work more productively?
Do you sleep better?
Has it helped you grow your family?
If so, then take the studies with a grain of salt. They are an entirely imperfect way to assess the qualitative nature of this medicine.
when two opposite points of view stress you out.
All of this leads me to the idea of holding and indeed utilizing two opposing points of view.
In Western medicine, the gallbladder is an organ — one that’s relatively expendable!
In Eastern medicine, the gallbladder is not only an organ but a channel, a caricature, and a metaphor for flexibility (and within that, a harbinger for what happens when you’re too resolute).
So when people come into my practice, stressed out about the holiday season, political viewpoints, public health viewpoints, parenting viewpoints…
What do some metaphorical gallbladder therapy:
See that this medicine comes from a different perspective than allopathic medicine and guess what? It helps you. Just like you and uncle Bob come from different ideological points of view.
Accept the fact that acupuncture is going to have a cascade effect within the body, so that the ability to accept different points of view has something comfortable to root and ground into. A watered down physiological rationale for that is that acupuncture calms your nervous system.
Know that the neuroimmunological effects of acupuncture cannot be adequately quantified through an empirical study and also know that the experience of your result with acupuncture is actually the thing that matters.
Leave space for breadth and flexibility of experience, because sometimes you come in for elbow pain and man, the emotional release was not expected! This is actually one of the main points of being human: different things happen, you cannot control everything, and that can be an ok thing.
ACKNOWLEDGE the “bad” thoughts. You know, the ones that are like “I wish I didn’t have kids” and “I hate uncle Bob” and even the frowned upon and shamed “I wish I didn’t exist,” because when we leave space for these thoughts just to be themselves, they turn out to be fleeting and when they have that space, they do that. They fleet. Flit. They stay true to their transient nature and git, and acupuncture can provide a space to allow that type of dissonance to safely occur.
I don’t have the empirical evidence to prove that acupuncture helps to make your own viewpoint more expansive, but I know firsthand and also from my revolving door of case studies for this to be true, so I accept it as a fact of the type of acupuncture that I practice.