Or...how I became an acupuncturist
I was always drawn to helping people, and in high school explored the lives and cultures of people not like me. I read books about Africa and African American culture. I fell in love with Alice Walker and read every one of her books. When I had thoughts about a career, I knew I wanted to do something I really loved, that would support me and help others. After reading Walker’s Temple of the Familiar, it all came together. I would be a massage therapist like the characters in her book!
My journey to acupuncture and Chinese Medicine began as I was working towards my bachelor’s degree at Humboldt State, in the redwoods, by the ocean, in a major I designed around what I called Holistic Wellness. As part of my curriculum, I took a Western herbal class with a local acupuncturist and was so fascinated I asked if I could work as his apprentice while was in classes at Humboldt. He told me I needed to finish my bachelor’s degree and enter a master’s program in Chinese Medicine. Meanwhile, he let me work as a receptionist in his office, where one day, when I came to work with severe pain in my lower right abdomen, I saw firsthand the magic of Chinese Medicine in action. The acupuncturist treated me for an inflamed appendix with acupuncture and herbs. After follow-up acupressure treatments, I recovered and I have my appendix to this day! Chinese medicine works!
In the summer of 1998, I began my professional massage career at Villagio Inn and Spa in Yountville, working weekends at the Spa, and driving back to Humboldt for my last semester’s classes. It was an amazing experience to move into the body, to understand what tension and knots feel like, to know where I hold tension, and to begin to feel how qi flows throughout the body.
About a year after I graduated from college, a friend and I took a post-college trip to Thailand. We learned a few variations of Thai massage there and I ended up staying in Thailand for a year, immersing myself in the countryside with the people, farming, and learning the language. When I returned, I settled into a job as a massage therapist in Meadowood Napa Valley. At this point, you may wonder what happened to my hopes for an acupuncture career.
As life would have it, my guide was my dog, MoeJoe, who was suffering from bone cancer, and in my search for help for him, I learned of a St. Helena acupuncturist Kamala Dietz, who did acupuncture on animals—as well as people. Kamala showed me points to work on Moe. Once, she commented that I found the points and asked if I’d ever considered becoming an acupuncturist. Yes! And so, with her constant encouragement, I began my journey into Chinese Medicine at the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences in Berkeley. I was in love with what I was learning, the foundations of Chinese Medicine, the Dao, herbs, qigong, meridians, and point indications. Even as someone of a Western mind, I could understand the concepts in Chinese Medicine, as they are based in nature–– as above, so below, as outside, so inside. I got it all right away, even without reading Chinese or being able to understand the cultural implications of classical text.
Every summer, our teacher, Heiner Fruehauf, PhD, Lac, founding professor at the College of Classical Chinese Medicine at NUNM National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, took a group of mostly students from the school on a month-long journey to the Guangxi province in China. There, we were immersed in the Classical texts and practices of Chinese Medicine, from the I-Ching to the Shang Han Lun. We learned a form of qigong which we practiced every morning as the sun rose toward the temple in the mountains behind majestic rock formations that jutted into the sky almost like they were floating. We had classes every day discussing Classical texts, the Dao, and the rhythms of life. We fasted and learned about opening the portal of the Earth, we chanted in the temple in the evenings, and we drank delicious teas. It was magical! And so here I am, for the last fifteen years, an grateful acupuncturist––thanks to MoeJoe…and Kamala, and my teachers!
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