Maatwerk voor je gezondheid, natuurlijk
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An elderly man came to me with a strong desire to quit smoking. Having smoked his entire life, he knew it would easier said than done. Since every addiction arises from an underlying need, I asked him when he felt the strongest urge to smoke.
“That’s when I feel very irritable,” he said. “I smoke to suppress that feeling.”
...“What makes you feel so irritable?” I asked.
“I start feeling really irritable when people keep asking me if I can help them with this or that,” he replied.
He had spent his life as a captain and owner-engineer in the commercial shipping industry. His work ethic was not to slack off, but to always to keep going and push through. This was often fuelled by coffee and cigarettes. Rest had never seemed to be an option for him. However, now that he has stopped sailing and is approaching retirement age, he has less work and more free time.
Because he is extremely skilled and able to fix or create almost anything, many people lean on him when they need something done. In the past, saying no was out of the question, so they continued to expect his help. For him, as a captain, he saw admitting that he felt overloaded as a sign of weakness, making it almost impossible to address the root of the problem.
In reality, recognizing and expressing overload is a sign of strength—it means that you are taking good care of yourself.
Together we worked on seeing irritability as a signal of overload and an opportunity to say no, instead of reaching for a cigarette. Additionally, I saw him several other times and used ear acupuncture to help calm his nervous system.
He is making progress, setting clearer boundaries, and now smokes only three cigarettes a day—an amount he feels comfortable with.
Acupuncture can support the process of quitting smoking.
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...A woman comes to me with menopausal symptoms. She has a full schedule and has put a lot of pressure on herself. But after a number of treatments, she feels better about herself and is more in touch with her needs.
She says: “I looked at my busy schedule and thought, this is ridiculous. So, I’ve cancelled half of my appointments.” A while later, she realises that she doesn’t like her job anymore either: “The contact with my customers drains me completely.”
A short time later, she has a new job with contacts that give her energy.
When you are in stress mode, you are often no longer in contact with your real needs. The nervous system is in fight-or-flight mode and every action becomes a ‘must’. When you relax into the resting position, you can feel where the need lies; not from a feeling of ‘must’, but from a sense of ‘being’.
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They both enjoy this treatment. Her son reminds her that she used to massage him all the time and that he had liked it so much. She looks at him and says, “I think I’ve lost track of you a little lately.”
The way they look at each other with such happiness really moves me.
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...This is the first and, to date, the only time in my acupuncture practice that I have ever made such a proposal.
Normally, I treat clients with pain complaints once or twice a week in the beginning. In this way, the treatment can build on the effects of the previous treatment and you will ultimately need fewer treatments.
But this case is exceptional: this young student cut her index finger on a broken glass and the scar fused with the nerve. Although the scar and nerve were separated, two years down the line the nerve pain still shoots from the finger to the shoulder. It’s impossible for her to sleep for more than an hour at a time becauseof the pain. She has difficulty planning activities, because the pain might resurge and then she is unable to do anything.
So, I begin treatment on the healthy finger. The pain immediately subsides for a few hours and then returns. When I treat her again later in the week, the pain has returned in full force. This calls for drastic measures. I tell her that treating her twice a week will not bring any lasting results and that it will be a waste of time and money if I keep having to go back to the starting blocks after each treatment.
When I propose treating her six times a week, she decides to go for it!
So, she comes for treatment six times a week for two weeks, then the following week she comes three times, followed by two treatments the week after that.
The treatment stops and except for a very slight stinging sensation in her index finger, which she can live with, the nerve pain has completely disappeared. She can sleep again and is pain-free for a year.
But after a year, she comes back to the practice because the pain has returned in full force. We immediately start treatments six times a week, but this time the pain does not significantly lessen with each treatment. So, my conclusion is that there must be something that structurally continues to irritate that nerve. I tell her that I think that there might still be glass in that finger.
Her surgeon checks it out and discovers that there are still two pieces of glass in her finger.They are removed and at Christmas I get a card from her saying that she is doing well now.
This anecdote illustrates the importance of a well-coordinated frequency of treatment. It also proves how effective acupuncture is without directly pricking the painful area. And it shows that acupuncture can’t eliminate mechanical blockages.
Therefore both Chinese and western medicine care are essential.
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Now I understand what’s going on and I can explain it to her step by step using the meaning of Yin and Yang:
Yin is the dark side of the mountain
and Yang Is the sunny side of the mountain.
Yin is cold
and Yang is warm.
Yin – cold becomes a more physical, solid presence (just like water turns into ice under the influence of cold)
Yang – heat becomes increasingly rarefied (like water turns into steam under the influence of heat)
The bodily fluids are Yin (matter).
The moving energy and the mind are Yang (rarefied).
Yin and Yang balance each other in the body.
If there is a lack of Yin, there is a lack of bodily fluids.
Then Yin can no longer control the Yang in the body.
If Yang is not under control, the tenuous moving energy flies out of control. This manifests itself in great restlessness or in rising heat in the form of hot flashes or short tempers.
If you exercise fanatically every day and go to the sauna, you lose a lot of bodily fluids and therefore a lot of Yin. And that, in this case, causes Yang to boil over.
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...Sometimes you just can’t fall asleep and often the solution lies in everyday things.
A youthful older lady tells me that she can’t sleep because of the pain in her shoulder. During the day, she can do everything with the shoulder and it doesn’t bother her at all. At rest, it’s a different story. This is a sign of stagnation. But the afternoon nap she takes on the couch bothers her much less than when she sleeps in her bed. As an experiment, I ask her to take the cushion she uses on the couch to bed. And truly, I get a relieved text from her saying that her shoulder is much less painful.
It’s always useful to tackle undermining factors during treatment as well.
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...In the winter of 1997 I witnessed a special spectacle at the start of the Eleven Cities Tour – the ultimate cross-country ice skating race through eleven northern cities. A man, in his forties, sportily dressed, is eager to start this two-hundred-kilometre skating race.
He steps onto the ice and with quick, powerful strokes he sprints towards the finish line that he mentally can already see in front of him. However, he doesn’t move an inch, but he doesn’t realize that, focused as he is. People shout at him: ‘Hey dude, you still have your skate protectors on’. After a one-minute sprint, the penny drops. With heavy legs and freed from skate protectors, he continues his race.
I am reminded of this event when I treat a man who returns to work after a burn out. He is very reluctant to open his laptop for the first time and, well prepared as he is, has resolved to only do things that have priority.When he opens his laptop, in no time he’s doing tasks that don’t take priority and that he hadn’t set out to do. His brain is focused on ‘the finish’ and the connection with his body is lost.
I ask him to open my laptop as an experiment and feel where the tension is in his body. He can clearly feel it around his diaphragm. I ask him where he experiences peace in his body. He feels it in his feet. I then ask him if he can feel a connection between the diaphragm and the feet. He succeeds and now feels a lot calmer behind the laptop.
By connecting with his body in this way, he can avoid starting the marathon called work with a sprint that puts his whole body in stress mode. Landing in his body prevents him from sprinting like an unguided missile towards the endless horizon. And so he can set the right pace for the work marathon without getting heavy legs.
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...During treatment a client remarks: ‘You look so satisfied, as if you are working on a work of art’. I say: ‘But you are a work of art’. She agrees.
I really think a body is a work of art. The fact that a human being is created from a sperm cell and an egg cell and all those cells work together to create that is amazing. You can look at it from different angles: morphogenic cells that determine how a body is formed, intelligent energy or Qi or the creation or God. Whatever you want to call it, it’s a miracle. We should stand in awe because it is truly something to marvel at.