The festive season can be both fun and a physically, mentally and emotionally taxing time, but there are tools you can use to keep your spirits and energy up. While acupuncture may be the opposite of your idea of a good time, Dr. Catherine Shaw, is an acupuncturist but also holds the title of Dr. of Traditional
Chinese medicine, a title that is held in high regard amongst people from the country of it’s origin. Shaw says acupuncture can be a very helpful tool for feeling better but, “there is no single prescription for stress or exhaustion.”
Dr. Shaw says that trying to explain acupuncture in western terms is inadequate. “It’s been around for a long time, and is used in a great deal of the world.“ She says, in the simplest terms, that acupuncture “has to do with the circulation of chi in the body and in all levels of our beings; mental, physical and emotional. “ She adds that “we are naturally moved toward health and wellness,” but sometimes, there is imbalance. Dr. Shaw says that by stimulating the systems in the body, acupuncture can help alleviate or reduce pain and improve sleep and flu-fighting capacity.
Shaw cautions that ”to try to explain how acupuncture works in western terms makes it smaller than it is.” With origins that date back thousands of years, Chinese medicine incorporates both acupuncture and herbal remedies.
Shaw has empirical evidence of the efficacy of acupuncture. Having treated thousands of people and seeing results with every treatment, she is emphatic. “It works.”
Whether it is stress, headaches or sleeplessness, Shaw looks for the underlying cause for the symptom and looks for multiple clues to health challenges. “Acupuncture can help with stress,” she says, but if a chronic situation is the trigger, it may be that other outside support is also needed. ”It depends on the underlying illness and stressors.“
Before beginning a treatment Shaw does an assessment including patient history, asks questions, does a pulse diagnosis, which is not just about the rate of the pulse, but how the blood-flow feels to her touch. She also inspects the condition of the tongue, which can indicate imbalances.
“The flu is a big area of treatment in Chinese medicine, especially since antibiotics can’t be used for viruses.” The doctor often combines more than one modality in her treatments. With the flu, or jet lag, she has herbal medicine that can help. In the case of travelers who head off somewhere hot for the holidays, then return to the winter weather, it is hard on the body, as if jumping from winter into summer and back. Treatment addresses the need for the body to adapt to the extreme changes.
Shaw says that because every condition has so many variables, as with headaches or stress, the exact treatment and length of time for the treatment depends on the individual’s history and situation. Headaches may seem like a straightforward result of holiday stress, “but seemingly simple kinds of things are not simple. Often they are complicated, and a sign of imbalance.” She does observe however, that with treatment, “most people will feel much better right away.”
How needles poking into various places on the body can bring relief to another part of the body is difficult to understand, but the results are remarkable. Shaw became interested in Chinese medicine when acupuncture cleared up her severe allergies. Shaw studied in the US, Europe and Canada as well as traveling a month in China. Prior to becoming a doctor, Shaw had been a lawyer. Now Shaw is a long-term community health advocate who has a gentle and nurturing approach with her patients.
The ultra-fine needles are inserted at locations that correlate to internal systems. The needles will stay in from just a moment to half an hour, sometimes as Shaw touches them for greater stimulation to that point. Every patient has a different sensation during acupuncture and each visit will be different. Sometimes treatment will trigger an emotional release ranging from tears to laughter. A patient may feel almost no prick from the needle on one occasion and feel it powerfully the next. A needle will go into one part of the body and another part may have a sensation while an entire system responds.
Difficult as it is for western thinking to understand acupuncture, it brings relaxation, relief and healing to a wide variety of people on a daily basis. Shaw understands that the idea of having numerous needles inserted into the skin may not appeal to some. For those people, there are massage techniques, finger pressure, electrical stimulation, lasers and moxibustion, which heats up and stimulates the points that would otherwise be stimulated by a super-fine needle. “I don’t use lasers or electrical,” says Shaw, who sees her patients one at a time, patiently monitoring their responses. She also will not use needles on children.
Part of the stress during the holidays, the doctor observes, is that we are “out of harmony with the seasons.” There is increased activity and agitation when this would naturally be a period of rest and recovery. “If you think about a plant, in the winter the energy goes into the seed or the roots so it can burst into new life in the spring. “ Shaw suggests that winter is traditionally a time of going inside, and turning inward. Instead, people may not take time to regenerate and feel burnt out. “Winter festivals are about eating together, and about building up our internal light and fire. When we are expending all our energy externally, we fall out of harmony with the natural rhythms of the season.”
Essentially, winter is naturally a time to slow down so that we can emerge transformed in spring. For most of us however, cocooning will just have to wait another month.
Acupuncture can help with your energy flow and balance your chi. If nothing else, when you go for a treatment, you get half a hour of lying down and doing nothing which, in itself, can be wonderfully grounding.
