Tuesday, July 23, 2013

East meets west: acupuncture, part II

This morning I had my second round of acupuncture, this time with the fertility lady, Candace.  She burned my tummy and gave me pills.

Okay, what she did was burn herbs on my tummy.  The process is called moxibustion, a procedure in Eastern medicine wherein dried mugwort (she showed me a baggie and it looked just like weed) is rolled up thin, then laid across certain pressure points and lit to attract or generate energy in that area.  In this case, Candace laid several around my abdomen, with the intention of drawing energy to my uterus.  (According to Wikipedia and the acupuncture site I linked above, sometimes this is used to turn babies in the breech position.  Wow.) 

It was pretty low-key, to be honest.  Candace had started with some light acupuncture, explaining that my pulses weren't in balance (and she checked both my wrists a lot).  She placed needles in my feet and ankles, then some behind my knees, some in my wrists, and one at the top of my head.  After a few minutes, she came back, taking out some needles and replacing some others.  Then she swiped some ointment on my abdomen, then laid out the rolls of mugwort.  I couldn't see all that well, but she had one little incense stick (or, that's how it looked) that she used to light the mugwort, and what looked like a hollowed-out cigar to snuff it out.  I felt heat, but nothing direct.

I'm not even sure what happened, only that I find it entirely believable that I'm short on qi/energy.  Apparently it is not normal when you're comfortable sleeping 12 hours a day.  I don't, but I could.  So, you know, I'm cool if Candace wants to burn stuff on my stomach if that moves some energy around. 

Candace packed me off with some herbs.  Eight pills, three times a day.  That sounds super-crazy, but the pills look like miniature malt balls and aren't much trouble to take-- counting them out is as bad as it gets.

I go back to Candace in two weeks.  By then, we'll know what's up.

No comments:

Post a Comment