“Your body’s ability to heal is far, far greater than you’ve ever been permitted to believe.” – Mo Rosati
When I was a student in acupuncture school my energetics teacher used to say, “Acupuncture is like rolling your car out of a ditch.” I filed that saying away, thinking I would never use it, but after seeing my first few patients “roll out” of an injury or illness I began to use that phrase with every new patient I worked with.
Acupuncture utilizes the body’s own energy, which Chinese medicine calls Qi (“chi”), to restore the body to balance. Using small, carefully placed needles, acupuncture helps the body establish a healthy flow of Qi; the more healthy a person’s Qi, the quicker the body is to heal itself without outside assistance. Unlike many modern medications that are designed to treat symptoms rather than illnesses, acupuncture focuses on strengthening the body so that it is better able to cope with stress, sickness and injury.
Just like humans create the force that can rock a car out of a ditch, acupuncture creates the necessary impetus to let a body begin to heal itself. When your car is in a ditch the momentum that is created by slowly rocking it back and forth eventually carries the car over the lip of the incline. In the beginning, I tell my patients to get treated consistently, to provide that first “push;” once the body has developed enough inertia to maintain a healthy balance, then acupuncture has begun to do its job.