Finding Alignment in Your Life
So you want to make a change in your life, but you’re not sure what to do, and something is off… Or maybe you have very specific goals in mind, like starting a family, but are having difficulty conceiving? For thousands of years, people have been practicing meditation and acupuncture, with origins in Asia, and have found healing, inspiration, clarity, and life direction from these things.
Traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncturists, and Buddhist monks/nuns and meditation teachers have been helping individuals align themselves with their life direction, their personal, physical, mental, and spiritual goals, and heal short-term and long-term ailments.
In Chinese medicine, “qi” is a life energy that flows along “meridians,” and when blocked, imbalance and disease occur. While acupuncture was first mentioned in The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine in 100 BC, it is believed acupuncture was practiced as early as 6000 BC in ancient China. Scientific discourse on acupuncture is constantly evolving, seeking to explain why and how acupuncture works. It is believed that needle insertion at specific points of the human body leads to the release of endorphins, encouraging circulation and overall stimulation of the central nervous system. This in turn is thought to explain why acupuncturists have success in pain management and stress reduction.
What’s also important to note about acupuncture is that it treats the person as a whole, and draws on the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang. Yin and yang can be described as oppositional forces which form a whole. It is believed in Chinese medicine that health is an ongoing fluctuating balance of Yin and Yang in a person, and in all things. What is cold and hot, is to health and imbalance in Chinese medicine.
Health, diet, exercise, daily life all affect our hormones, gut health and fertility. On a deeper level however, when we think about the direction we want our life to take, sometimes obstacles come in the way whether it’s physical, mental, spiritual, or even financial. Personal goals such as simply self love or compassion, compassion for others, feeling positive about one’s life, healing from trauma or even taking the next big life step can feel challenging and working with a certified acupuncturist can be highly beneficial.
Working with a certified acupuncture therapist is almost like working with an energetic life coach, in some cases acupuncturists are also life coaches. If you want to achieve something, wellness or something intangible, you first must come in alignment with yourself.
So what about meditation and why do so many people turn to it in this day and age? Many acupuncturists also offer meditation techniques as they work with you to cultivate a mind/body connection.
Professor and neuroscientist Richard Davidson offers research and insight into the positive effects of mediation in working with the world renowned Dalai Lama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Davidson, who studies the effects of meditation on the brain, embarked on a mission to find out the brain activity of those with high levels of well being and such, studied Buddhist monks. What he found was not only do long term meditators rebound better from stress than novice meditators, but that the act of practicing inner compassion and gratitude had an effect on how they interact with each other.
What does this mean for those wanting to change their life direction or take a leap into the next big step of their life? Well, as life is full of stressors and uncertainties, Davidson’s research suggests that long term meditation has positive effects in battling such stressors. Thus, this can be applied to any area of one’s life whether it’s work, a new job, moving, loss, trauma, home life, an IVF transfer or post-partum life.
As Clifford Saron stated, who worked on a long term meditation project with Davidson called the Shamatha Project, “people are experiencing a lot of psychological stress without relief…It’s not that meditation is so special; it’s like permission to do something natural.” As Saron points out, culturally we as a people are suffering from stress and not searching for solutions that are really within our powers to find.
In a 2010 speech at the Society for Neuroscience in Washington D.C., the Dalai Lama spoke about a concept called ‘neuroplasticity’ and urged researchers to study the brain imaging of Tibetan monks as well. What is neuroplasticity? When an individual experiences changes in the brain due to a response from an experience this is what we refer to as ‘neuroplasticity.’ It’s been purported that meditation is essentially no different than other types of skills that one can pick up, and ultimately create ‘plastic changes in the brain.’ If research suggests that new connections can be made in the brain, plastic changes, then why aren’t more people doing it? Whether it’s acupuncture or meditation, or a combination of both, the evidence is there to suggest that these practices can help one not only get into a healthy headspace to start a new chapter in their life, but help the body to naturally heal itself.
They say the body remembers, or keeps a headcount when it comes to trauma and loss. Just as evidence suggests that people can create new connections in the brain, one can alter their perspective on a traumatic event in their life as feelings come and go about it.
Starting a family is a big step in one’s life, and comes with many changes. For people who give birth, postpartum depression is a challenge that can be treated with acupuncture. Acupuncture offers a highly personalized treatment plan for the individual, and can complement Western psychiatric practices. In the case of postpartum depression, individuals like acupuncture while lactating as they are concerned with harm to the infant due to drugs they might be taking otherwise.
In our world of kanban boards, apps to organize our lives, products marketed and sold to us to help health, it’s important to look at ourselves as whole beings. We are yin and yang, and capable of creating new mental patterns with consistent meditation.
Instead of feeling like you’re walking a tight rope to find the balance in your life, seeking an acupuncturist can help you gracefully find healing and mind/body connection.
So what are you waiting for, start today!
https://www.pacificcollege.edu/news/blog/2021/06/03/benefits-of-acupuncture
https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/yin-and-yang
