Acupuncture first needling

Sydney harbour last week...

Sydney harbour this week...

Feels like the beginning of Spring today, went for swim in the harbour after uni. Beautiful sunset.

First practical acupuncture workshop today! That means the first time for inserting needles…
Was a bit hesitant, as I must admit I do not like needles-who does? But medicine is not supposed to taste good if you know what I mean. We tried on ourselves first. Interestingly we were told to find a non-acupoint. Suddenly challenging as everything before that has been acupoint orientated even though there’s more skin than points! Pain-not as bad as I was worried about. At one point we were told to rotate the needle 360 degrees a few times. No pain. However try removing it- you cant! It gets stuck due to wrapped muscle tissue. Nothing worse than having a needle you feel as though can’t remove! This problem is solved by waiting a short time before removal. Another person told me they had practiced already: “On who?” I asked, her dog…
Anyway we progressed to pairing up and needling three points on some one else. Glad to report the whole process was zero drama and a lot easier than I had imagined.

“De Qi”, BTW, is the arrival of the Qi. This is the sensation felt with needling by the patient. A practitioner should notice it before the patient reports it and should be able to differentiate from any pain sensation!

Finally our lecturer, the ever up beat and non-cynical ( sarcasm) , he who must be obeyed ( own words, deserving of his own blog entry at some point) left us with this quote from one the greatest practitioners of the Qi “ Do or do not, there is no try”. Yoda.