healing – Huwe Acupuncture

Gratitude = the New Guilt… But You Don’t Have to Buy It.

It’s November… and you know the Script, right? It’s all about the gratitude.

It’s the time of year I am supposed to effuse about the WONDERFUL things in my life, and how #grateful and #blessed I am. (With a parenthetical, often unvoiced hope that this process will attract more wonderful things into my life, and shove the crappy stuff out of the picture.)

To not talk (and post) about gratitude would be, you know, ungrateful.

It would be negative.

And privileged.

And generally obnoxious.

As an acupuncturist and a writer, my assumed part in this narrative is to describe what’s naturally happening in the fall, and how we can experience and cultivate gratitude. To wax philosophical about acknowledging what’s precious and valuable to us, and letting go of what serves us no longer.

In deference to the Script, I’ll suggest that we let go of the Script. I don’t think it’s serving us.

The Pressure of the “Attitude of Gratitude.”

Here’s what I’m noticing, both in the clinic and in the world: somehow gratitude has become the new guilt.

#Gratitude has acquired a hashtag. People are worrying if they’re #gratituding enough, if they’re doing it right.

When something crappy happens, they wonder if they’ve attracted it through a lack of gratitude. With their karma. Maybe because they don’t hold a state of mental purity, of eternal gratitude. And what about their chakras? Probably they’re filthy. Or is that the aura? Crap.

#Gratitude has become a weapon to beat ourselves up with – to prod us to some sort of finish line of personal growth. It covers up a few nagging fears.

While it may not be conscious, I think the train of thought driving this Gratitude Self-Abuse is that we believe we don’t deserve our own happiness. We believe we don’t deserve our #blessings. We must prove – to ourselves and to each other – that through our unyielding, relentless application of gratitude, we have earned the beauty of life.

Most major religions would object to that part that says we must earn the beauty of life.

Earning the beauty of life isn’t our job; honoring it is.
But #Gratituding has an agenda:

Make the Crappy Stuff Go Away.
Earn the Beautiful Stuff.

It is denial. It’s denial hyped up on an energy drink after 5 hours of sleep for a week straight. It’s intense, in other words. It’s trying to force a feeling of gratitude where there isn’t one. It fails to honor. It fails to pause and notice.

Honoring Beauty → Spontaneous Gratitude

Honoring beauty is the simple action that leads to gratitude. I’d say it basically means “notice with respect and humility.”

When we notice the beauty in our lives without pausing to quiz ourselves about whether or not we deserve it (or justifying why we do deserve it,) we naturally feel grateful.

Then actual gratitude just… arises. Spontaneously. Like magic! It’s not a thing we have to apply to our lives or do to ourselves.

It can be really, really simple to honor beauty and feel gratitude.

You don’t need any supplies, but if you like them – go for it. An altar, a journal, a photo… whatever works for you. All that’s actually required is an openness of the senses.

Or even just one of the senses.

Here’s an example, using the sense of sight:

Notice the beauty in small, quotidian things.
- I see an intricate bird’s nest outside my window.

Bam. That’s all you need to do with your outward senses. Now the rest of it becomes internal:

Feel the feelings that arise when you notice small, quotidian things.
- What a peaceful feeling that bird’s nest gives me.
- I love seeing life that’s outside of my own life.
- I’m in awe of that tiny bird’s craftsmanship.

And that’s all you need to do on the inside. Just allow the feelings to arise, and feel them. If you want to, you can then:

Notice how those feelings can create more of the same feelings.
- - Wow… I can just *think* about that bird’s nest and feel peaceful. I only need to see it in my mind’s eye, and I can benefit from it.
Now I’m noticing similarly beautiful things – like that spider’s web. Or the ripple of the new butter in the tub.

Honoring beauty can take practice, and so it deserves your patience and self-kindness. Which is, I think, the actual point of any practice.

Wishing y’all well,

PS – What About the Bad Feelings?

If we allow ourselves to feel the bad feelings, won’t we just attract more bad feelings?

Denying the “bad feelings” will never make them go away. Denial doesn’t allow things to change, because it keeps stuffing them down. And so they keep popping back up. If there’s an endless loop of nasty chatter in your mind, you can rest assured that denial is in there somewhere.

I think it’s true that wallowing in bad feelings can create more bad feelings, but that’s not the same as feeling your feelings. You know the saying, “You have to feel it to heal it?” Feeling something is the first part of being able to let it go. There are lots of safe ways and modalities to help a person do that without self-injury.

XO,
MBH

These writings are an exploration of what it means to be human – to be sick, to be well, and to heal – viewed through the lens of acupuncture and, occasionally, herbal medicine.

My words aren’t medical advice. And they aren’t meant to be the final word on… well, anything. Rather, I hope they are a beginning of a conversation you have with someone in your life. Thanks for reading!

How to Keep the World from Getting You Down

by Mary Beth Huwe

For a recording of me reading this post to you, click here.

There’s a new disease going around, and boy howdy… it is communicable.

I first noticed it affecting some of my patients in 2009 during my clinical internship in acupuncture school. In the intervening years, the illness has become virtually omnipresent in my circles; almost every adult I encounter suffers from one or more of the symptoms.

Continue reading “How to Keep the World from Getting You Down”

My briefcase is like acupuncture

by Mary Beth Huwe

For a recording of me reading this post to you, click here.

I hate to brag. I really do. It makes me uncomfortable and hot around the collar… and various other regions. So it’s not braggadocio – but just good, old-fashioned, unbiased reporting – when I tell you that my briefcase unites people, and is a metaphor for life and healing.

Ready?

#1: She’s A Family Heirloom

The briefcase was originally my dad’s. Dad believes objects are made to be used up. There’s a lot of wisdom and carpe diem-ing in that philosophy. It also means that we are judicious when purchasing gifts for him.

This briefcase, miraculously, escaped the Dad Treatment. It came to me in fabulous, mint condition. Dad describes it as “burgundy.” To my eyes, it is purple with pink stitching. It’s as though she was, lo these many years, purchased just for me.

She was not. She was purchased for Dad, who doesn’t conceive of her as a “she.” He quite merrily used this briefcase indifferent to its having a gender. And I love that.

I love that we can both use the same item, 30 years apart from each other – but at the same point in our lives (our 30s) – and that we can see that item differently.

It’s not unlike what we, as people, can do with our inherited health and characteristics. We can have endlessly different orientations to the similarities we share.

#2: She’s Wildly Relevant in Modernity

Pockets! Flaps! Not too many, not too few!

This lady is vintage with wicked-useful applications, even in today’s world. Her pockets are the perfect size for files, my phone, my business cards, my travel size tissues. Her flaps hold an appropriate number of files, and she will not permit me to nonsensically pack her with more work than I need or can achieve. My Mac fits in there perfectly, and has the added benefit of being padded and protected.

Her “oldness” doesn’t make her irrelevant. It makes her practical. And savvy. She is tried-and-true. In all of these ways, she is like acupuncture.

#3. She’s a Head-Turner and a Heart-Cheerer

People comment upon my briefcase nearly everyday. There’s a certain neighborhood coffee shop I frequent, where strangers look up from the phones or conversations to say, “Wow. I love your briefcase.”

Friends know me by it. Contained in this baby is a world of possibility – a system of organization that can support unbridled creativity. Just like . . . acupuncture.

…

These writings are an exploration of what it means to be human – to be sick, to be well, and to heal – viewed through the lens of acupuncture and, occasionally, herbal medicine. These writings aren’t medical advice. And they aren’t meant to be the final word on… well, anything. Rather, I hope they are a beginning of a conversation you have with someone in your life. Thanks for reading! ~MBH

Under the People Umbrella

by Mary Beth Huwe

Sometimes I think of people – all of the people, I mean – as being under an umbrella together. We might squawk about who should hold it and how, which way it makes the most sense to stand, what the weather is doing or is going to do, who most deserves to be under the umbrella, etc.

But in general, we’re attracted to each other and share a certain sameness. In the end, we usually agree that we’d rather be under the people umbrella together than under the wild hyena umbrella or the umbrella of reproduction by budding. Things like that.

In other words, even though we all fall under the same umbrella we have a variety of differences within our intrinsic sameness. We all know this to some degree, I think, though we may surround ourselves with people Very Much Like Ourselves. When we do that, our interactions can become reinforcement for what we already know.

And that can be limiting, like sitting in a beautiful place and staring at your phone.

But some people get hands-on experience with the differences in people and I feel lucky to be among them. The way that I see people – namely from my lens as an acupuncturist – is a way that I choose and a way that I’m good at.

So there’s a safety within the structure that allows me to deeply interact with people whose life experiences and umbrella opinions are wildly different from my own.

Typically, there’s a sameness/difference occurrence in the way that people respond to treatment. It’s generally in one of four ways. I have found that, educated though my guess may be, I can only guess how a person is going to respond to treatment. This is especially true for the first treatment, when I’m just getting to know how that person’s body appropriates its resources and priorities.

But the ways people respond are not predictable by (the oft oppressive) class, gender, race, socioeconomic background, or any other way we group ourselves or each other. Those groupings may somehow color or otherwise affect the response, but they don’t dictate it.

I find this beautifully reassuring and reductive. The millionaire and the miner can be together under the umbrella in a different, more human way. To that I say, Wow. Just, wow.

Do I have to believe in acupuncture for it to work?

by Mary Beth Huwe

People often ask me if they must “believe” in acupuncture to receive its benefits. The short answer is “no.” Belief is not required in order for the needles to do their work. You don’t have to know what qi is, or that your gallbladder has acupuncture points on your foot. Many people who have experienced great relief initially came to us feeling either very skeptical or completely unsure of the process.

That being said, there are ways you can participate in the healing process, and actually enhance it. This primarily starts when you begin connecting the dots between your acupuncture treatment and how you feel when you’re not on the table. Similar to exercise and meditation, acupuncture increases a person’s physical and mental awareness – both as independent forces (“Wow, my balance is better. Wow, my mind is clearer,”) and as related entities (“Gee, when I feel anxious, my stomach is also upset.”)

We also notice that people accelerate and enhance their healing when they rid themselves of the negative things in their lives – whether it’s giving up fast-food, getting out of a moldy house, leaving an unfulfilling job, or dropping a miserable relationship. Each of these things powerfully reinjures the qi on a daily basis. Removing such things from one’s life is a powerful augmentation of acupuncture’s benefits.

You can also sabotage your progress. This is quite common in the beginning; people unintentionally run themselves down after they start feeling good again. It can take a little practice, getting used to managing the renewed sense of health. But it’s worth doing; otherwise it’s kind of like winning the lottery and blowing it all – fun, but ultimately a bummer.

And sometimes – this is a bit more complicated – people unconsciously slow their progress because they’re actually more comfortable feeling terrible than feeling great. It’s like the old saying, “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.” A familiar routine is comforting, and changing that routine can be frightening … even if you hate the routine. Acupuncture can be very helpful in untangling this kind of pattern.

Healing Home – My Messy Beautiful

Healing Home – My “Messy Beautiful”

by Mary Beth Huwe

About three weeks ago, we announced to our patients and community that we’re moving out-of-state.

There’s freedom and beauty and excitement all wrapped up in this decision. As a result, my heart feels expansive and winged – not manic wings that flutter so many times per second that they’re a blur. Instead, these feel like strong, fearless, soaring wings – bird of prey wings that belong to a creature who will, if it must, eat the eyeballs out of evil and doubt. It’s lovely.

And yet, I also feel a bit raw and exposed, somehow. I think it’s because this tiny town is my home; when I say tiny, I’m measuring it about right. I can stand on top of graveyard hill and see the whole thing.

And you can see clear across town, too. That's it. — And you can, too. That’s about it.

Frankly, I never intended to come back here to live. But three years ago I did, bringing with me my infant and my husband and fellow acupuncturist. We set up shop and I commenced to stemming an internal freak-out. Who was I to run a business? Would anybody come get acupuncture in this conservative town of 350 people? (Well, 353 if you counted us.) Who would drive from surrounding areas that are perceived as so far away? Would people think we were peddling snake oil? Would they talk about us in line at the bank? Or worse, would we be such a non-event that they wouldn’t talk about us in line at the bank?

In short, I felt very vulnerable and very small. I was also not at all small, because I was the first-time mother of a nursing 3-month-old. None of my pregnancy clothes fit, and none of my pre-pregnancy clothes fit. I had begun to fully appreciate the extent to which my body had transformed. It’s not simply that it was a bigger body than the one I had before. It was a completely different body. To the casual observer, all parts were still in the same places, but to me – the inhabiting presence of the body – the change was discombobulating.

This was fine. Poetic, even. I’m good with the idea of shifting into a different state of being after giving birth. It’s kind of like a badge of honor for growing and fetching a baby from the ether. But still, it ain’t easy. Knowing that parenthood changes people and experiencing that transformation is like the difference between looking at a picture of a stargazer lily and smelling one. Big, in other words. And visceral.

My viscera were getting a pounding, for sure. Our daughter was born in our final few months of a four-year grad school program, and in order to graduate I was back at classes full-time when she was two weeks old. We had achingly generous help from corners unlooked upon, as well as corners well-traveled. We got our diplomas, got our licenses, and got on with it. Outwardly I was more or less together. Inwardly, I was more or less a wiggly-legged colt, excited and quivering to try out my new life.

And it turned out that people did come for acupuncture. The beauty of helping one person is that word-of-mouth becomes unclenched, and it travels. I watched with fascination as the schedule filled. Lots of the names belonged to people I’ve known casually all my life. These were people whose faces were part of my childhood backdrop. They were the grown-ups when I was little. I had called them Mrs. Ma’am and Mr. Sir, and now I was doing things like asking about their bodily functions and putting needles in their toes. Just as treating them let me know them in a fuller way, preparing to leave is helping me understand more about healing and being present to the things that are hard – and how those two are related.

Presence and healing are ideas I consider often. If I didn’t, I should have a different job. Being an acupuncturist means that I am routinely sitting in rooms with people who are, to varying degrees, suffering. And who have, also to varying degrees, made themselves vulnerable.

Just by being there, they have admitted something’s wrong, and they have opened themselves to a medicine they don’t understand. People come to see me because they are hurting in some capacity. Maybe they have constant knee pain, or panic attacks, or nightsweats, or a rash that came on after the death of a loved one. Maybe they’ve been written off as crazy or incurable in another form of medicine. Maybe they cannot reconcile their actual lives with the lives they yearn for.

In some way, something isn’t right for them, and they’re coming to me with the hope that we can sort it out. And most of the time, they have absolutely no idea what I’m fixing to do, or why it works. Or even if it works. Some of them wonder if it’s magic or all in their heads.

But there they are – asking me to put teensy pins in their bodies and talking to me about their bowels, their dreams, their menstruation, their anger, their cancer, their fears, their various appetites, their allergies.

The trust this demonstrates continues to humble me, and though it is indeed my routine to be in rooms with people in this way, there is nothing rote about it. It’s part of my self-imposed duty to genuinely engage with people through their suffering. This isn’t work to do on an empty stomach or after a terrible night’s sleep. Nor is it work that is always taken very seriously by others. But it’s work I’m honored to do. And when people can tell me about their well-being and challenges without having to first say, “You’ll probably think I’m crazy, but…” I feel like doing a little celebration dance for us all.

Being an acupuncturist is my venue for exploring what it means to be human. I’m thrilled to have found it. I remember sitting outside as a child, quite literally contemplating my navel and lying very, very, very still on the grass because I thought I could feel the earth move. In other words, the world is fascinating to me, and I thrive when I find sincere people to examine it with me.

At their initial visit to the clinic, people often say apologetically, “I’m a mess.” That’s a judgment, of course, and in some ways is completely irrelevant. In other ways, though, it’s highly pointed and informative, because it tells me that this person has an expectation that life should be tidy. Anyone who has ever had urgent diarrhea, or given birth, or possibly done both around the same time is aware that life is messy. Life leaves its traces on our bodies. To see these traces as ugly scars that mar our perfection is to deny life’s right to be messy, and our right to live it fully. This creates suffering on top of whatever pain was already there.

For healing to be profound and sustained, something has to change. And nothing can change if we’re stifling the process because it’s not pleasant to behold or doesn’t fit into our schedules. Transitions from sickness to health are usually messy and often unpredictable. Old patterns of disease and ways of life have to crumble and fall to make way for the fresh, live ones pushing up from underneath. And that’s not pretty. It often feels like disaster at first, and it always requires letting go.

Healing can show itself in innumerable ways. It may mean breaking free from a toxic relationship. Or having regular bowel movements after a lifetime of constipation. It could be in the form of releasing an addiction all over again everyday, or draining pus from a wound. It can mean dying without fear. It can be understanding when the body needs to sleep, rest, and move – and letting that happen, regardless of whatever else is demanding attention.

In my job, forms of this are happening around me all the time. There remains a part of me that wishes I could leave like Mary Poppins – satisfied that all the people I care about are healed and happily flying their kites together on the hill in town, getting promoted and basking in the warmth of their familial love. But I keep coming back to the beautiful truth that healing doesn’t work that way, and that leaving isn’t the end.

This essay and I are part of the Messy, Beautiful Warrior Project — To learn more and join us, CLICK HERE! And to learn about the New York Times Bestselling Memoir Carry On Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life, just released in paperback, CLICK HERE!