Zetta endeavors to learn something new

This past weekend I began a new course of acupuncture study. I took my training in TCM, or Traditional Chinese Medicine. In the US most people who practice acupuncture are trained in this manner, with the exception of a small number of folks who got their edumacation about acupuncture from this really interesting school called the Five Element. TCM is a vast, and, some people say, a complete medicine. I think of it like a big organization with lots of departments--you've got your warm diseases, your cold diseases, your organ differentiation, your materia medica, and you've also got a behemoth of material to pursue, study, refine, and live inside forever. People can get fairly rabid and righteous about what they study, how they study it, how it applies to clinical realities, and on and on and on. There are more than just a few scholarly folks in this field who have alot to say about how they know this and that and the other thing, and they might, but I think if you don't get out there and do this stuff--all the time, then what good are all the quotes you have stored up in your brain from books that got wrote thousands of years ago? The way I see it, it is a damn fine way to make yourself into an asshole. For all the not-remembering chapter and verse of the Su Wen that I do, I'm working on people all the time. TCM, for all its pretty things and big stacks of books (stuff I love) has been somewhat empty for me spiritually. It's neat, but I want something else, something finer and sweeter and prettier to delve into wholly. I'm mostly interested in acupuncture as its own thing. I want to know what it is, what it does, why it does it, and, most importantly, how I can play with it.

I chose a course of study in a system of acupuncture that is not TCM. It comes from part of TCM--for those of you that want some jargon around this, the toyohari meridian therapy comes from the Nan Jing. A book I have not read because I am a punk and a terrible scholar and a wretched person, but I am going to read it, I swear. This stuff is based on Five Phase Theory, which I think we talked about for four minutes in first year TCM school, on a break between Four Stages and maybe Hot Disease or something. I am sure I was not paying attention because I was hopped up on coffee and watching the clock, because I was bored out of my mind. (See above about terrible scholar etc.)
So this meridian therapy class I am doing is really crazy if you are like me and accustomed to sticking needles in people. We use needles, but we don't puncture the skin. I knew that going into this situation, but once I got there I was pretty uncomfortable with it. Toyohari practioners come from a tradition of blind acupuncturists in Japan. That is what brought me to this course. I want to be the kind of practitioner who relies on the really subtle things about energy and feel and seeing and the magic that is necessarily germane to acupuncture for me, but also to plain old physiology. The getting there is going to be a bumpy ride.
I went from an adept, mildly seasoned, clinically knowledgeable acupuncturist to someone who had never felt a pulse or held a needle. When my classmates reported changes in pulse qualities, I didn't feel anything. When we were locating points in small groups--again by palpation and with a touch so light one hardly contacts the skin (tiny bony landmarks we love to find? Nope.) I was lost, scared, and it was getting dark out and I didn't bring any matches, extra food, or a compass. It is exactly like switching from Windows to Mac. I have to forget about all kinds of things that live in my head and which I use all the time and with every patient I see. I feel clumsy and stupid and I am fully willing to cop to it.
I'm excited anyway. When the teacher for the weekend addressed the class for the first time, he said this: "This work is a highly refined art, and you will always be learning it, throughout your lifetime." For the first time in a very long time since beginning my journey as an acupuncturist, I felt my heart open like a giant soft flower to the sunshine.