I had the opportunity to try acupuncture for the first time this weekend; I long ago unpacked the biases that name some medicines “alternative” and some sciences “pseudo,” but I was yet to go under the needle, so to speak, and experience the deconstruction (or reintegration) for myself. I was nervous. Not only because I’m actually a touch sensitive and pain averse wimp, but because this particular practice was more than poking and prodding; there was going to be talk involved too, and I was bursting at the seams with things to say. Lucky for me, this practitioner is the real deal, and my whole lot felt light and easy in that dimly lit space, and by the end of the session, I felt the same. The way I described it was like two transparencies of myself lining up on top of themselves, finally coming into focus. Even my breathing had improved.
I’d been noticing how alien to my body my breathing had become for some time now; you could say it started with COVID, like for so many of us, and it never got better, mostly due to my growing anxiety over experiencing the kind of panic attacks I did when my lungs refused to cooperate in those early days. But I think I was born with it. I know that for a fact, because the one time I went under the knife years ago, they discovered a deviated septum that was restricting my breathing to a dramatic percentage; that first breath after they took away my bandages a month later was euphoric.
But these past few months have been different; there have been days when I’ve struggled to catch my breath even at rest, and the other day, at the art therapy session I did, I was asked to close my eyes and draw a wave to my inhales and exhales for a minute. The picture looked like a herniated spine with terrible posture.
My physical therapist has noticed it too. She often asks me to breathe into my back, but my ribs refuse to comply, so she’s been trying to teach me tricks to access that part of me which you’d think would run on pure instinct. Alas. But the good news is that something shifted under those needles. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but I felt it and breathed it in and loved every second of it. Like someone plugged a bunch of loose cables back where they’re supposed to be. It was wild.
I breathlessly recounted all of this to Christine on the ride back from the session. I later mentioned how the practitioner had said something about “responding” versus “reacting” that echoed what she’d said to me too, so she smiled and replied: “There are many wise women in your life.” And I’m grateful.
This world needs correction. New modalities of care, new forms of community, new measures of truth, new standards of power, and much of that new newness is a matter of retrieval, not innovation, per se. To quote one Christine’s saints, taking down the Devil himself: “Lie still, thou fiend, under the feet of a woman.”