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Family Acupuncture Log
with Kay Madsen, Licensed Acupuncturist
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"Life becomes easier when you learn to accept an apology you never got."
Robert Brault
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Spring - the Season of Rebirth and Growth
"The months of the Spring season bring about the revitalization of all things
in nature. It is the time of birth. This is when Heaven and Earth are reborn.During this season it is advisable to retire early and arise early. Also go walking in order to absorb the fresh invigorating energy.Since this is the season in which the universal energy begins anew and rejuvenates, one should attempt to correspond to it directly by being open and unsupressed, both physically and emotionally.On the physical level it is good to exercise more frequently and wear loose fitting clothing. This is the time to do stretching exercises to loosen up the tendons and muscles.
Emotionally, it is good to develop equanimity. This is because Spring is the season of the Liver, and indulgence in anger, frustration, depression, sadness, or excess emotion can injure the Liver."
The Nei Jing Su Wen, Chapter 2
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Acupuncture for Forgiveness?
All this forgiveness may sound good in theory, but it can be hard to put into practice. Sometimes harboring these emotions can feel like having your tongue frozen to the flagpole. Believe it or not, achieving perspective and gratitude can actually be cultivated with acupuncture treatment. Treatment can help you gently and naturally release your resentments - like thawing your tongue off that flagpole.
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Enjoying the Family Acupuncture Log?
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With the craziness of the weather lately, it's hard to know whether to think that it is actually spring. Literally going from 65 to 20 degrees over night is a bit jarring. While the transition may seem a little more rough than usual this year, truth be told, this is the nature of spring. The journey from the depths of winter into the return of the light is always a blustery roller coaster ride between cold and warm.
This cold meets warm interplay generates a lot of wind. The purpose of the spring winds is to clear left over winter debris, making room for the upcoming new growth. In our lives, we also recognize a need for a good spring cleaning. Like the wind, we blow through our closets, clearing our houses of unwanted clutter. It is only natural then that spring is a good time to clean up our internal world as well. The Chinese medical classics advise us that smoothing our movement into spring should be on both the physical and emotional level. This year, instead of sharing another version of a physically based liver detox program, I'm turning my attention to a cleanse on the emotional scale. Sort of like milk thistle for the soul.
Enjoy!
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Spring Cleaning Your Emotional Closet
In Chinese medicine we correlate the season of spring to the qi of the liver. The liver is our primary detoxification organ. This is no doubt why many natural health care systems advocate a good seasonal cleanse in the spring to help the liver release stored toxins. It helps us lose a little weight and alleviate spring allergies. I do it every year, and it is very refreshing. A perfect way to start the season.
This year, I am expanding my focus of the spring cleanse. We always talk about holistic medicine touching the body, mind and spirit. So, it seems appropriate to ask what an emotional and spiritual spring cleanse would look like. In Chinese medicine, the liver is said to house the emotion anger, as well as an aspect of our soul that knows our life's purpose. If we accumulate too many toxic emotions, we will lose sight of the bigger picture of our lives.
Anger is not, in and of itself, a pathological emotion. It has a healthy function under the right circumstances. For one thing, it gives us the sense to defend ourselves when needed. We get into trouble with anger when we hold onto it beyond its useful purpose. I am reminded of the Zen saying that harboring anger is like holding on to a hot coal with the intention of throwing it at someone else. You only burn your own hand.
Forgiveness then appears to be the emotional version of a liver cleanse. Exploring the process of forgiveness drives us deep into our emotional closets. First what we find is a big difference between the insults and injuries we have truly forgiven and those we have simply suppressed. Those that have been forgiven can be recalled without emotional charge, sort of like watching a movie. Then there's the more toxic stuff. Old hurts that were simply tucked away but not forgiven. It's those buried unhealed wounds that lodge in our bodies and souls and burn like a hot coal. This is the clutter we need to clear from our emotional closets. But how?
I have to make a confession. One of my pet peeves about alternative health practitioners is our penchant for offering simplistic platitudes designed to cure profound wounds. I, for one, need a more specific process than just simply telling myself to "let it go." In an effort to unlock the mystery of this process, I've been sorting through a life time collection of wounds. I see that forgiveness has often happened spontaneously with acknowledgment of wrongdoing and an expression of remorse by the "guilty" party. Simply put, a sincere apology untied the knot of pain, resentment and anger. Almost like magic.
But those are the easy cases for forgiveness. Sometimes we fall victim to people who are not sorry. They may never acknowledge or feel remorse for the wrong committed or the damage done. They may even lie about their actions or attempt to deny or diminish the damage done. In these cases, we simply do not want to forgive them. We get stuck on the fact that they just don't deserve it.
This spring, I am challenging myself to clean my closet of these tricky cases. To forgive the seemingly unforgivable. I can find examples where I have already done it. Instances where I forgave in the absence of apology - even in the presence of denials and lies. In these times I had a deep awareness that I simply needed to get past it and move on. To not allow the wound to be disabling. It doesn't matter whether someone deserves to be forgiven. It doesn't matter that they were wrong and I was right. It doesn't matter whether that person will ever "pay" for what they've done to me. As long as I think I need an apology or retribution to let go and move on, I give that person the power to hold me in a pattern of perpetual victim-hood. Forgiving doesn't mean condoning or even keeping that person in your life. Forgiveness isn't necessarily the gift we give to another, as much as it is the one we give to ourselves by letting go of the burning hot coal. It's the freedom to move on in life without the pain.
That still leaves me with figuring out how to let go. I believe the most powerful keys to forgiveness are perspective and gratitude. These emanate from from a place of your own power, instead of relying on an external source of apology. You control your own sense of perspective and feelings of gratitude. You own the power to release your own anger, resentment and pain.
Perspective is gained in attaining the higher vantage point that allows us to see things in a new light. In the grander scheme of my life, how big was it really? How much did I contribute to the situation? What is the lesson to be learned? How can I prevent this kind of harm in the future? I wonder what wounds the other person has that caused the hurtful behavior. With a refreshed perspective, gratitude can then break up the last of the cement that binds the pain. Thank goodness it wasn't worse. It gave me good survival skills I wouldn't otherwise have. Now, I'm so glad that I didn't get that promotion or have that relationship last. The course of my life depended on me having the past exactly as it was - pain included. What I thought of as misfortunes at the time actually shaped all of my good fortune. I look at the things I cherish most now - my work as an acupuncturist, my beautiful daughter. I am thankful for the things that went "wrong" and felt so bad. They diverted me from folly and put me on the right path where I can achieve my life's purpose.
Ah, I feel lighter already.
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ABOUT ME
After leaving behind a decade of practicing as an attorney, I received my Masters of Acupuncture in 2002 from the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in Columbia, Maryland. It certainly was an interesting career shift! Every day I am increasingly grateful to do this amazing work. I guess I still use some of my old attorney skills to piece together every patient's experiences to create a new picture of their health concerns from a Chinese medical perspective. From there we fashion a strategy toward healing together. It never gets old to watch a person's sufferings unravel. Sure beats interpreting government regulations for a living!
I keep balance in my own life by sharing my love of outdoor experiences with my husband and daughter. Camping, hiking and critter watching are much loved family activities. It's important to me to see that my daughter learns to attune herself to the movement of the seasons and the many lessons they offer, so that she can appreciate balance from an early age.
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Suite 204
Silver Spring, MD 20906
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Kay Madsen, M.Ac., L.Ac., Dipl.Ac. (NCCAOM)
Licensed Acupuncturist
13415 Connecticut Ave.
Suite 204
Silver Spring, MD 20906
(240) 393-5420
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Copyright � 2013. All Rights Reserved.
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