Whispering of Willows 41

By Dr. Anna Zhao

https://whisperingwillowclinic.com/

Some of my patients inquire when I will publish my next Whispering of Willows, but I sometimes put it off.  I responded something about being too busy with work, of course. Some people asked if we could set up a meditation class at out clinic to teach meditation and energy healing therapy. This is something that both Dr. Daniel and I would love to do one day, and we are striving towards this goal, but the timing is not quite right yet.

We really have been busy – it is not just my excuse. The highlight in our hectic times of late was helping to induce labor for a lady who was only three days away from her due date. She was exhausted from a lack of sleep and her physical strength was deteriorating rapidly. She wanted her baby to be born as soon as possible. We helped her along with Qigong, Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine. When I was doing Qigong on her, she said she could clearly feel her uterus contracting. When Dr. Daniel gave her a needle in her small toe, she said she could feel the baby's position was changing. Early next morning, their baby was delivered smoothly at the hospital with no eventful complications. Later her husband sent us a picture of a happy content newborn – such a cutie!

Recently, we have encountered an increase in respiratory problems.  It is a good thing that Traditional Chinese Medicine is quite effective in dealing with this kind of issue. People sometimes tend to regard TCM as an alternative way to deal with chronic diseases, but actually, TCM has quite a few techniques and advantages to treat such urgent conditions.

No doubt, TCM does help with chronic diseases. What I want to talk specifically about is chronic pain, because as a therapist, it is often encountered – almost daily. On the surface, it seems that these pains are identical differing only in their location - shoulder, neck, lower back, wrist, etc. But gradually, with my increasing clinical experience, I realized that most of what we call chronic pain is not as completely physical as we would like to think. Our body does demonstrate chronic problems in our muscles, or tendons, or joints, but these are only the façade of the real cause. Much of this chronic pain we have, directly or indirectly, stems from our foundational years as we matured – our childhood, our living environment, our emotional state, our attitude towards life, our personality, our likes and dislikes, etc.

Many types of chronic pain appear like similar shaped icebergs, but this iceberg barely shows 10% of its volume above the water. The remaining 90% is still hidden unseen in the dark ocean.  As a medical practitioner, we can't peer directly to find out what's really going on. All we can do is surmise from the ice floating above the water to determine what kind of conditions lurk beneath the dark water.

If no two leaves are alike in the world, there are no two identical pains.

Being skeptical you may ask: Isn’t my shoulder pain related to my bad posture? Or due to spending too much time with my computer or mobile phone? Of course it's related to this. But a pain like that should ease after changing your lifestyle, work habits, and appropriate treatment.

The kind of pain I’m talking about is a chronic lingering pain, that no matter what you do, you can’t seem to shake it off or get free from it.

I believe that every negative energy, no matter its origin, even from your almost forgotten childhood, can leave an imprint, or what TCM refers to as a stagnant point, in your meridian. These stagnation points once accumulated sufficiently form a blockage in the blood and energy system, eventually manifesting as a lingering pain in your body.

To liberate yourself from this kind of pain or lingering symptoms, or at least learn to coexist with it, you must learn to reassemble your own energy field.

When I was about to graduate from college, I was in a huge car accident and suffered comminuted fractures all over my body. I almost lost my life because of it. The doctors managed to bring me back to life, but also frankly told me: from now on, you will spend your life in a wheelchair.

I endured dozens of hours of major surgeries, and was kept in a hospital bed for ten months. My body was covered in heavy plaster from top to bottom. I couldn't move my hands or feet, or even my fingers. Nor could I turn over. Even the toilet work had to be done in bed.

I was very young, and had to face such excruciating pain in my body everyday, not to mention the mental and emotional pain. The only thing I could do at that time was staring at the window where I could see a small corner of blue sky. I simply taught myself to smile, and to breathe, and to be grateful that I was alive. When pain limits moving your body, please tell yourself: “fortunately, I still can move my braincells”. That is what I did at that time.  Every day I meditated and visited the depths of my soul and used my time to re-examine everything I could recall in my life experience. I faced everything squarely, and for those I could fix, I developed plans to work on them in the future. For the ones I could not repair, I gave them blessings and buried them for good. That turned a nightmare time into a most particularly beneficial era when I learned to regroup my energy.

When my trembling feet retouched the ground after ten months, I used crutches, but not a wheelchair. With the passing of another a year or two, I recovered so well that, at least from a distance, no one could tell that I had experienced a terrible and devastating accident.

If you ask me now: Dr. Anna, can you help me relieve my pain or chronic conditions?

Yes. However, I must tell you honestly: If you want to truly heal yourself and say farewell to your pain forever, you have to learn to reexamine your life and learn to reorganize your energy field. Pain is not punishment, but a language that beckons us to pay attention to the needs of both our body and soul, and reveals in quiet moments how to make these repairs.

Behind every chronic pain or problem, there is a heartbreaking story. You are the protagonist of your life story; you must learn to interpret it. Once you have learned how, you will be transformed. By then, not only can you heal yourself, you can also lend a hand to those on their healing journey. Isn’t that a cool thing to do?