Jingei: let me count the ways...

I had read Skip's forum post about the pain of watching acupunks think, think, and think some more about deciding on points. Yep, that's me, I thought. That would be me. My big expensive master's degree didn't give me a whole lot of confidence about whether I could identify any given patient's underlying condition.

I would take patients into our intake room, examine their big long health history while asking questions and taking lots of notes, thinking that I could just do it faster now, keep the treatments simpler.

Whenever anyone showed up with back or neck pain, it was a toss-up for me. I didn't have a lot of faith in those distal points that everyone kept talking about. Even though I knew the patient would have a much better time out in the big room with the other patients in the recliners, I thought they would get better results if I just got them face down on the table and stuck the needles in where they would do the most good. Eventually I had some patients who were really spoiled by back treatments, and even though I know they enjoyed the needling, I wasn't so sure that I was getting at the root of anything and I was also beginning to resent the extra time and energy each back treatment required compared to the community room treatment.

A long time ago, I had read Korben's jingei notes from the first Portland training. We had tried one morning to practice the technique. But I always kind of thought that I would be one of the ones who just couldn't, for some constitutionally defective reason, find a ratio between the carotid pulse and the radial. It seemed too hard. Measure width, what? How? You've got to be kidding.

Enter Skip and Lisa.

In the afternoon section of the WCA training at PCA, I learned how to do it. Lil old me. When Skip said at one point that I would have it down after a week of practice, my heart soared. There was hope after all.

And the main point of this blog post is that my workdays after the training have been completely different and a MUCH MUCH better experience for me, and most likely for my patients as well (okay, except for one of the spoiled ones who really wanted to be face down - i take full responsibility).

Where before I would have been sitting there, thinking and thinking and asking some more questions, trying to feel for the spleen deficiency in the guan position and feeling wishy-washy in general, there was my savior thought instead: ha! Let's go get a ratio.

Next blog post: results!