Discomfort
Dear Patient,
Here’s a story about discomfort.
One time when I was a student intern I was treating a fellow student in our school clinic. This was in a private room setting, so she was face down on a massage table and I placed a bunch of needles in her back. Once the needles were in and it was time to let her rest, I turned off the lights, told her I’d be back in a while to check on her, and shut the door behind me.
Thirty minutes later I knocked on the door and peeked my head in. To my surprise, I saw that she had gotten up, turned on the lights, found a magazine, and was now back on the table facing the opposite direction and propped up on her elbows, reading. Most of the needles that had previously been in her back were now on the floor, not doing her any good.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I got bored.”
She’d put in the work to make the appointment, set aside time for it, show up and pay for it, and in the end her efforts were defeated by the discomfort of boredom. I don’t remember why she came in for a treatment that day, but since the needles spent more time on the floor than they did in her back, she probably didn’t feel much better afterwards.
Discomfort prompts us to make a change. But the change creates new discomfort. So we make another change. We turn on the lights, we get up and move, we find something to read…because the quiet and stillness and dark are too uncomfortable. Eventually we’re just moving away from one discomfort after another, never really towards anything.
But remember: the needles don’t work if they’re on the floor. To find the change we’re hoping for, sometimes we have to dwell in the discomfort.
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist