Dear Patient,
“This takes time,” I’ll say to a patient.
Usually it’s a reassurance when things aren’t progressing as quickly as they’d like. An injury is slow to heal. Another month passes with no pregnancy. An illness lingers.
So I tell people that acupuncture is slow medicine.
Sometimes the opposite happens—acupuncture works much more quickly than expected. Pain relief is immediate. An uninterrupted eight hours of sleep after one treatment. Change can be startlingly swift.
But what is time to the body?
Time simply a measure of our expectations. I expect my first patient of the day to show up at 9AM, because that’s when I’ll be ready for them. You expect a meeting to last an hour, because you’ve planned to do something else afterwards. We expect some or another life accomplishment after a number of years on earth, because, well, we just expect that.
But the body has no such expectations, no internal timekeeper charting our progress. The body has no Google calendar or productivity apps. The body mends, repairs, balances and adjusts outside of time.
Our schedules and plans matter not to the body. Healing unfolds as it will, and we are wise to surrender to its mysterious agenda.
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist