Dear Patient,
People experience all kinds of sensations during acupuncture. Some people feel changes in temperature, or maybe it feels like water is flowing through their body. Some feel a heaviness, like they’re sinking into the chair. Others feel like they’re floating. Some people twitch. Some see colors.
These are signs that you’re settling into your own body, while your body is figuring out what it needs. A floating sensation could mean you’re letting go of a burden that’s been weighing you down. Heaviness might mean you’re getting centered and grounded. Seeing colors or other images indicates an opening up of awareness and perspective. So these sensations are little clues about what your body is working out as you rest there with the needles.
And once you notice these sensations, you find that your body is doing this all the time. You tend to perceive it more in moments of stillness, like when you’re lying in bed, but it’s always humming along in the background. Your body is in a perpetual state of recalibration and adjustment. The needles magnify this process and help you tune in, but it’s always happening.
These sensations are evidence of your body’s ongoing quest to maintain balance. It’s movement within stillness, yang within yin. Trust that it’s happening, even when you can’t feel it. And when you do feel it, send a thought of gratitude to your body for its mysterious workings, and enjoy the ride.
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist
Thankyou for this, being in our bodies can be such a difficult concept to grasp and such an amazing feeling to realise. I am a herbalist principally because the plants taught me how to be more in my body and I love how acupuncture can bring me there as well. traditional herbalists get a lot of information about the medicine by meditating and observing the herbs around us, as i write about here:
https://natashaclarke.substack.com/p/spring-unfurling?s=w