Dear Patient,
Recently a group of astrophysicists unveiled a major discovery. Based on collaboration among hundreds of scientists across the globe, they announced evidence of the existence of low-frequency gravitational waves, which create a “background hum” as they travel throughout the universe.
Image description: AI depiction of gravitational waves by dream.ai
When I heard this news I immediately thought of an acupuncture treatment I had a years ago. I asked my colleague to do some points for stress, then settled into my chair to rest. I had trouble relaxing though; my thoughts were all over the place. So to give my brain a point of focus, I tried just to tune in to what I could hear. My mind soon began to quiet as it processed the sounds around me, eventually sorting them out in proximity to my ears.
First were the close proximity sounds, intermittent and high-frequency. They weren’t necessarily loud, but they were nearby: footsteps across the laminate floor, the tinkling of the front door bell when someone entered or exited, the rip of paper on the credit card machine, the low whispering of other patients in the treatment room, the ambient music and whirring of white noise machines. Beyond that were sounds I could still identify, but were farther away: the rumble of the HVAC unit, cars rolling by on the street below. And beneath it all, a deep, heavy, immense, rumbling and unceasing hum. I remember at the time wondering what it was—it seemed so distant and low, more like a felt vibration than an actual sound. Was it the burrowing of earthworms and beetles underground? Infinitesimal shifting of tectonic plates? Bubbling of molten iron at the earth’s outer core? I never settled on an answer, and drifted off into a nap.
And then I learned about these newly-detected low-frequency gravitational waves. I’m pretty sure our human ears can’t hear them. That’s probably not what I heard. But I heard something, and felt something, low and resonant and unnameable.
What is a gravitational wave anyway?
In simple terms, it’s an invisible and fast-moving ripple in space and time—like an ocean wave, but moving through dimensions instead of water. Gravitational waves spread out anytime there’s a violent event involving a massive body—say, the collision of two black holes. Einstein first postulated the existence of gravitational waves in 1916, and it took scientists nearly 100 years to actually detect them in 2015. The more recent discovery builds on the 2015 breakthrough, showing that gravitational waves can occur at an even lower frequency that originally thought.
In a Washington Post article, physicist Katie Mack describes a gravitational wave as such:
“But a gravitational wave? That’s a distortion of space-time itself — a stretching and squeezing of the fabric of reality, a wave of deformation tearing through the cosmos, warping everything in its path. The monstrous denizens of the intergalactic deep reveal themselves not through the light they emit but by how they stir the space-time we share. When a gravitational wave moves through you, you are, for a moment, a different shape.”
A pervasive, invisible force that travels across the universe, changing the shape of everything touches as is passes through? Transforming you, and me, and everything surrounding us? Sounds like what we acupuncturists call qi.
Humans use language to make sense of the world. And our language exists in the context of a worldview. What one person calls God, another might call the Universe. What I call an exterior wind-cold attack, an allopathic medical doctor might call the common cold. Are qi and low-frequency gravitational waves the same thing? Maybe.
As powerful as language is, sometimes words are inadequate. Sometimes a subject is simply too vast. I’ve been talking about qi for more than two decades and still words fail me when I try to describe it. Astrophysicists are similarly awed by this latest evidence of low-frequency gravitational waves. Something immense and immeasurable connects all of us. It’s out there, journeying through the universe, leaving ripples of change in its wake.
Can you hear it? Can you feel it?
Love and gratitude,
Your Acupuncturist
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References:
Opinion: I’m a physicist. Last week’s gravitational waves announcement sent me reeling
Scientists use Exotic Stars to Tune into Hum from Cosmic Symphony
Some deep discoveries here Alexia. Interesting to read. Thank you!