There is no way I would have believed my body would succumb to having needles stabbed into me voluntarily. However, I did, to get well. Initially, I felt like a dartboard — needles in the hands, arms, legs and feet.
Having had enough of antibiotics and painkillers, I decided something new was in order. I went for acupuncture with all the needles involved.
Don't let me scare you, the needles are about the thickness of a hair and really don't cause pain — the needles work on the brain and imagination.
They can pull out ache, toxins and poison at an alarming rate, not to mention emotion. I cried enough to fill a valley and my husband is ready to bring out his boots. It is an emotional process I never could have imagined.
To quote a reputed doctor in Dubai, it is a matter of summer and winter in all our bodies and about finding the balance. The process is called repair, recovery and progression.
Had I known what I was in for, I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to do it. I went to him initially to find out what was wrong with my feet. He, in turn, found so many poisons in my body that he decided extraction was long due.
To quote Dr Qiang, he wasn't worried about my feet, for it was merely a yellow leaf on the tree. His focus was on the emotional blockage and unbalanced body energy.
It has been five long years of pain — now I was voluntarily going into weeks of wondering who I was or where I was going. It was a miraculous discovery process, but as Dr Qiang warned, it can be a long journey. The speed bumps I hit were like taking off in mid-flight.
My first encounter was like drifting on warm water. I slept, I drifted and on the recall I was like a zombie — the impact hit hard — and I had to give up the lifestyle I'd grown used to.
Dr Qiang says in his decade of practice in Dubai, he has only seen the deep relaxation I experienced three times — I just didn't want to wake up.
According to him, I was a pressure cooker ready to explode — normal and functioning on the outside but little inner peace on the inside. Acupuncture actually drills a hole in that valve system and lets of the steam you aren't even aware that you are carrying.
Dr Qiang tells me he has patients who cry for weeks. Well, I am going through a very dark winter but summer is just around the corner.
— The writer is a Gulf News Reader's Club founder member based in Dubai.
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