About 10 years ago, my first acupuncturist told me: “You’re perfectly healthy. You just have to spread your wings and fly.”

I looked at him confused and angry, thinking: “I’m sick and he’s making jokes!”

I couldn’t understand what he was talking about and I immediately thought he’s not going to be able to help me. In fact, he was not only an MD and DO, but also an acupuncturist trained in China — and he helped me a lot. It took me a while to understand that he wasn’t talking about physical symptoms or diseases.

Looking back, I can see now that I wasn’t sick. I was scared and overwhelmed. I was going through a lot of changes in my life and everything was reflecting into my physical health. I was convinced I was sick because I didn’t know how to deal with all those emotions and changes.

Not sure how many of us have the time to think further than physical symptoms when working in the clinic, but since we learn about emotions and how they can affect a certain organ in the body, I’m definitely going to be one of those practitioners that asks the patients what’s happening in their life and look deeper for the real root cause of the problem.

I believe that if you treat only the symptoms without even thinking about the root cause, you’re not going to get the best results. Yes, you might get the right diagnosis. Yes, it might be exactly damp heat in the GB/LV, but you might be surprised and not get the expected results using the standard points, and then what? I guess we’re back to square one and thinking out of the box is not going to be in any schoolbook….

To put it simply, I was so stressed this week because of midterms that I felt sick almost every single day. Not even 10 minutes after my last midterm, I felt a rush of energy and no more headaches, no more nausea, not a bad physical symptom. I guess the best practice is when you experience symptoms yourself, and then you really know what the patient is talking about!

I’m still working on that “flying” my acupuncturist was talking about but, most important I know that each emotion has an effect on my body and might create a physical reaction. I also learned this is not about pushing myself or my patients. It’s all about understanding your inner self and your inner mechanism. Next time you’re feeling an emotion, negative or positive, imagine yourself as being the most exquisite watch and look for the reset button.