Currently I’m in the fourth week of teaching a six month course in acupuncture to a group of beautiful individuals, every one a treasure. I can’t imagine a more enjoyable teaching experience. This week one of the students was inquiring about why she couldn’t feel in her body an acupuncture channel we were working on. I asked her what she was feeling and she said all she felt was a very deep relaxation. Three times she repeated that the relaxation was particularly deep. It made me think quite a lot after the class. Was she actually experiencing the qi of that channel or was her body steadily preparing to feel it by assuming a deeply relaxed state. There’s so much to wonder. All I knew was that it seemed as though she was having an experience just as profound as the students who were certain they were feeling it, but without the labels. I wondered, did she fast track herself through the channel to find herself experiencing a healed state—a quiet arriving at a state of deep peace. Our culture, addicted to sensation, would have us believe that the more heightened the sensations the more desirable they are. But the channels show us otherwise—natural unfettered access to a quiet state of grace, our birthright of calm.
Ann Cecil-Sterman
Manhattan, 1/22/2023