Sorry to be out of touch. It’s been a very full and beautiful past few weeks.
The first text today was from a staff member: “Long time, no blog, Ann!” Timely. I hit the road at 4:17AM this morning, and now that I’m in the air, there is plenty of blog time.
I enjoyed my very pre-dawn shower a little too much and only had 11 minutes to get to 8th Avenue and 31st Street to catch the next train to the airport. My albeit flat sandals were not supporting a brisk walk, and neither was my suitcase loaded with three weeks worth of stuff including teaching clothes for five days in two cities in opposite seasons. No packing lightly on this trip!
I arrived at the station with the final call for the 4:28AM Newark airport train, and 4:28AM, the station clock said. NJTransit trains aggressively run to the minute, especially in the morning, meaning they can pull out seconds before the actual minute scheduled. I made my way to the escalator for platform 12. There was no way I could pick up the suitcase and rush, and so I did what I sometimes do, which is to stretch time. It’s handy whenever I’d prefer that I was running a couple of minutes earlier. It’s easy and you might like to try it if not familiar already. All you do is say, “pause time now and hold x” and then time pauses while motion continues. So as I was going down the remarkably slow escalator, I simply said “pause time now and hold the train”. Then you simply focus on the pause on time while witnessing movement at the same time, or, you might say, the concurrent absence of time. I love it when the mind can’t grasp reality and you have to calm the poor thing down. When I got to the bottom, only the two big conductors remained on the platform each with raised hand. As if professionally choreographed, their classic, imminent “go” signal transformed into almost graceful permission to board. As I sat down, I glanced at my watch. 4:30AM and rolling. The train reached the airport exactly at scheduled minute. All was well, with nobody inconvenienced. Is it okay to do this just for me? Sure. Time didn’t slow for anybody else. For them it was going too fast.
In Chinese medicine we talk constantly about intention, especially the intention of the practitioner in the presence of the patient, but the enormity of its capacity probably can’t be fathomed. The power of intention is a product the Kidneys; it’s a subset of the Will. If what is being intended is in alignment with destiny, it will manifest. The inevitable challenges of life will then present elsewhere, since the sequence of events branching off the incident avoided cannot play out. In treatment, when the patient gets an hour of undivided attention and intention, after activation of the channel, we can intend simply but strongly that the patient experience a state of increased freedom and then witness the rapid pulses slowing, the rebellious stomach descending, the misaligned structure realigning. The needles are merely props for these mind-actions.
Ann Cecil-Sterman
Airborne somewhere between New York and Los Angeles
21 July, 2025.
