Very often the subject I’m teaching in the Mentorship Program becomes a subject outside the Mentorship at the same time.
When I arrived in the apartment late this afternoon, my daughter didn’t respond when I greeted her through her closed bedroom door. I spoke again.
“I have a really bad a headache,” said a weak, pained voice through the door.
“I’ll bring you some water, I said.”
“No, mom, I got hit in the head by a basketball and I have a terrible headache.”
I opened the door.
“Oh no! When?”
“In gym.”
“What’s the most difficult movement?”
“I can’t tip my head back. It hurts and makes me dizzy.”
I asked her where the ball hit. Sure enough, the area was hot even through her very thick hair. I gave her a hug.
“You need a sinew treatment, M.”
“No, mom, no way.”
“Okay, time for a story. When I was in acupuncture school we had to learn CPR. Two amazing, strapping paramedics came to the school. They had been partners on the job for years and told us lots of incredible stories, but one has really stuck with me all this time. They were called to a girls’ baseball game not far from here. A 16-year old girl had been hit by a ball and fell to the ground. She was out for a few seconds during which someone called 911. She stood up ready to play on. The paramedics arrived and she refused to be examined or to get in the ambulance. Her father arrived on the scene, took one look at her ready to play and refusing to go, and so he said to them, she’s good, let her be. The paramedics tried their very best and warned them of the dangers of concussion. After the game, she went home, had dinner, went to sleep and didn’t ever wake up… You will have needles, sweetheart.”
“Where will you put them?
“As you well know, one needle doth not a treatment make. It’s going to be more than one.”
“No. I’ll be okay.”
It’s very hard to treat your family.
“Okay, two. One jing-well…”
“Mom, no! No jing-well points.”
“As you well know, the well point is the exit point. The swelling in your meninges will exit there. You must have this treatment.”
She stuck out her foot and screwed up her face.
—
Once a patient came to the office for the first time complaining of never quite having a sense of complete balance in his stance. I asked him when it began and right away he gave me the date of his fall from a horse over twenty years earlier. I asked him whether he was concussed at the time, and he said, oh yeah, very. In palpating his head I found many tight spots on the scalp and gave him a thorough sinew treatment, going all the way down the entire Leg Yang Ming (stomach) sinew, then all the way down the entire Leg Shao Yang (gallbladder) sinew and then the giant Leg Tai Yang (bladder) sinew. The number of places that wei qi had gathered along those sinews was remarkable. Each one received a very shallow insertion with a twist and immediate removal. When he got up from the table he said that he felt he was connecting with the floor with his full weight in a way had never before, and that he was suddenly experiencing being in present time with a kind of deep yet enlivening solidity, instead of experiencing the slight veil that he immediately recognized, in retrospect, had been over his consciousness all those twenty years.
There was no way my daughter was going to accept this kind of comprehensive treatment. I decided to needle the gallbladder jing-well point and then to go to the inflamed site of impact and do a sinew needle there (with no retention) and then to activate that entire sinew plus the unneedled Tai Yang (bladder) sinew by remote. She felt better.
Andrew cooked dinner of half milled rice, Brussels sprouts, shiitake mushrooms and fish. So delicious. We sat and talked about the night before when M had gone to Carnegie Hall to hear Andrew and company. She was lucid and chatty about being with her brother who was the event’s official photographer, and about chatting with Joan Baez and Laurie Anderson. When she started telling me about the couple of performers she didn’t like and why, she became even more animated. Then I was certain she’d be okay. Back to herself, she was. But the treatment was not yet complete…
After dinner, she stood up from the table.
“MOM! Look at my feet!”
I walked around to her, and all ten toes were dramatically swollen, so much so that there were no gaps at all between toes.
“Mom! What’s happening?”
“What do you think is happening?”
“Wei qi is moving out of my head to the jing well points.”
“That’s a great and accurate answer. Spot on! Do you feel better?”
“Yes.”
“Any pain?”
“No, but my head feels a bit fuzzy.”
To my surprise, she let me needle ST45, GB44, BL67 and to take a half inch needle and very lightly go over the sinews on her head.
“That’s better, now, much clearer,” she said.
We did several checks between then and going to sleep, and more checks the following morning, and again in the afternoon, and there wasn’t a hint of any symptom of concussion. Such is the wonder of the sinew channels.
Ann Cecil-Sterman
February 27, 2024.
Chelsea, Manhattan.