Acupuncture
I practice Traditional Five Element Acupuncture in Belfast, Maine. My practice is informed by the richness of several traditions and teachers I’ve been fortunate to train with.
The foundation of my practice of acupuncture is learning to observe and understand the Five Elements of nature from the inspiration of the late master teacher J.R.Worsley. I work with my patients to restore and maintain their energy to harmonize with the changing seasons. After over thirty years of practicing acupuncture, I keep discovering the intention of treatment is not simply to heal illness but to support each person becoming the fullest expression of who they can be in this lifetime. I continue to be moved by the unfolding of each person’s aliveness and wisdom.
“We must strive to see people not only as they present themselves in illness, but more importantly as they would be in perfect health and balance, in full discovery of their true nature, unique in body, mind, and spirit.” —J.R. Worsley
Photo by Peggy McKenna
I have studied with Alexandra Merrill in Women’s Leadership Groups and individually for nearly two decades, becoming mindful of the individual and group level issues that affect us as we heal and become citizens of the world. In my work with clients I might raise awareness of introversion/extroversion or explore how the impact of class, race, and privilege affects their healing process.
“These principles, perspectives and practices offer an immediate connection between this small life and that huge and miraculous fate and destiny that seems assigned to us by a cosmic intelligence. Between the beautifully ample cosmological metaphors and the empirically defined specific human growth pattern, a way of seeing, holding and leading group process toward peaceful coexistence has emerged. It is this way of seeing and holding that we will share.” —Alexandra Merrill
With my clients, I make suggestions to help them create a team of support. I am informed by many teachings that have forwarded my own healing. We are fortunate to live in a community that is rich in extraordinary practitioners from many traditions. I am especially grateful for what I have learned from being treated by Vicki Pollard in Blue Hill for over thirty years.
My treatment room
The foundation of my spiritual practice that I bring to my work are from the Buddhist tradition of the Opening the Heart of Compassion and Loving Kindness practices.
I offer these phrases with the prayer: may all beings be released from Suffering.
May I dwell in the Heart.
May I be released from Suffering.
May I be healed.
May I live in peace.
May I be safe and protected from inner and outer harm.
May I be happy and peaceful in my heart.
May I be strong and healthy in my body.
May I take care of myself joyfully in this life.
After I received my BA Honors from Johns Hopkins University in 1977, and after two years of pre-med classes at California community colleges, I began my acupuncture training in 1982. I received my degree of Competence and Master certification from the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in Columbia, Maryland and Licentiate degree from the College of Traditional Acupuncture in Leamington Spa, England. For over fifteen years, I spent countless hours of advanced training and consultations with Dr. Worsley and my colleagues who practice Five Element Acupuncture.
This poem speaks to the essence of how I work.
“Compassion” assemblage by James Strickland. For more information go to jamesstricklandart.com
The Time It Takes For The Work To Become Effortless
(A Letter to a Beginning Practitioner)
All you have to do is to become completely fascinated with who comes to you to be helped. Listen to all the details of their life and their struggles in the body, and see it all with equal attention and fascination. Be especially focused on seeing all the places you or others might find them irritating or wearing and discover how to love those places more than any other. Be proud of them, encourage them, be thrilled by their efforts, applaud their finally beginning to go for walks, to eat better. Read their first story. Adore them the way we were all meant to be adored and delighted in as a child. Begin now. Then the work will become effortless.
All you have to do is to learn to lean into and completely trust in this medicine. You have to let it help you again and again in your most painful places year in and year out. Keep releasing all that is in the way, so you can live in the river of delight you were born to live. All you have to do is live the truth of who you are. All you have to do is let someone love you in this place where you speak the truth of who you are, as you lean into their loving arms. Begin now. Then the work will become effortless.
All you have to do is to create a community of colleagues who speak the language of this medicine, and begin speaking and writing your truth with them. Let them know when you feel like a fraud, when you feel you know nothing, when you have little miracles, when you are struggling and in pain. Let yourself learn to be completely yourself, and let them love you and find you wonderful and stay connected with them through all of your life. Begin now. Then the work will become effortless.
All you have to do is discover a spiritual practice that holds you and teaches you, and that you can learn to lean into. Discover a language of the ancients that helps you be present to suffering, to so much suffering, your own and in the stories you hear all day. Discover a language you can share when people ask you, how can you bear all of this? Discover a practice that helps you hold steady when your dearest patients die, when you lie awake in an agony of fever, when you fear for your children, when you are cast out into your aloneness. Find a practice that helps you quiet the galloping chaotic horses of your mind. Build the muscle of faith. Learn what it is to exercise and strengthen your faith daily. Begin now. Then the work will become effortless.
All you have to do is discover how to keep your creative channels moving. Try what you’ve never done before, dance, draw, and learn to listen to Beethoven well. If you dream of painting, then call up a friend for lessons the next day. Keep yourself moving, following your creative stream, because this will heal you. Follow your creative stream because you need to know how to support others following their own waterway, because this is what will heal them. Begin now. Then the work will become effortless.
All you have to do is keep taking the pulses on their wrists, listening into the rivers of their life, and one day you will begin hearing the pulses in your ears as your fingertips inquire into their wrists. Then you will see where they are blocked and what you need to do to treat them. This will take five years. Then the work will become effortless.
All you have to do is learn to see who someone really is, under the story and all its distracting details, under the list of all the symptoms. All you have to do is learn to see who they really are, and hold that for them. They will steadily move forward in your knowing. All you have to do is surrender to being of service to helping return each person to their true self. This will take 10 years. Then the work will become effortless.
All you have to do is risk loving whoever walks in your door, and completely love them from that moment they walk in your door. Then you will know all there is to do to treat them without the agony of trying to figure it out. This will take 15 years. Then the work will become effortless.
All you have to do is know that they are the same as you, that there is no separation, that the river of love is saturating both of you, that the treatment is healing both of you, that each treatment is etching its way into healing all of us. This will take 20 years. Then the work will become effortless.
All you have to do is walk out into the street and see everyone you meet with complete delight, and see them all as the same as you, and know that there is no separation. Walk along the street looking up into the buildings, under trees, at every bird and animal you meet, the stones and driftwood along the ocean and love it all and know that this is all aliveness and that there is no separation. This will take the rest of your life. Begin now. Then the work will become effortless.