Tag Archives: acupuncture

At long last, in class again!

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I was finally able to fit in a yoga class at Thrive with Pierre Cou­vil­lion this evening. My first class since mid-​​August and almost two months after my knee oper­a­tions. I forced myself to go by pack­ing my kit and rolling up my mat this morn­ing before I left for work and giv­ing my wife instruc­tions to take it to the stu­dio when she went to her class in the after­noon. I knew I had to put some kind of imper­a­tive in the for­mula because I was build­ing up all kinds of resis­tance to the yoga class and even going to the gym, even though I can feel the adverse effects that their absence is hav­ing on my body and temperament.

Pierre led a pretty straight for­ward class that was good for me because it was am all-​​levels class that empha­sized ground­ing in the basics of good form and breath. I did not do any­thing crazy — no jump-​​backs or jump-​​throughs, no wheels or advanced inver­sions. I just wanted to feel easy and com­fort­able in my asanas, and focus on my knees to make sure that they were solid and fully engaged. Pierre led us through some fun­da­men­tal vari­a­tions in stand­ing poses that rein­forced the track­ing of the leg mus­cles. I think the fac­tor that had dete­ri­o­rated the most dur­ing the break was balance.

In prepa­ra­tion for the class, I had a ses­sion of acupunc­ture in the morn­ing that was sup­posed to help break up some of the scar tis­sue in my knee.

Acupuncture treatment helped a lot

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I woke up this morn­ing and felt a big relief in my knee. The relief of ten­sion that I had felt yes­ter­day after treat­ment had con­tin­ued after a night’s rest. Yes­ter­day, I was really sore, and felt tired from the dif­fi­culty of walk­ing and climb­ing stairs. I could feel the strain build­ing up in my shoul­ders as I clinched with each step with my right leg. I have started icing down my knee this week­end. I pre­vi­ously thought that my knee did not show any signs of swelling, but today I did detect some puffi­ness above my knee, which may be a sign of inflam­ma­tion. Another symp­tom is that I get pain relief from ibuprofen.

In other words, I am treat­ing it as if it is an inju­ruy, not just a nick or ding that will go away with a lit­tle rest and time.

Another con­se­quence is that I’ve gone up five pounds over the past four weeks. I have to cut back on my calo­rie intake due to the drop-​​off in my phys­i­cal activity.

Seeking help, a start

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Old drawing of meridians in Chinese medicine
Acupunc­ture chart from Hua Shou (fl. 1340s, Ming Dynasty). This image from Shi si jing fa hui (Expres­sion of the Four­teen Merid­i­ans). (Tokyo : Suharaya Heisuke kanko, Kyoho gan 1716). Cour­tesy of Wikipedia.

My knee both­ered me more each day as the week went on. Ibupro­fen has become an essen­tial intake sev­eral times a day. Last week, I could still feel capa­ble of tak­ing a yoga class. This week, it’s out of the ques­tion because of the increased pain and the sen­sa­tion of insta­bil­ity. I was lucky to already have a Fri­day appoint­ment with my acupunc­tur­ist, Kelly Welch, only three blocks from my office. Kelly also prac­tices Ash­tanga yoga and had two bad knees so he has first-​​hand expe­ri­ence about deal­ing with the problem.

I gave him the back­ground on the injury, which I have already laid out here in excru­ci­at­ing detail. He asked about where the pain was felt, zero­ing in on medial side of the knee. He really did not give me a “diag­no­sis” in a med­ical sense, leav­ing that for a West­ern physi­cian who could use MRIs and other tools to rule out things like arthri­tis, torn lig­a­ments and other nas­ties. He gave me some point­ers about how to keep up with my yoga while not injur­ing it fur­ther by using a rolled-​​up towel or blan­ket between my thigh and calve behind my knee when­ever I have to go into hero’s pose or sim­i­lar poses that put pres­sure on the joint. He gave me the name and phone num­ber of his ortho­pe­dist, who han­dles a lot of sports related cases. He also gave me the name of his mas­sage ther­a­pist who has worked with peo­ple with knee issues, too.

Kelly did acupunc­ture on my right knee and left elbow (China med­i­cine is into the yin-​​yang thing so a Chi­nese doc­tor would always treat the oppo­sites to restore bal­ance). He also applied some elec­tri­cal stim­u­lus, a slight sen­sa­tion of being shocked. He adjusted it so that it did not reach dis­com­fort or pain. And then he left me to sim­mer for 20 min­utes. The treat­ment seemed to release a lot of mus­cu­lar ten­sion that had built up by the pain — and the antic­i­pa­tion of pain. As always with acupunc­ture, the treat­ment seems to wash me clean of ten­sion and com­pressed energy. I feel lighter, more clearheaded.

Finally, Kelly set me up for three more weekly appoint­ments for follow-​​ups on the ini­tial treatment.

As soon as I made it back to the office, I shot off an e-​​mail to the optometrist’s office assis­tant and set up an appoint­ment for next Wednes­day after­noon, the soon­est that he could see me.

New Art of Living group

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This week­end I real­ized that I had not done the long kriya in nearly two months. My orig­i­nal group had stopped meet­ing because it lost its bor­rowed office space. I looked up another group in my area (Rockville, MD), made con­tact to con­firm the meet­ing, went to Stephen and Amita Cupp’s house this Sun­day after­noon and par­tic­i­pated in the weekly gath­er­ing. It was a very Indian set­ting — we sat in a liv­ing room with­out chairs or couches, just a beau­ti­ful car­pet. In addi­tion to the long kriya, we spent some time singing AoL songs. Appar­ently my DC group was musi­cally chal­lenged and skipped the singing part.

It’s impor­tant to keep doing the long kriya because you can check your form and tim­ing. I noticed that I was cut­ting my inter­vals in 3-​​part breath­ing too short.

Last week in my acupunc­ture ses­sion, Kelly told me that he was going to work at open­ing up my lungs and heart, in addi­tion to deal­ing with my lower back strain. I noticed on Fri­day dur­ing my morn­ing kriya that my breath­ing was excep­tion­ally deep and fluid. That also made me want to do the long kriya as well.

It fits together.

Acupuncture, breaththroughs and convalescence

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Last night my yoga class really rung the last ounce of energy out of me. I had noticed that I had good flex­i­bil­ity in my spin, being able to do twists that had proven hard, if not impos­si­ble, before my acupunc­ture treat­ment last week (But it could also have been due to con­tin­u­ing work that I’ve been doing since I injured my lower back a month ago). I was more flex­i­ble, but because my stiff­ness and rigid­ity had been prop­ping up my core, I strug­gled to hold posi­tions. My breath got out off con­trol and I had to drop out of a cou­ple of poses. I com­mit­ted myself to accom­pa­ny­ing my body through the process — not judg­ing it or get­ting discouraged.

Later at home, I really felt drained. I had a late sup­per and went to bed. I got up this morn­ing still feel­ing fatigued, and dragged myself to my acupunc­ture appoint­ment at 9:00. One hour later, I was re-​​energized and feel­ing fine. I had spent about 20 min­utes on the table and felt as if I had taken a long nap. Kelly Welch also pre­scribed some Chi­nese med­i­c­i­nal herbs to help improve blood flow.

In gen­eral, my back is much bet­ter. The day after my first treat­ment, my ache was no longer con­cen­trated on one side, but had dis­si­pated across my whole lower back and less­ened. It was like a knot had loos­ened. Over the week­end, the pain became an after­thought. I only had a twinge of stiff­ness in the morn­ings when I got up, and that usu­ally dis­ap­peared before I was out of the door for work.

Over in the Mov­ing into Still­ness forum, a par­tic­i­pant said: “Sounds like you got a ded­i­cated doc! I’d say that you are one of the lucky peo­ple.” He’s right.

I have not posted here much over the past few days because the acupunc­ture treat­ment has loosen up some other emo­tional things that I have been work­ing through in a pri­vate jour­nal. I don’t want to turn this blog into a confessional.

Acupuncture treatment for back pain

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I had a ses­sion of acupunc­ture treat­ment for the back pain that I’ve been suf­fer­ing from for the past month. One of my yoga instruc­tors, Anne Thiel, rec­om­mended that I try acupunc­ture, instead of a chi­ro­prac­tor or doc­tor for deal­ing with the lower back sprain. She rec­om­mended a young cou­ple, Kelly Welch and Kather­ine Yonkers, here in down­town DC, only a few blocks from my work place. They were on my Care­First approved list of alter­na­tive med­i­cine providers so I got a dis­count. I would have gone sooner, but they were on vaca­tion for the week prior to July 4th so I got an appoint­ment as early as I could fit into Welch’s sched­ule. Since this was the first time, the ses­sion lasted 90 min­utes — the first half for a gen­eral eval­u­a­tion and his­tory tak­ing, and the sec­ond half was the treat­ment. Welch explained the prin­ci­ples behind the Chi­nese med­ical prac­tice and explained how it would be applied to my problem.

I came out of the office with­out feel­ing even an ache in my lower back, a relax­ing flush in my body and a new appre­ci­a­tion for an “occult sci­ence.” Admit­tedly, as soon as I made my appoint­ment this week, the pain began to sub­side sharply. Today, it was not that severe and I even had some prob­lems pin­point­ing it once I was lying on my stom­ach. I will have to see how I feel after my yoga class this afternoon.

I will have two more ses­sions, the first in a weeks time’, and then assess if addi­tional treat­ment is nec­es­sary. I have read that back pain has a really low suc­cess rate for treat­ment, though my is not chronic pain so it may not be more prone to treat­ment. I liked that the treat­ment was holis­tic in approach and fit smoothly and neatly with my yoga prac­tices: there’s no mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence between Chi and prana — both are life energy.

Post­data: I noticed dur­ing my yoga class that I felt ener­gized and in touch, even though it’s been a while since I had a class and I was out of form. It was a very emo­tion­ally sat­is­fy­ing ses­sion, even though my thighs ached from the deep lunges.