Intuitive Acupuncture by John Hamwee

Author:John Hamwee [Hamwee, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857012203
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2015-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

Authenticity

If the patient is able to tell you what is really going on for her, to get beyond being charming or polite or interested or sceptical or gloomy – whatever it is she is accustomed to doing – then that will help you to work more accurately. So it is up to you to create the conditions in which that can happen.

Some aspects of this are the same for every patient. The treatment room, or area in a multi-bed clinic, needs to be a safe space, even a sacred space. Interruptions and disturbances convey a message to the patient that other things may be more important than her and her treatment, and who would reveal themselves in those circumstances? And anyone who has used a pressure cooker knows that a closed container amplifies the change you get from any input of energy. The old alchemists knew it too as they put their base materials into a retort. The treatment space needs to be inviolate in order to maximise what we do. It is the same with confidentiality.

On the other hand, each patient needs something different in order to trust you and reveal herself sufficiently for you to work well. It is a big issue, and I want to start to examine it through the example of prognosis.

Early on, many patients want to know what their prospects are, and how long it might take for them to get better: perfectly natural questions. Sometimes a general kind of answer seems adequate: explaining how the diagnosis gets more precise as a result of feedback from earlier treatments, how the work is cumulative as the body becomes more responsive, and so on. But sometimes that won’t do. The patient needs more. Often, especially in the first few sessions, I don’t really have enough information to be confident of a specific prognosis. On the other hand, I sense that only something quite precise and tailored to that individual patient has any chance of allowing her to trust acupuncture, and me, and hence to start the healing process. Perhaps you have encountered the same dilemma. Stay cautious and you may well forfeit much potential, or stick your neck out and risk the damaging crash of the false hopes that you have raised. And in the moment I am aware that the nature and quality of the relationship may well hang upon how this turns out.

I have had three kinds of experience. It is easiest when I just don’t know. Then I simply have to find a way of saying so that isn’t off-putting. Next is when I do have an instant and compelling opinion. It doesn’t happen very often but I have come to regard it as an example of what I call sudden knowing, so I trust it and I tell the patient. It hasn’t let me down. The last possibility is when I do have an opinion but it doesn’t have that intense force of clarity and conviction behind it and I think to myself that it might be right, but it might not.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.