NEEDLES

Could you stick a needle into someone, then another and another and another? I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t. I might hurt someone. I might miss – or more likely, chicken out at the last minute. How do you commit to stabbing someone, even kindly, and follow through until that sucker is where it’s supposed to be?

You practice. You put thin needles into an orange. Next, you take turns with a fellow student, someone likely to be as inexperienced as you. Then perhaps you try your skill on oranges floating in water. That’s how my friend and acupuncturist Jennifer Stone learned how to do the “sticking” part of her job, the part where she confidently inserts the tip of a 3″ stainless steel point into the small of someone’s back or into one temple and then the other or in that curvy space between the first and second fingers — all in the service of moving the body’s energy where it needs to be.

What I like best is that Jennifer doesn’t hesitate. She runs her hand confidently over the place a needle will go, balances it between her fingers, and zing! In the point goes. She tests the needle’s position for a moment, making sure that there is proper “resistance,” then goes on to the next one. Occasionally, a needle stings or hits a nerve (and feels more like a small jolt of lightning than a sting). Jennifer doesn’t apologize for the body’s natural reaction; she simply removes the offending needle, wipes down the skin with alcohol, and continues. I respect this commitment and non-apology 100%, even as I wish nothing ever hurt.

Every time a needle goes in, I think: this is the way someone wins at darts or takes the other guy down for the count: commitment and follow-through. You imagine the needle is finding its way beneath the skin, not just up to its surface, imagine the precise number of millimeters that will do the job and go right there over and over. Even if it makes you unpopular in the short run, even if you occasionally hit a tender spot. Here’s what I learn every time I have an appointment at East West Acupuncture: I make a far better patient than I ever would a practitioner of needles.