The Reluctant Acupuncturist

Growing up, I never wanted to be an acupuncturist. My mother’s acupuncture practice took her away from me, and wore her down until she collapsed each night, begging me to step on her back. At best, I viewed acupuncture as a necessary evil. Without acupuncture we would not have anything to eat but the wind, she would say, demonstrating with wheezes for dramatic effect.I was going to be a scientist – a physicist, neurosurgeon, geneticist. I wanted to be part of the cutting edge, whatever that meant. I was going to work with pipettes. But in college, as I stood at a lab bench zapping yeast with radioactive beams, I suddenly asked myself, what did the yeast ever do to me? Why don’t we let yeast be yeast?It was not a straight shot from there to the medicine of my childhood. I worked in a hospital as an interpreter, where I found myself wanting to touch the patients, but was not allowed to.  I worked as a community organizer, and was disappointed to find that a pilot program at a local hospital that we had fought for did not end up helping patients. So I found myself coming full circle, to the medicine I’d avoided all along.

At acupuncture school, unlike my previous schools, people acknowledged that to become better healers, we needed to support each other, not outperform each other. I loved the contradictions we were forced to grapple with every day, as we studied both biomedical and Chinese perspectives on the same disease. I loved my teachers and classmates – an eclectic group of people who had the openness to twist their minds so far from how they’d been raised and schooled.

However, I also noticed certain undercurrents of Orientalism among some American practitioners and consumers of Chinese medicine.  As acupuncture increases in medical acceptance and general popularity in the U.S., I think it is important to be mindful of the cultural and political context of how we use it.The next post will look at the quest for authenticity among American practitioners of Chinese medicine.[Top photo by Wonderlane.] Rona Luo began practicing Chan (Chinese Zen) meditation at age six, and found a beautiful compliment in yoga during college. A former community organizer, she has taught bilingual yoga and meditation classes in NY and Oakland Chinatowns. She is also studying at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine in SF. Connect with Rona on Twitter under @pomelolo.