To restore physical, emotional and mental equilibrium
Over the last couple of years I have been exploring a lot of alternative medicine / therapy whilst being injured. I feel like I pretty much tried everything to figure out what was going on with my body and in the process learnt an unbelievable amount and spoke to a lot of people. I did go down the NHS route, got an MRI and saw a physio for a number of months all which were helpful (and free) but I didn’t feel like it was enough or quite right for me. So I began to explore I guess what you would call, alternative medicine, this included; chiropractic treatment, osteopath, sports massage, acupuncture, yoga, pilates, diet and believe me the list goes on. I can safely say that I owe my increased health, movement and recovery to a number of people and the key things I feel have made the biggest difference have been chiropractic treatment, Pilates, diet and acupuncture.
The Acupuncture treatment was the stand out thing for me that helped with pain relief and improved general wellbeing. Chinese medicine was something that had never really been on my radar until I was made aware of acupuncture by a friend. It was actually one of the last things I ended up trying and I went it with the mind set of what have I got to loose.
I really had absolutely no idea about it apart from that fact it involved sticking needles into you and I wasn’t really sure how that could fix an injury! Traditional Chinese Medicine is in fact an ancient system of healing that manipulates the body’s energy flow to trigger healing. What I also didn’t realise was how much it was about your body as a whole rather than targeting the specific problem area. Another thing I learnt was how much of an emotional link and response my body had with my injury, even talking aloud about my injury would fill me with dread and almost always end in tears.
This sums up perfectly what acupuncture is and the benefits I gained from it.
“To restore physical, emotional and mental equilibrium” British Acupuncture Council
I started a course of acupuncture treatment over the next few months with the wonderful Kat Love in Sheffield. At the beginning of each session we would sit down and talk not just the pain in my back and where it was but also how I was sleeping, feeling and general well being. Another interesting thing Kat would do would be to take the pulse from my wrist, which can give you a great deal of information about specific organs, depletions, pain and stress. Apparently there are almost 30 different kinds of pulses to feel for! Kat also treated me with moxa, this comes from a herb called mugwort. You light the moxa stick and then either hover it over the needles so the warmth penetrates down or place it in a box on the area that is stagnated.
I had treatment over the course a 3 months, once a week. I was experiencing pin pointed pain around L4/5 in my low vertebrates and then radiating pain spreading from here and out across the bottom of my lower back and down into my gluts. It was painful to bend forward, sideways, pick anything up and even sneeze. After this course of treatment the radiating pain had completely disappeared. I had my up and down days but general felt less worried and anxious and was sleeping better.
After feeling like I was hitting my head against a brick was for so long it is safe to say I am now making huge progress. My body is starting to feel a lot better and it feels nice to move and climb again. I wouldn’t put this change down to one specific thing but rather an accumulation of different alternative medicines and for me they worked. If you are experiencing chronic pain I would certainly recommend trying acupuncture.
I would highly recommend Kat if you live in Sheffield or the Peak area www.katlovesacupuncture.com
