An insight from an Acupuncture and TCM Expert, Petra van der Wildt
I have always known that the word balance conveyed something important. As a child growing up, my mother once told me about this magic word. To me balance was still quite unclear when I was very young, but somehow the word spoke to me.
Many years later, it is through balance, which implies the existence of two opposites or the two opposing halves (duality if you will) that I have learned to understand things.
I always wondered why we have bodies that had two opposite sides, it intrigued me that you could literally draw an imaginary line from the middle of your forehead, down between your eyes, all the way down in perfect symmetry. Why was that? Why were we built that way?
Through my studies of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, I learned about the concepts of yin and yang, which I saw reflected in the body during my anatomy and physiology classes. I gradually started understanding more and more about the deeper duality of life. This duality is found in the furthest reaches of our external world as well as in the smallest and tiniest parts of our internal world. Through this balance and duality my awareness grew.
As an acupuncturist and mother, I deeply value the body-mind as a whole and feel our body is our ‘earth suite’, that houses our mind and spirit during our stay here.
The body is the most magnificent, incredible, unimaginably complex home we have. I call it our home here, because if it were to break down, or get sick where else could you live?
Our bodies have innumerable complex systems that are constantly at work for us to stay in a state of homeostasis (which would be the medical word for balance). It has up to 12 known organ-systems that carry out this tremendous task constantly. All organs systems also work together, as they are codependent and in constant communication with each other. Our body-mind gives us signals when it is out of balance or when something is wrong.
Our job is to listen to these signals.
That is not always easy, but we can learn to get better at this. As I work with energy, really everything is energy, I do not just insert little (painless) acupuncture needles, but see it as a balancing act, to invigorate certain organ systems that need a little fine-tuning. Acupuncture is a beautiful tool that is very non-invasive. It uses the body’s own self-healing mechanisms to jumpstart the healing process, whether that is to stop pain, strengthen the immune system, rewire itself energetically or bring relaxation.
