That acupuncture and the spleen are directly linked to my emotions, I experience that firsthand. Acupuncture works on all organs and when I go to the acupuncturist again, it appears that acupuncture spleen is the solution.
"How are you?" she asks. I say that I'm still coughing, of course, but I'm doing pretty well otherwise. "Quite good?" she asks. When I look at her again after a few seconds, I have to admit that I'm not doing well at all, because I'm not in shape at all, I'm in the middle of menopause and I'm always tired. Dead tired! Meanwhile, she taps diligently on the laptop between us and nods every now and then to confirm that she hears me.
“Take off your outerwear” she says and this time I am prepared for it. I look with satisfaction at the neat set I put on that morning and think back in disgust to the last time I stood here in my "wrong underpants".
I am allowed to sit on the treatment table and for the next five minutes she focuses her attention on my wrists. "What are you feeling now?" I ask curiously. “I can feel the energy of your organs, but I need to concentrate for a moment,” she says gravely. “Your kidneys and spleen, in particular, are very low,” she says when she's done. I ask her what that means, because apart from the fact that I'm still skeptical, I don't understand much about this Eastern medicine.
When she explains to me that the spleen, among other things, provides the balance in emotion, I immediately feel the tears prick behind my eyes. My confidence is growing by the minute, because everything she says afterwards about acupuncture for the spleen makes perfect sense. “Are you drinking enough?” she asks. I tell her how much I drink in a day and she shakes her head sympathetically. "You really should drink more, because you're really dehydrated!" “Look…” she says. “If I press your skin with my thumb, it should immediately spring back”. I do fear that. She explains that a person needs at least one and a half to two liters of fluids per day and that coffee and tea are not part of that. (because they actually remove moisture from the body).
Needles are being poked into my skin in various places and luckily I don't feel much of it. The special thing is that when she puts a needle in my ankle I feel it at my neck. When all the needles have found a place I feel like a kind of porcupine and I am reminded of an old advertisement from a well-known insurance company. The man had to jump out of a burning house with hundreds of needles in his body, while under his window (at least two floors below) firefighters stood ready with a parachute. “Ow...”
I get an aluminum blanket over me, which turns out to be unexpectedly light and warm and I slowly doze off a bit. The soothing music helps me to forget the things I still have to do this day. Acupuncture… the Chinese are not that crazy after all.
