What goes into training a practitioner of Five Element acupuncture? Understanding!
While our training includes years of studying Chinese Medicine theory, Western biomedical theory, acupuncture strategy, point location, and safety…The core of our training was an invitation to dive into, study, and learn OURSELVES.
The focus of our approach is on doing our own internal work, learning the ins and outs of who we are as people. How has life shaped our own processes and interactions in the world? Asking the questions of ourselves in regard to how we want to show up in the world? How do we want to show up in our day-to-day interactions? With our families? With our work? Within our treatment rooms? What are our strengths and weaknesses? Where are our edges, what are those things that ‘bump’ us a little and make us uncomfortable? And how do we react to being uncomfortable when it happens?
What does any of that have to do with Chinese Medicine?
A good Five Element acupuncturist has done/continues to do their own work and seeks to treat you as a whole person not simply your list of symptoms or even your ‘patterns.’ It’s setting the intention of discovering who you are in HEALTH. Who are you and how do you respond to life and its ever-changing circumstances. It’s understanding that “we can only take patients as far as we are willing to go ourselves.”
This statement alone has shaped and driven each practitioner here at Five Shen in different ways, to not only be the best practitioner they can be but to be the best version of themselves as a person simply showing up in the world.