Monday, and was it ever.

Why is it, WHY is it that my fantasies about how parenting is "supposed" to work can't conveniently work out in reality? I keep finding myself having to take positions and enforce them against the hordes, and this is NOT HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE! Jeepers.

I keep reminding myself that eventually this is all going to work out, that eventually what I'm saying and modeling is going to take root and bear fruit, but baby, I'm running on faith with that today, believe me.

Sometimes I wish I were a drinker....

W.I.P. Wednesday

A baby quilt, for the baby of someone who babysat my little ones all those years ago... I can say with no reservation that I'm utterly, utterly done with that stage of my own life, but I wish them well, and I sure like making little quilts!

The Ross Sisters - Solid Potato Salad

Check out this offering from 1944 - you've got your singing, your dancing, your hotpants, your contortionism, your swinging from the hayloft.... Happy Tuesday!

Click here

Community Acupuncture, aka Gospel Train

Get on board, a-little childrun
Get on board, a-little childrun
Get on board, a-little childrun
There's room for many-a-more...

And here's the internal war I've been waging with myself over the past few years. I love acupuncture. LOVE it, and I'm not using that word lightly. I think it's a fabulous tool for regaining and maintaining health of all sorts; physical, mental, spiritual. AND... it's very expensive. The going rate in this area is between $70-$90 per treatment. Per treatment! Holy crackers!

That, my friends, is not sustainable health care for the most of us, especially when you consider that acupuncture works best on injury or acute chronic conditions if it's administered at least 1X/week, usually between 6-10 weeks, and then at maintenance levels after that.

There are all sorts of reasons given for this, but what it boils down to is that when acupuncture crossed the ocean to the new world, it needed credibility, and it decided that credibility could be gained by adopting the standard western medical model: 1 client, 1 practitioner, 1 room, and given the nature of acupuncture treatment, for 1 hour. And if you look at it that way, well yeah, you'd have to charge a lot to cover your building rent and the cost of the education that got you there, and enough to make a living besides.

The downside of this, from a practitioner's point of view, is that it severely limits your circle of clientele. $70-$90/hour? That eliminates about 75% of people from seeing acupuncture as a possibility for themselves. Another 20% of us (those with health benefits) can afford some treatment, but certainly not on a weekly basis for very long, and maybe 5% of the population can afford to address their health and/or pain problems with acupuncture on a regular schedule.

It's hard to build a thriving practice if you can only count on a sliver of that last 5% to partake of what you're offering.

And then me, I'm thinking, "I'm going to stick a few needles in someone and let them percolate for half an hour, and for that I'll charge them $70?" Hmmmm.... even a conscience as leathery as my own finds a problem with that.

I've forgotten the actual statistic, but I believe that in North America, a large majority of acupuncturists are no longer practicing acupuncture 5 years after they graduate. The model simply doesn't work very well unless you can tap into an elite clientele.

Consequently you hear a lot of griping on acupuncture message boards about the masses not being committed to their health, etc. But really, come on! If someone's making minimum wage, they're barely paying the rent, never mind taking care of the degeneration of their knees. And on the other-other hand (have I used up all my hands yet? I warn you, I'm like a Hindu goddess in that regard), I have NO PATIENCE with people who say they can't afford treatment when they're sipping a $5 coffee.

This was going somewhere...

Right. Okay. Enter COMMUNITY ACUPUNCTURE!

This is a different business model. It's not 1:1:1:1. With community acupuncture, multiple clients are treated simultaneously. Generally speaking, you use recliners instead of tables, and they're all in a big room together. People remain clothed, rolling up pants and sleeves, and most of the points used are from the knee to the foot, shoulder to hand, neck, face, head. Fees are on a sliding scale, usually from $15-$40 per treatment, often with an initial $10 surcharge for the first appointment to cover the paperwork and extra time involved in reviewing your medical history.

And here, my friends, is a video to give it flesh.

I was thinking about this concept all on my own up here in Northern Alberta, and consider my surprise when I found it all assembled and ready to use down in the States! No need to reinvent the wheel. Someday I'm going to be an acupuncturist, and I do believe that this is the way I'm going to go. It sits well in my heart.

I hear the car wheels rumblin'
And a-rolling through the land...

A Tutorial of a Different Kind

Photo credit: schmitee from morguefile.com

It was The Day. I turned FORTY. Finally one of the big girls!

Now for the birthday present.

I'm constantly seeing clients who have upper back pain. You probably know this pain. This is the knot on the inside border of your shoulder blade, or higher up in the traps, something like that.

Obviously I can't open an online clinic, but I can show you a combination of stretch and strengthening that goes a long way toward alleviating some of that upper back tension. I give these instructions to clients almost every day.

When the pectoralis major muscles are over-strong, they pull toward the centre and rotate the humerus (upper arm bone) forward, which creates a head-forward, rounded-back posture that over-stretches the smaller, weaker rhomboids between your shoulder blades. When the rhomboids are in a constant state of stretch, they spasm in an attempt to regain their optimal length, which HURTS. This sequence addresses both.

So first off, you need to stretch out those pec major muscles on your chest. They're a type of muscle called "postural", which means that in general they tend to be strong and tend to shorten. They need to let go first, before trying to strengthen the back. The pec major originates along your sternum (breastbone), and attaches at the upper humerus. Here's a picture, courtesy of Wikipedia:


Here's the Lovely Poppy showing the stretch:


Stand beside a wall, and place your forearm along it. Lean forward, until you feel the stretch across your chest. Hold for 15-30 seconds. Do the same to the other side.

Here's a picture of it from behind:


Right. Now that the front is less tense, it's time to work on the rhomboids in back. The thing is, and here's the thing, that because these back muscles are spasming, trying to pull the shoulder blades back into position, it feels like they need to be stretched. THEY DO NOT NEED TO BE STRETCHED. They need to regain tone, so they stop firing off distress signals.


So here's Poppy demonstrating a strengthening exercise:


Stand straight. Drop your shoulders, and keep 'em dropped. (Shoulders have a tendency to migrate north when we're concentrating, which is another piece of the upper-back-pain problem.) Bend your elbows to 90 degrees, and bring them back, pinching your shoulderblades together. Then, when you've got maximum contraction, bring your fists forward slightly, maybe an inch, until you just start to feel that your losing the contraction between your shoulder-blades. Hold this for 10-15 seconds. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

When I first learned this sequence, I'd been having constant misery in my upper back for many years, and I would do the stretch/strengthen combo many, many times per day. Now that it isn't nearly the chronic problem that it was, I do it maybe 3-4X/day, enough to counteract the habitual postures of life and work.

If you came to my clinic presenting this problem, I'd do some myofascial release work on the pecs, and give the rhomboids some tone, and then I'd give you these exercise. Since I can't see you all under my hands, at least I can give you something to try at home. Just another piece of the pie. Or cake, I suppose.

So Long...?

Kate, I'm hoping it's an April Fool joke.

If not, I'm very sorry, and I'll miss you.

Take care.

Sap Rising

Photo credit: bosela from morguefile.com

In Chinese medicine terms, spring is the season that correlates with the Wood element; rising energies, forward motion, plans and instigations. The organs associated are Liver and Gall-bladder. The colour is green, the positive emotion is benevolence, as in benevolent action towards promoting justice, the negative emotion is ANGER.

I'm feeling a lot of Wood energy this morning, this month. Sometimes it's anger, but overall it's like I'm finally returning to my original nature, my natural disposition towards creativity, planning, making things happen. Lord, it's been such a long time... Years. Finally I'm not trudging through depression anymore - it's spring in every sense!

And part of this is that I'm pushing some issues that were in danger of being left to die a slow death. Last fall I found out that a practitioner had been slagging me and my husband online. Talk about angry! And as hard as that was, and as angry as I was, I think it really lit the fire under my ass that has warmed me into action and interaction with life again.

A few weeks ago, after months of silence from the regulating board, I wrote an e-mail asking what had happened to my case, since I hadn't heard anything since the initial reception. That was difficult for me to do. A part of me wants to just let it fall between the cracks, the part of me that feels like everything is actually my fault, and that any grievance I have against anyone else will turn on me and become my own death sentence. But I took a big breath and wrote it anyway. My rational mind knows that what went down was completely out of bounds, and happened even before I had any significant dealings with this person, and that an impartial third party has no choice but to recognize that, especially since I have it in writing. I try to listen to my rational mind.

Yesterday I received a letter in the mail, stating that the grievance process was going forward, and scheduling an appointment with us to take our oral statements. Everything in me that had been dormant leapt into overdrive; anxiety, anger. Since then I've been trying to round up these wild cows and refocus. But jeepers - the anger is huge and explosive, the anxiety runs my heart a little faster, worries me into taking some of the blame for something I never had a hand in. Good thing I've opened a more constructive outlet for it. More constructive than the violence I'd begun to fantasize about, anyway. Destructive for her, possibly. Constructive for me. And ultimately, if it deconstructs her hubris towards clients, that's a win for her too, though I'm sure it won't feel like it at the time. And for her other clients, whom I assume she treats in the same way. Though maybe not so much anymore, since she's been found out.

I used to be a very angry person all the time, and I trained myself out of it. Part of that was religious ideals, part of it was sheer practicality. Ya gotta get along to get along, you know? Inviting people to f*** off and die doesn't usually help matters much, in any situation. But I trained myself too well. I trained myself into something I'm not, and it was killing me. This rising sap that's so much a part of my make-up needs to be acknowledged, because it's the source of my creation and the fantasies that lead to action. My sparkling frustration is a signal that something is NOT RIGHT. And that's good to know. Now I need to learn to take those sparks and light a torch that can lead me into parts unknown, to slay the dragons that decimate the inner countryside.

Speaking of dragons... I actually have a bit of an affinity for them, my last phrase notwithstanding. Not Disney dragons, or dragons as a symbol of evil, but Chinese dragons. In Asian culture, dragons are water spirits, a good omen. I once had a marvellous dream about a cloud dragon, twisting in the mist in front of me. I'm not sure what it meant, but I tucked it away in my heart and think about it from time to time. It's a something. Someday I think I'll know.