Recent reporting of the financial difficulties has made me even more aware of the importance of language.  I know that the first rule of journalism is ”first simplify, then exaggerate” - problem is they take it to the level of sensationalism and then, often, to downright lies. 

 

So I thought that as an antidote to the media’s current misery, I would share with you some lighter moments I’ve had of late.  As with life in general, in our world the importance of what we say (or, indeed, don’t), how we say it and when, is crucial.  Let’s start with the marketing:

 

 

MARKETING

 

“Try our acupuncture – you’ll never get better” or “Kiss those painful haemorrhoids goodbye” are perhaps not the sort of call you should be putting out.  At my clinic, I recently gave a series of talks on Taoism and TCM; inadvertently, I had the notice:

 

TODAY

Pain & Stress

come in

 

again, not the best advertisement. 

 

After explaining where my clinic was to a new client, she asked “Where do you put the needles in?”  “There, at the clinic” I said. “No” she said “what part of my body?”

 

 

CLIENT INTERACTION

 

The number of times I’m asked, “Does it work?”  How tempting it is to say, “No – it’s one big con”.

 

Your clients will often have a language of their own – we’ve all heard it called “Aquapuncture” and no amount of telling will change it!  And interchanges like:

 

“I’d like you to help me conceive” is a bit of a conversation-stopper. 

 

“Are those your own teeth?”,  “Yes, I paid for them”. 

 

“You’re used to poking around with needles.  Can you take this splinter out?”

 

 “Do those trousers come up to your knees?”,  “No, they come up to my waist” and so on.

 

“You haven’t been ill lately – are you alright?”

 

Be careful what follows what when discussing symptoms with clients: don’t follow a discussion on bowels with a question like “and do you have floaters?” – it can lead to difficulties.

 

Round about the time I was seeking a name for my clinic, I was treating a rather dour lady who could only reply, “prick” when I asked what she was feeling during a needling session.  “Is it dull or sharp?” , “Prick”.  “Well, is the sensation travelling or just local?”,  “Prick”.  Until I hit the spot, at which point she looked me in the eye and loudly exclaimed “BIG PRICK!”.  Not taking it personally, I realised I now had the name of my practice:

 

“BIG PRICK OF *****”.

 

Another lady, growls at me as I put the needles in – most disconcerting.

 

A farmer who had Sciatic problems, and who alleviated the pain at home by using the same heat lamp as he used on small lambs, was having moxa treatment on his Piriformis when he asked “would that be as effective on my calves?”.  I had visions of working in the cow-house so replied, “possibly, but you might have to shave some hair off first” when he said  “… because I’ve been having cramps in there as well”. 

 

Another farmer came into the clinic after a session when I’d been using an aromatic massage oil and declared, ”Phew, this place stinks” – what he didn’t realise was that having spent a day processing silage, he was in no position to criticise AND bits of his manure heap dropped off him onto my floor with every step!

 

Then there was the woman who needed a face-down then a face-up treatment.  As she had a largish frame, I said that I would lower the couch while she turned over.  Maybe it was because I had my back to her, but she said something along the lines that I didn’t need to as she was used to it with her “large arse”.  Somewhat surprised, I was about to say something conciliatory, such as “I don’t think it’s that large”, when a little voice in the back of my head reminded me that she was of an equestrian bent; she had, in fact, equated getting on and off the couch to getting on and off her “large horse”.  Phew!  Sometimes a little pause is best!

 

The there was the client who declared: “I’m having difficulties with the flickering tubes”.  Not sure what Giovanni would have made of that and desperately trying to frame the appropriate questions, it transpired that she was being bothered by an ill-fitting ceiling light.

 

 

WE ARE AS GUILTY

 

Then we have to watch our own jargon – how many times has the poor patient worried about our usage of “Wind”.  Equally, “are you fit?” perhaps isn’t the best way to greet an epileptic.  Please don’t confuse Pericardium with Perineum – I’ve heard it done!  Likewise, pronunciation is important – offering a ‘gentle’ treatment requires clear enunciation if shock and embarrassment is to be avoided.  And once a recipient misheard “Damp-Heat” as “Stampede” followed by a few minutes of interesting conversation.  Never tell people booking appointments that such-and-such a slot is ‘free’; use the word ‘available’ or you’ll become a charity.

 

As students, we can be a little too focussed.  I remember a time, when I was where you are now, that I was watching Lethal Weapon 2, and in particular the love scene in the caravan between Patsy Kensit with Mel Gibson in – she was in the superior position and, to my shame, I heard myself saying  “what a pronounced C7 she has”.   Round about the same time, a dear colleague of mine, when a student in clinic, was so intent on filling in the boxes on the form, she asked this male patient about his period!  And again a second time after his somewhat strangled “pardon”!

 

We try to avoid pain and discomfort, but some people are very sensitive.  I’ve been likened to a driving instructor as someone who makes people cry a lot, and one patient asked “Did you get thrown out of dental school?”  A colleague usually responds that he didn’t take up acupuncture to cause pain – it was just a happy coincidence!

 

 

IN THE WIDER WORLD

 

I love the old jokes such as:

 

“I rang the enema helpline for advice – they really were very rude to me”

 

“Doctor I think I’m shrinking” – “you’ll just have to be a little patient”

 

and so on

 

But others also mess up their use of language.  I recently heard of an anti-drug campaign that was giving out free pencils, with the slogan “too cool to do drugs” written down its length.  The problem was that this became “cool to do drugs” and disturbingly “do drugs” as the pencil was sharpened.

 

Whenever I do Tom Williams’ Shendao Neck Release, I’m reminded of a charismatic vicar who asked congregation if there’s any thing he can help with.  Charlie goes up and says “it’s my hearing”.  The Vicar sticks one finger in Charlie’s ear and the other on top of his head.  After 5 minutes the Vicar asks, “did that help with your hearing, Charlie?”  “I don’t know,” says Charlie ”it’s not until Wednesday”

 

Then there is the urban myth that there is a single point to cure them of smoking, overweight, stress etc.  One client was half way out the door when he turned and said “Oh yes, is there a point for memory loss?”  I have another client who tells me every 5 minutes that he has a poor memory.

 

 

TO CONCLUDE

 

So the use or misuse of language can lead to problems – but it can also lead to hilarious episodes that we all need so much at times.  Enjoy them both.

 

Metta

 

Push the Red Button for another Stimulus ….

 

Recent events in the world money markets have served to remind us of just how we, both as individuals and as a society, react.  Rarely is that reaction just right; rather, we under-react and not do what should have been done, or we over-react and send the problem spinning off into even greater perturbations.

 

Pause

 

It is said that Lao Tsu, the accredited author of the Tao te Ching, thought nine times about what he was going to say before he said it.  I guess it would make for a slow conversation, but the chances were that he said exactly what he wanted to say (clichés come to mind:  God gave us two ears and one mouth ……., once the words are out you can’t put them back in …. etc).

 

Let us consider the value of the PAUSE.

 

In a previous Blog entry, I mentioned that the concept of the wheel (see Chapter 11 of the Tao te Ching) describes us nicely – how we ‘attach’ to the world from the periphery and ‘connect’ to it from the centre.  When we ‘attach’ to something, we cannot but help react when that something changes; when we ‘connect’ to that same something, then we have an option when it changes – not a ‘reaction’, but rather a ‘response’.  Why do you think that practitioners of T’ai Chi connect to their partners/opponents with the back of the wrist rather than by gripping it? – so as to have the option whether to disengage or follow, not to be yanked somewhere involuntarily before they’ve had time to loosen their grip.

 

You have to agree that recent world events have seen much of this uncontrolled reaction, with markets being yanked this way and that, with precious little evidence of considered response.

 

So why do we find ourselves in a society that ‘reacts’ rather than ‘responds’?  Well, as both individuals and as a society, we seem to be ever moving into a frenetic state of mind where we need constant stimulus; witness the development of dangerous sports or high risk activities, the buzz people get from violent video-gaming, joy-riding and so on (some say that it is a natural consequence of the increasing frustrations in life, developing in us Liver Qi Stagnation, and hence the need for over-activity to (temporarily) blow it away – discuss) ……  We seem to need constant stimulation to make us believe that life is worth living – however, studying TCM requires a focus that can be positively damaged by constant external stimuli!.  As my teacher has written:

 

We live in a world inundated with distractions, where we only have to press a button when we get bored or when we come to the end of our attention span, to move onto the next stimulus. This conditions us to resist any discipline that keeps us engaged in one activity, particularly if we have become used to a chaotic way of living. In fact, the very notion of discipline creates resistance, because it is generally misunderstood as something to do with coercion or duty. It has come to take on militaristic connotations. But the true meaning of discipline has to do with being a disciple - the willingness to learn, which implies, among other things, perseverance – a determination to carry something through to the end.

 

And yes, we come back to the question “from where does this stimulation come?”   It comes from outside us, the periphery, from those things to which we attach – the impermanent and transitory (interestingly, the way we see our lives very much as ‘outside ourselves’ is reflected in Dr Nick Reid’s view, in ‘Sick and Tired’, that: “throughout the last three hundred years, Western societies have been conditioned by scientific discoveries to perceive illness as a distinct entity that attacks us from outside our 'selves' and produces definite pathological changes that need to be treated with specific medicines or surgery.”)

 

What, then, if we learn to PAUSE, consider what options are available to us, and then respond appropriately?  This is much more of an internal process, and you keep your ‘centre’ secure.  We may not be able to change the course of world events, but we can choose how we respond to them.

 

I can hear it –“this is exaggeration - knocking the society in which we all have to live”.  Possibly, but my thoughts are the product of experience.  Some years ago I was teaching Primary School kids T’ai Chi; as an experiment, I tried meditation with them – we sat in a circle in the middle of the school hall at the cessation of lessons.  Cleaners were banging buckets and mops, parents were collecting their offspring, teachers were busying about clearing up etc.  Yet my kids went off into their own worlds oblivious to the chaos around them.  This feature soon became their preferred activity, and it wasn’t long until the teachers became intrigued, and then the local radio station.  These adults could not believe that these children could be so quiet and still.  When asked why they liked meditation, they replied “it’s time when we can be quiet and get away from all the activity – both at school and at home”.  Thus nails the concept that children have always to be kept occupied; out of the mouths of babes and ducklings, eh?

 

Osho, in his book ‘Awareness’, explains:

 

A man can live in two ways: he can live from his periphery or he can live from his centre.  The periphery belongs to the ego and the centre belongs to the being. 

 

If you live from the ego, whatever you do is not an action, it is always a reaction – you do it in response to something done to you.  From the periphery there is no action, everything is a reaction – nothing comes from the centre. In a way, you are just a slave of the circumstances.  You are not doing anything; rather, you are being forced.

 

From the centre, the situation changes diametrically.  From the centre you begin to act; for the first time you begin to exist not as ‘a relata’ but in your own right. 

 

So I would advise you to PAUSE.  Take a breath, count to ten, meditate or do something of that nature – you could use the Thai kick-boxing technique of ‘sinking the Qi’, by breathing in through the mouth and out through the nose – it works.  Respond to the world, as your choice, rather than blindly reacting.  Connect to it from within and don’t allow yourself to be yanked about by attaching to it from your peripheral in fulfilling your temporary sensual desires.  Chang Tsu told this story:

 

There was a man who was disturbed by the sight of his own shadow and so displeased with his own footsteps that he determined to get rid of both.  The method he hit upon was to run away from them.

 

So he got up and ran.  But every time he put his foot down there was another step, while his shadow kept up with him without the slightest difficulty.  He attributed his failure to the fact that he was not running fast enough.  So he ran faster and faster, without stopping, until he finally dropped dead.

 

He failed to realize that if he merely stepped into the shade, his shadow would vanish, and if he sat down and stayed still, there would be no more footsteps.

 

So enjoy the new term, and take the measured view.  There will be many ups and downs but pause a little - it’ll help you cope with them.

 

Metta