My Journey to becoming an acupuncturist

I love acupuncture. As the youngest of three, my first experience with the practice was being dragged to my sister's acupuncture appointments. My sister was a rock star when she was a teenager because she not only got needled but also took raw herbs. When she boiled those "sticks and twigs", as I called them, she made the house stink and then drank them! She said they didn't taste that bad, which is even crazier. 

After watching my sister’s experience with Eastern Medicine in high school, it was my turn. In my junior year of high school, I developed elbow/arm/wrist pain playing tennis. Of course, it was diagnosed as tennis elbow, but it was actually ulnar nerve entrapment. I did all the things with the support of my parents: physical therapy, orthopedist surgeon consultation, acupuncture, and chiropractic. The latter two were what diagnosed me correctly and helped me the most, and thus began my intrigue. 

Then came college, graduation, and a move to Washington, D.C. - only to find myself waking up with joint pain. In my very early 20s, I would dread getting out of bed because it felt like I was stepping on glass. I found myself an acupuncturist, and the rest is history - but not really. 

My acupuncturist in D.C. helped me tremendously to stop waking up “stepping on glass shards''. By then, I had gotten enough acupuncture to ask my acupuncturist about all the ice cream I ate in the hot, muggy D.C. summers. She told me to eat watermelon. It was as simple as that. On my way home from that appointment, I got off a stop early from the metro, bought myself a half watermelon (no way I was carrying a whole watermelon home for 6 blocks), and went home. I cut into it, and two slices later I had no cravings for ice cream! Blown away, the next time I saw my acupuncturist, she said watermelon was an Eastern Medicine herb that helps cool the body down. I was eating ice cream because I was hot on the outside and on the inside, and my body was trying to cool down. 

I was so fascinated by this that I started looking into acupuncture schools. As fate would have it, on the first day of my first Herbology class (not quite as fun as Harry Potter Herbology, for the record), the first herb I learned is xi gua - also known as watermelon!