By Paul Johnson.

One of my clients said this to me a few weeks ago. Honestly. He had come to see me for a skin condition, but had undergone an enormous awakening with the first treatment. He felt like a new person, like the blinkers had been lifted form his eyes. He felt alive, energised, connected. He realised he was stuck in his life and needed to make some major life choices. All that, and just from having a few little needles. And that wasn’t even my intention!

Acupuncture sometimes produces miraculous results. When people’s energy becomes stuck it can manifest in a myriad of ways – frustration, depression, anxiety, migraine, digestive or menstrual is-sue, skin conditions… the list goes on and on. Once that stagnant energy is moved, the body starts a natural process of putting itself in order, both physically and emotionally. Acupuncture can quite literally be life-changing for people. I should now – that is what it did for me, which is why I retrained as an acupuncturist all those years ago.

This transformation doesn’t happen for everyone. I catch some people at the just the right time and place to give them a life-changing nudge! I don’t plan to, but their body accepts my suggestions for how to correct itself and embraces it, big-time!

I often see this happen with people who have chronic constipation. I always explain to them that there may be some emotional aspect to the issue and that they may undergo some kind of emotional upheaval as the problem shifts. People with this problem are often stuck in their lives. They can’t let go. Basically, they are full of shit and once that moves, who knows what may come out! One of my patients divorced her husband, sold her home and moved to Barbados to take up her dream job of teaching scuba-diving after just a few treatments. Another went round to every mem-ber of her family and told them what she really thought of them – painful in the short-term, but in-credibly productive long term.

Of course, this doesn’t always happen when people are treated with acupuncture. If someone has strained their back from doing too much gardening, the treatment they get is hardly liable to be life changing. That only happens when people are at that point in their life already and just need a little nudge. It’s not the acupuncturist that changes them, it’s them that changes them.

So just be aware that next time you have acupuncture, if you are ready to take a new step in your life, this could happen to you!

Paul Johnson