The Body Is Not A Problem To Be Solved

As summer draws to a close, I’ve been reflecting with gratitude on the practice I’ve cultivated over the last 20 years in New York City.

Some of you have been seeing me for nearly that long. You transitioned with me from massage therapy to acupuncture and have been along for the ride as I’ve explored new ways of working with the body, from Frequency Specific Microcurrent to Cold Laser.

But even the phrase “the practice I’ve built” doesn’t feel quite accurate when I think about how I’ve made my living for the last two decades.

I haven’t built something so much as I’ve cultivated relationships with people. And relationships are an exchange of energy. They deepen over time.

Acupuncture is a singular path, and it has transformed me in ways I could not have imagined when I began my training in 2011.

I came to acupuncture heavily shaped by our culture’s ideas about achievement, growth and survival. I thought my task was to build a business and a reputation—to develop the skills to solve people’s body problems for them, to become really good at getting people out of pain.

But this medicine has a way of outsmarting that mindset.

Of course, acupuncture can exist comfortably within our modern medical and economic systems. We can study it, measure it, demonstrate its effects and use it to treat symptoms. And yes, acupuncture can be remarkably effective for pain relief. I’m really skilled at helping people experience less pain in their bodies, and I’m proud of that.

But after practicing this medicine for long enough, I’ve come to believe that isn’t the main event.

If the conversation never goes deeper than How do I make this symptom go away?, we never get below the surface of what might be possible.

I’ve learned that the most valuable thing I can offer a patient isn’t simply making a symptom disappear. It’s creating a space where you can be truly listened to.

A place where you can talk about what is happening in your body with someone who is invested in your well-being and trained to understand it on many different levels. Where you can ask questions, express feelings and make sense of the experience of living in your body. Where we can develop insights together and find practical steps that might lead to meaningful change.

A medical practice where your body is not simply a problem to be solved.

I don’t claim to have all the answers. What I can offer is a partnership: a willingness to journey WITH you as we help your body move through the experience of being alive with greater ease, resilience and, hopefully, greater joy.

There is something about this that feels deeply connected to the roots of Chinese medicine itself.

The foundational text of Chinese medicine, the Huang Di Nei Jing, takes the form of a conversation between the Yellow Emperor and his physician.

A conversation.

Two human beings exchanging observations and ideas, asking questions together and reaching toward a deeper understanding of the body, nature and what it means to live well.

Increasingly, I think that conversation is the medicine.

Because we are living in conditions that place extraordinary demands on human beings. And sometimes the symptoms we label as “pathology” can also be understood as intelligent adaptations to circumstances our minds have learned to accept as normal, but our bodies experience as anything but.

I came to understand this through my own experience.

For years, I approached the modern medical system with a deeply unpleasant symptom that I wanted to make disappear. I called it “anxiety.” I assumed the circumstances of my life were normal and therefore something must be wrong with me because I felt anxious.

Only when I began understanding myself within the larger systems I lived inside did a different picture emerge.

I couldn’t simply “delete” anxiety and continue with business as usual. I had to become curious about it. What was my body responding to? What had my nervous system learned about the world? What ways of living, striving and relating had I accepted as normal even when my body was telling me otherwise?

Eventually I realized that the person I had learned to be would reliably become anxious in a stressful environment—and our environment was unlikely to become less stressful.

So the work became something much more interesting than eliminating anxiety.

I had to become a different kind of person: more aware of myself, more able to listen to my body, more resilient, and more capable of choosing how I wanted to meet the world.

That was certainly more work than simply making an uncomfortable feeling disappear. But it also became a path toward meaning and self-understanding.

And increasingly, that journey is what I draw from when I work with patients.

I still want your shoulder to hurt less. I still want your headaches to improve. I still want you to sleep better, move more freely and feel more comfortable in your body.

But I also want us to remain curious about what your body might be telling us.

Because after twenty years of working with people, I’ve come to believe that the body is rarely just a problem to be solved.

Sometimes it is the beginning of a conversation.