Symptoms- Friend or Foe?

No one likes to feel pain, discomfort, or illness, however, how we view having symptoms in the body is important to our healing.

Symptoms as Messenger

When we experience symptoms it can be easy to fight against them or feel discouraged or frustrated at their existence and understandably so! Often our symptoms can keep us from doing the things that we love to do and from being the people we want to be in our work, lives, and relationships. In Western culture, we seek to eradicate symptoms or we seek out medicine to remedy symptoms. In Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, symptoms are actually a more superficial evidence of imbalance that is occurring at a deeper level in the body. As acupuncturists, we see symptoms as the body’s communication system alerting us with a red flag indicating a deeper level of disharmony. In Chinese Medicine we seek to treat a root cause of disharmony which in turn, helps alleviate symptoms. If we simply treated symptoms, the underlying cause may still lurk underneath, likely symptoms may return, and the underlying disharmony could go untouched and potentially deepen over time.

Stay Curious

It is understandable to want to be symptom-free, especially when symptoms are getting in the way of living our best life. Thankfully acupuncture can treat on a deeper level in the body helping to resolve symptoms and support the bodies healing in a way that has side benefits of other aspects of health improving as well. With this in mind, I invite you to give yourself some grace around your symptoms, and to recognize that these are simply an invitation for change and healing, and ultimately, a dear friend delivering you instructions that it is time to create some deeper time and investment in your self and in your health. Staying open and curious around symptoms is a good step to supporting internal harmony and is expansive and life-giving, instead of the contraction and rigidity that comes with fighting against them. This expansive approach may not come right away, but with practice, can be a powerful catalyst of health starting from within. Our symptoms may not subside with simply changing how we view them, however, with a degree of acceptance and self kindness, we can muster the courage and the fortitude required to face them and to make healthy decisions for our lives.