Parent Times

To Linda Solow-Miyoshi, a headache is not necessarily just a headache. It may be your spirit crying out for attention.

An acupuncturist, Solow-Miyoshi helps people overcome pain, addiction, anger and other ailments by understanding how the body and spirit work together. "We have more than one body--a physical body and an energy body. If you repair on the energy level, you may be able to repair on the physical level," she explains. "Acupuncture moves the vital energy of a person."

Solow-Miyoshi became interested in acupuncture several years ago when she was experiencing pain in her appendix. Working as a nurse in a hospital at the time, she was not eager to have the appendix removed. A friend suggested acupuncture and, when the treatments cured her problem, Solow-Miyoshi was hooked. "I used to hang out at my acupuncturist's office, so I decided I had better study it," she says.

A complicated and ancient form of treatment, acupuncture uses 361 points on the body that correlate to "meridians." An illness, Solow-Miyoshi explains, is some blockage of the energy in a meridian. The acupuncture point taps the energy associated with these meridians. "Acupuncture points are like a web through the body, a web of energy, which the needles access," she says.

To determine if a treatment is effective, acupuncturists take 12 pulses, related to the organs in the body. If someone has had an organ removed due to cancer, for instance, an acupuncturist can feel the energy on the pulse and may be able to determine if the cancer will go to another organ. "It's preventive medicine. Before something else shows up on the physical body, we can correct it on the energy level and possibly halt, slow down or change the course of the illness. Chinese medicine empowers the patient by aiding the body to heal itself from within, rather than imposing measures from without."

With three years of formal training in Chinese medicine in America and additional study in China, Solow-Miyoshi explains that the practice of acupuncture is a constant learning process. If two people come in with the same symptom, their treatments may be completely different because the root of the problem is never exactly the same. The evaluation process is therefore quite extensive, and typically involves a lot of discussion about patients' lives and the stresses that may be affecting their health.

"I had one case where the patient, a young woman, was having stomach pain. She had been given a lot of different drugs and, finally, they wanted to put her on anti-depressants. But, her mother didn't want that," Solow-Miyoshi recalls. "So, during treatment, it came out that she had been assaulted and had never told anyone. By holding all that stress within her, many physical problems were caused."

Solow-Miyoshi's specialty is helping people to overcome addictions and counteract the side-effects of drugs. Her work in these areas has exposed her to two very different groups of people--prison inmates and children.

Using auricular (ear) acupuncture, she has treated patients in jails and substance-abuse centers. Members of this tough population are often skeptical at first, she says, but usually make a remarkable turnaround after a few treatments. "In one month's time, they are saying, 'I don't want to be here again. I want to do something with my life.' Acupuncture opens up possibilities for their lives and gives them a sense of calmness inside," she explains.

Solow-Miyoshi treats children who have recurring infections that are not being helped by antibiotics. She also helps autistic kids counteract the side-effect of drugs used to treat their condition. "In China, acupuncture is used for everything, even reversing allergies."

Finding it difficult to briefly describe how acupuncture works, Solow-Miyoshi tells how the Chinese explain it. "The sign for energy in China is the rice pot lid bubbling. What acupuncture does is keep the rice pot lid moving," she says. "If you get stuck in your life on any level --physical, emotional or spiritual--acupuncture gives you a new viewpoint to make some changes. There's an old saying that the role of the Chinese physician is to help you connect with your destiny."

In the U.S., acupuncture has seen a phenomenal growth in popularity. This, says Solow-Miyoshi, can be attributed in part to the amount of quality time acupuncturists spend with their patients. "People are looking for more connection than they are getting from their present health-care system, and acupuncture provides that," she says. "It goes to a deep level in how the body and the spirit work together, and how to stay healthy."