Wait! Isn’t Acupuncture demonic?!

I once hired a Catholic business coach to help me with streamlining my already established brick and mortar acupuncture practice in order to niche down and increase my reach.  She was lovely and kind and her business acumen was on point.  But she discouraged me from offering acupuncture to the world, the Catholic world, since it was understood by her to be “ruled by demonic forces that are not aligned with the faith.”  

I was so offended by her suggestion that I fired her.  Kindly, of course.

And I don’t regret it.

This woman was trying to tell ME that she knew more about my profession than I did.  At first I was so taken aback and, wanting to be a “good Catholic,” I tried to believe her, considering what my life would look like if I’d abandoned all I’d worked so hard for over the past 20 years, the medicine that I truly came to love, and devising a pivot plan for what I thought I “should” make of my business.  Eventually, I came to and established a more confident footing.

I decided to debunk her claim right here on my blog to set the record straight because she is not the first Catholic to express this insinuation to me.  To be clear, ANYTHING can be influenced by the darkness of the enemy. Yes, anything.  Even western allopathic medicine.  Even people inside the Catholic Church.  The spiritual battle has been waged and is alive and well, I’m afraid.  Well-meaning people can often get caught up in the lies of the enemy or in the witness of others performing “medical acts” that are clearly outside of the scope of God’s will.

I’d encourage those who are quick to judge to zoom out and discern whether the claims they make about things they are less than properly educated about are accurate or even true.  Did you know that the brain often fills in the blanks of our memories, contorting and fracturing the truth of what really happened, and even convincing the person with certainty that past events did or didn’t occur?  Poor brain. It’s not at fault.  This is its way of organizing time and experiences with the ultimate goal of ensuring our survival when memory has holes. In order to keep going, our brains need to create stories that protect us.  These stories either help us to avoid the same threat, perceive imminent danger so we do not repeat mistakes (ahem) or recon a situation safe.  They can serve our greater good, or wreak havoc on our peace but I’ll save that topic for another post.  The stories our brains believe don’t have to make sense or even be real.  It’s not the job or concern of the brain to know the facts.  It is the job of the brain to ensure we survive.  That’s it.    

Sometimes we act like that in our own lives.  We take a topic we know very little about and we formulate an opinion based on that knowledge alone.  We fill in the blanks with what makes sense to us based on the information at hand and our lived experience up to this point in our lives.  We all do this, of course.  It is how we animate ourselves in the world with confidence and safety.  We can’t know ALL THE THINGS.  We have to be able to make accurate momentary decisions with the information at hand in order to move on with our days.  Have you always known how to change a diaper?  How to sear a roast?  How to apply for a FAFSA loan?  It is estimated that women make an average of 35,000 decisions per day.  That’s a lot of thinking!  We are too often bombarded with making decisions and forming opinions before we have all the facts.  Life is too fast for research sometimes and we are bound to get some things wrong.  We do our best, we really do, and this business coach was no different.  She was doing her best with the information she had and she was coming from an intentional place of wanting to help me.  I thank her for that.  But she was wrong.

A small amount of wishy-washy information thrown our way, coupled with not knowing where to look for the truth, and mixed with a swirl of pride that hinders our ability to doubt what we already know all come together to create a perfect storm of potential falsehoods and lies.  Think about what it feels like to debunk something you’ve always felt to be true when you find out it really isn’t.  It rocks our world.  It’s difficult to accept.  There is pride involved (“I was SURE I knew that!”) but more, there is fear.  Fear of the unknown, of danger, of being redirected off course.  It’s not our fault, really.  We don’t all have the time to properly track down the underpinnings of truths, let alone something as ostensibly confusing as acupuncture.  As Catholics, it is tempting to lump Traditional Chinese Medicine into the realm of the occult, the dark side, the sinister ways of the devil.  As humans we can, and should, be smarter than that.

Acupuncture is an incredible medicine.  Did you know that cultures of all kinds don’t hold onto things that impede the survival of their people?  So when things, say, lobotomies, human sacrifice, and hysterectomies as a form of psychological treatment for women don’t work, we abandon them as a verified survivalist practice and move on.  Medicine in general has loads of examples of this with which I will not bore you.  That TCM has survived for the past 3,000 years (EVEN through its near ban just before Mao’s Revolution) is a testament to the fact that it works, it serves, and yes, it is real.  

There is a long standing debate about where exactly acupuncture was invented but I will speak to the nature of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) because I am a TCM doctor.  3,000 years ago in China it was considered an abhorrent disrespect to a deceased person’s body and spirit to dissect them for learning or for any other reasons.  They had a lot of time on their hands back then.  The Lord knows they certainly weren’t scrolling Tik-Tok, placing the latest Amazon order, or driving their kids to sports practices.  They were sitting around, with sick people, wondering how in the world they could help them.  The sages did a lot of experimenting, trial and error, this or that, and they wrote it all down.  I mean, ALL OF IT.  The ancient records of TCM are abundant and vast lending themselves to the obvious dedication to precision that still exists today in Chinese culture.  I thank them for that.  Because for anyone who wants to look, the science is there.

The Chinese studied and developed Taoism (pronounced DOW-ism) which was their spiritual anchor.  They were in a section of the world that was not touched by Judaism or other religions.  They were on their own.  The tenets of Taoism are beautiful and, though its different beliefs in the origins and endings of things diverge from our Catholic faith, the understanding of the awe and omnipotent power of nature (what we Catholics know as God) was the same as any devout practicing religious person I’ve met.  

There was a respect for this higher power, let’s say.  So much so that the Chinese both consulted it and harnessed it, paying it homage where due, and developing means to care for their culture in ways that were certainly informed by it.  This is where people can get tripped up.  Taoism on its own is not demonic.  Just like Christianity on its own is not demonic.  It is what some humans have done to Taoism, just like what some humans have done to Christianity, that parts ways with the will of God and leans more closely toward the enemy.  

However, I’m not sitting here and lumping Catholics in with Christian religious extremists who want to exterminate all who don’t look like them or engage in practices that are frankly abusive all in the name of Christ.  So I implore you to do the same when it comes to Chinese Medicine.  This medicine is so profound and intelligent because it is unspoken.  It is a language of the body as well as the spirit.  We are embodied beings, that is, our souls cannot be separated from our bodies until death.  God did that and for good reason.  We are created in His image and likeness, unique from all other living creatures on earth.  The body can speak information about the soul and vice versa.  And TCM gets to talk to both.  Is it a wonder why the faith is always talking about bodies?  “This is my body, given up for you,” the “Body of Christ,” “one bread, one body,” and on and on. Our bodies are way smarter than our minds.  They teach us.  They tell us.  They discern.  They decide.  They speak in very intelligent ways, when we learn the language of flesh and of hearts.

Acupuncture needles aren’t magic.  No, they’re not voodoo either.  They are tools used by humans to effect change at both the biological and electric levels of the body.  They tap into that innate intelligence of the flesh and spirit and allow the emergence of balanced health in return.  Much like exorcised salt is not magic, it’s a tool used by humans to protect us from things we cannot see but know are there.  Needles remind the body to move things inside of themselves that we can’t see but we know are there.  How do we know?  Because our bodies speak and tell stories, they cry and exhale, they contort and relax.  We know because our bodies know.  Our bodies know because our spirit knows.  Our spirits know because GOD KNOWS. 

Without getting too deep into the weeds about TCM theory, I’ll cut right to the point (is that a pun?!) and explain a bit about physics and atomic behavior.  We know there are atoms, right?  We know that atoms are held together by the charges of electrons.  We also know that inside atoms are nuclei and quarks and other things that are beyond my expertise or scope so I’ll stop right here.  All matter is held together by a force that we know exists but can’t see or explain.  How do we know this force exists?  We know because of the evidence we see from the result.  That said result is at both the macrocosmic level, where we observe the way the universe is spinning, the nature of planets and stars being round, and at the microcosmic level where we observe the similarities to the macrocosm where electrons and atoms, behaving much like stars, in orbit around their suns, cause the atoms to in turn come together in the formation of….you guessed it….matter.  So we know there is a force.  But has anyone PROVEN from where that force originates?  Sure we have plenty of theories, the space time continuum, the big bang (which was formulated by a Catholic priest, I might add!), but we have not definitively proven from WHERE that force has ORIGINATED.  The truth is that no one definitively knows, even if they think they do.  It’s all theory.  All guess.  

The Chinese call this force Qi.  Like it or not, it is real. It exists.  And to say it doesn’t is to deny the very existence of the computer you are reading this on as much as it is to deny the very bones inside your body or the wind among the trees.  We are all made up of Qi.  Qi is as solid as a stone and as invisible as electricity.  Both forms of it exist in tension to produce life.  I’m unsure where along the lines the word “energy” became associated with some sort of voodoo practice, but energy is a very real and measurable force.  Um, can we say electricity?  Also energy.  And it is precisely this energy with which acupuncture needles communicate when they are inserted into a person’s body.  No, the needles aren’t talking to the demons in the corner.  They are talking to the body’s qi.  

From a western medical perspective, the needles are inserted into very specific points that stimulate certain nerve responses in different parts of the body.  In short, the needles “talk to” the brain via the points they puncture and the neurological impulses they stimulate. Very interestingly, the pathways through which these points communicate align with the western medical idea of the dermatomes which are neurological pathways that connect different nerves and organ systems.  Fantastic.  There is your proof.  Let me remind you that the ancient Chinese did not know about dermatomes.  And yet, they got it right.  The neurological response to acupuncture treatments is so effective that it can remedy all kinds of conditions ranging from sleep disorders, to cortisol hyperdrive, to menstrual irregularities, to PTSD, to addiction.  No, it’s not just for pain!  Although it does a very good job at ameliorating that too.

Now, to speak to this idea of acupuncture being somehow connected to occult practices which is the thinking of some Catholics…Intention always matters.  And it matters across all things.  Your intention matters whether you are practicing Chinese or allopathic medicine, whether you are centered or distracted in prayer, whether you are bringing a gift to someone because you feel guilty or just want to give.  In my practice, my intention is to medically treat an individual for what currently ails them.  Period.  It is medicine and nothing else.  That is how I approach it.  I know enough about anatomy and physiology that I can explain exactly what I’m doing, what points I choose and why I’ve chosen them, and I can answer any and all questions with the posture of medical knowledge and scientific backup.  I purposely avoid speaking to patients in the esoteric metaphor of TCM diagnosis that often gets misconstrued as something else and translate everything into western terms so they understand that, yes, this is REAL medicine doing REAL work on REAL bodies, hard stop.  Liver Qi stagnation is heightened cortisol response, Spleen Qi deficiency can be metabolic syndrome or water retention, Kidney Yin deficiency can explain stress incontinence or recurrent miscarriage.  It’s all one medicine.  It’s all one body.  And, guess what?  God is at the center of it.  Do I make my medical practice a practice of spirituality?  Not when I’m engaged with the science.  But am I praying the rosary for my patients on occasion when they are resting on the table?  Am I saying silent prayers of gratitude to the Holy Spirit for the honor I feel to be used as a catalyst for His holy work?  Am I maintaining constant contact with God while in the treatment room repeating the words of Saint Francis, “God, make me an instrument of your peace?”  You’d better believe I am.  

And so it goes.  Acupuncture is not demonic.  It is one of the most wonderful gifts we have in our arsenal of medicine.  It works so well with our bodies and has little to no adverse side effects.  It stimulates blood flow, decreases inflammation, increases white blood cell production, and regulates the nervous system, all of which happen in EVERY SINGLE TREATMENT regardless of the patient’s chief complaint!  

Come on in for a treatment and go easy on your acupuncturist when you do.  He or she has trained, seriously trained, for 4 long years in medical school with real science like chemistry and physics and pathology and endocrinology, has performed clinical rotations throughout different medical institutions in his or her respective cities, and has inserted thousands of needles before you ever even decided to walk through the door of the clinic.  Be kind, be loving, and be open to the fact that maybe you just don’t know it all.  And that’s okay.

God bless and Shine on, 

Stephanie