One of the most popular questions that I get is this, “How did you decide to study Chinese medicine?” Well, we had to go back to 2010 in order to answer that question. I was working full-time at a corporate job for about two years. I had a steady income, great friends, really reliable community, a fun environment and just a really good overall life.
However, at a certain point, within those few years, I started to really feel these weird feelings of uncertainty and unfulfillment, and within all that, I started to feel a little sad. These feelings weren’t feelings that just kind of came up and went away, they snuck up on me and they stuck around, whether it was during work hours or when I was having a really good time with friends.
I just couldn’t seem to shake these feelings of unfulfillment. So I started to get this craving for a different life and I started to think that well, maybe I needed to live somewhere else, maybe I just needed to serve a different community or maybe I just needed a whole new career. So I began to get a little curious about these feelings of unfulfillment.
I had tried to think of ways and other things that I really enjoy doing, one of which was health, wellness and exercise. So I started to take a ton of yoga classes, experimented with different styles of massage and received Reiki. I was under chiropractic care as well, and I also decided to look into what it would be like to be nutritionist and even a fitness coach.
But none of that stuff really seemed to click, and then, within that whole mix, I decided to try acupuncture, which is something that I had been really curious about but never really gave a lot of attention to. So I had my first treatment and it went great. I saw several different acupuncturists and just full disclosure here, I was going to get acupuncture because I was curious about it and may be also, for a little bit of stress relief.
I had tried several different acupuncturists and ended up to be settling on an MD. He was my family practitioner and he had just done a few hundred hours of acupuncture and was treating me for stress relief at that time. Because he was also my family physician, he had known about my struggles for something else and just that deep sadness that I was feeling within myself.
One day when I was getting acupuncture from him, he said, “You know, I think you would really like this medicine. I think you would really enjoy the whole process and everything that it brings. Why don’t you go and look at classes in schools and their curriculum online? See if there is something that interests you and if it does, go visit some schools. Just a few, don’t overwhelm yourself. If you like the area and what the school offers, go to school for this.”
So there you go, that’s how I came to Chinese medicine and how I made the decision to study this medicine. What’s that one surefire way that I overcame this feeling of unfulfillment and deep sadness? Well, I got curious. I mentioned this a few times while I was telling my story, but I settled in to that feeling and those feelings, and really allowed myself to be just with these feelings and then I realized I needed to get curious.
These feelings, the unfulfillment and sadness, they are there because they’re like a nagging itch. We need to scratch it, we need to get curious, we need to ask ourselves, “why am I feeling this way?” What’s going to make me feel better? What do I need to feel what they want to feel? For me, that curiosity was really taking my hobbies and saying, “how could I turn this into a job?” How can I make this something that I love and naturally not gravitating towards any of the other hobbies that I had mentioned, like the yoga, the nutritionist and the fitness coach?”
I gravitated towards acupuncture in vancouver bc and the curricula that goes with it and really just fell in love with all these – what the schools had to offer as well as what I was receiving from my doctor, who was giving me acupuncture. So I invite you to take those uncomfortable feelings, sit with them, maybe write them down or draw them out, get them out of your head and into some paper and then, get curious about them.
What can you do to fulfill that emptiness, to really embody those feelings and help yourself to fill that hole? It really all starts with getting curious. If you’re comfortable with this, I would also encourage you to tell your friends, family, your doctor. Don’t keep your feelings deep inside. Get it out and let it out because you’ll never know who’s going to give you just a little glimmer of how you can fulfill that unfulfillment.