This is my first time blogging and I plan on trying to update as often as I can. The first thing I wish to do is welcome and thank you for taking the time out of your day to check out my site and read this blog. Now the formality is out of the way let me give you some information about myself and what I plan to do with these blogs.
First a bit about me, I was not really that much into health or any kind of medicine when I was growing up. I hated going to see the doctor. I was for the most part a healthy child, so that made the avoiding of the doctors that much easier. The aspect of any kind of alternative health care was not really even thought of except for the few home remedies that were talked about, but with very little understanding of how to use them.
The first aspect of any kind of healthy life style for me started with my martial arts training which started at age of 25. Even with this it was limited to start. It started with Chi Ball massage. I became intrigued with the idea of how the use of massage could help an individual feel better. A few years later I found myself going to school to learn massage, even though I still had not had a profession massage done to myself. I was lucky to have a very good teacher for my advanced studies that understood the usage of energy. Without him I would not have been a good massage therapist at all. He challenged my thoughts and made me look outside of the box of traditional western ideas of massage.
After doing massage for a few years, I developed a problem with my hip. The worst part is that I was going to be testing in Kung Fu soon and it was quite painful to move. It is quite important in Kung Fu to be able to move your hip, especially if you are going to test. A friend of mine, whom graduated from the massage school with me, gave me three massage treatments within a couple weeks period. The massage treatment was focused on my hip area utilizing neuromuscular massage. Neuromuscular massage is not a pleasant treatment. It uses a pain scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most pain and 1 being the least. The treatment is done staying between a 5 to 7, this is not fun at all. After the three treatments he asked me how I was feeling. I did not think lying to him would be useful, so I told him that I still felt the same. He then told me that he was about to graduate from school for Chinese Medicine and thought that doing acupuncture would help. I told him no. I was really afraid of needles then. He convinced me to let him put one needle in me. I only let him do it because I did not want him to think I was a baby. When he put the needle in, I thought that all he did was touch me. I did not even realize that it was already in. I did notice as soon as the Qi was accessed. To me it was a little electrical shock, not painful, just strange. My friend then told me that he would like to put another needle in me. I told him that he could, especially since I did not even notice the first one. He put it in and I had the same sensation. He then told me that he was just going to leave the needles in for about 15 minute and then he would take them out. At this point I was curious as to why he would only use 2 needles. I had only seen it done on TV and they would use lots of needles. So, I asked why he only used the 2 and why I had seen on TV so many. He told me that he was only working on the one problem and that is all that he would need and that on TV they were only using a lot of needles to sensationalize the aspects of the needles. It is not normally good to use a lot of needles since it can drain the Qi out of the person and make them week. After the needles were removed I got up and stretched out my hip and there was no pain. I was amazed. Because the problem was acute and he fixed right away I did not need another treatment. At that point I was sold on Chinese Medicine.
Ok. Now that I have told you a bit about myself, I want to share my plans for this blog. I want to use this blog as another way of helping people to understand their health through Chinese Medicine. I will try not to use to many technical terms and if I do I will always try to explain the meaning of it. There are many uses for Chinese Medicine and most people only know of its use for pain management. I hope to share my experiences as well as knowledge to improve other peoples’ health and lifestyle.
Please email me with any question that you may have or even wonder about. This will also help me to focus on specific topics within this blog. I hope that you have enjoyed my first blog and that you will look forward to reading many more.
Thanks,
Dr. Robert Murphy