This might be a familiar scenario: Your new patient comes in and you want to help them feel better. The patient's intake is complex, and there are many long and intertwining issues that have been in play for years. You wonder what technique from your acupuncture toolbox you'd like to use and you want to know that when the patient leaves, you've made some positive changes for the body to integrate until the next time they schedule.

I know with Engaging Vitality techniques that even when I may feel overwhelmed with all the newness of a business owner and clinician, I rest assured that the information I need for effective treatment can be discovered from the patient's own body, not just a text book. The EV techniques I've learned through the beginning EV Modules 1-3 help me translate this palpated information into effective and precise treatment for my patients. I just need to show up, be present, observant, and curious.

I know that even when a treatment doesn't initially go in the right direction, I have a list of techniques to return to and troubleshoot. Is the depth and angle of my needle correct? Am I on the right channel? Did I hit the right point or was I a millimeter off? Did the movement of the Yang Rhythm improve? Have the quality of the fluids in the body changed? Have I created space for more flow and openness in the channel I was working with? And more traditionally, have the tongue and pulse been effected positively?

If you could learn to work with your patient's qi and have immediate palpable confirmations of your treatment, wouldn't you want to? Wouldn't you want to feel like you've sent your patient off knowing you felt positive changes in the body? Of course you would! And you should. To prevent boredom from protocols, to prevent burnout from unsuccessful treatments, and to stay curious and engaged with this amazing, effective medicine. This is how EV has guided and supported my beginning practice, and it's been incredibly fulfilling to see my patients' conditions continue to improve.

-Written by Amanda Anuraga of Tacoma East Asian Medicine , EAMP