I love this book: Meditation as Medicine: Activate the Power of your Natural Healing Force, by Dr. Dharma Khalsa and Cameron Stauth. Dr Khalsa is medical director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Foundation in Tucson.

Meditation as Medicine gives a detailed yet easy to comprehend medical and scientific view of how the human body works, and follows that up with useful exercises and meditations to help improve our health. It is a great layperson’s read – I’m serious! – about how the endocrine and nervous system work, about our hormones, and just why using the voice (in prayer or mantra) or the fingers (in music or art or mudra) and the eyes, breath and arms impact our heart and brain and well being and can restore the body’s proper functioning.

I have an acupuncture practice in Old Town Alexandria and I give these postures and meditations to willing clients to help correct issues. The movements are simple – the hardest part being that they are repeated for sometimes hefty lengths of time. One client found herself suffering unusual fatigue, muscular ache and hair loss. With acupuncture and a kriya (meaning a set of simple postures) to help the thyroid, she recovered energy and optimism and a healthy head of hair.

I highly recommend the book as an interesting tool to better understand your body and to learn simple actions that, performed with purpose, can optimize your health.

Does acupuncture hurt?

I will wager that the most wondered question about acupuncture – whether given voice to or not – is probably: Does acupuncture hurt?

And from the vantage point of my acupuncture practice in Old Town Alexandria, I can answer: not really.

I can safely say that most people are surprised by how little discomfort there is. Even the most needle-phobic person – and in my nearly 13 years of practice, I have worked with quite a few – loses his or her apprehension and fear once they experience acupuncture and see how good it makes them feel.

But never say never: sometimes the insertion of the needle at a point can give a zing. But by far the majority of my clients don’t feel the needles, and when they do, the discomfort is minor and almost instantly recedes.

I am often asked if there is something inside the needle. There is not. The needles licensed acupuncturists use are solid – usually stainless steel – and as fine as a hair or two on your head. They are not hypodermic and, in general, bear no similarity to those used in western medical offices.

And lastly, Virginia state law requires we use disposable needles, and so we do. They are never reused. Once used, they are disposed of as bio-hazardous waste.

The preventive aspect of acupuncture

My mother died at the age of 93. She did not die of stroke, as did the rest of her family. Nor did she suffer paralysis or other stroke–like symptoms that she was genetically predisposed for. She had one stroke-like episode -- a transient ischemic attack -- that is a precursor of a future stroke. She woke from a nap and talked zibberish to my dad. That lasted for about a half hour and scared the wits out of him. But a stroke never followed.

And I firmly believe that was thanks to the acupuncture I began giving my mom shortly after that incident and that continued the rest of her life. Acupuncture was a positive intervention for her. A pattern that could have lead to obstruction of the blood and energy distribution to and from her head never developed.

Of course it is difficult to “see” prevention. It is much easier to appreciate when a problem that at one time plagued us stops happening. I have many clients with stories like that: like the one who would be sick with sinus infections all winter, every winter but who is no more, or the one who had migraines with each period but no longer does. But it is harder to prescribe acupuncture so that something that might happen never does.

The good news is that in the process, acupuncture administered by a nationally- certified, licensed practitioner, feels good. Whether one believes in prevention or not, one can experience relaxation and can shed the pressures of stress. They can become unburdened of physical or emotional hardships so that they can walk along and look up at the sky and think: wow, what an amazing day.