My First Time Getting Acupuncture

I Was 16 When I First Tried Acupuncture

As someone who is Chinese American and was living in Flushing, getting acupuncture was not a strange concept. I can’t really remember when I first heard about it because it seemed like something I always knew existed. When I was a high school student there was a time when my knee started aching from time to time. In my family, everyone went to get tui na (massage) for general aches and pains and I had tried it for my knee first but it seemed to always come and go so my mom suggested to get acupuncture.

She attached an electro-stim machine and turned it on and I remember picturing myself as a Ghost In The Shell cyborg with wires coming out of the back of my body.

Photo by Chanel Govreau

I arrived at the doctor’s office nearby where we lived. It was an apartment and there were a few others waiting in the living room turned waiting area. The doctor and I had limited common spoken language as she was a Mandarin speaker and I had minimal Mandarin skills, but it did not seem to matter. I sat down at her desk where she took my blood pressure, looked at my tongue and felt my pulse while I stared at the picture she had framed of herself and Bill Clinton. She said nothing, only nodded. I said something about my knee in my limited Mandarin and pointed to it. She nodded again and led me to a row of plastic partitioned treatment rooms where I laid face down on a massage table. Pins went in like little mosquito bites. She attached an electro-stim (e-stim) machine, turned it on and I remember picturing myself as a Ghost In The Shell cyborg with wires coming out of the back of my body. As I laid there having robot dreams, while my knee was ticking, I started to feel a warm itchy sensation on the back of my knee, later I realized she had a heat lamp over my knee as well. I just laid there as there was nothing else I could do until she came back. At some point I even wondered if she forgot about me because there were at least 4 other people being treated, but she returned at some point, after awhile and removed the needles. I got up and met her at her desk where she gave me a brown paper bag of herbs and I paid her the cash my mom had given me. She told me my mom knew what to do with the herbs and I was already dreading how they would taste. I came back 2 or 3 more times and my knee got better. A year or so later I remember coming back to treat my acne.

I accepted and trusted all of this. I tell this story not to judge one way or the other but to just offer a different perspective to those who may not have grown up knowing about acupuncture.

I tell this story because I feel that most non-Asian people experience acupuncture much differently. Even myself as an acupuncturist today, must offer a different experience than what I was originally used to. My first experience of acupuncture was circa 1994. I had never heard of any non-Asian people getting acupuncture at this time. I even doubted that I could become an acupuncturist back then because I couldn’t speak Mandarin. Culturally speaking, I did not have to be convinced that acupuncture would work, or be educated on what it was. I didn’t ask questions about why or how it worked and I didn’t ask the doctor any questions at all. The doctor also did not explain any part of the process. She did not tell me how long I would be laying there or that she even put a heat lamp or did electroacupuncture (e-stim) on me. I accepted and trusted all of this. I tell this story not to judge one way or the other but to just offer a different perspective to those who may not have grown up knowing about acupuncture. I am often faced with a range of opinions on it from those who are curious and want it explained to those who want to be convinced that it’s relevant.

Because of how tied it is to my culture and ethnic background I am not always so excited to have to convince people that it’s relevant because I am essentially being asked to defend my culture. How often do you question your primary care doctor about their procedures and testing? Do you ask them how they test your blood for its content and how the lab gets those results exactly? How the medication works and what it’s possible side effects are? I don’t. Just as I did not question my acupuncturist. I also believe there is a lot of racism uncovered when you unpack why people are afraid, or skeptical of Chinese Medicine. I write all this to say, if you do not come from an Asian cultural background I encourage you to consider a different perspective.

By Emily Grace Siy, L.Ac. on 12/12/19