Acupuncture experience sticks with recipient

I am not afraid of needles. As a kid, I stuck pins under the tips of my fingertips – I'm not exactly sure why – and then later I received numerous tattoos and injected myself with hormones for an IVF experience that would prove to be fruitless.

So when Kip Friedman from GreenSquare Center for the Healing Arts, 6789 N. Green Bay Ave., asked me to come to the facility to experience acupuncture, I was intrigued and completely undaunted by the thought of dozens of little needles sticking out of my face or back or feet. I'm impervious to pinprick pain and I fancy myself as a bit of a badass, so why not?

What I did not comprehend was the emotional side of acupuncture or the way that I would feel following the experience. It's not that I walked in as a skeptical nonbeliever.

I had heard from a lot of people the merits of acupuncture, so I went in with an open mind, but also with the belief that I was just doing what I love to do: something wacky for the sake of the OnMilwaukee.com story and for the personal experience of it.

This is why I asked David Seebach to cut me in half. This is why I got a colonic. And this is why I thought I was getting acupuncture. But it turned out to be more than that.

Jodie Heinrich has rented space at GreenSquare for about two-and-a-half years and was one of the first in the building. She has been a massage therapist for 25 years and a licensed acupuncturist for almost eight years. She received an MS degree from the Midwest College of Oriental Medicine in Racine / Chicago.

Heinrich's space is serene and uncluttered, with a large skylight, soft music and a trace of flowers and sandalwood in the air. There's a framed piece of Buddha art and a small bell hanging from the ceiling in the corner of the room that a friend told her was for feng shui.

The space is calming, and what one would expect from a natural healer's office. But Heinrich is no stereotype. She is down-to-earth and has a quick sense of humor. She is also a great listener and a seemingly gentle person.

GreenSquare Center leases office space to more than 20 independent natural healing specialists who have their own offices (or with another practitioner) and share common space. Acupuncture is just one of the center's offerings along with reiki, physical therapy, reflexology, chiropractics, feldenkrais, body activation, hypnosis, massage, yoga and more.

To begin my acupuncture treatment, I filled out a form about my physical and mental health and we discussed my issues. Heinrich said the paperwork was to "identify the patterns" in my body. I am overall healthy, but I don't always sleep very well. I am prone to anxiety. My menstrual cycle is a little out of whack.

She is so easy to talk to that I went on and on once I got started. Before I knew it, I was telling her about my driving anxiousness brought on by witnessing a serious car accident happen about three feet in front of me last spring and the fact I think nighttime wine-drinking is at the root of my shallow sleep.

She smiled at me and asked to look at my tongue. I stuck it out at her. Then she asked to see it again. Then again. She said it was a little pale, indicating a blood deficiency, and my tongue's center fissure "showed a little heat" which suggested spleen deficiency.

She was quick to point out that her use of "deficiency" did not mean something was really wrong, rather that some things just needed adjusting. She said my tongue was "scalloped," too, which indicates that I might be burning myself out. She took my pulse and then reported it was a little weak.

I then took off my boots and socks, rolled up my pant legs and reclined on the table. Heinrich proceeded to stick 18 little needles into my body: including my wrists, feet, ears, forehead, just above my ankles and just below my knees.

She also stuck one in the top of my head, for calming and mental clarity, and said when she was in Oriental medicine school, a lot of students would show up for tests with a needle sticking out of the top of their heads. I like the image of that.

Acupuncture is a component of Chinese medicine that originated 5,000 years ago. It is based on the premise that the body's functions are regulated by an energy called qi (pronounced "chi") which circulates through 12 invisible energy lines known as meridians on the body.

Each meridian is associated with a different organ, and if there is an imbalance of flow of qi throughout a meridian, an imbalance and / or disease might occur.

Acupuncture is believed to release nuerotransmitters to the brain, influence the nervous system, stimulate circulation and pain relieving endorphins, and create electrical currents in the body.

Placing needles in specific points on the body, based on the patient's needs, help to direct qi so it flows in the "right" direction and restores or maintains health. It is used for pain relief (headaches, back pain), disease, infertility, addiction, arthritis, hot flashes, depression, fibromyalgia, stress and proactively to keep a person balanced and healthy.

The needles are sterile, skinny and come in different lengths. When inserted, it feels like a quick poke to the skin as one might imagine, but there is not any lingering pain. The needles are left intact for about 20 or 30 minutes.

During this time, Heinrich usually goes into the kitchen and reads other patients' charts and drinks tea. I was aware the needles were in my skin at times, and other times I was not. For a brief period of time I felt needles in places where there were not any.

Within a few minutes I felt very calm. I started to think about a waning relationship with a friend that had been bothering me relentlessly for two days, and it seemed less problematic.

I could actually feel the tension from the heavy emotions associated with the friendship start to melt away. I immediately started to wonder, to hope, I would feel this way for good, knowing – or at least the skeptic in me reporting – that this was only a temporary feeling.

Then my stomach started grumbling, louder than I had ever heard it grumble before. When I later told Heinrich about this, she said, "As soon as needles go in, there's often a visceral reaction, things get going, moving, stomachs may start grumbling."

I also felt tears start to slip from my eyes. About four or five from each eye in two different rounds. This was a strange emotional response, because I did not feel sad, exactly, rather relief. I thought about aspects of my life that I worry about sometimes and it seemed silly and sad to let myself fall prey to mental trappings when life was so short. Henirch said this was a common reaction.

Right now, while typing this, I start to tense up, thinking perhaps I am sharing too much and that I sound like a New Age sap. But the truth of the matter is, this experience moved me beyond what I was expecting. These are true thoughts and feelings.

I had also told Heinrich that I often feel cold and need to wear heavy jackets and sweaters during mild weather. Hence, she performed another traditional Chinese practice on me, called moxa, which involved lighting a cigar-looking stick made from mugwort and circling the smoke around the needles. I felt warmth directly below where she gently waved the stick but I also felt warmth in other areas of my body at the same time that were not directly receiving heat.

At the end of the treatment, Heinrich rubbed delicious smelling, calming lotion to my temples and more lotion on my feet that she said was for courage and strength. The lotion is even called "valor." She then taped tiny magnets in my ears for more calmness. I felt completely calm, almost dream like after the session.

While on the table, I thought about health care in a new way. I believe that all people have a right to safe, affordable health care and after this treatment, I upped it a notch and now believe health care should include access to holistic approaches that not only have the potential to heal, but to prevent the need to heal in the first place.

It costs $80 per session for an acupuncture treatment, and $100 for the introductory visit. This is not something I can afford right now, but what I do know is that if I did have a budget that allowed for such treatments, I would spend hard-earned money on it.

It is four hours since I had 18 little needles poking into my body parts and I still feel very good.