A Blue Poppy blog post by Bob Quinn
Sometimes we remember a tidbit of information in the right moment, and it can become a major inflection point for us in our career. I’d like to relate just such an occurrence from 2004 when in a moment of need I recalled a passing comment from Kiiko Matsumoto from some years before in a seminar. My focus in writing this blog is not so much the tip itself, although it is a good one to be aware of, but more on citing an example of how change can arrive in our lives in quantum leaps.
It was in the winter of 2004; I was in Florida staying at a friend’s house. He was a Vietnam vet who had had a great deal of exposure to Agent Orange over the course of two tours of duty. One day he woke up in agony with lower left abdominal pain. This had happened before, he explained, and he was on a wait list at the local VA Hospital to be assessed. He could not move without the pain worsening and was calling out asking me to bring the trash basket near, as he felt he was about to vomit. I asked him if he wanted me to try to help with some needles, and he said that if I could help it would be great.
I recalled in an Oregon seminar that Kiiko Matsumoto had mentioned in passing that lower abdominal pain can be helped by needling contralateral LR 8. The pulse showed a LR pattern from the Meridian Therapy perspective (LR and KD pulses weak), so this was an additional reason to treat this point. I palpated the abdomen and found in the lower left quadrant a mass. It was approximately the size of a kiwi, and it had irregular margins. I was worried that it was cancer, knowing as I did his history with Agent Orange. When I pressed on the mass gently, my friend reported terrible pain that radiated to his left testicle.
On right LR 8 I used Dr. Shudo’s superficial needling technique (SRT it is now called). My insertion was only about 1mm deep, and I was twirling the needle rapidly, about a tenth of a turn back and forth. In doing this I was just hoping for some mild reduction in the abdominal pain. I was fully expecting that this was the first step of a treatment that would take an hour or so. After doing the technique for a short time I rechecked the abdomen. The mass was gone! I rechecked and rechecked. My mind was blown. I pressed where it had been and now the tissue there felt completely deficient in nature, so much so that I did a little moxa there to try to bring some tone to the area. And that was the entire treatment. My friend reported that 100% of the pain was gone.
In January, 1999 I had started to study Japanese Meridian Therapy and Dr. Manaka’s Yin-Yang Channel Balancing styles, both of which are amazingly gentle. I had little support in Portland as I tried to switch over to this gentle way of working, and privately I nursed real doubts about how effective this gentle path was in tough cases. I believe this experience was given to me as a gift to demonstrate that unbelievably subtle and minimalistic treatments can be a perfect match for cases of difficult and severe pain.
Dr. Manaka in one article wrote about how difficult it can be to find the ideal treatment dose for a given patient. He said it never really gets easier to assess and determine how much treatment to give. Here in this case I had a tough ex-marine, not likely the classic picture of a patient that needs the gentlest of the gentle approach! But gentle is exactly what saved the day. I should mention that I had long-term follow up on this case and that pain stayed away for many years.
So, in a moment of need I relied on a clinical tip, mentioned in that particular Kiiko Matsumoto seminar more in passing than as the focus of the class, and it turned out to significantly change the trajectory of my career. So funny how things can turn on a dime! After the treatment described above I no longer doubted the power of the gentle when it is appropriately matched to the patient’s needs. I should add in the same breath that I fully recognize that certain situations do require much stronger techniques than the ones I describe above. We should be able to perform in a way consistent with what a given case requires, sometimes gentle, sometimes stronger.
Best wishes all around,
Bob Quinn