My parents, who recently became fascinated with
Chinese traditional medicine, convinced me to give
Chinese therapeutic massage a try. I was
skeptical of this.
Acupuncture has been scientifically proven to work, but this hasn't. But oh well, what did I have to lose? So I tried it.
The practitioner was a kind old lady. I talked to her a bit, and she was pretty cool. She asked me a bit about my lifestyle and diet, and took my pulse and all that. She then proclaimed I had too much anger in me (big surprise), and my liver was performing under maximum efficiency. I didn't have any clue what that meant, so I nodded a bit, eager to get on with it and leave.
So I lay face down. Suddenly, her fingers dug into the back of my neck. Lightning streaks of pain shot through my entire body. Her fingers, which looked pretty frail, were as strong as iron hooks. I resisted the urge to yell out in pain. For that horribly long hour, I think there was not a single pressure point that she missed. The extremely sensitive ones, such as the ones on the top of my foot, my hands, and the head, were especially painful. As I dragged my body, which felt like it had been beaten for hours by thugs wielding baseball bats, upstairs so I could nap, I was more aware of pain than I had ever been before in my life. I have never been really afraid of pain until now.
Later, I found out it wasn't supposed to hurt as much if I had a more healthy lifestyle. Apparently, my horrendous lack of sleep in my freshman year did not help. My summer vacation has helped that. After a few massages, it not only hurt less, I felt much more vitalized every day. Well I'll be damned. It worked after all.