Finding My Chi?

So, today I found my chi in the Alternative Med class. We were learning about Tai Chi as a means of healing and then we did this interesting thingymajiger by holding our hands out in front of us and then it felt like this fuzzy, static feeling in the distance between our hands and that, my friends, was my internal energy. Wanna feel yours?

Taken from: Chi Gong 101

I'm not going to undermine the art of tai chi and hundreds of thousands of years of ancient Chinese history and practices by suggesting scientific explanations for that staticy feeling between my hands. But, if that fuzzy feeling really baffles you, it might make you feel better to think of it as your personal bubble.

A Poem for Cardiology

I've spent hours studying, but despite all our efforts, some things remain unrequited...

Thus much and more, and yet thou lov'st me not,
And never wilt, Love dwells not in our will
Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot
To strongly, wrongly, vainly, love thee still.
-Lord Byron

Your Eyelids Are Getting Heavy...

So I signed up for this random Alternative Medicine class this semester, mostly because I wanted to get elective credits for 4th year, but it turns out this class is actually kind of interesting.

Today, we learned therapeutic self-hypnosis and the speaker told us about how she actually hypnotized herself before she underwent a surgery for an ulcer repair. She told herself that she would bleed less and feel no pain. And then she actually showed us the video of her surgery, without ANY anesthesia, and she was totally fine, talking during the surgery about how she could feel pressure in her abdomen, but no pain at all. She even helped the surgeons realize that they were tugging too hard on something INSIDE OF HER. HOW STRANGE. How can you tell yourself consciously or unconsciously to control an autonomic process of the body? How can you control bleeding or hemostasis? What in the world?!? I'm so confused. And if it's possible, then wouldn't that be incredibly helpful for patients who don't want to experience side-effects of anesthesia during surgeries?


And THEN she hypnotized us. I GOT HYPNOTIZED. WHAT?! It sounds so mystical and other-worldly, but the speaker basically told us that self-hypnosis just entails entering into a trance state. Like for example, when you're driving and then 20 mins later, you don't remember the exact specific details of how you got to that particular portion of the highway, but some part of you was still consciously in control, enough to successfully maneuver the car. Still don't get how hypnosis can induce clotting. Anyway, I can't fully wrap my head around it. I've always been somewhat of an alternative medicine skeptic, but maybe I've just become a product of the intensely scienci-fied (yeah I made that word up) academic environment that I've been exposed to. Either way, very interesting stuff.