Bloating, Emotions, Acupuncture

Here's a journal entry I wrote on August 6, 10 years ago. I am so grateful to be where I am now, health-wise. It's been a long journey, but I've learned so much. At the time of this entry I was hugely bloated - I looked six months pregnant, all the time. It would get worse as the day wore on. Now I know what it was  - my digestion was shut down, due to mercury exposure. But back then I struggled to figure out what was wrong with me. IBS? Parasites? Candida? Blocked emotions?

I smell like resin now, like a bong. Cause I went to see Dr. Caroline Colonna here in Taos, an acupuncturist, who put needles in me and burned a moxa (moxibustion to help with qi) on my tummy to soothe me. The resin is what has smelled up the whole office. But I feel better than I did before I went.

She thinks it's mostly, if not all, emotional. Issues like grief about father that need to be looked at and focused on to release them. It's like my body with all its symptoms is saying "enough already.” On palpation, my right belly is hard, not the left or center, which springs back up.

Cold feet and hands is liver qi stagnation, which I have a lot of.  Spleen, lungs, kidney deficiencies too. The points she picked today were mostly for emotions. I cried at the start, then calmed down and could feel stuff moving in my belly a bit. The moxa also is warming and moving.

When I think of my belly I will think "You are beautiful. You are where the nurturing is. I nurture and love you." The skin stuff is liver too. She wasn't sure if the left arm was tinea versicolor or not, she said possibly, but the skin is capable of producing so many different symptoms/rashes that even dermatologists are a bit helpless to know it all.

Sweating is good since stuff is trying to get out of the skin. Yoga, meditation, reiki, herbs, all to get in touch with emotions and to calm down.

She gave me three herbs. I will stop taking Mandelbaum's herbal concoction and the Livatone so I won't confuse things. The Livatone makes my bowels unformed and soft anyway. Bupleurum Dragonbone Oyester shell (Chai Hu Long Gu Mu Li Wan), Ardisia 16 (Jin Niu Cao Tong Shen Pian) and a Reishi and Royal Jelly extract formula (one vial every a.m.).

I'll see her in a week.

She spent 7 years in NYC and had to get out, sick sort of energy/place/stress there. I'm glad that I know now for sure we will move from there.

At the start of our session she thought parasites might be it but after some talking (and my crying) she thought emotions were the culprit - emotional making physical symptoms - and is not interested in sending for lab tests.

So my focuses now are how I nurture and love myself and my belly, yoga, sweating, meditation, reiki, the emotional stuff that resonates with me.