Lessons from my garden: resilience

This week I was cleaning up the garden beds getting ready to plant my seedlings when I came across a bunch of leeks that had no business being alive. I had harvested what I thought was all of the leeks in the fall. However, it turns out that some of the plants had lost their green tops so I missed them during the harvest. They managed to make it through the freezing winter temperatures to burst up this spring, ready to be picked. It made me shake my head with wonder at nature’s resilience.

This past year has put our resilience to the test. Clinically, I’m seeing the result of all of that stress on the body and although the internet has many motivational memes about needing resilience, there is often little explanation about how to go about getting it. The key factors to bouncing back include nurturing yourself and taking action to solve your problem. This is why, I believe, acupuncture is so effective in helping us get back on track.

Pain, stress and anxiety all take up space. They can use up our reserves making things harder than they would be without them. Anyone who’s ever gotten treated by me knows I’m fond of saying that stress may not cause a problem, but it sure doesn’t help it. The same sentiment goes for pain. When we’re chronically hurting it’s sometimes hard to have the bandwidth to find solutions to our problems.

Acupuncture clears up that space so our natural resiliency can kick in. Plus it’s a wonderful way to relax and take a quick nap, which is great because adequate rest is also a vital component in becoming resilient. So if you’re feeling a bit worn out consider coming in for a tune up to get you back on track.