Stress Center Peer Support

Guys,

Over the last year I have gone from being just a stressed out, Type-A person to suddenly a miserable, anxiety driven person struggling to get off of Ativan, Xanax, etc. and dealing with all sorts of body symptoms to more recently a calmer, more balanced person who just passed the beginner level Tai Chi instructor training and who is looking to a brighter future like never before.

I'm not saying it has been easy. I started with my company's Employee Assistance Program who gave me a referral to a good mental counselor. I then asked about acupuncture and she said she'd seen people completely come off their medications after undergoing this type of eastern medicine therapy.

My acupuncturist immediately recommended Tai Chi exercise to complement what he was going to do. After four acupuncture sessions, I finally had an "energy channel" become unblocked and everything I was learning about mindfulness, meditation and Tai Chi practice began to finally take firm hold.

I know each of us are different, but I'm begging each and every one of you to consider this alternative path to drugs and despair.

Throughout all these activities the one common thing I learned was that I had to make a complete life change in how I reacted to both myself and the world, but it was absolutely necessary.

And, now Tai Chi and the beautiful physical and mental relaxation and meditation opportunites it provides is something I can take with me everywhere I go and keeps going long after the therapy sessions are over.

Good luck to everyone...you can make it!!!

this sounds great but i was always afraid off not the needle but if it gave you a warm feeling all over your body when you unblock the channels because wnen i have an attack i get a warm feeling all over do you feel anything like that thanks dan

Well, I don't know about others, but when my energy channel became unblocked, it started with this irrisistable urge to just slightly tilt my pelvis upward as I was lying on the table.

I couldn't figure out why my body wanted to move, but this tilted pelvic posture is part of the Tai Chi stance and so after a few minutes I finally gave in and shifted my hips.

Almost instantaneously I began to feel a clear and distinct but gentle "pulse" in my lower back right about even with the top of the rear end cheeks. This pulse was like a light, pleasant tingle that kept pulsing and pulsing and pulsing for about 5 minutes until it gently and gradually faded away.

I was told later that this was an energy gate, a big one, that became unblocked and that was finally allowing the Qi to flow more freely through my body.

I truly beleive that it was after this that my body began to heal with the heart palpitations beginning to subside, the blood pressure coming back into normal ranges and all the tightness and pressure I was feeling in my throat, chest and diagphragm began to ease. It didn't happen overnight, but I began to believe even more that the course I was on was the correct one.

I began to take the Tai Chi classes more seriously and the mental and physical relaxation I began to practice became more of a way of life.

Another lesson I learned in all the "mindfulness" exercises that come with meditation in any form is:

Focus on what it is you want and not what it is you fear.

Hard to do at first when you are so scared of dying any minute, but the perseverance is worth it and soon you come to believe the long nightmare can be over.

One thing is for sure, it can't be ANY worse than the drugs and their withdrawal symptoms...that was pure hell....

Again, good luck to EVERYONE! Hang in there!

You can do it!

I've been doing Tai Chi for a while now and I love how it has helped me. At first it was more for working on my balance, but now I see how much it has helped my focus. It centers and calms my mind and body.

I'm glad someone started this thread. I had my first acupuncture session on Saturday, my next is tonight. Hoping to help the anxiety, but mostly to help the IBS that I have recently developed. I'm really hoping that acupuncture will work for me, I've heard so many great things...

Hey this is a great topic, I have done acupuncture and have had great relief when my anxety was out of contol, I will look in to the Tai chi.

Thanks

i love reading this, i have my first acupuncture appointment tomorrow, and im nervous but excited at the same time.

I just purchased a beginners Tai Chi DVD off ebay to try. I am recovering from a illness and bought one that is supposed to be for "arthritis" Figured that should be slow enough. Do you think I will get the same results from a DVD?

so does it take more than one session of acupuncture to feel the effects?

Hot Rod,

I had one session of acupuncture. The woman who did it works on my gynecologist's infertle patients and they swear up and down that it helps them conceive. She said acupuncture unblocks your chi (life force) faster, but she sells all her patients a CD on chi gong and tells you to do it every day. She said it will also work, just more slowly. She said that Tai Chi is the military form of chi gong--have no idea what she meant by that. So I assume it is basically the same thing, just different moves. The instructor on my chi gong CD was an older woman and I thought it would be easy, but you are using muscles you don't normally use and you get a really good stretching workout and it is supposed to calm you down.

Curtstl7,

I have allergies and her chinese herbs stuffed me up and made me jumpy. Don't let that put you off--you may react great to them. I had the impression that you had to go for a while. I don't think just one session is going to do much except get you started and let you see if you like it and want to continue. I had a cognitive behavioral therapist I was seeing at the time and he said acupuncture helps some people with anxiety, but his opinion was it really depended on how good the acupuncturist was.