The Point
The point of this first blog entry on Hazel Tree Holistic Health is to share with you a bit about who I am and what I do. At the moment, I am 26 years old. I am sitting in my office at an infertility clinic in Warsaw, Poland (www.novum.com.pl). I am lucky to be here. I graduated from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (PCOM) with a Masters of Science in Oriental Medicine in 2006. In April 2007, I was granted a license to practice Acupuncture, prescribe herbs and perform tui na massage, cupping and gua sha. After that moment, I spent some time working in a hospital in Chengdu, China. It was here that I finally made the decision to focus on women’s health. After spending some time on the gynocology ward, it came to me that I can’t possibly do anything else. Had I known, 9 years earlier about TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), I may have avoided surgery. Had my greatgrandmother known, sometime around the turn of the century, she may have avoided being sent to an asylum after her 4th or 5th miscarriage. If my friends and family had known, maybe less people would be suffering from the Western World dis-eases of menopause, endometriosis and dysmennorhea.
So, long story short, I found my perfect mate in the form of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Polish man decided to follow him to Poland and then started my first “real job” in women’s health here at nOvum. The challenges seemed too big to speak of at the beginning. Here I was, a new graduate and a foreigner trying to show people just how effective this medicine can be. I understood only about half of what my patients were saying and was given by my new boss 30 minutes with each patient to figure it all out and give/finish the treatment. But, this was just another high mountain in my life… I put on my gear and started trekking.
At the end of the third month, things were really looking up. At the end of the fourth I couldn’t believe my schedule. It was full. There were people interested, there were babies being made, there were women feeling more comfortable about their treatments and treatment choices. Gosh, this is good. Through the rest of the first year, I was continually amazed (and quite often overwhelmed) at the amount of work I had. We hear constantly in acupuncture school that the chances of us making it are pretty slim. That most people don’t even practice after the first year. Luck, once again, I had found luck. (My patients would disagree that it was luck. We had so many pregnancies, both natural and after IVF/ICSI treatments that the whole clinic was finally excited that I was around, acupuncture works! and they were grateful to have the chance to experience it… I still just felt lucky).
As with everything in life, this soon passed. I started getting homesick. I started feeling burnt out. I was irritated with myself for allowing my boss to push me into a position where I only had 30 minutes with my patients. Patients started showing me that they loved acupuncture, but I could see that something was missing.
In the States, there is an organization called “Resolved”. The aim of this organization is to help women through the various stages of infertility. I started thinking that maybe something like this would be good in Poland. But I’m not a counselor or psychologist, how can I do this? At the same time, I was in touch with a beloved teacher of mine from PCOM who’s women’s health class was a treasure to me while still in school. I started sharing some of my frustrations. She works with The Fertile Soul Method. I had read Dr. Randine Lewis’ first book and loved it. There was now a second… so I ordered it. I got some intro material on becoming trained in this method and got really excited about it. It all made so much sense to me. The basic idea (which has been repeatedly blasted in front of my face in too many places to count) is that in order to be fully “fertile”, you have to be living according to you. This has many different names and systems and ideas behind it. A few of them are as follows:
The Fertile Soul Method - Randine Lewis, M.D and L.Ac (licensed acu)
Yang Sheng living (daoist) - Robin Tiberi L.Ac
The Golden Path - Lillian Bridges - amazing author of Face Reading in
Chinese Medicine
Live Your Best Life Series - Oprah
I could go on and on.
So you ask, what is the point?
The point is that here on this blog, I will be exploring this idea of creating/following your own path and drawing conclusions about how it may effect your state of health. I hope to help myself and my readers find actual useful information pertaining to holistic health practices. If you have any questions, please ask! I might not know, but I’ll sure check it out for you 
~Caity
July 06 2009 03:09 pm | Articles