First Week Down

The first week of school is behind me, and already I feel like I have made a wonderful choice in my school selection.  OCOM (Oregon College of Oriental Medicine) was just rated The Best Acupuncture College in The U.S. by thebestschools.org, which is pretty fantastic.  However despite all of the notoriety the overall feeling I have when I am in class, and at the school, is one of belonging and awe.  Learning about the human body is fascinating, and learning to heal the human body is magical. 

Sadly, my first day was not the best for me.  While I was very excited about the classes I was going to have that day, Point Location and Qi Gong, I was sick with a head cold and it was extremely difficult to be present.  My first day of class was Wednesday, and I had woken up on Tuesday with a fever.  My fever broke Tuesday night, but by Wednesday morning I really had no business being out of bed, so I made it to my first four hour class, then skipped my second class and went home back to bed. 

I wish I had had an opportunity this week to do a little more reading, and have more interesting information to give out, but most of the week I was just trying to keep my head above water.  I am now feeling much better due to multiple acupuncture sessions, and some Chinese herbs I am taking. Next week will prove much more lively for me. 

One idea I can close with, is a little perspective given to my class by my wonderful anatomy and physiology teacher Regina Dehen ND, LAc.  When speaking to the relationship between western medicine and eastern medicine she took us back to the foundations, when western medicine was in its infancy. She explained to us, that back then, ideas were less black and white than they are today.  We have all heard the term Melancholy, which for a long time was the term for what today would be called sadness or depression. Melancholy literally means black bile, and it was thought that people with this condition had a liver disorder that produced a black bile into their system.  However, no black bile was ever found so the idea was, after some time, dismissed.  The example was kind of a light bulb to me, how similar ideas once were, and I feel that modern thinking is coming back to these concepts.  More and more people are looking to alternative medicine for help, The Economist just published and article about the human microbiome entitled Me, Myself and Us, and the U.S. Military is beginning to hire Acupuncturists to help with PTSD.  It is an exciting time to be in my field indeed!

                                             Here is a Picture of my entire incoming class!

HI!

As many of my friends and family know, I have begun the journey through acupuncture school with the Oregon College Of Oriental Medicine.  I am going to try and post a weekly reflection, and thought this would be a fun way to keep everyone informed as to my progress, as well as being a good tool for me to look back on.  So here it goes, my experience up to this point:

School officially begins on the 19th of September. I am very excited, and am looking forward to getting this much anticipated ball rolling.  I was able to meet the entire incoming class this week at our new student orientation at Menucha in the Columbia Gorge.  This was an overnight retreat stay in which we listened to many people talk about "how hard" OCOM is going to be.  By the end of the first day I felt a little weary of hearing about how hard it all is, and how tired I am going to be, but I was encouraged by the idea of it being an over all transformative and uplifiting experience. 

In conjunction with all the information that was given to us, we also got to participate in some fun practices.  We had a small hands on shiatsu demonstration where we got to pair up and practice a little Shiatsu massage.  This reminded me that part of my experience at OCOM will be giving and receiving an array of wonderful treatments. We also had a brief lesson on Qi Gong.  It was fun to be able to partner up with a complete stranger, and play with each others energy.  During the practice I could feel the magnetic pull of her energy on my palm,  and it will be fun to expand my knowledge of this practice. At the end of the day we got to receive a little auricular acupuncture after which I took in the amazing sunset, and finally retired to my bed.  

Menucha was such a beautiful atmosphere to begin this new journey, and I was impressed that OCOM invested in this retreat style experience for us to begin with.  I am nervous to begin this new chapter in my life, as it is so different from the world of restaurants and corporate ladders that I have up to now been engrossed in, but I am also so excited and optimistic.  I feel that my future is so bright.  I just have to send a little gratitude out to my father Perry Dominic Reghi, who passed away in 2007.  He was at times a hard man to know, but he helped to teach me one of the greatest lessons in life: that life is a precious gift and we are really the only ones who can dictate our own happiness regardless of all the external factors.  And that compassion is not always easy, but always necessary for peace.

So here are some pictures:
                                               This is what I ended my day with:

and this: 

                       And this is what I began my second day with, as I held hot tea in hand: