THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER

Began last week acupuncture sessions for general health and this week likewise Asian Body Work massage. Both at AOMA in North Austin. Both at the instigation of a friend who has found treatment success with them for her incurable Addison’s Disease.

AOMA (Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine Academy) is a store-front graduate school for acupuncture and Chinese medicine in a shopping center on Anderson Lane. My acupuncturist is a licensed pro from China, but the body work therapist was a young Anglo-American student transitioning from teaching math to special ed kids in the Austin public schools.

Maybe after my second acupuncture session Friday I’ll have a better feeling for what it’s doing. The first time I only felt like a human pin cushion from head to ankles. It didn’t hurt, it just felt strange, even a little warm where the hair-thin needles were placed in my legs to, as they said, stimulate increased production of hormones.

The massage results were more obvious. Very relaxing. Twenty-four hours later I still feel loose-limbed. I did think she had dinged my left shoulder, which was achy about six hours later. But this morning that’s gone. Worth a second session next week.

It isn’t expensive, $75 for the acupuncture with a veteran’s discount of $10. They seem to offer the veteran discount because the Army, for one, takes acupuncture more seriously than some health  insurance companies do. The massage was only $20, with the veteran discount and the fact that it was done by a student.

UPDATE:  Second acupuncture sessions went well. No apparent results yet but I got in thirty minutes of concurrent breath meditation. Massage I’m going to have to find elsewhere at more cost. The students aren’t always available. Next one I could schedule won’t be until July 20.