My Aunt Bernie Could Drive the Dalai Llama Crazy
How Chinese Medicine can get you through the holiday season
My Aunt Bernie was super fancy. She would take us to her stuffy private clubs in NYC and I would have to wear wool dress pants, a wool sweater, a wool sport coat and dress shoes. That’s Kid Torture. I was forced to pretend to be having a great time, quiet, interested and mature. The whole “dress nice, be polite and mature” thing did not work for Gabriel.
My Aunt Bernie was a character. She was infatuated with Tootsie Rolls. She could throw down 15-20 Tootsie Rolls in a 2-minute conversation. While talking she would clamp her teeth down on the end and then shove her tongue through it to unleash the roll. She didn’t even chew. She would straight out swallow the roll and put another in her mouth in the same motion. This might sound sexy to some of you (she was talented) but let me be clear: it was the opposite of sexy. It was gross.
She had Tootsie Rolls in her living room, kitchen and even the bathrooms. As a kid I would scream that the Tootsie Rolls gave me diarrhea, and then run to the bathroom only to sit in the bathroom to hide, waste time, eat Tootsie Rolls, and practice her tongue technique.
Very fancy bathrooms
A weekend at Bernie’s was torture. I would rather have done Yom Kippur for 48 hours. Every meal was an event. Meals would take over 2 hours and we would be forced to be engaged the whole time. Bernie would slowly eat her food, digesting each morsel before putting another bite in her mouth. Everything was in sloth motion. I would stare at her and question how it was possible to eat so slowly. I was done with my whole meal in 15-20 seconds and 45 minutes later she had just started her sides.
She came to visit me in the city and I took her to The Coffee Shop in Union Square. The model Sloan, who was pretending to be a waitress, was so confused by Aunt Bernie’s lack of speed. She had never seen an Aunt Bernie. No fire under Aunt Bernie’s tush. Sloan kept looking over and questioning if we were going to order anything more. There was a line to get in and my aunt, oblivious to the world, was soaking it all in.
We are entering the family time of the year. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah are coming. It's not easy. We all have a variation of an Aunt Bernie so let's take precautions so we don’t lose it on our relatives.
Acupuncture’s main goal is to keep the system in balance. If we are too anxious, as in, “why can’t we get a hotel room instead of staying with Aunt Bernie?,” acupuncture helps to relax the system. Points I love to use are pericardium 6 (Neiguan), shenmen and heart 7. There are two formulas I love to use for anxiety: Tian wang bu xin Dan and Gui pi tang.
If we are stressed, like you want to grab Aunt Bernie by the shoulders and scream “I have had enough of your sloth-weird-tongue-Tootsie Roll-eating craziness!”, acupuncture helps to release the tension in the body. It's all about balance, and I find the combination of acupuncture (Gallbladder 41, Liver 8, Liver 3) and herbal formulas such as tian ma you teng yin helps to regulate the system's imbalances.
We are all a work in progress. We are constantly being challenged by environments that want to throw our body off. Acupuncture helps to prevent this from happening. Aunt Bernies are everywhere so you have to use acupuncture and herbs to handle the family chaos.