How can Shamanic Energy Medicine help Military Personnel?

This is a special invitation for military personnel (active duty or retired) to consider a shamanic energy medicine session.

I will be honest up front: I have never been in the military. Therefore, I will never say that I know what it is like to serve.

My experience with the military comes from spending two years providing acupuncture to injured active-duty service members at a military hospital. In addition to treating them, I spent a lot of time listening to them. These men and women generously told me about their experiences while serving. Through these stories I’ve come to deeply respect those who have committed themselves to military service.

I’ve also learned how difficult life in the military can be. Service members put themselves at risk every day, in a variety of ways, even when they are not deployed.

All my acupuncture patients initially came to me for pain relief related to a physical injury. However, once their pain was controlled, many would keep coming back because they got other benefits from the acupuncture – they were less anxious and hypervigilant, their sleep improved, or they could focus better.

It was in these later sessions when the service members would open up and talk more about what had caused their injuries and the traumas they had experienced. They shared how those events impacted their lives, their work, their relationships, and even their view of themselves. Acupuncture was helpful for them to settle down, begin to process what happened to them, and sometimes even offered a sense of hope.