Malia's Note: The following post is from Ted Hall, L. Ac., one of the instructors at Southwest Acupuncture College in Boulder and one of the people both Shawn and I are proud to call a mentor. Ted isn't just an all-around great guy to share a joke or two over a glass of wine, some cheese, and some charcuterie, he's also a stellar acupuncturist and an incredible teacher. We hope you enjoy his words and perspective.

I Was A Teenage Acupuncturist.

by Ted Hall

Ok, that’s not completely true. I never really practiced as a teenager, but the phrase largely describes my start in this wonderful field we all now call Oriental Medicine. I did indeed enroll in acupuncture school at the youthful, if not tender age of 18, some 30 years ago now. I began my training at the Kototama Institute in Santa Fe, NM, and studied under Masahilo M. Nakazono, Osensei. It was a traditional Japanese school somehow transplanted into the American Southwest, certainly a unique situation. I consider myself extremely lucky to have stumbled into the opportunity to be there, as it shaped my entire life.

So, how does a wet-behind-the-ears, 18-year-old find his way to acupuncture school? Well, the same way most of us do, I believe, through the patient end of the needle. I discovered acupuncture in high school and loved getting treated, it untied me in ways I could never have imagined, it opened my world and I wanted more. Not necessarily to become an acupuncturist, I was definitely too young to be packing such lofty vocational ambitions. I wanted to learn all the ancient secrets to the universe; I wanted the magic that I perceived lay behind the medicine. I was a romantic youth stalking the secrets of the ancients. I attended the Kototama school for 2 years, which was the length of the basic program in those days, and it set me on a path that I have not strayed from since, one that continues to teach me more than I could ever imagine.

The Kototama Institute offered classes in Aikido & sound meditation along with the medicine classes, and I threw myself headlong into all of it. It was a very traditional school with a strict discipline and the medicine was taught the old way, through instilling humility in the students. By being humble, we are open and unassuming, thus we learn. That was the traditional way and it was definitely a way of life at the Kototama school. I have been actively involved as an educator in Oriental Medicine for a good 15 years now, teaching largely at mainstream acupuncture schools along with some continuing education, and I can safely say that pretty much every student I’ve had would have been kicked out of the Kototama school. The behavior demanded of us was not the sort of thing that goes over super well in American culture, unless you’re in the military. The majority of the students were in their 30’s & 40’s, a few in their 20’s, but the overall demographic was definitely a bit older than the typical acupuncture student of today. Many of the people there just didn’t know what to make of it; it was at once enticing and insufferable. The school presented an unprecedented seriousness toward the study of the medicine in a strict traditional environment, offering a formality that when I describe it now almost seems quaint, but at the time was unbelievably serious and demanding. We were to bow as we entered the building and before entering the classroom, we bowed to our instructors at the beginning & ending of each class, to our partners when we practiced techniques, we couldn’t enter or leave a room without the instructor’s permission, we couldn’t speak without the instructor’s permission, we sat on the floor, in seiza or cross-legged, we could not point our feet toward the instructor nor toward the shrine, and utmost respect was demanded of us at every moment; it was a very traditional environment. I remember once when somebody yawned in class, and Sensei exploded, pointing at him directly and exclaiming, “Don’t show me the inside of your mouth!” We were yelled at if we asked the wrong questions at the wrong time, we were yelled at if we didn’t ask enough questions, we were yelled at whenever we became too comfortable in any way, and I loved it! I took to it handily; it was like acupuncture boot camp for me. I was at the age where that intense guidance & discipline were exactly what I craved, and I was all too happy to come into class and fully offer myself to my studies, sit with my feet crumpled under me and my back completely straight, I was dying to prove my seriousness to myself, to my teachers, to the world. It was perfect for me, exactly what I needed at a critical time in my life, and yet I was not quite perfect for the school.

When I went for my initial interview to begin my studies, I was quite nervous, as I had heard a number of stories about Sensei teasing & intimidating his prospective students, and yet at my interview there was none of that, he simply told me I was too young. I told him I knew that, but that I wanted to study anyway. My enthusiasm allowed me to enter the program, but it did not make up for my age (or lack thereof) and all throughout my two years there, I knew that Sensei was right, I really was too young, and I feel like I missed and entire layer of what was being taught. I took excellent notes, I never missed a class, I was so focused, but all I had was an 18-year-old view of the world on which to hang it. I’m not saying I was a complete ding-dong, I just wasn’t the hallowed bastion of wisdom now blogging before you. At 18, I was the consummate fool, not because I was dull-witted, but because I was just so lacking in any kind of life experience. Starting at that age offered me a lifetime of medicine, but with the initial handicap of youth: a rather small lens through which to view the world. However, as we all know, youth fades, and with perseverance through time, a wonderful advantage grows. The other great advantage youth offered me was the infallible optimism that often accompanies naive innocence. I was so directed, dedicated, and completely stoked to be where I was, I was so eager to apply my entire life energy to the medicine, that I did manage to learn a few very important things from my time at the Kototama school despite my academic shortcomings, perhaps even in a way that some of my more aged & experienced counterparts were not able to realize.

In all honesty, I’d have to say that medical instruction was probably the least of what I learned at the Kototama school. Being so young, I didn’t really know how to learn very well, I was overwhelmed academically, and more than a few of the details were lost on me. What I did manage to learn was where to put the medicine, how to approach it, and how to ultimately make it who I am. Of course that’s a long-term project, as is learning how to diagnose & treat, but the medicine came to me through the context of the Kototama school, and through that foundation, the spirit in which my teacher offered the medicine and invited us to participate, Kototama medicine is really my life. The key to that success lies in what I can say is the most fundamental lesson I learned at the Kototama school: seriousness. There was no higher value there than seriousness. And of course at 18, I didn’t really know what that meant. I originally thought serious was the opposite of funny, but it isn’t; serious includes funny, among many other things. I think for me the apex of seriousness is sincerity – that is, applying myself with the whole of my heart to something that I care about completely. Seriousness was everything at the Kototama school, if you weren’t serious you were nothing. As I came to see it, our patients’ health demands nothing less, the legacy of the medicine that our ancestors gave themselves tirelessly to build demands nothing less, and our own life substance demands nothing less. It was the ultimate gift of self, as I came to understand it in my two years at the school. Sensei had devoted everything he had to it, who was I to show up and offer any less? What else could I be saving myself for and if there was something more important to me, then why was I not pursuing that? What I saw underneath all that bowing & discipline, all the formality & tradition, was commitment of purpose, commitment of spirit, commitment of love, and the ultimate act of medicine, giving up my own personal sense of entitlement for the benefit of health & life, as it exists in the people who lie down on my table. I learned that being selfish & being generous are the same thing. I’m not saying I’ve got all this down or that I’m any better at doing this than anyone else, I’m just saying that I’m trying my best to make myself available to the gift I was given at such a young age. These are not accomplishments I can boast of, they are goals to which I continue to aspire. Seriousness is the lighthearted confidence that comes from the dedication of spirit to letting the medicine be who we are, this is the spiritual practice that I am finding behind the medicine, the sense of purpose & creativity of being truly available to our medicine.

Of course I didn’t see that at the age of 20 when I left the Kototama school, and I didn’t see it for years afterward. And even now, I only see it some of the time. In truth, I didn’t even really learn that at the Kototama school; I built the space for it there and laid the foundations, but the meat of it I got in the internship I did afterward, the years of study & practice I spent with my teacher, Thomas Duckworth, DKM. He was one of the instructors at the Kototama Institute, one of Nakazono Osensei’s original students, and an invaluable foundation for my studies. It wasn’t enough for me to be told to be serious in that enormous way, or even to see Sensei’s dedication, I needed a guide & mentor, someone to share their practice in this greater picture of the medicine with me. And that’s exactly what Dr. Duckworth did, he took the ideals I was exposed to at the Kototama school and made them practical & accessible for me by truly living them himself. Monkey see, monkey do, and I learned the most through his example. He showed me that the medicine is alive, that our patients are our real teachers, that studying never ends, and that the more available we can be to the process of treating, the greater the medicine becomes, the more it can do. As students/practitioners of this powerful ancient medicine (and we are all both of those things), we are meant to give it life through our dedication & practice, just as all of our seniors have done. To treat a patient with anything less than our complete availability & commitment to developing ourselves as practitioners is to not give our best. This work demands nothing less if we are to truly offer ourselves in the field of human health.

That is my seriousness as it stands today, as I interpret the things my teachers tried to share with me, the things I sought that were behind the details of how to diagnose & treat. I think it’s both more simple and more complicated than it appears. That impossibly strict discipline I encountered at the Kototama school that so many of us couldn’t oblige, the discomfort of relinquishing our social sensibilities so we can all be heard, that safety we fear losing that keeps us ok in the face of what we cannot yet understand, our cultural moral directives, our sense of who we think we are, these are all swirled up in the battle to be truly serious. I still fight with mine, but I’ll never give up, my teachers worked too hard, my patients work too hard, I can never stop. It’s only now as I look back through the opportunity to write this that I can see how I learned some of these things.

Thanks for reading, may we all live a life of medicine.

Ted Hall, Boulder Colorado, Sept. 2011