Me v Wikipedia

According to Wikipedia, acupuncture is quackery.

There are many people like myself who have found acupuncture helpful. For me it has cured a number of physical, emotional/mental issues, it has eased muscles, stopped eczema, reduced inflammation, stopped and reduced pain

Acupuncture is a component of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the oldest continuous medical treatment form, it is still taught and used all over the world today. It is a system of in which fine needles are inserted in the skin at specific points along what are considered to be lines of energy (meridians)

A fascia is a band or sheet of connective tissue, primarily collagen, beneath the skin that attaches, stabilizes, encloses, and separates muscles and other internal organs.

Fascia is classified by layer, as superficial fascia, deep fascia, and visceral or parietal fascia, or by its function and anatomical location. Surgeons cut through these layers with impunity and little thought. It is common in the West to cut into fascia to release tension and relieve inflammation. Until recently the Western medical practise had done little, if any research on whether fascia had a function.

Recent research on the fascial network has indicated that acupuncture points coincide with fascial trigger points which suggests that acupuncture functions by means of fascial treatment.

Fasciae are similar to ligaments and tendons, they. They differ in their location and function: ligaments join bone to bone, tendons join muscle to bone, and fasciae surround muscles and most other structures.

All three have collagen as their major component. They are made up of fibrous connective tissue containing closely packed bundles of collagen fibres oriented in a wavy pattern parallel to the direction of pull. Fascia is consequently flexible and able to resist great unidirectional tension forces until the wavy pattern of fibres has been straightened out by the pulling force. These collagen fibres are produced by fibroblasts located within the fascia.

It makes total sense to me that working on the bits that hold your whole body together and basically provide it's structures and form. Makes a lot more sense to me than seeing our bodies and mind as a collection of separates parts and then drugging, chopping off, cutting into those bits which displease us. A way of thinking that however you look at it causes pain and makes a lot of money and misery between the joys

It could be down to having had my tonsils removed when I was very small, but the above makes so much sense to me, I feel I understand why I have always felt that I must not have any unnecessary surgeries.

Daily Racism

I'm in a bar with a mate I've known for around 20 years. We're having a good chat and a young American woman asks to join the conversation and in the way they do, takes over and tries to force a Drumpf conversation on us.

I step in immediately and have to spend the rest of the evening explaining my right to reject having others determine how, what, my conversation is. I don't mention his name, I knew all the 'terrible' facts she was insisting it was important to discuss, knew and was discussing them before she was born. 

Refuse attempts at education by those less educated is my motto. When socialising talk about stuff that inspires to action rather than magnifies a sense of powerlessness and lack of control. Re address Americans belief that theirs is the most important, influential (only if YOU allow it to influence your choices and I don't), country, topic on the planet.

I could go on about the above at length it was a long and repetitive conversation, as it is when one side won't listen/hear and the other (me) is intractable.

Anyway at a certain point the girl asks where I am from. I reply as is true I am from England at which point my - not friend - says

"Oh, but you are going to tell her where your mum is from aren't you."

"Why would I? She didn't ask about my mum."

But you are proud of where your mother comes from aren't you?"

At which point I am forced to enquire as to whether she would be asking the same questions, of any of the other English women she hangs out with.

"But I like your mum so much." Has me employing my newly awakened calm, focused voice of 'previous rage'

"Do you have any idea just how offensively racist that is? If you defend any of those statements or try to justify them we are done." Of course she still did but, luckily checked herself and apologised eventually.

 It did take at least three times of telling her to let it go, combined with refusing to listen to any of the things she so desperately wanted to say to try and deny her racism.

What I find most distressing is the fact that this is the mother of two mixed heritage daughters. Both of whom, to be perfectly honest, totally reflect the identity confusion, self oppression and benign race hate that the white mothers of politically black children inflict on their offspring.

I am focused on being grateful that she eventually listened, heard, realised and then apologised.

But you know, these conversations, rip into your being, they shred your psyche. 

This is someone  who considers them self sound. This is a woman who has in all the time I've known her only had relationships with black men. Who is raising daughters who actually undermine the black liberation struggle (as do - unintentionally - far too many mixed heritage people, with their abused self images).