by Koos Van Kooten in 2004
Huang Ti (N.V.A.: Dutch Acupuncture Association) October
Acupuncturists are often asked to diminish pain, and in fact acupuncture can - by means of diminishing stagnation or otherwise - often be of help in this regard. The author of Braving the Void - journeys into healing, Michael Greenwood is an acupuncturist and one of the forces behind a pain clinic in the Canadian city of Victoria. Being trained as a physician he gradually understood that his way was to lead him somewhere else, and the Victoria Pain Clinic is the tangible result.
This is a surprising, refreshing and disturbing book. It is hardly about acupuncture. It is much more about the experience of people with severe, chronic pain. For the author, acupuncture is only one of several ways to help people “brave the void”.
Having said this we get to the important question: “what is this ‘void’?” The author writes: “One of the cornerstones of the healing process is the appearance - whether it be sudden or gradual - of a profound attitudinal shift which might best be described as “transformational”. (...) the shift is much more than a change from one perspective to another. It is rather a shift toward a positionless position. As impossible as it may seem, to begin the healing journey we have to discover that non-place within ourselves which I have chosen to refer to in this book as “the void” (...). As we move across its threshold, our sense of dichotomy (female/male, subject/object, body/mind) and separation which seem so self-evident in our everyday reality recede until finally even the distinction between observer and observed dissolves and uncharted territory seems to explode in all directions.” (p. 27). Were this an advertisement for a meditation technique or some psychotropic substance you could either lose yourself in it or brush it aside, but this book is about people with chronic pain who have undergone countless operations, swallowed kilograms of painkillers and lost their jobs, with no improvement in sight. You won’t find any unworldy floating-away but you will find a genuine desire to know that which is inside this Void. You’ll also find a description of the many ways practitioners and patients usually avoid this Void, and many impressions of what people encounter once inside the Void.
Through this all runs the author’s conviction that “deep inside everyone who is ill, (...) is a contradiction so crucial that it would seem that annihilation would accompany full expression of the soul.” (p. 67). Facing this inner contradiction in the Void can open a path to increasing expression of the soul, thereby making visible someone’s inner qualities.
Most often, if not always, underlying such an inner contradiction is a ‘wound’. Only by facing this wound healing becomes possible. By doing this the physical pain - which could be regarded as a way of not feeling the deeper wound - seems to become superfluous and to diminish a great deal (there are some impressing graphics on the clinic’s website, that of course only reflect outer changes, not the inner changes depicted in this book). However, a tremendous lot of courage, often the courage of despair, is needed to face the wound or wounds. The motto for a chapter named “The Grail” reads: “The central issue of the healing journey, which stops all but the most committed, is that the task involves healing a wound which won’t heal.” (p. 123) In other words: how is it to be aware of a wound for the rest of your life, and saying ‘Yes’ to it every single moment?
In this book Michael Greenwood shows the importance for practitioners to wholeheartedly say ‘Yes’ to the wounds of their patients. By doing so you seem to create a place in which someone can enter the ‘void’. But aware! This ‘Yes’ also means wanting to know the violence someone was exposed to, the violence someone carries in him/herself, the loneliness, the qualities, the experiences someone would rather not be aware of oneself, and it also means abstaining from trying to cut what you get to know into easily digested bites.
That the author has succeeded in depicting the experiences of his patients without obscuring the sight of the ‘void’ is in my opinion a formidable piece of work. Highly recommended!
Koos Van Kooten: