In this recorded therapy session, Shawna Lynne (the client) and a practitioner (Speaker B) explore how Chinese acupuncture can serve as a non‑verbal, energy‑focused form of emotional therapy. The conversation begins with Shawna describing her preference for “sitting in” the experience rather than talking, and the practitioner explains the concept of “stuck chi.” Through tongue‑and‑pulse diagnosis they identify liver and gallbladder imbalances that manifest as suppressed anger. Shawna reports physical sensations—tingling knees, achilles scar pain, hip tension—and the practitioner maps these to meridian pathways, describing needle placement that both tonifies and releases energy. The dialogue moves into a broader discussion of mind‑body balance, the role of the “third eye,” and the idea that emotional equilibrium mirrors physical balance. They use transformative language (pain → pleasure, grief → gratitude) and metaphors (plunger, making room) to illustrate energy release. Shawna shares her struggle with anger and grief, her practice of curiosity‑driven breathing, and her desire to stay positive. The practitioner proposes a collaborative model involving student therapists and AI‑generated session notes to reduce cost while preserving therapeutic depth. The session ends with mutual acknowledgment of the importance of holding space, allowing energy to move autonomously, and the practical logistics of recording the session for future insight.
Chapters
Okay, hello and welcome to acupuncture. It's 2 therapists talking in a therapy session. It's very different than regular therapy. You got that right. I found someone who matches my brain and can hold space for the incredible changes I'm making at a quick speed. I've been doing this for 30 years. I needed someone who understands how I move energy, and through acupuncture, I actually have to do less talking and more being.
I got it. Sitting. Yeah, sitting.
I get to sit in it instead of talking about it, and it moves on its own.
There you go.
Oh, it's so much less exhausting and less emotional, I think.
I think so too, right? Yeah, she's got that right.
Like, it's a good feeling, and I can see where my body is, um, still holding part of the story.
Right, or stuck.
Yeah, stuck.
We call it stuck chi.
Yeah, I had Reiki the other day and there was like something stuck because like all of a sudden my fingers were tingling and I was so excited.
Anytime something gets in your body to move energy and it moves and you feel sensations, that's how you know it's moving, which is something that happened here too. So When Shawna first came, she told me a little bit about her feelings and what she was hoping to get out of this. But through tongue and pulse diagnosis, we found that there was something going on with her liver and her gallbladder. And liver holds and regulates anger and irritation and frustration.
Oh, I have— I, I— anger is like the only emotion I do not like to I find it so hurtful that it hurts my body to let it out. It hurts my body to be angry.
It hurts because you're holding it.
I don't like being— I don't like anger, right? I don't want it. I just want to be joyful and laugh and happy.
So we had to move. We had to move her anger and frustration. I remember you also had some body aches and pains.
Yeah, my knee, my left knee was Still like tingling. My Achilles still hurts where the scar is. My right and my left hip, they, they change depending on the day, but that's all about the moving forward and the change. And I know they hurt, and I know that there's tension in there that needs to move.
Yeah, and we've gotta, we've gotta move from head to toe. So when you move, when, when we're putting needles in for you, we're not just working on liver gallbladder channel. Channels are the meridians that run along the body.
Yeah.
Remember that? And the meridians connect with the actual organ at a certain point on the body. But that's not all we want to do. We all— we also want to support all the other organs because those other organs support each other. It's like a family system.
Yeah, yeah, everything has to work together.
It's like therapy.
Yeah.
In the body.
All parts have to come together in order to have success. At the moment.
There you go.
I, I just thought of a really interesting thought.
Tell me.
Do you think that there is a correlation between— like, I do a lot of balancing and, and a lot of self-development, balancing with my body and self-development for my brain.
Okay.
And I'm really good at balancing. Do you think there's a correlation between balancing my emotions and balancing in general?
100%. 100%.
People ask me all the time how I can balance so much. But it, I think it's, I look inside every single day as deep as I could.
Well, that's where your balancing starts from.
Right, that makes sense. I never put that together until just now.
Yeah, yeah. So you're, so you're, you're balancing inside and you're also working on the outer. It's mind-body connection.
Yeah.
This is one of your favorite points.
My third eye.
Your third eye.
What is out there that I don't know, that I don't know, that I need to know, that I can't think about?
So much.
And the one you put in my head when you moved my thoughts, when you were stirring them the first time.
That's right.
Oh my God.
You felt that?
Oh my God, all the way down my body. I'm like, she's stirring my brain.
She's— she had her eyes closed. What are you doing up there? I could feel the energy. I'm like, I just put the needle in.
Oh my God, no, I felt like you were like Stirring a pot like a batter. Because it's some—
you do, you kind of just— then you pull up because you're just trying to move the energy and out, right?
It was like, thank you, thank you for opening up the hole to let us all move around.
Got it.
What's it called, like when you— I guess, you know, when you like you blow something up so it has more— like there's— it's more room?
Uh, well, you're making way. Making, making room.
Making room.
Making, making—
when you put the one-on-one in my, in my head, yes, I think it opened up like a portal to let go, to release. That's like, thank you for bringing that all out of your body into your logic.
Yeah, let go.
That's right, right? Mel Robbins' Let Them Theory.
That—
yeah, right? It's exactly that. I've let them emotionally, I've let them physically. But my brain's still like, why?
Well, because you— it, it was sitting there at some point, landed, and you're trying to release that thought too.
Interesting. Why just came up, and I did a grief meditation training, grief yoga training I'm doing.
Oh cool.
With this guy Paul Dennison. He's freaking amazing. And yesterday I sat there breathing and saying the word why Like with anger. Oh yeah, I had to say it like 20 times with anger, and it was really funny. I was having a really hard time, like, why?
Why? So you had to do it that way?
I had to. I couldn't. It was really hard.
Oh, interesting. Why? Why? And forcing it.
I really, I really struggle with making— I'm like, why? I'm like, why?
Curiosity. So you had to Anything— Shift how you do it.
It was really hard for me. I really— yesterday I was like, anger is not an emotion I want to ever deal with or like. I just don't want it.
Yeah.
I don't want to own it. I don't want to keep it. I don't want to feel it. If it's out there in the world, I don't want to see it. I'm gonna stay in my bubble of positivity and spread that as much as could be. Somebody has to.
Yes.
Not everyone has to interact with the shitty world out there.
You're right. You're right, but you have the ability to be aware of it and allow it to move through.
With gratitude.
And move out with gratitude.
Pain to pleasure.
That's right.
Grief to gratitude.
There you go.
Ooh, my left foot is tingling when I said that, right on the—
oh, oh, I felt like—
no, no, I felt like there was a needle on the top of my foot. It's on the left side.
Okay.
Like just up, like between my baby— no, go down my foot. Keep going down with your hand over to the right. And down a little bit and to the left a little bit, right there.
Yeah.
It was like a funny pain.
Okay, I'll tell you why.
Yeah.
Because you have your gallbladder and your stomach channel that I just activated. So one's very tonifying and the other one is the master point of tendons and joints in the body. And because of your hips you were telling me about, I went into that master point because I wanted to shift Wu Qi And then I tonify because I want that, you know, I want that point to go in and kind of— it gets fed by all the other organs.
Okay.
So it's like tonifying.
Feeding the master point.
Tonify.
And so that's why you felt it down here.
Oh my gosh. Because it's pulling and yeah, you're moving.
I feel it in my whole leg is like tingling, but a good tingling.
Yeah.
In the beginning it was not a good tingling, it was uncomfortable. Yeah.
Yeah, you could get that sometimes, especially if something's stuck.
Oh, it was stuck.
It's like a plunger. You're plunging.
I'm a toilet. You're getting rid of the shit.
Take it out the garbage.
Oh my God! Oh, what's that? What's that? That one stand for again?
Gallbladder. But I'm doing balance with you. My treatments with you. All the needles that will be on the right will be the same on the left.
Nice.
Your grief point, it can go in.
Yeah.
Or it can go out, and you've expressed to me that you want it out.
I want my grief out.
Right, so I've pointed the needles outwards.
Ooh.
Out your fingers.
Cool.
But you can turn it inwards when people are trying to avoid and they really want to sit with it. They don't know how, so I turn the needles inward and the grief, they sit with it.
Oh, so people who are detached from grief?
Correct.
Or have, um, put it away because they're caregiving way too much?
There you go. That's exactly it.
Because you can't release that grief. Like someone who lost a child, right? You can't release that. You sit in it forever.
You sit in it. You sit in it.
But you could sit in it differently.
Correct.
You can let go of the power of it in your head. Like, you can intentionally move The emotion you want to move by explaining to you where I want to move it. That's right.
Ah, that's right. And you may come back and give me some other clues, and then we can talk about it, or I can—
My Achilles is, is like, is like stinging. It feels like it was like— it feels like the healing Oh, so every time it healed, I felt it. Every time it was going through a healing, I felt it shifting and moving because I talked to it all the time.
I love that.
Like, I talked to my heel, my Achilles every day. Oh, oh, what's that?
Kidney.
Oh my God, what's wrong with my kidneys?
Nope, nothing's wrong with it. We're just moving.
See, right to the negative right away. Fuck. No! What are we changing with my kidneys? How are we cleansing them?
We're not changing. We are supporting the kidneys. Kidneys are your essence, your aging process.
Oh, I'm aging quickly.
You are not.
You're not. Again, negative, negative.
Yes.
See, that's the bad thing. Aging is negative unless I think of it as not.
Right, and we're just supporting it. We're just here to support the aging process. That's all.
Breathe through it.
I don't even have to tell you that because You've taken your breath therapy course.
Yeah. Okay, it's gone.
Better? Yeah.
Yeah, see, recognize it, label it, ask a question about it.
Yeah, why am I doing that for you?
Right, I want to know. Inquiring minds want to know.
Curious, curious.
I love curiosity. I love how my body talks to me, and the only reason it can is because I've talked to it, and I went to therapy for 30 years.
Which is why you're so connected to your body. You see, some people won't feel it at all. They'll— it'll be numb, and then they'll go home and say, I, I felt like the needle was still there, because they went into a safe space and allowed the circulation to happen even after the needles are out. So you have a few days after treatment where it's still moving. It's almost like going to the gym. Working through the muscles, right?
You know, that's a really good place to also collaborate with my student therapists.
Ah!
Because for a very low price, you can kind of like talk through what just happened to you.
That's right.
Because really, like, I wait to come back to you, and you are pricey and worth it, right? But Like, I value what's on your wall and what I'm paying to move my energy.
Yes.
I just can't afford it every week.
Right.
So, if I went to a therapist, another therapist—
Yes, that maybe had some understanding about, or has had it done.
Has had it done, yeah. Or even just understands that you are going through a story and I'm just going to hold space for your story. I don't need to do anything, it's going to do it on its own.
100%.
You just kind of have to talk to it out loud, and you don't want to do that to your family.
Nope.
Because they don't really understand the change.
Nope.
Or your partner. You kind of need to keep this in your own.
And it's got to start with you first.
It does.
Right.
So that's a really good way for student therapists to get their hours too, is holding— anytime someone goes for a spiritual healing of some sort, or science, that they take it to a student therapist who can— they could just talk about the story, and then they can take those notes from the story Back to you even. Here's what happened. Yeah, record it with AI. Give me the changes. Bring it back to you. That would save them money with you too, because then they'd come in with the solution, not the problem again.
There you go.
Oh, that sounded really good, and we're saving you money moment by moment.
And now we're gonna log off because she needs to rest. It's very important.
This is the best part.
This is the best part.
Oh, you can leave it on.
You want to sleep with the camera on?
Yeah, yeah, you can leave it on. Let's see if anything comes out. Oh, after anything comes out, some of your needles are going like this. They're moving on their own?
On their own.
Oh yeah, that energy wants to go so badly.
It wants to. Yeah, it's like dancing.
Yeah, you know what, let's stop this and let's start it again so this way it can be 2 different ones.
Okay.
'Cause if people don't wanna stay on for 2 hours, for 80 minutes.
Okay.
We recognize your time is busy and you might just wanna send the first part.
