Night Sky Acupuncture + Ideaphoria

Liz Asch Greenhill, LAc.

811 East Burnside Street Suite 216 Portland, OR, 97214 United States

NIGHT SKY ACUPUNCTURE WILL CLOSE ON MARCH 31, 2025. THANK YOU FOR ALL THE YEARS OF COLLABORATION, COMMUNITY, GROWTH, AND CARE.

PLEASE SEE THE COMMUNITY RESOURCES PAGE FOR SUGGESTIONS FOR SUCCESSIVE PRACTITIONERS.

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We offer transformative acupuncture to reduce pain (physical and emotional) and support the nervous system and whole being. We do not offer managed care or primary care. If we are a good fit, we can serve as an auxiliary person in your network. We are both certified herbalists and can bring herbal medicine into your treatment plan, along with bodywork and other Eastern Medicine modalities. Liz is also an educator on creative embodiment and offers virtual sessions to individuals and groups of artists and thinkers. 

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Liz is the creator and host of Body Land Metaphor Medicine, a free guided visualization resource on the podcast platform. Listen and get a sense of what it’s like to work with me. These are deep listening experiences that require time set aside in a still, quiet place. They can be listened to in bed for insomnia, via headphones on public transportation for self-regulation, in groups as a guided meditation with an integration discussion afterwards, and so on. They are not to be listened to while driving or multi-tasking. Listen on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Amazon Music, or download directly here on my website. Please share widely. These are a public offering. Seasons 1-4 are in English, and season 5 is en Español.

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We are in-network with Providence, MODA, and Pacific Source. If we are out-of-network with your health insurance, you can pay up front and we will give you a superbill to send in to your insurance company so that they reimburse you directly. If the out-of-pocket cost prohibits you from coming in, please email us and let us know. If you are a community organizer for a BIPOC non-profit, you may receive up to four free sessions per year. Sign up under the BLM option for your free healthcare.

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If you’d like to subscribe to Liz’s very occasional newsletter which includes guided visualization and tidbits on Eastern Medicine, here’s the LINK.

YOUR INTERNAL ME TOO MOMENT – SPRING CLEANING 

May 11, 2019  /  Liz Greenhill

I’ve noticed that a lot of people I know are going through their own internal Me Too movement. Myself included. It is as if we have been combing through our psyches for old patriarchal ideals we’ve accidentally collected and yanking them out like weeds. Have you experienced this as well? I’ve seen friends and clients begin to speak up for themselves, question unhealthy relationships, make big changes, begin to speak more kindly to themselves, treat themselves with more respect, and set boundaries to ensure more satisfaction and independence. We are becoming more aware of internal discord and seeking alignment. We are growing and changing. 

 

When you think of the term culture, you might think of the society we live in and you might also think of the goo in a petri dish or the composition of yogurt. Each is an environment in which the cell swims. We are each little cells swimming in this culture of America. In other words, we are affected by the societal ecosystem in which we live and in order to not absorb its toxicity we need to strengthen our boundaries and restructure our inner ecosystem to adjust for what we want, in favor of what is familiar. What does this have to do with Chinese Medicine? 

 

The entire body is fueled by qi, or living energy. Qi is allocated to different roles and some of it goes toward that energetics of the cell wall, of boundaries, of fortifying our qi again intrusion. That qi can help us become more aware of who we truly are and to notice and adjust when that integrity is out of alignment.  

 

How can acupuncture help? Energy medicine works on four layers: the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. Like when one drops a stone in a pond, there is a ripple effect through all depths of the water, even all the way to the shore. Acupuncture excels at moving stuck energy. Without having to rely on language and thought, acupuncture can help dissolve areas of conglomeration in the body where old narratives play on loop. 

 

Now is a time for investigating the root causes and stories we are holding onto that challenge our notions of feminism and for using self-care practices to dislodge those blockages. We have an opportunity to release the inner remnants of old ideals we picked up along the way that we might still carry around out of familiarity, old patterning, or negative self-beliefs. When we have less congestion we can more clearly see old patterns in which we question our value or abilities, or old errant beliefs that put us in positions of subordination to others. It is time we do some internal Spring cleaning!  

 

We can practice with a visualization. Find a comfortable quiet place to sit or rest for a few minutes. As you become aware of your breath feel your body settle softly downward with gravity. Take a deep breath and sigh aloud. With your eyes closed, use your senses to identify a place in your body where you feel stuck. It might coincide with a place where you have pain or an old injury or it might be more energetic. Just let your intuition show you a place. Visualize this place as a tangle of yarn. See your own hands like holograms toying with the tangle. Bring your breath right to that area. By that I mean, use your awareness to really feel breathing in that spot. As you breathe, imagine the tangle of yarn growing more stretchy, and each thread starts to loosen and have a lot more space around it. Let the tangle of yarn keep growing and stretching and loosening with your breath until it is wide and stretched between your fingers like a cat’s cradle game. Ask yourself what negative self-belief story this configuration holds for you, and listen for an answer. Sense what might be laced into the yarn’s design that is holding you back. For example, I will always have pain.Or, I don’t deserve happiness. Let that phrase know you’ve heard it and that you know it’s holding you back. Then imagine the yarn sizzling like sparklers and dissolving into darkness. See everything in that space as black, with your hologram hands empty. Imagine your fingers moving and wiggling in the darkness, suddenly free. Feel a sense of spaciousness and emptiness there in the quiet darkness of your body. Let that particular spot feel completely vacant. Write the opposite of that statement in the dark air, saying it aloud with your mind or scribbling it with your fingers. For example, I am not my pain, or, I am more than pain. Or I deserve happiness and I have it.Let these positive self-statements and wishes echo through your body and ring with clarity.