By Tere Ruiz and Karen McConnaughey
In Focus
on Mexico we experience the joy of meeting lots of wonderful people who come on
our Focus on Mexico Program and who have enriched our lives in many ways. Every
individual who makes Lake Chapala their home offers our community their
knowledge and personal experience to enhance our wonderful lives in our pocket
of paradise. When we have the opportunity, we like to showcase some of our
alumni who have improved our days and our souls.
This month we are very happy to introduce you to Dr.
Kuelewa Furaha (Swahili for Understanding Happiness), who came to the Lake Chapala
area with a one-way ticket and participated in our August 2010 Program.
Furaha (as he prefers to be called) is a noted
licensed acupuncturist who worked in the San Francisco
Bay area of California. He worked for 25 years - with
great results - in an array of various county contracts. Dr. Furaha worked with
a drug court and substance abuse program helping people who were given the
choice of being incarcerated or receiving his service. He also worked on
prenatal programs and in the last 19 years with the county, Dr. Furaha had the
distinction of being the only acupuncturist under contract for the county. He provided
no needle acupuncture at the Regional
Medical Center
as patients simultaneously received chemotherapy. The bulk of his practice were
patients with chronic and severe pain. Something that is very interesting to
note is that the vast majority of the patients who attended Furaha's office
during these years were referrals from local doctors who, like many around the
lakeside area, work in conjunction with Holistic Medicine practitioners.
Born and raised in Virginia,
Dr. Kuelewa Furaha graduated from the University
of Wisconsin in Madison, with a B.A. Degree in Social Work.
Later, he attended the Harvard
Medical School
for three years until realizing that dispensing synthetic medicine would not be
in harmony with his concept of wellness. Furaha felt a strong pull to heal
individuals through natural medicine. He wanted to treat the whole person…treat
the causes, not just the symptoms.
With this in mind, Furaha moved to California
where he studied and graduated from the American
College of Traditional Chinese
Medicine in the San Francisco.
He passed the California State Examination and began his practice in the 1984.
In addition, Furaha was tutored by highly accomplished mentors in both the USA and Southeast Asia.
What is Acupuncture with no Needles?.jpg "Karen gets a treatment")
Acupuncture with no needles is an increasingly
popular form of treatment used by practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine
for a wide variety of conditions. It is quite similar to traditional
acupuncture in that the same points are stimulated during treatment, but it is
performed with a device that generates micro currents instead of needling the
skin.
The advantage of this type of acupuncture is that by
not using needles, it takes less time as well as removes the likelihood of
pain, bleeding and bruising, and also alleviates any possibility of infection.
Significantly more points can be stimulated using a micro current. With regular
acupuncture, the needles need to remain in place for 20 – 30 minutes as the
patient remains still , but the micro
current needs only seconds. Also, it is said to be more effective.
According to the principles of traditional Chinese
medicine, illness is caused when qi (pronounced ‘chi’) does not flow properly
throughout the body. Acupuncturists determine whether your qi is weak, stagnant
or otherwise out of balance, which indicates the points that need to be
stimulated. Acupuncture with no needles is considered to be especially useful
for conditions in which there is an accumulation of qi, such as in chronic pain
syndromes, or in cases where the qi is difficult to stimulate. Finally, it is a
salvation for those who respect this modality yet suffer from the phobia of
needles.
Patients may experience a tingling sensation while
being treated with electro-acupuncture, which is most likely due to the micro
current. Typically one senses a pleasant pulse sensation.
Dr. Furaha’s Therapy Experience
Now that you know his background, let’s get into
what Furaha’s authentic technique of Acupuncture with no needles - and much
more - offers to all of us.
Just to sit in front of Furaha and listen to an
explanation about Acupuncture with No Needles is a joyous experience, because
Furaha is one of the most peaceful, serene, quiet and loving people I have ever
met. His voice is soft and clear. This is the way Furaha lives his life; he is
a human being who acts accordingly with what he believes, with what he
preaches, with what he offers to the world around him. And this is the same way
he behaves whether he’s having a casual conversation, writing an email or
practicing his therapy.
Furaha has a very interesting philosophy and it is
to “Place our attention on our medical
future, not on our medical history.” He
explained to us that some of the most successful achievers in the world don’t
envision themselves going from Point A to Point B, but rather visualize
themselves already at Point B. Their attention is on what they want in their
lives, so he assists people in seeing themselves where they want to be, like
for example…they are thinking of the future…having no pain. Furaha sees himself
as a guide to assist people to get to their “garden of peace.”
Furaha’s therapy lasts from 40 - 50 minutes. He
starts by asking the patient how he or she can be helped. Then he invites the
client to go into deep relaxation by reminding them to breathe naturally like a
baby: inflating the abdomen when you inhale and deflating as you exhale. While
the patient enjoys natural breathing and relaxation, Furaha performs his
acupuncture therapy and continues talking softly to the patient.
Some of the things that Furaha said while treating
Karen were:
“Your
(natural) breathing is your walking medicine cabinet.”
“Relaxation
is invisible medicine… Just because it is invisible does not take away its
effectiveness...Gravity is invisible...Electricity is invisible...Wind is
invisible.... Love is invisible… We all
know how powerful these forces are in our lives… Stress is also invisible but it is an invisible
toxin which subtracts from our lives. When relaxation comes, stress has to
leave. They cannot exist together. Stress is the cause of all discomforts. When
stress is high, the immune system drops down.”
Furaha invited Karen and invites all his patients to
“Everyday, give yourself a big dosage of relaxation : 10 minutes minimum, every single day, every single day…”
“We are
all going to the cemetery and my question is:
Why Rush? Let’s enjoy this
journey!”
“Some
people confuse relaxation (which slows the heart, lungs and mind) with
recreation (which speeds the heart, lungs and mind). When we have recreation,
the mind goes out to our friends, family or subject. When we have relaxation,
our minds goes inward to the heart and soul. With recreation we have fellowship
which is good but with relaxation we have communion which is even better.
Relaxation is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Relaxation is so vital ...so
pivotal that once per day Mother Nature will insist that we relax. We call it
…..sleep.”
Now you may understand better why I mentioned that
this is not just Acupuncture with no needles, but so much more, and why I
decided to experience this therapy myself and why I recommend you to experience
it yourself also.
Tere’s experience with Furaha’s Therapy
When my session with him started, I was suffering
one of my daily headaches. I say daily, because, basically, I had been having
pain in my head for the last two months. Today, almost a week after my session,
I can tell you that my headaches are gone since he gave me the therapy and
performed a massage on my head, neck and shoulders. Also, I hurt my thumb about
three months ago, and was used to having pain in my right hand since 2002. 
I
didn’t mention it to Furaha, because I thought that there was not much I could
do about either of these problems. During my session, and even though I didn’t
tell him anything about it, he worked on my right hand and on the precise spot
that had been hurting. It was very strange, because I wrote above that
Acupuncture with no Needles causes no pain, but there was some discomfort when
Furaha was working on my thumb. However, after that, the pain stopped and has
not come back at all.
Karen’s experience with Furaha’s Therapy
“Electrical acupoint stimulation (acupuncture
without needles) is one of the most interesting experiences I have gone through.” Karen told us she had been practicing
meditation and self-hypnosis for years…unfortunately, not on a regular basis…so
when Dr. Furaha started talking to her, she fell almost immediately into a deep
meditative state. “I felt as if I were floating, listening to Dr. Furaha’s
soothing words. I felt no pain whatsoever from the treatment…just a tingling at
the point of contact. After my therapy, I felt ready to take on the world…very
energized. Tere, on the other hand, was very tired and kept yawning. It appeared
to me that this therapy seems to give each person what they need at the
moment.”
After reading more about this highly effective
treatment, we find that it’s being touted as beneficial for arthritis, painful
periods, allergies, tennis elbow, acute post-operative pain, even weight loss,
among other benefits. ScienceDaily wrote in
December 2008— “Acupuncture works - but it works
equally well with or without needle penetration. This conclusion can be drawn
from a treatment study involving cancer patients suffering from nausea during
radiotherapy.”
You
can contact Dr. Furaha at quietqi@gmail.com. We
guarantee that your first appointment is just the start of how good you can
feel for the rest of your life!
Please
note that this is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice. You may
want to seek the help of your medical practitioner before embarking on
alternative complementary therapy. Obviously, this is not intended to be a
scientific document.
Tere Ruiz-Rodarte: Director of Research and Development FocusOnMexico.
Karen McConnaughey: Operations Manager for FocusOnMexico.
Focus On Mexico offers 8-Day Educational
Programs to Ajijic and Lake
Chapala, Mexico
(2nd Best Climate in the World). Join us on a Focus program and
learn why thousands of Americans and Canadians chose to retire in Lake Chapala.
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