What in the world?

I admit it, there are times when even an acupuncturist doubts the wisdom of using needles and herbs where western medications would seem to deal with a problem quicker. But this week I was proven wrong in quite an astounding way...
The weather here in San Jose has been, lets say "unpredictable" - at best. Part of my journey has long been the dealing with frequent, debilitating headaches/migraines where changes in barometric pressure, more than anything else, trigger them. So, you can imagine living in San Jose is, for the most part, almost ideal - balmy, dry, sunny days. Heaven. Not this week!
So, my usual routine takes me out of the office on Tuesday evenings to my yoga class. I love it. It is my "non-negotiable". Last Tuesday, on a particularly muggy and unpredictable day, off I trotted to my class, and came out enraged! Absolutely beside myself with anger and irritability! I thought to myself "what in the world can have happened in that yoya class...?". I was telling Angie the story the next day (MAJOR migraine day, by the way), and was showing her that we had done alot of inner groin work that evening in yoga, when it hit me ... hard. We had worked on the LIVER meridian - the very meridian that is associated with this time of year, and often with anger, frustration and resentment. I think the yoga had allowed a very deep opening and done some unblocking. Hooray for me!
But why on earth did I have such a bad headache the next day? Rather than deal with another earth-shattering realization, I decided to try and nip it in the bud with an Imitrex injection (it was getting to be pretty bad, fast). That didn't help. A second injection didn't help either. An hour of cranio-sacral didn't do much, neither did the 4 avdil and a frappacino (I was getting desperate, and had a very full patient load). Finally, Angie came in to the office, and I was able to get her to do some cupping and gua sha (scraping) - these are techniques we use to release muscle tension and "ground" the body. Low and behold, within minutes, the headache was much reduced, and within the hour, totally gone!
What did I get out of this whole episode? A newly restored absolute faith in what I do; a reminder that while it is easy for me to see what is wrong and take care of others, taking care of myself is still a hard thing for me to do; and a whole new respect for my practitioner - Angie.