In all my years of doing acupuncture, I’ve never once set off a smoke alarm. That may not surprise you, because you would naturally assume that there’s no reason for needles and smoke to mix. But we learned a very special technique at our school called flaming ginger moxa. Moxa basically means any sort of heat therapy, although very often moxa uses the herb mugwort (artemesia vulgaris).
Ginger moxa is a great treatment for sore muscles and it feels divine! It’s a little hard to describe , but basically it consists of a cotton ball which is slathered with a special salve, which is clamped to a slice of ginger. The cotton ball is lit and the ginger is rubbed along the back. The goal is to relax the patient without burning them with the flaming cotton ball.
That was my goal, to not burn my patient, so I shut of the overhead fan (if you are an acupuncturist you are also probably wondering why we are even using a fan- I assure you it creates a very calm breeze and is highly necessary with the heat of our area). But in turning off the fan, even with the windows open, the smoke alarm went off and brought my comatose patient to a startling alertness.
Unfortunately the smoke alarms are 12 feet high, which would become problem #2, because even in standing on the massage table, I am not tall enough to reach it! Luckily my very forgiving and very tall patient was able to reach it and stop the incessant beeping. A good lesson that I shall do my best to never repeat, but it made the list of new things because it did make life a little bit more fun, if only later when we were laughing about it!