The Light Behind the Eyes

A colleague asked me the other day if I do cosmetic acupuncture.

It isn’t something I’ve ever been especially drawn to, but in answering her, it gave me pause. It made me reflect on beauty from a very different perspective.

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, we speak of Shen. It’s often translated as “Spirit,” but that word barely touches its depth. Shen lives in the Heart. It’s our consciousness, our emotional life, our capacity for presence and connection. It’s the light behind the eyes. I like to think of Shen as how life is looking out through you.

That conversation reminded me of one of the more meaningful experiences I’ve had as an acupuncturist.

When I was an intern, I worked with a patient who had a long-standing, complex chronic condition. They were quiet, guarded, and often perceived by others as difficult. If I’m honest, at first I felt some of that distance myself.

They came in every week, consistently, and we worked steadily on their physical concerns. But over time, something else began to shift.

Little by little, they softened. They spoke more. They began sharing pieces of their life, stories, memories, photos. Over time, a sense of trust and ease developed. I found myself genuinely looking forward to our sessions.

One day, they shared a story about being adopted as a child and separated from their siblings, never to see them again. It was a loss I imagine had quietly lived with them for decades. Near the end of my internship, they arrived with unexpected news: a sibling, living in another city, had reached out and wanted to reconnect.

There are many ways to understand moments like this. What I took away was something simple and profound.

As we worked with the body, something in them became more available to life. More open. More connected. It felt as though their Shen had been gently nourished, allowed to shine a little more brightly. And in that softening, what they most needed found its way back to them.

This is one of the reasons I love this medicine.

Healing isn’t always about fixing or changing. Sometimes it’s about creating the conditions for someone to come back into relationship with themselves, and with life. When that happens, the effects can reach far beyond symptoms, and far beyond what we expect.