Date:03/11/2004

Tiny needles can treat emotional, intellectual and physical problems, says Meeraa Sampathkumar, practitioner of the alternative healing technique, su jok

MEERAA SAMPATH KUMAR always travels with a box of needles. As a su jok therapist she never knows when she might need it. Su jok uses the tiny needles, which have hair-like points to treat patients for a wide variety of ailments, from infertility to aches and a range of problems in between. One of her favourite cases was one where she stopped a patient from being a pushover: an elderly gentleman who was a regular, started bringing his brother along for treatment and was forced into paying for the both of them by the pushy sibling. She says she "used wisdom tonification to decrease the naiveté levels and increase the level of seeing reality" — leaving the aggressive elder sibling to pay for himself.

Su Jok is a form of therapy still relatively new to India where the human palm is seen as representative of the entire body and ailments of a particular part of the body are treated on the corresponding place on the palm. Meeraa says su jok can treat sprains, catches, arthritis, hormonal functions, respiratory problems and just about anything else under the sun. "It's not acupuncture," she insists, displaying the tiny needles which she says, can cure people of less serious ailments immediately and make people with chronic problems feel better with the very first needles.
Meeraa started out wanting to be a microbiologist, which is what she studied but that took a backseat with her marriage. It was only later, after she had turned to alternative healing, that she was introduced to su jok when a friend recommended she attend a conference by its inventor. Initially sceptical of its resemblance to acupuncture, she was reluctant to begin practising anything that requires pushing needles into people.

But the healing technique devised by Prof. Park Jae Woo and based on a 3000-year form of energy healing drawing on Chinese philosophy, fascinated Meeraa. It seemed difficult, but she returned from the conference eager to use all her new learning and began using su jok techniques on her patients. Any initial scepticism was put to rest as patients claimed to feel better immediately on being treated.

It's all about your intention, Meeraa emphasises. "The stronger your intention to heal, the stronger will be your effect," she says. "If the intention of the therapist is to cure, you will use every trick in your book to make a difference to your patient. But alternate therapies are also increasingly becoming ways to make money and so if the therapists don't see their patients as people to be healed but instead as bank notes flying in, they won't make much of a difference."

What she calls her "healing hands" have been long in the making. As a child, people always came to her with their problems or if they wanted to talk, and in her profession this has translated into a desire to make people feel better. "I feel very happy if I know I have helped someone," she says and explains that good su jok therapists can use the therapy to operate on many levels: emotional, intellectual and physical. She has treated people with interaction problems such as professional rivalry and those with paralysis and even cases of gynaecological problems, since the therapy bases itself on using needles to bring about a harmony of elements and restore balance and health.
It takes a lot of reading and library work to master a technique relatively new in the arena of healing, but Meeraa says she stays on top of it by reading a lot. Not just does she constantly read up on su jok, but also on related fields. "People are always bringing in tests and reports," she explains, "and you shouldn't gape at them."

The modalities of the treatment have expanded considerably since it was initially conceived as working on the palm. Burning herbs for instance, might cure those terrified of using needles. Meeraa says she has successfully used the potential energy of methi seeds, massages, and magnets and has worked on the patient's posture to make people feel better.

Practitioners of su jok therapy have to be granted the permission to do so by Prof. Park Jae Woo, su jok's conceiver, and Meeraa is one of very few in Bangalore who has the go-ahead to practise, enabling her to have set up a clinic in September 2000, and to now be looking ahead to starting an institute.