s p i r i t g a t e

Community Acupuncture in 2031

I wrote this almost 3 months ago, referring to my then 27 month old son.

 

 

Julian said “acupuncture” very clearly this week. Also inserted a needle at my LI10 with force and tenderness, using a guide tube. Walks through clinic and looks straight at each patient with relaxed curiosity, gets beamed at by almost all. In this context, he must recognize the different energies in what his daddy is getting to do, the power in the whole situation, recognize the love, must think that’s natural.

 

This is a letter I’m writing now to Julian. Maybe its to him now. Maybe to him in a few years.

 

Dear Julian.
It was delightful getting pine-needle acupuncture from you today along that blue and orange blazed path by the pond. It’s really fun playing acupuncture games with you. I love all the places you go, the different jobs you have when we pretend. Its generally amazing getting to be with you while you discover the different things that capture your interest and imagination.

Spending time in the clinic, my workplace as you call it, you seem to already know a lot about how the acupuncture is to help people feel better, to heal, to get re-connected, but I wanted to tell you about ways its been really important to you and me and mama.

Once when I was halfway between your age and mine I got pretty sick. I couldn’t stop coughing, and I coughed so hard I broke a rib. I was wheezing like you did when you had the croup, but for many months. I also had a lot of pain in my back. It made it so I couldn’t do much. It made playing soccer or laughing or singing too painful. I got really, really sad at the same time, but the kind of sad where you don’t want to cry. Crying hurt, too. I decided to try acupuncture, and, boy am I glad.

It made it all feel better really fast. At first I thought it was something special or magic this man had done to me, but the more I read about acupuncture, the more I realized that it worked for me because acupuncture just works. Then, along with being happy that I had discovered it, I started feeling disappointed and confused that no one had told me about it before. I didn’t understand why acupuncture wasn’t everywhere, or why everyone was just being given really strong drugs for everything. I told everyone to try it.

I decided I wanted to be someone who does acupuncture to others. To go to acupuncture school, I used all the money I made from my children’s librarian job and I’m still paying every month for those three years of school.

I met mama when I was half way through acupuncture school. We fell in love writing love notes to one another every day. We created our own language where we talked about our bodies as made up of rivers and pipes and moments in time. Our minds were made up of the northern lights and the ocean floor. The whole wide world was made up of poems and stories and blood and turnips, and of animal breath. I think we fell in love with each other because we both saw that everything is inside a tiny rock and that we are inside everything. I like thinking about this now, Julian, and thinking about how you came from those love notes, and the stories we told each other.

When I finished acupuncture school, I made most of my money as a gardener, and I did acupuncture in the evenings. I had thought that I was going to be somehow different than thousands of other acupuncturists who weren’t giving acupuncture to many people, and who weren’t making any money. We were all confused. We were all thinking that we were special or magic and this made us a little selfish with how we shared our skills. Thank God, a couple very important people came along a few years before you were born to remind us that we’re not special, (well sure we’re special but not because we know how to do acupuncture) but that we have a very special and magical tool that everyone needs, that we should take this really seriously and go out and tell everyone we know about the tool of acupuncture and tell them to come get some and to keep getting some because it will change their lives for the better. And these two people also showed me and hundreds of acupuncture do-ers that we CAN have acupuncture be our real jobs. Because of them I have a wonderful and useful job that I get paid for. Though this should be true for everyone, it is not.

Because of these people, Skip and Lisa (you met them at the house where we lived with Uma and Ellen, and at Andy and Karen’s this fall, and you’re gonna get to see them again in May), there are clinics like my workplace all over the wide world where lots and lots of people are getting acupuncture with each other. It seems to us that the more people that come sit in the clinic and get poked the more special the tool of acupuncture becomes. You have seen that when you come in; and,you have felt how just you showing up and walking around the clinic makes the lovey and healing energy even stronger.

Remember your playgroup in Philadelphia, up in the firehouse? Remember playing and snacking with Ida and Oscar and Rose and Sunny and Nina and Saj? That place felt really nice, huh? That’s another acupuncture place that’s an important center for thousands of people around it. Me and mama and the other parents always felt relaxed and pleased to be in there with you and the other young people. We all had lots of help with our bodies in there, including the moms when they were pregnant with you little guys. Right now, there’s probably lots of people in there getting needled by loving acupuncturists. And, there’s so many sweet clinics like that in our world now. And they’re all connected like a gigantic playgroup, or workgroup. Its one of my favorite things about this world. I can’t wait to introduce you to more people like Cris and Ellen and Skip and Lisa, people who make up this group and who created all these acupuncture centers.

Not only are these people really fun, but they’re really good at fighting to change things so they make more sense. Like making it so that as many people as possible can get acupuncture if they want to. One of the things we’re fighting to change is how people learn to be an acupuncturist. Like, right now, lets say you were 19 years old and you decided you wanted a job being an acupuncturist, you probably couldn’t because the school you’d have to go to would want way more money than your mama and I have or will have. It shouldn’t be that way. You have dexterity and grace in your hands and fingers, and a heart full of love, and you’re really good at listening and connecting with people. You should get to be an acupuncturist if you want. So, we’re trying to change it so that you or any of your friends could afford to go to acupuncture school. And, better than that, we hope to make it so that you could become an acupuncturist just by learning with the great people in our playgroup/workgroup. And this means that all the things you’re already learning and will probably keep learning from me will actually mean something for your future. And, that is just SO incredibly cool.

 

Love, dada 

 

Free Acupuncture for Veterans in Philadelphia

Check out the website for the Philadelphia Area Veterans Acupuncture Project here.

Obama, Baltimore Avenue, The Electric Slide, and Acupuncture Theory

Here's the article I wrote for The Community Acupuncture Network.

Here's some videos i shot at 47th and Baltimore.
Here's some photo's of 47th and Baltimore, post election, taken by local resident, Margie Politzer.

PCA and Community Acupuncture on "Marketplace"

Wow. Philadelphia Community Acupuncture was featured on American Public Media's "Marketplace" last Tuesday. Local freelance journalist, Joel Rose, who did the piece, focused on access to affordable health care and on community vs. individual treatment.
Here's a link to the broadcast.

group qi

   

Much has been said and written about "group qi" in the context of community acupuncture, where receiving treatment in a room full of people creates an auspicious and fertile environment in which everyone's healing capacity is enhanced.

Here's a nice blog entry by a fellow community acupuncturist.

Here's another couple angles on it from me.

1)I think our nature as humans is to be interconnected: emotionally, creatively, by
touch, and all sorts of other inexplicable ways. But, our daily lives
are largely set up to shut down these connections so that we can be
more productive, so that we consume more. We all try, though, all the
time, to restore these connections; and, every way that we do is a big
political act. If our natural connectedness was fully intact, it'd be
much harder for powers to wage wars in our name, flaunt contempt for
democracy and human rights, or deny us health care.

2)Good things happen when we really make space for each other. We've all
listened to a friend or a loved one at one time or another for as long
as it took for that person to work something out, for them to heal from
some rift. We made it safe for that person to show their real selves by
listening mostly silently, withholding judgement, refusing to argue or
reassure, and just showing that we care and trust that person and the
brilliance in his or her mind and body. I think community acupuncture is a
big wonderful version of that, where the quiet, the proximity of
relaxed strangers and neighbors, and some carefully placed needles all
contribute to a rare opportunity for a number of people to heal,
naturally, together.

3) I sometimes long, however, for a more rambuctious and less serene or
solemn vibe in our clinic. I
think there's all kinds of ways we can do this. Here's an example of
what can happen when we're not shooting for quiet as a primary
condition. I wrote this in new Orleans when I was treating folks right after
Katrina. 

 

A woman from the neighborhood is walking by and sees several
of her neighbors sitting in an oddly meditative manner. Mr. Ali, who has had
three unsuccessful surgeries on his cervical spine in the last 15 years is
looking at me with heavy eyelids and asking me how the acupuncture can so
quickly make his neck looser. I am trying to answer as simply and quietly as
possible, and I’m being helped by another man being treated, a 60 something
year old cab driver. Mr. Clarke studied Mao and Chinese culture when actively a
Black Panther in the 70s. He’s identifying a point I used on Mr. Ali’s arm as
lying along the Triple Burner channel. Lamar is a middle-aged painter and
contractor who’s been working 12 and 14 hour days since the flood. His forearm
and fingers are numb and he cannot sleep. Francine is a 49 year old white woman
who is working 10 hour days at the one welfare office which survived of seven. She is here for the third day in a row
to get help quitting smoking, a decision made in the throes of the emphysema
like coughing that has racked her since the mold set in. She knows of these men
but has never spent any time talking to them. She and Lamar are almost whispering
to one another, both crying
periodically, which gets the attention of a small orphan dog which has made its
way to their feet. The clinic’s only pharmacist, a woman from Detroit, has been
sleeping in her chair with one leg elevated since the needles went in a half hour ago. She had asked for help with
an acute migraine and a swollen ankle. The woman passing through catches eyes
with another man who’s getting a treatment, a man appears to know well. He’s
been orating irrepressibly since 5 or 10 minutes into the treatment. He’s
looking at her saying

“Lord have
mercy…. Wow…… Like I’m in high school…….. This is alright…..  Aint this something…… Feel like a
bird…. Like a body ought to feel in this  world…..
Aint this something…. Somebody discovered something…. Lord have  mercy……. Makes my back straight and
takes my defenses right down……. Like  a
bird I tell you….”

And the passing woman shoots back

“Well, go
on and fly…”

Her only question is if the needles will hurt.

“No,
sweetheart.”

And, several people close their eyes and reassuringly shake
their head.

“Like a
little bug bite,” Francine says.

She sits down with her neighbors.

 

Amy Walsh

These are by my wife, artist Amy Walsh.

Neighborhood Acupuncture

Many of the things that led me to community acupuncture was a simple wish to be able to provide Chinese medicine for and within my own community. And, there are lots of significant social positives to be had in actualizing this desire. A few for me are the ecological and political benefits of working a few hundred yards from home while trying to think globally, taking on classism and racism within my own life, and assisting a shift in the locus of our health care conscience from a finite physiology of the individual and her diagnosis to the unlimited relationships between elements within a person and persons within a community.

But, what I'd like to say is that the wish to work with and support your own people is simply human. In this sense, the questions of whether "community acupuncture" represents a more ethical practice or a less ambitious business model or whether we're employing deeper or more superficial principles of Chinese Medicine all kind fade a bit. At least these questions defer to the way each of us are actually being liberated towards our natural goodness.

We're ALL born GOOD, totally brilliant and creative and wanting closeness and collaboration. And, we all want a chance to be effective and to make a difference. It's natural for us to want our lives as healers to not be unconnected from the social and physical communities we inhabit.

I'm writing about this now because I'm realizing how much more deeply connected I feel treating 100 of my neighbors a week with my partner than I did treating 10 or 15 people I probably wouldn't see outside my private office. And, even though I believe that wanting all this connection is natural, I'm realizing how far I've been socialized away from being comfortable with it.

So, here's a couple ways my life has changed upon becoming a neighborhood acupuncturist here in Cedar Park, West Philadelphia.

When I was doing my private practice, talking about acupuncture with neighbors (at the coffee shop, co-op, block party, on the soccer field, or at a community meeting) was largely an abstract or theoretical conversation. I'd answer the questions about whether it works for what symptoms. I'd listen to people free-associate about acupuncture, reiki, chiropractic, and past-life regression.

These conversations were often frustrating but somehow comfortable in the way I got to stake out different positions and impress (or put off) people with interesting theory tidbits or success stories. I think this strange combination of comfort and dissatisfaction mirrors a lot of interaction under advanced capitalism, and in this case is related to the actual social distance between myself and those with whom I spoke.

We get used to having cordial, even crackling conversation with one another without the hope of actually reaching in there and making a difference in other peoples' lives. It's not always like this, but it's a dynamic I'll bet we all wish we could break through more frequently.

So now, since my neighbors and friends and colleagues can afford to get acupuncture, it's almost always the case that someone in the conversation has either had treatments or knows someone who has. The conversations are totally different, and it's taking some getting used to, partly because there's a brand new juicy opening for my ego.

Not only is the social distance between us shortened, but the proof pudding is close at hand. Sometimes, this means the language gets a little less rich and a whole lot more practical. Did the hives go away or not? Did she get her period or not? Are they feeling more motivated or not? Whether the answer is yes or no, this is where it starts to get uncomfortable.

If the hives did go away, or she did get her period, one of a couple very interesting things is bound to happen. One is simply the expression of appreciation. As someone raised middle class by protestant parents, the giving and receiving of appreciation i learned was always of a somewhat qualified variety. I'm not real good at either. And, it's not just me. But, I'm trying to learn to go ahead and accept the appreciation, even if I think what should be appreciated is the brilliance and simplicity of acupuncture itself or the community in Philadelphia Community Acupuncture. I'm deciding that it's actually radical to make space for the flow of simple appreciation even if it comes out seeming inappropriately heavy, and even if I have some early life experiences which tell me that it's actually dangerous to be singled out.

Another thing that sometimes happens when people hear or see positive outcomes resulting from friends' or relatives' treatment is that they get wildly hopeful. Now, you're answering whether acupuncture can help with a father's stroke, a niece's autism. Once again, the conversation has moved to a different and more personal level.

On the other hand, if in the friendly conversation it's established that the hives haven't gone away, or the amenorrhea isn't resolving, then my ego is jumping around on its other leg. I'm still learning how to explain with relaxed confidence about chronic conditions requiring a long course of treatments and/or lifestyle changes. Once I do, though, I realize how powerfully relieved I am to actually be able to offer an affordable, and attractive solution.

I'm face to face with patients or patients' friends many times a day now. This means I have daily practice of checking my worry or attachment about their health, and of trying to remember that my goodness and value don't have anything to do with whether the man who volunteers to pick up trash around the neighborhood still has back pain.

I'm also having to learn another level of integrity around confidentiality and responsibility. Now that most of my patients are, at most, one degree of separation from me, I'm figuring out what a principled practice is regarding key confidential details about them. When I know important people in a particular patient's life, I ask myself different questions about knowing, for example, that he or she is an abuser, or is considering suicide, or is looking for a place to live. What's my role?

And, finally, I'm learning how to take myself both more seriously and more lightly. I feel way more personal investment in my work now, and way more immediate accountability with my patients. It's inescapable that I'm important in the lives of people around me. At the same time, it also becomes clearer that every patient's life is complex, and that i am simply their acupuncturist (or, one of their acupuncturists).

What really stays up ion my face is that it takes a village. And, to do my job as an acupuncturist and as a human, moving qi in the channels is but one part of contributing consciously to the village by increasing and reinforcing the connections that hold it together.

Ceremony

I went to a performance/art installation recently as part of the Philly Fringe Festival. I thought it was sublime, fun, full of wonder and mystery. It changed how my body felt and the thoughts in my mind. It connected me to the hundred and fifty or so other people in the room.

The artists, The Headlong Dance Theater, figured out how to lead a whole bunch of strangers into really participating in a conscious ceremony with a beginning, middle, and end. Neither an exact trajectory nor the outcomes of the event could be predicted. However, the combination of the compassionate and curious intention of the artists, the way they stayed committed to their best creative thinking, no matter how daring, and the way an already beautiful and intentionally holy space was infused with the love of the artists created a huge opening. And, given each audience member’s natural desire to connect and to heal, it was hard for most everyone not to go ahead and walk through towards a transformative and hopeful experience.

It was also hard for me not to walk out thinking about community acupuncture, the spaces where it takes place, and the caring, artful intention of those making it happen. Holy.

The performance was partly about the tension between our wanting to watch, on one hand, and the choice we have, on the other hand, to participate. For most people, each gentle encouragement was enough to go ahead and join as an active part of what was unmistakably ritualistic in nature.

All attendees were asked to wear blue. Most did. Everyone was divided into four groups before entering the old abandoned Christian Science rotunda. I was in the first group. In the foyer, we were told a story and invited to think about an unexplainable event in our lives, and, then, led through a fabric membrane into the huge domed cathedral where the old wooden floor had been cleared of everything. Explore the space freely, we were told, walking in. A short piece of music played while 6 dancers in orange made swirls of movement around the gigantic space. We all seemed tiny under the ocular window at the zenith of the towering dome. The dancers’ movements were lovely or silly or solemn or rhythmic or not, connected to the others or not.

The music ended, and we, the first group were divided further into a few organic collections of individuals and invited by the artists to create, when the music begin again and the second group entered, patterns of movement of our own choosing which related to the space and the music. This was just the beginning of a long series of group motion-poems facilitated brilliantly by the dance troupe, which all eventually linked together into a fluid ceremony.

One thing that got revealed was our relationship to the space around us, how Everything is intimate and touching. That as energizing as it is when we’re open as individuals to the universe’s qi, when we’re inviting hand-holding with a hundred people, or at least not actively avoiding one another, the energy is even more vast, complex, awesome, potentially delicious.

Some audience members had initial resistance to being led toward this kind of activity. There were slumped shoulders, puffed chests, turned heads, and nervous laughter. Most of these folks got swept up by fun and beauty, not by peer pressure.

About a week after we opened Philadelphia Community Acupuncture, Ellen and I were readying the space for another day. It was five minutes or so before our first scheduled patient and in my excitement I shouted like a carnival barker “it’s show time!”.

I certainly don’t think we’re creating fiction or illusion, or that Ellen or I are playing some role other than ourselves. I do believe there is a delicate choreography we undertake to make the clinic click and flow. And, in best moments, patients find themselves floating not only in the acupuncture-induced Shavasina-like state within their own bodies, but also in a collective swirl of benign reality, a real relief from the just barely capped terror, or sadness, or rage we all walk with quite often.

I just thought how interesting it would be to create a time-lapse bird’s eye movie of a whole shift’s activity, the clockwise flow of patients around our space from coming to going and everything in between. You’d see a constant and calm orbit of arriving, checking in, heading around the corner to the bathrooms and into the treatment space, and out the other way back to the reception area. Inside that circle, you’d see the spoke tracing arrows of Ellen and I moving decisively between needle stands and patients. You’d see the subtle movements of the front desk person in the middle of it all, reaching out to every patient, the shifting light from sunbeams across surfaces and textures lovingly and skillfully prepared by Ellen’s artist husband who had to anticipate at least some of this celestial-like symphony.

Art need not hold the beholder away from its body. Religious experience doesn’t happen for me when being told how I’m supposed to feel gets in the way of connecting with mystery. We get to act with the kind of intelligence and love the Headlong Dance Theater showed me. We get to do something that allows this kind of holy space to move through. We get to know that we join all kinds of artists/medicine people doing this work today and all kinds of ancient traditions where opening and listening and moving to the stars with one another makes sense and mends the world.

Breathing ALL the way.

Bicycling to my very first clinical assistantship almost 10 years ago, I felt pretty jazzed, a little scared, and hugely hopeful. I was looking forward to connecting with patients as a caring student of Chinese Medicine with lots of attention to spare.

Within the first twenty minutes of my time at this hundred-bucks-a-pop clinic with multiple waterfall dioramas, I had all the contact I would ever have with the owner and principle acupuncturist. He asked me to take needles out of a patient in room #6, and then he told me to put on deodorant and to never ride my bicycle in if I was going to smell like sweat. I was asked to do some filing for the rest of the shift.

OK, I thought. Yeah, that must be right. I’m a big fan of paying a lot of attention to what makes patients comfortable and uncomfortable, and of generally being a conscientious community member, where sometimes it makes as much sense for me to get out of the way as it does to be very powerfully who I am.

But, the interaction left me really angry, even spiteful. I couldn’t quite tell why.

The feelings I had that day cascaded out in a manner much out of proportion to the present situation. So, they must have been in me, like a fear smell, waiting to come out. It went something like this: Oh no! I’m dirty and don’t smell right… My clothes are all wrong….I don’t know what I’m doing…. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to afford a car (even if I don’t want one)…. Can I be an acupuncturist if my hands won’t warm up in the winter?… I hope the smell of my breath is OK… I hate this guy.

I wanted to never come back and to generally just forget about my first assistantship experience. At least until I could get some perspective on it, which I finally did this week, during the very first day we were open at Philadelphia Community Acupuncture.

Usually a good crier, I think my lung energy has been a little rigid as I’ve hatcheted away at various critical-seeming tasks these last few weeks before we opened. I figured that at some point during treating people on our first day, I’d probably have another kind of opening, that I’d realize what Ellen and I have created, and be able to cry. True, it was. But, it didn’t happen when I was looking at our beautiful room full of people in recliners, nor from any glance or hug with Ellen. It happened in one of those moments that moved in slow-motion dream speed, and it happened through smell.

I was treating a beautiful middle aged man, an ex professional dancer who’s current (traditionally male) job puts him in a lot of physical danger, makes him witness to a lot of violence, and discourages any self-care. He wasn’t aware I’d be asking him to take his shoes off, and was very reluctant to do so, saying his feet weren’t too pretty, and they didn’t smell too pretty. After some ear points and yin tang and a root treatment, he called me over and said if I really needed him to take his shoes off he was willing. It felt to me fairly unessential for a good acupuncture treatment but like a good opportunity for him to take a step towards healing a very specific self-image injury.

When I needled his feet, I think I did a good job of making him feel he was totally perfect and his presence was welcome and treasured in this space. Without thinking, I also really opened up my smelling, and my breathing in general, with simple curiosity about what part of this man’s physical humanness and qi got attached to the oppression which told him something was wrong with him. He still had his recliner un-reclined, his body curled in, and his feet on the floor.

I could kind of identify a subtle but particular odor from his feet. Slightly fishy. The smell of ……well…..feet! It made me laugh inside. Sitting in the same circle of chairs was a young woman I’d needled earlier. She was on the 1st day of her period and had been sweating a lot before coming in. I could smell a metallic odor from her.  I was finally dropping into really being here, and out of all the preparing-to-be-here. Now, I could also smell Chinese food from across the street. It was only then that I noticed my own smell, the fear one, which apparently follows me into every circumstance that feels like I’m doing something for the first time, just like my first assistantship.

But, this is was different in just about every way. An incredible relief. I looked back at the male patient sleeping like a baby with his recliner extended and his perfect smelly feet pointing in to the middle of the circle. I felt really connected to all the people in the room. It felt like there was space enough for everybody’s humanness, and not any space for shame.

This was when my lungs really let go and I got nice and cry-y. I could see the contrast between what was happening here and that first day of “assisting”.

I know that all the not-good-enough and not-normal feelings I had that day were rooted in false conclusions I made as a direct result of the classism I experienced as a very young person. The whole set-up of this clinic, it’s location, décor, services offered , and prices-per-treatment, all made me feel like I definitely did not belong I’ve worked a lot on the feelings and would probably be in better shape now to not be as personally hurt by what was said to me.

But, I would still be mad. Not for being called smelly, but because of the whole dominant clinical dynamic, borrowed directly from the technologically based bio-medical model, in which great emphasis is placed on shielding each patient from the real world, and, consequently, incarcerating him or her in an artificial environment, disconnected from real human experience in ways that have a significant impact on a that patient’s ability to heal.

Because the one-and-one, private-room treatment scenario refers so directly to kinds of intimacy which create a lot of unspoken confusion, and also to other medical procedures, a practitioner may find it important to erase a lot of aspects of the self to make room for a clinical relationship. In my private practice over the last 6 years, I’ve wondered to what extent can I heal, repair wholeness, and help liberate a patient into his own body and senses and intelligences while simultaneously expecting both he and myself to disappear enough to be safe.

I recognize that there is a natural link between our rational expectation that our healers practice good hygiene and an innate understanding that body odors can clue us in to someone’s cleanliness. I also am aware that culture and religion have a lot to do with various personal understandings about smells and the body and cleanliness, and that we’re responsible to keep learning about these norms and thinking flexibly about our relationship to them. (There are a lot of Muslims in my neighborhood. Will it make sense for us to have footbaths in our restrooms?)

I want to make choices about relating to my patients, about how I carry myself, based on my good thinking about them and the community, not on rigid, unexamined and oppressive rules.

Philadelphia Community Acupuncture health resource center and community room

PCA's community room will provide a relaxing space for people to congregate, ask questions about acupuncture, learn about natural health, get info on affordable care in Philly, use or contribute to our library, and enjoy a cup of our delicious tea.

Taoist yin-yang theory holds that each body and interior self is a reflection of its environment. You can not take care of yourself without taking care of your community. Health care not only happens to you as a consumer but is something we all cultivate and maintain the more we're connected to one another acting powerfully towards goals of our own choosing. Bodies and minds work better and feel better when they have real security: liberation from fear and isolation.

While acupuncture brilliantly smooths the flow of information (qi) within the body, PCA also hopes to contribute to the strengthening of connections between the different elements in our community. So, we'll house classes, performance, other gatherings generated by the vast collective knowledge and inspiration of Cedar Park and West Philadelphia.

Along with information about affordable health resources, we will also keep contact info for organizations and individuals thinking about ecological and economic justice, international solidarity, art, spirit and play.