September, 2008

The strangest thing about the CA movement is that no matter who you are (and this applies to the founders of this movement, too), CA is not what you think it is, initially.

A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with John Weeks of The Integrator Blog. He had asked me for an update about how things were going, and I mentioned that we had just had a banner week at WCA; 448 acupuncture treatments, including a total of 73 new patients.

I didn't watch the presidential debate tonight. Instead, I was at a local Tent City (organized homeless encampment), joining with other Tzu Chi volunteers to serve dinner and offer friendship to Tent City residents.

OK, I am, like, sooooo tired of you WCA people running around here and acting like a big bunch of know-it-alls. It makes me sick! “Oh, we’re WCA. I’m Lisa and I’m Skip. We started community acupuncture. We have a staff of ten. We see 430 patients a week and gross over a quarter million a year. We’ve been doing this since Clinton was in office.

Many patients, who first came to The Turning Point when it opened last November, had initially expressed some reservations about how they would like group acupuncture sessions once the clinic grew.  They enjoyed their affordable treatments, but in the beginning months, they were often the only ones in the room.  These individuals are now returning from a summe

Building a bit on what Skip mentioned in his last post, since of course it resonated with me very much... I thought I'd share my thoughts in my own experience of transition to community acupuncture.

I see that Lisa anticipated my blog post here in the last post of mine just below this one. What she wrote about there is the flip side to the numbers game that I comment on there also and so I'll expand on it here. But please read her comment first. She's a much better writer than I am.

The other day I was treating one of my regular patients. There was nothing in particular that he was complaining about; he just loves Acupuncture and comes every week regardless. I look at his tongue, feel his pulses, look at him in general, and needle accordingly.

• tatyana's blog
• 3 comments
• Read more

This is new - I am blogging during a shift since a new patient is not showing up.  One of the patients who did, however, just told me that Marketplace aired more about the acupuncture piece in their bimonthly letters broadcast on Tuesday.  Here's the link:

I took part today in a live interview on public radio program 'Word of Mouth' here in Concord, NH - carried on New Hampshire Public Radio.

I would imagine the topic at hand will be of interest to anybody who would be reading a CAN blog post.

Enjoy...

http://www.nhpr.org/node/17455

(BTW - I had no input as to the title of the piece...ironic, right?)

 For visitors to CAN, non-members, the Blogs here do not represent CAN, writings here represent only the ideas of individual writers.

http://thezangfool.blogspot.com/

We are in the midst of preparing or CA clinic for its opening. During this flurry of furnishing, arranging, re-arranging, etc it has been very helpful to look at photos of other clinics. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of searching the CAN site trying to remember where the various photo-sets are found.

As the shadows begin to grow longer here in the Sonoran desert, I say goodbye  Fire and Earth, and hellooo... Metal. My thoughts turn to autumn and cooler temperatures, and not soon enough because Tucson is already pretty much absolute Yang. 

One month ago, I left my beloved partners and patients at Grassroots Acupuncture Project in sunny, breezy, affluent Santa Cruz to follow my sweetheart to hot-and-sticky, broke-down-but-beautiful Detroit. She got a good job teaching here, and I was excited to move back to Michigan, where I grew up, and where my family still lives. They’re all several hours away, though, and we don’t know anyone in the city, and have been feeling sporadically lonely. We also don’t have any TV reception in our apartment. So, last Thursday, we headed over to a BBQ restaurant/karaoke bar in Eastern Market to join several thousand other folks to watch Senator Obama give his historic acceptance speech.

Coming into CA as a clinic owner/practitioner is one thing.

Unique demands surrounding the biz/clinic operations and hiring/managing people are as interesting as they are varied and unexpected, while demanding of collaborative, material and mental resources aplenty.

Gather 'round the old Philco, folks; and turn it up. It's airing tonight! Just got a call from the writer, Joel Rose. He reminded us, by the way, that it's American Public Media that produces the show, not NPR. Nevertheless, it'll run on most NPR stations tonight, at 6:30 in most cities.

Here's a story about the effectiveness of community in one day of community acupuncture. It's also a reminder to all acupuncturists using recliner chairs treating woman in late stages of pregnancy.