Community Acupuncture: Fundamentally Different

First, I want to second what Lisa says below about our great NYC weekend.  Its always great to get out of your comfort zone to get some perspective and this happened for us.  

So what perspective did we gain?  A couple of things really.  The first was realizing to a deeper extent than before how different Community Acupuncture is than a) Boutique acupuncture (i.e. the conventional way acupuncture is practiced), b) other types of medicine in this country as they are almost always practiced.  I see more clearly that putting the word "Community" is not just a cute idea.  No, the word "Community" describes how healing takes place.  We are so accustomed to the idea that healing happens because the healer makes in happen that even when we say that the healer is just a facilitator it doesn't fully sink in.  The funny thing is though is that a successful Community Acupuncturist is more like a conductor of an orchestra than a shaman and that the group setting allows the patients to lose their isolation from other humans that is hurting them so. Sharing experience is huge in the healing process.

The upshot for American Acupuncturists is that its hard to start a CA practice because it requires fundamental shifts of thinking about why we are in the healing business in the first place.  Since most of us (including me) originally came into the profession thinking that we were learning to heal others (and ourselves) it is taking some time to turn that thought upside down, to realize how true it is that we (Acupunks and patients equally) are in this together and that our (Acupunk) #1 job is to make the space available for healing to take place. Another way to put it is that there is no real separation between needle-er and needle-e.  Its all one Community.  The old way of separating patients and providers is not only isolating but positively harmful to our bodies and souls.

I quoted Aristotle's phrase, "Man is a political animal" before in an old forum post somewhere but I'm remembering it now because I'm seeing it more deeply than I did then.  (PIcture me slapping my forehead while saying, "Duh!".) Its just that the conventional way of practicing Acupuncture is isolating, creating a me-and-you dynamic which is not reflective of reality and therefore damaging to us.  Unfortunately the old way is how every Acu-school in this country teaches.  There are a few individual teachers who know better, but in general the emphasis on technique, particularly the takes-a-long-time to do an intake an/or do a treatment is isolating because it sets us Acupunks up on a pedestal when in reality there is no pedestal.  So it makes (more) sense to me now that changing that type of thinking is the hard part of starting up a CA practice and that each of us (again including me) has a slightly different part that is effected by the isolating urge (i.e. the ego).

Oi. I hope this isn't totally incoherent.  Eventually I'll be able to articulate this better.  That you everyone for patiently letting me slowly understand more.  Especially everyone in New York.