Blogger Bios

Opened Manchester Acupuncture Studio in Manchester, NH in June '07 after a two-year courtship with the teetering and relentless desire to 'do it WCA-style'.

Now in May '08 with 2 full-time Punks and 10 shifts over 6 days/nights each week, we are on our way...

I've been an L.Ac since 2001 and an RN forever. I love doing community acupuncture and seeing people get better without having to stop treatment too soon due to money. I also see the end of chronic illness as we know it if there were a CAN style clinic in every neighborhood. I live in the Twin Cities with my cat Priscilla, Queen of the House and really enjoy spreading the word about community acupuncture.

It is hard to stay where it started. Perhaps it was deep down in Blythe Miller's roots in the 19th century Russian proletariat. Perhaps it was deep in a Qi Gong fueled meditative state. Hell, maybe it was something her dog told her. At any rate, it became crystal clear to Blythe that regular people have a really hard time getting access to quality healthcare, especially acupuncture. And she has made it a priority to bridge that gap through promoting Community Acupuncture. She is currently slogging her way through the Masters program at the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine.

I Grew up in Utah and even did some experimenting with LDS, but I am recovering now. I am currently in my last 6 months of acupuncture school in Phoenix, Arizona, afterwards my wife and I are very excited to open a CA clinic in the east valley area.

I am still a student of acupuncture (and not in the metaphorical sense), I am an actual student that is still paying actual good money to "learn" acupuncture at OCOM here in Portland. I have 15 months left and then I will be free! The good news....I will be treating patients at the school clinic in September and thus will be learning tremendously by actual practice.

I plan to incorporate Jingei Pulse diagnosis into my practice there and am excited to begin. In the future, I am going to open up a "community acupuncture clinic" and in the meantime, I am trying to learn as much as I can from Lisa, Skip, Sarah, Lupine, and all those wonderful people at WCA.

I am lucky/grateful to have been exposed to this model early in my schooling because as soon as I was, I was thrilled about it and it just made perfect sense to me. It is helping me to stay eager about practicing as I jump through the hoops at school. That long paragraph said, I am happy to be part of the blog

Started Providence Community Acupuncture after reading "The Little Red Book of Working Class Acupuncture" and attending a conference at WCA in Oct. '06. The community clinic has enabled her to spend more time working out doors at a friend's vegetable farm and at killing her own lawn to plant more food and flowers. Cris enjoys biking to work, scrumping (harvesting local food surpluses) and her wonderful community of friends and family.

I first discovered acupuncture as a very effective treatment for neck pain. Before becoming and acupuncturist, I helped develop continuing medical education materials for MDs. After seeing how research was spun or ignored to serve the pharmaceutical agenda, I decided a career change was in order. I went to PCOM New York and graduated August 2007. During school, I couldn't afford acupuncture except at the school clinic and wondered how I would convince people to pay going rates for my services. Luckily, I found The Remedy in spring of 2006. My CA practice is in Ferndale, MI.

 

I'm French-Irish-American hybrid living in SF, married to a Irish-American gal from New Hampshire. I have a son named after my hometown in Texas; he was born in the year of the Monkey (me--the Dog.) I went to school to learn how to stick needles into people in order to make them feel better. I'm broke, in-debt, and pay too much rent for a one-bedroom apartment. I have health insurance but owe about $2000 in medical bills and believe that CA will make my life, and others like me, more comfortable. I also have about 20 kilos of puer tea aging in a red metal cabinet -- I plan to drink it all before my days are over.

I had just hit 10 years in practice when I stumbled on the Working Class Acupuncture model in 1995, via Lisa and Skip's "Little red book of working class acupuncture". After reading this 3 times in the first two weeks, I was ready to jump, and two months later I was offering Community Acupuncture part time in my Cape Cod, Massachusetts clinic.

While my boutiqe style practice had always been enough to pay the bills, I was forever needing to recruit new clients, and the ones I had often ignored my recommendations for a treatment plan, mosty due to cost. This made me feel frustrated and not very effective. The opportunity to transform my practice in ways that better support me, my community, and my values has been life changing for me. While it's all still a work in progress, there's no question that this is what I want to be doing, and helping others to do as well.

is the co-founder of Philadelphia Community Acupuncture.  She lives four blocks from her clinic, two blocks from the park, and has to go nurse now.  The baby monitor is making noises.  Oh wait, they stopped.  So here's more:  Use a stainless steel guide tube!  Ellen loves them and so will you.  

Gabe is an acupunk wanna-be currently slogging (or how about slugging - in both senses of the word as Oregon is slug-central and school and the non-CAN acupuncture world make her want to slug someone) her way through her first year of acupuncture school. She specializes in parenthetical run-on sentences, bitching and moaning about stuff and avoiding studying or coming up with solutions by watching entire seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in one night...and now by blogging, too.