Are you experienced?

Not me -- I have a diploma and a license and less than a year of practice under my belt. I wish I could be more proud of my novice status, but I am too sensitive to the awkward pause of disappointment when I report the facts to those asking how long I have been out of acupuncture school. This society is pretty overtly oppressive to those just starting out in most things in life. There are millions and millions of people stuck in careers they hate just because they know that they couldn’t afford to start over again. That’s some serious oppression. I recently heard a story from an elementary school teacher who said that by the time her students are in first grade, they have already somehow learned to treat the kindergarteners as inferior people. I guess Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind wasn’t on the pre-K curriculum.

One of the things I love about this Community Acupuncture Network and its revolution is that there is none of that. There is so much permission to be a beginner, and the salary remains the same.

My practice management teacher at PCOM (San Diego) was more like a motivational speaker. She taught us that the more expensive things are, the more people value them. That if people could afford to pay $100 to get their hair done, they could afford to pay us as much for a treatment. She taught us that we, yes, even we recent graduates, could charge as much as someone who had been in practice for years and years; we were worth it. We had permission to make a living too, the fledgling practitioners. Most of us were relieved and inspired. But there was also a lot of unspoken disgust in the room – you could feel it in the silence, and some people addressed it. One student, from China, was really pissed off, and challenged the teacher by saying that she thought it was actually morally wrong to charge so much without the equivalent experience. They agreed to disagree. I have a feeling that the student’s outrage had more to do with the teacher’s assertion that we should all go out and charge high prices, because the elephant was standing in the middle of the room unaddressed: if acupuncture is so pricey, what about all the folks who can’t afford it?

It turns out they were both wrong. We don’t need to charge high prices to make a living – nor should we, and we don’t need to validate the internalized oppression of the inexperienced by lowering our prices just because we are beginners. We get to make a living and we get to charge low prices and none of it has anything to do with the practitioner’s experience or with perceived value. As Lisa and others have said before, acupuncture is valuable regardless of what it costs – and the less focus on the practitioner, the better, because it’s the patient’s own energy that does the work.

So I get to be a beginner and be proud of it, because ultimately, if I had to pick, I would pick more presence over more experience any day. And not only do I get to start out on the right foot, but as a community acupuncturist, I am going to get a whole lot of experience treating a whole lot of patients, real fast (fingers crossed).

I have a friend who recently opened a community acupuncture clinic in El Cajon (east San Diego), and who is teaching at PCOM. We corresponded recently and I asked her if she had been able to speak about the community acupuncture model in the practice management class. She replied that she didn’t think her chances were too good, despite some vocal student advocates in the class and support from the dean. Since there seem to be darker forces at play there, it’s one time I actually wish that I could say maybe they'd let her speak if she had more experience.