Growing up

This month marks a year since my WCA training in Portland and a year since I joined CAN. So I have been thinking about growing up recently. I think Lisa wrote somewhere about how our profession is still in the “teenager” stage of growth, but I cannot find the posting. I really like that analogy. I think when we start studying Chinese medicine, all the choices of approach to the various imbalances in the body overwhelm us and we are easily susceptible to the suggestion that we need all that time with the patient to figure out what to do. I think part of growing up as a practitioner means not needing the time to consider all those choices and not expecting to get paid for that thinking time. It means that the patients’ needs for something simple, affordable and effective come before our need to analyze them for a long time and contemplate all the different techniques we could use to treat them. This self-indulgent thing.

I remember (during the recent San Francisco workshop) Lisa talking about appreciating the familiar in reference to using the same Jingei treatments over and over. The older I get, the more I appreciate the familiar and stable and perhaps boring things in my life that work well, nourish and support my everyday needs. I don’t need so many choices anymore, because I already know what works for me. It does not mean I am not open to new things, it just means I am able to discern better when the new things will be helpful and when they are a waste of time and energy. I think Community acupuncture can be like that for its patients – nothing special, but essential for living a healthy full life. I know it can be that way for the people who practice it because I read about it every day and because of being part of this great community.

I also remember Skip, during the same SF workshop, referring to Community Acupuncture practitioners as more mature or grown-up in terms of practice. I think it was something he said to me in a private conversation, but I might be wrong. I understand this as becoming more realistic about being an acupuncturist, realizing that our work is not to be expensive and enlightened experts but to serve others through acupuncture, to use our bodies and minds and hearts to deliver this medicine. And realizing that work is what it is. I guess I am echoing Nora’s recent post about the aprons. Growing up means putting on an apron, rolling up the sleeves and getting into the needling as opposed to wearing a spotless white coat and waiting for the patients to show up and pay you lots of money for spending an hour with them.

When I was writing my old business plan for my conventional (boutique) practice a few years ago, I kept getting stuck on the cash flow projections. You were supposed to project how many patients and how much income you would get for about one year ahead. I had been really struggling to build a practice for a while at that point, and I just could not understand how to project this, knowing what I knew about the unpredictable nature of acupuncture practice. I kept asking – how can I know that it will grow? I asked this because my only experience as a practitioner so far had been that it was very hard to get people to stay with the acupuncture long enough to get results, they just could not afford it. At the time I felt stupid, like something was wrong with my business sense, but now I know that my sense was right on, and I just needed help growing up and waking up and smelling the proverbial coffee.

Three weeks ago I moved my once per week CA practice (temporarily) to People’s Acupuncture space in Berkeley. This was a good move for me because it completely separated the “boutique” part of my practice from my CA practice. Also as a result of this move, I was able to add more appointments to my shift. Before the move, I treated 8 or maybe 9 people per shift, and this felt like a lot. Last Friday was the 3rd time I ran my CA clinic in the new space and ALL of my new appointment filled, plus someone dropped in who did not have one and I treated her too. I treated a total of 14 people in about 4.5 hours. I also had treated 3 people in my “private” office earlier that day for a total of 17 people in one day. This was a new threshold for me. I feel that I am growing up little by little and it feels good. Thank you WCA, thank you CAN, you made such a difference for me.

-tatyana