s p i r i t g a t e

Letter to my dad about owning a business

This is a recent letter I wrote to my father. It's just a rambling thank you, really, but it relates directly to doing what we're doing with community acupuncture.

Hey Daddio.

 Thinking about you lots these days. 'Course it's partly because I'm trying to fit into my father suit
(with Amy 10 weeks or so away from giving birth). But, I've been thinking about you just as much because of work.

A couple things recently have been making me appreciate being a business owner, and reflect on the ways you were one. I think of my work as just doing acupuncture, and that it's as much about getting out of the way and letting the universe work as it is about filling up the space with some skill. And, our
whole way of inviting people in and doing our job is kind of about de-emphasizing the *Professional*, and highlighting the simple in what we're doing and the importance of the whole room of people. I
think of our business as an expression of this neighborhood and this city that I'm lucky enough to be able to work in the center of and get paid a little by.

In these ways, I usually think of myself more as an activist/acupuncturist* than as a business owner.
But, of course, it's true that Ellen and I DID start this business. And, we DO “own it”. Like you started and owned your architecture business, with your partners. I'm appreciating how your work, too,
was about putting together a bag of tools (technical and creative) from teachers both contemporary and ancient and then learning how to use them to get out of the way and let humans do what they do best in
their own skins and shelters.

When I was a boy, your owning a business looked attractive because you clearly loved what you were
doing. You loved the people you got to work with. It looked like they really loved you. I had no idea how hard you worked, or really how little money you were actually making given the work you were doing,
because we were eating and I loved my family and friends, and life was good. You seemed to know everyone in the city. I remember you running into the mayor and talking to him. I also remember running
around at ribbon cutting ceremonies or during constructions at new health centers and renovated schools while you talked to neighbors or a school custodian.

At the time I didn't know the kind of struggles you faced as someone trying to create quality affordable
housing and health facilities in the same areas which were slated by the city for “slum clearance” in the long, institutionally-racist aftermath of the civil rights era. I just enjoyed running amok with
other kids and being around hopeful adults. Now, I know the kids I swung and spun with on a playground on the Near Northside were the children of Panthers and other activists, the same folks who stood
with you in that same spot 5 or 6 years before listening to Bobby Kennedy bring news of MLK's assasination, and trying not to explode.

We've got our work cut out for us, too, 40 years later. And, I'm glad I've found (largely because of your
modeling of how to connect with people who want to do something big) a growing group of people committed to justice and ending classism and racism in their own lives.

But, sometimes I forget, probably like you did, that what I'm doing makes a difference. Sometimes, I'm just working. I spend 10 minutes or less with every returning patient and 20 with every new patient, before they fall off to relaxation. The room is usually full of people. So, if people want to show some kind
of appreciation, they have to figure out how to do it with a facial expression or a few short whispered words. Yesterday, though, my first patient was really early and my next two were very late, so
there I was taking my time with my first patient. And, she started thanking me. I've been treating her for 2 years, and we've built up a lot of trust between us, so I decided to go ahead and try to really
listen to her appreciations until she was done.

She kept going for 15 minutes. And, none of it was fluff. She said very specific things about the skills
she noticed me using and the ways the clinic was changing her life. I'm doing better these days at getting over my feeling that I'm not good enough. Interactions like these help, when, sometimes, just the
facts of people's healing don't convince me. I CAN tell sometimes that my treatments are getting better and better. I can almost always tell that what we are offering as an experience is radically good.

It's been a sweet time in the clinic. As an expectant father, it's really great that I'm getting to treat
so many women who are getting pregnant and having babies. We're getting shown a lot of appreciation by the moms who are having natural birthing experiences with help form the acupuncture. Lots of
baby visits at the clinic these days.

I think we're doing great reaching all kinds of people. We do seem to struggle to retain working class black men as returning patients. We'll keep trying to figure out what we can do differently, but, of course, it's mostly about what our own social networks look like, and mine is still pretty white. I DO like
being forced to look at racism in my own life.

Another thing I'm appreciating right now is how many older Jews I'm treating. I've been trying to
consciously remember that I'm treating the survivors of the holocaust. I'm honored that I get trusted to this extent with all of my patients, but it feels somehow even more significant with this
older generation of Jewish folks. I'm treating a man whose main complaint is his high blood pressure. To have his wife thank us for “working miracles” with him, and how “he's a different person”
to be around, well, that's something. This guy was recommended to us by his wife. He then researched everything about us, including the namesake of an award I received for my graduating class. Turns out
he knows someone who knows the person after whom my award was named. And, even though that individual had absolutely nothing to do with the anonymously given award, and is apparently more a UFO specialist than an acupuncturist these days, it's still a connection, and thats
what counts.

You always said to me that it's all about just knowing people and creating good will. Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about your work. I want to get together before the baby comes and have you
remind me of all the projects you worked on over the years, and all the people with whom you worked. Thank you for all the good you helped create and the healing you helped happen in your city.

*Check out this tiny little interview with a current acupuncturist/activist talking about
grassroots community healthcare in the 60s and 70s.

Free Acupuncture for Veterans in Philadelphia

Check out the website for the Philadelphia Area Veterans Acupuncture Project here.

Obama, Baltimore Avenue, The Electric Slide, and Acupuncture Theory

Here's the article I wrote for The Community Acupuncture Network.

Here's some videos i shot at 47th and Baltimore.
Here's some photo's of 47th and Baltimore, post election, taken by local resident, Margie Politzer.

PCA and Community Acupuncture on "Marketplace"

Wow. Philadelphia Community Acupuncture was featured on American Public Media's "Marketplace" last Tuesday. Local freelance journalist, Joel Rose, who did the piece, focused on access to affordable health care and on community vs. individual treatment.
Here's a link to the broadcast.

group qi

   

Much has been said and written about "group qi" in the context of community acupuncture, where receiving treatment in a room full of people creates an auspicious and fertile environment in which everyone's healing capacity is enhanced.

Here's a nice blog entry by a fellow community acupuncturist.

Here's another couple angles on it from me.

1)I think our nature as humans is to be interconnected: emotionally, creatively, by
touch, and all sorts of other inexplicable ways. But, our daily lives
are largely set up to shut down these connections so that we can be
more productive, so that we consume more. We all try, though, all the
time, to restore these connections; and, every way that we do is a big
political act. If our natural connectedness was fully intact, it'd be
much harder for powers to wage wars in our name, flaunt contempt for
democracy and human rights, or deny us health care.

2)Good things happen when we really make space for each other. We've all
listened to a friend or a loved one at one time or another for as long
as it took for that person to work something out, for them to heal from
some rift. We made it safe for that person to show their real selves by
listening mostly silently, withholding judgement, refusing to argue or
reassure, and just showing that we care and trust that person and the
brilliance in his or her mind and body. I think community acupuncture is a
big wonderful version of that, where the quiet, the proximity of
relaxed strangers and neighbors, and some carefully placed needles all
contribute to a rare opportunity for a number of people to heal,
naturally, together.

3) I sometimes long, however, for a more rambuctious and less serene or
solemn vibe in our clinic. I
think there's all kinds of ways we can do this. Here's an example of
what can happen when we're not shooting for quiet as a primary
condition. I wrote this in new Orleans when I was treating folks right after
Katrina. 

 

A woman from the neighborhood is walking by and sees several
of her neighbors sitting in an oddly meditative manner. Mr. Ali, who has had
three unsuccessful surgeries on his cervical spine in the last 15 years is
looking at me with heavy eyelids and asking me how the acupuncture can so
quickly make his neck looser. I am trying to answer as simply and quietly as
possible, and I’m being helped by another man being treated, a 60 something
year old cab driver. Mr. Clarke studied Mao and Chinese culture when actively a
Black Panther in the 70s. He’s identifying a point I used on Mr. Ali’s arm as
lying along the Triple Burner channel. Lamar is a middle-aged painter and
contractor who’s been working 12 and 14 hour days since the flood. His forearm
and fingers are numb and he cannot sleep. Francine is a 49 year old white woman
who is working 10 hour days at the one welfare office which survived of seven. She is here for the third day in a row
to get help quitting smoking, a decision made in the throes of the emphysema
like coughing that has racked her since the mold set in. She knows of these men
but has never spent any time talking to them. She and Lamar are almost whispering
to one another, both crying
periodically, which gets the attention of a small orphan dog which has made its
way to their feet. The clinic’s only pharmacist, a woman from Detroit, has been
sleeping in her chair with one leg elevated since the needles went in a half hour ago. She had asked for help with
an acute migraine and a swollen ankle. The woman passing through catches eyes
with another man who’s getting a treatment, a man appears to know well. He’s
been orating irrepressibly since 5 or 10 minutes into the treatment. He’s
looking at her saying

“Lord have
mercy…. Wow…… Like I’m in high school…….. This is alright…..  Aint this something…… Feel like a
bird…. Like a body ought to feel in this  world…..
Aint this something…. Somebody discovered something…. Lord have  mercy……. Makes my back straight and
takes my defenses right down……. Like  a
bird I tell you….”

And the passing woman shoots back

“Well, go
on and fly…”

Her only question is if the needles will hurt.

“No,
sweetheart.”

And, several people close their eyes and reassuringly shake
their head.

“Like a
little bug bite,” Francine says.

She sits down with her neighbors.

 

Amy Walsh

These are by my wife, artist Amy Walsh.

Update from the Firehouse, 6 Months In

Philadelphia is pregnant with twins. Two more community acupuncture clinics are forming in greater Philly as a direct result of the workshop we hosted here in November. That workshop was led by the founders of Working Class Acupuncture in Portland and of The Community Acupuncture Network.

Ellen and I are doing what we can to support the three practitioners involved in these projects. We know both places are going to be successful; and Philly will be that much further along towards making acupuncture accessible to the majority of its people.

This seems even more poignant  for me today having just read this article about  Walmart beginning to open health clinics.

***************

Many of you may not know that there's a new acupuncture school in suburban Philly. The Won Institute. Ellen and I were just asked to teach a unit on community acupuncture for their practice management course this year.

This happened, as far as I can tell, because of overwhelming interest from students, including in particular one rabble rousing organizer who attended the CA workshop held here in November.


**************

My relationship to practicing CA style acupuncture continues to evolve.

Obviously, the way we are ale to lower prices so much is by doing a high volume of treatments, which also has the advantage of getting a lot of people from the community together in the same room. This counteracts the isolation which plays such a big part in keeping us unhealthy.

Although in my biggest thinking and most rational mind, I know that the simple and frequent treatments experienced in this community setting are the best possible acupuncture medicine, I have had periods of distressed feelings (mostly fear) telling me that there's no way I can be a complete acupuncturist without using more moxa, without being able to treat the back, or without being able to spend more time with my patients.

So, its with great gladness and satisfaction that I report how much better the treatments are going. Each treatment is much more likely to excite rather than drain my own qi, and the treatment results are improving dramatically.

Several factors are leading to these changes. An important one is the way I've pushed myself beyond my comfort zone in terms of getting down to the business of pulse taking and needling with every patient. This means not getting drawn into unrelated talk when there's no time, and expecting return patients to be in a chair and ready to be needled when it's time for their appointment. It means exercising maybe gentle but definitely firm leadership with new patients that says what we'll be doing and what we cannot do.

The more subtle interpersonal stuff behind this has to do with my trying on KNOWING that what I'm doing is enough and that I don't need to show my care by listening to patients longer than I actually can, given the community model. It has to do with really recognizing how sweet and supportive and healing the whole experience is going to be for each patient, and how my role in that is being a competent acupuncturist, doing a treatment that helps a patient feel better now and making sure they understand how important regular visits are.

In this context, I am hugely grateful for our team of volunteers (Jacks, Waliyyah, Lou, Vida, Leigh, Rafik, Aurora) who very directly deal in providing sweetness and listening, while being brilliant interpreters and guides to a radically different and therefore potentially confusing experience.

************

Of course, as acupuncturists we are actually listening, listening, listening, all the time, as well as looking and smelling and asking. I noticed an instance recently how my own classism clouded my closeness and understanding of a patient, and so too my diagnosis and treatment.

This will be a bit oblique, but I'll try to tell you what I mean. During her third treatment, a woman told me something about her day that made me realize I had made an inaccurate assumption about the nature of her work. "Oh", I heard a part of myself say. "Wow, she does THAT for work! That's a really serious job. I thought that she just....."

Yikes.

And, I didn't catch myself until I had subtly but immediately shifted my take on the etiology of her symptoms in my mind. I think the best I can do to describe this is to say, I was looking differently at her spleen and the patterns of worry affecting it.

Fortunately, I'm not a machine measuring things, and I get to step back, maybe laugh at myself, and shift my thinking to reflect the reality that every single patient is Good and worthy and part of the same world where yin and yang and the five elements are at play.


**************

I made a trip to New Hampshire recently and got to see Andrew Wegman and his Manchester Acupuncture Studio. Here's one photo of a portion of the treatment room.

I got to see Andy at work, interacting with the good people of Manchester, and just experience yet another unique example of community acupuncture, where the clinic really reflects and respects both the particular and the universal of another place on earth.

A bald eagle was flying north up the Merrimack as I entered the building. A nun and some other really funny, sweet, grumpy, and loud guy were walking out, both looking lightened and shiny.

I fell in love with the whole movement yet again.

Neighborhood Acupuncture

Many of the things that led me to community acupuncture was a simple wish to be able to provide Chinese medicine for and within my own community. And, there are lots of significant social positives to be had in actualizing this desire. A few for me are the ecological and political benefits of working a few hundred yards from home while trying to think globally, taking on classism and racism within my own life, and assisting a shift in the locus of our health care conscience from a finite physiology of the individual and her diagnosis to the unlimited relationships between elements within a person and persons within a community.

But, what I'd like to say is that the wish to work with and support your own people is simply human. In this sense, the questions of whether "community acupuncture" represents a more ethical practice or a less ambitious business model or whether we're employing deeper or more superficial principles of Chinese Medicine all kind fade a bit. At least these questions defer to the way each of us are actually being liberated towards our natural goodness.

We're ALL born GOOD, totally brilliant and creative and wanting closeness and collaboration. And, we all want a chance to be effective and to make a difference. It's natural for us to want our lives as healers to not be unconnected from the social and physical communities we inhabit.

I'm writing about this now because I'm realizing how much more deeply connected I feel treating 100 of my neighbors a week with my partner than I did treating 10 or 15 people I probably wouldn't see outside my private office. And, even though I believe that wanting all this connection is natural, I'm realizing how far I've been socialized away from being comfortable with it.

So, here's a couple ways my life has changed upon becoming a neighborhood acupuncturist here in Cedar Park, West Philadelphia.

When I was doing my private practice, talking about acupuncture with neighbors (at the coffee shop, co-op, block party, on the soccer field, or at a community meeting) was largely an abstract or theoretical conversation. I'd answer the questions about whether it works for what symptoms. I'd listen to people free-associate about acupuncture, reiki, chiropractic, and past-life regression.

These conversations were often frustrating but somehow comfortable in the way I got to stake out different positions and impress (or put off) people with interesting theory tidbits or success stories. I think this strange combination of comfort and dissatisfaction mirrors a lot of interaction under advanced capitalism, and in this case is related to the actual social distance between myself and those with whom I spoke.

We get used to having cordial, even crackling conversation with one another without the hope of actually reaching in there and making a difference in other peoples' lives. It's not always like this, but it's a dynamic I'll bet we all wish we could break through more frequently.

So now, since my neighbors and friends and colleagues can afford to get acupuncture, it's almost always the case that someone in the conversation has either had treatments or knows someone who has. The conversations are totally different, and it's taking some getting used to, partly because there's a brand new juicy opening for my ego.

Not only is the social distance between us shortened, but the proof pudding is close at hand. Sometimes, this means the language gets a little less rich and a whole lot more practical. Did the hives go away or not? Did she get her period or not? Are they feeling more motivated or not? Whether the answer is yes or no, this is where it starts to get uncomfortable.

If the hives did go away, or she did get her period, one of a couple very interesting things is bound to happen. One is simply the expression of appreciation. As someone raised middle class by protestant parents, the giving and receiving of appreciation i learned was always of a somewhat qualified variety. I'm not real good at either. And, it's not just me. But, I'm trying to learn to go ahead and accept the appreciation, even if I think what should be appreciated is the brilliance and simplicity of acupuncture itself or the community in Philadelphia Community Acupuncture. I'm deciding that it's actually radical to make space for the flow of simple appreciation even if it comes out seeming inappropriately heavy, and even if I have some early life experiences which tell me that it's actually dangerous to be singled out.

Another thing that sometimes happens when people hear or see positive outcomes resulting from friends' or relatives' treatment is that they get wildly hopeful. Now, you're answering whether acupuncture can help with a father's stroke, a niece's autism. Once again, the conversation has moved to a different and more personal level.

On the other hand, if in the friendly conversation it's established that the hives haven't gone away, or the amenorrhea isn't resolving, then my ego is jumping around on its other leg. I'm still learning how to explain with relaxed confidence about chronic conditions requiring a long course of treatments and/or lifestyle changes. Once I do, though, I realize how powerfully relieved I am to actually be able to offer an affordable, and attractive solution.

I'm face to face with patients or patients' friends many times a day now. This means I have daily practice of checking my worry or attachment about their health, and of trying to remember that my goodness and value don't have anything to do with whether the man who volunteers to pick up trash around the neighborhood still has back pain.

I'm also having to learn another level of integrity around confidentiality and responsibility. Now that most of my patients are, at most, one degree of separation from me, I'm figuring out what a principled practice is regarding key confidential details about them. When I know important people in a particular patient's life, I ask myself different questions about knowing, for example, that he or she is an abuser, or is considering suicide, or is looking for a place to live. What's my role?

And, finally, I'm learning how to take myself both more seriously and more lightly. I feel way more personal investment in my work now, and way more immediate accountability with my patients. It's inescapable that I'm important in the lives of people around me. At the same time, it also becomes clearer that every patient's life is complex, and that i am simply their acupuncturist (or, one of their acupuncturists).

What really stays up ion my face is that it takes a village. And, to do my job as an acupuncturist and as a human, moving qi in the channels is but one part of contributing consciously to the village by increasing and reinforcing the connections that hold it together.

Ceremony

I went to a performance/art installation recently as part of the Philly Fringe Festival. I thought it was sublime, fun, full of wonder and mystery. It changed how my body felt and the thoughts in my mind. It connected me to the hundred and fifty or so other people in the room.

The artists, The Headlong Dance Theater, figured out how to lead a whole bunch of strangers into really participating in a conscious ceremony with a beginning, middle, and end. Neither an exact trajectory nor the outcomes of the event could be predicted. However, the combination of the compassionate and curious intention of the artists, the way they stayed committed to their best creative thinking, no matter how daring, and the way an already beautiful and intentionally holy space was infused with the love of the artists created a huge opening. And, given each audience member’s natural desire to connect and to heal, it was hard for most everyone not to go ahead and walk through towards a transformative and hopeful experience.

It was also hard for me not to walk out thinking about community acupuncture, the spaces where it takes place, and the caring, artful intention of those making it happen. Holy.

The performance was partly about the tension between our wanting to watch, on one hand, and the choice we have, on the other hand, to participate. For most people, each gentle encouragement was enough to go ahead and join as an active part of what was unmistakably ritualistic in nature.

All attendees were asked to wear blue. Most did. Everyone was divided into four groups before entering the old abandoned Christian Science rotunda. I was in the first group. In the foyer, we were told a story and invited to think about an unexplainable event in our lives, and, then, led through a fabric membrane into the huge domed cathedral where the old wooden floor had been cleared of everything. Explore the space freely, we were told, walking in. A short piece of music played while 6 dancers in orange made swirls of movement around the gigantic space. We all seemed tiny under the ocular window at the zenith of the towering dome. The dancers’ movements were lovely or silly or solemn or rhythmic or not, connected to the others or not.

The music ended, and we, the first group were divided further into a few organic collections of individuals and invited by the artists to create, when the music begin again and the second group entered, patterns of movement of our own choosing which related to the space and the music. This was just the beginning of a long series of group motion-poems facilitated brilliantly by the dance troupe, which all eventually linked together into a fluid ceremony.

One thing that got revealed was our relationship to the space around us, how Everything is intimate and touching. That as energizing as it is when we’re open as individuals to the universe’s qi, when we’re inviting hand-holding with a hundred people, or at least not actively avoiding one another, the energy is even more vast, complex, awesome, potentially delicious.

Some audience members had initial resistance to being led toward this kind of activity. There were slumped shoulders, puffed chests, turned heads, and nervous laughter. Most of these folks got swept up by fun and beauty, not by peer pressure.

About a week after we opened Philadelphia Community Acupuncture, Ellen and I were readying the space for another day. It was five minutes or so before our first scheduled patient and in my excitement I shouted like a carnival barker “it’s show time!”.

I certainly don’t think we’re creating fiction or illusion, or that Ellen or I are playing some role other than ourselves. I do believe there is a delicate choreography we undertake to make the clinic click and flow. And, in best moments, patients find themselves floating not only in the acupuncture-induced Shavasina-like state within their own bodies, but also in a collective swirl of benign reality, a real relief from the just barely capped terror, or sadness, or rage we all walk with quite often.

I just thought how interesting it would be to create a time-lapse bird’s eye movie of a whole shift’s activity, the clockwise flow of patients around our space from coming to going and everything in between. You’d see a constant and calm orbit of arriving, checking in, heading around the corner to the bathrooms and into the treatment space, and out the other way back to the reception area. Inside that circle, you’d see the spoke tracing arrows of Ellen and I moving decisively between needle stands and patients. You’d see the subtle movements of the front desk person in the middle of it all, reaching out to every patient, the shifting light from sunbeams across surfaces and textures lovingly and skillfully prepared by Ellen’s artist husband who had to anticipate at least some of this celestial-like symphony.

Art need not hold the beholder away from its body. Religious experience doesn’t happen for me when being told how I’m supposed to feel gets in the way of connecting with mystery. We get to act with the kind of intelligence and love the Headlong Dance Theater showed me. We get to do something that allows this kind of holy space to move through. We get to know that we join all kinds of artists/medicine people doing this work today and all kinds of ancient traditions where opening and listening and moving to the stars with one another makes sense and mends the world.