s p i r i t g a t e

Breathing ALL the way.

Bicycling to my very first clinical assistantship almost 10 years ago, I felt pretty jazzed, a little scared, and hugely hopeful. I was looking forward to connecting with patients as a caring student of Chinese Medicine with lots of attention to spare.

Within the first twenty minutes of my time at this hundred-bucks-a-pop clinic with multiple waterfall dioramas, I had all the contact I would ever have with the owner and principle acupuncturist. He asked me to take needles out of a patient in room #6, and then he told me to put on deodorant and to never ride my bicycle in if I was going to smell like sweat. I was asked to do some filing for the rest of the shift.

OK, I thought. Yeah, that must be right. I’m a big fan of paying a lot of attention to what makes patients comfortable and uncomfortable, and of generally being a conscientious community member, where sometimes it makes as much sense for me to get out of the way as it does to be very powerfully who I am.

But, the interaction left me really angry, even spiteful. I couldn’t quite tell why.

The feelings I had that day cascaded out in a manner much out of proportion to the present situation. So, they must have been in me, like a fear smell, waiting to come out. It went something like this: Oh no! I’m dirty and don’t smell right… My clothes are all wrong….I don’t know what I’m doing…. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to afford a car (even if I don’t want one)…. Can I be an acupuncturist if my hands won’t warm up in the winter?… I hope the smell of my breath is OK… I hate this guy.

I wanted to never come back and to generally just forget about my first assistantship experience. At least until I could get some perspective on it, which I finally did this week, during the very first day we were open at Philadelphia Community Acupuncture.

Usually a good crier, I think my lung energy has been a little rigid as I’ve hatcheted away at various critical-seeming tasks these last few weeks before we opened. I figured that at some point during treating people on our first day, I’d probably have another kind of opening, that I’d realize what Ellen and I have created, and be able to cry. True, it was. But, it didn’t happen when I was looking at our beautiful room full of people in recliners, nor from any glance or hug with Ellen. It happened in one of those moments that moved in slow-motion dream speed, and it happened through smell.

I was treating a beautiful middle aged man, an ex professional dancer who’s current (traditionally male) job puts him in a lot of physical danger, makes him witness to a lot of violence, and discourages any self-care. He wasn’t aware I’d be asking him to take his shoes off, and was very reluctant to do so, saying his feet weren’t too pretty, and they didn’t smell too pretty. After some ear points and yin tang and a root treatment, he called me over and said if I really needed him to take his shoes off he was willing. It felt to me fairly unessential for a good acupuncture treatment but like a good opportunity for him to take a step towards healing a very specific self-image injury.

When I needled his feet, I think I did a good job of making him feel he was totally perfect and his presence was welcome and treasured in this space. Without thinking, I also really opened up my smelling, and my breathing in general, with simple curiosity about what part of this man’s physical humanness and qi got attached to the oppression which told him something was wrong with him. He still had his recliner un-reclined, his body curled in, and his feet on the floor.

I could kind of identify a subtle but particular odor from his feet. Slightly fishy. The smell of ……well…..feet! It made me laugh inside. Sitting in the same circle of chairs was a young woman I’d needled earlier. She was on the 1st day of her period and had been sweating a lot before coming in. I could smell a metallic odor from her.  I was finally dropping into really being here, and out of all the preparing-to-be-here. Now, I could also smell Chinese food from across the street. It was only then that I noticed my own smell, the fear one, which apparently follows me into every circumstance that feels like I’m doing something for the first time, just like my first assistantship.

But, this is was different in just about every way. An incredible relief. I looked back at the male patient sleeping like a baby with his recliner extended and his perfect smelly feet pointing in to the middle of the circle. I felt really connected to all the people in the room. It felt like there was space enough for everybody’s humanness, and not any space for shame.

This was when my lungs really let go and I got nice and cry-y. I could see the contrast between what was happening here and that first day of “assisting”.

I know that all the not-good-enough and not-normal feelings I had that day were rooted in false conclusions I made as a direct result of the classism I experienced as a very young person. The whole set-up of this clinic, it’s location, décor, services offered , and prices-per-treatment, all made me feel like I definitely did not belong I’ve worked a lot on the feelings and would probably be in better shape now to not be as personally hurt by what was said to me.

But, I would still be mad. Not for being called smelly, but because of the whole dominant clinical dynamic, borrowed directly from the technologically based bio-medical model, in which great emphasis is placed on shielding each patient from the real world, and, consequently, incarcerating him or her in an artificial environment, disconnected from real human experience in ways that have a significant impact on a that patient’s ability to heal.

Because the one-and-one, private-room treatment scenario refers so directly to kinds of intimacy which create a lot of unspoken confusion, and also to other medical procedures, a practitioner may find it important to erase a lot of aspects of the self to make room for a clinical relationship. In my private practice over the last 6 years, I’ve wondered to what extent can I heal, repair wholeness, and help liberate a patient into his own body and senses and intelligences while simultaneously expecting both he and myself to disappear enough to be safe.

I recognize that there is a natural link between our rational expectation that our healers practice good hygiene and an innate understanding that body odors can clue us in to someone’s cleanliness. I also am aware that culture and religion have a lot to do with various personal understandings about smells and the body and cleanliness, and that we’re responsible to keep learning about these norms and thinking flexibly about our relationship to them. (There are a lot of Muslims in my neighborhood. Will it make sense for us to have footbaths in our restrooms?)

I want to make choices about relating to my patients, about how I carry myself, based on my good thinking about them and the community, not on rigid, unexamined and oppressive rules.

Philadelphia Community Acupuncture health resource center and community room

PCA's community room will provide a relaxing space for people to congregate, ask questions about acupuncture, learn about natural health, get info on affordable care in Philly, use or contribute to our library, and enjoy a cup of our delicious tea.

Taoist yin-yang theory holds that each body and interior self is a reflection of its environment. You can not take care of yourself without taking care of your community. Health care not only happens to you as a consumer but is something we all cultivate and maintain the more we're connected to one another acting powerfully towards goals of our own choosing. Bodies and minds work better and feel better when they have real security: liberation from fear and isolation.

While acupuncture brilliantly smooths the flow of information (qi) within the body, PCA also hopes to contribute to the strengthening of connections between the different elements in our community. So, we'll house classes, performance, other gatherings generated by the vast collective knowledge and inspiration of Cedar Park and West Philadelphia.

Along with information about affordable health resources, we will also keep contact info for organizations and individuals thinking about ecological and economic justice, international solidarity, art, spirit and play.

Philadelphia Community Acupuncture Grand Opening

Ellen Vincent and I invite you to save the date of Friday, September 7th for our Grand Opening party happening at PCA's home on the third floor of The Firehouse at 50th and Baltimore in West Philadelphia.

We'll actually be open for business no later than the week of August 12th. Ellen's husband, Pascal, has almost single-handedly transformed the former stable of office cubicles into the beautiful, bright, and peaceful sanctuary where we plan to provide great, affordable acupuncture, health information, and a place for community happenings for years to come.

VOLUNTEER

We'll have our last work days before opening over the next two weekends, that's July 28 and 29 and August 4 and 5. Please call or email if you'd like to volunteer to do some basic cleaning and talking and snacking with us and some of your neighbors.

The F I R E H O U S E . Yeah!

Ellen and I and Philadelphia Community Acupuncture are totally amped to announce our new home: The FIREHOUSE at 50th and Baltimore. We couldn't be more thrilled about this location. It's a wonderful, open, bright, and comfy space in one of the most beautiful and historic (1904) buildings in West Philly. The building also houses Firehouse Bicycles, The Satellite Cafe, and, in September, the Dock Street Brew Pub. The Firehouse is in the heart of the neighborhoods we want to serve, and across from vibrant Cedar Park, where we can picture doing treatments and/or qiqong classes in nice weather. Stay tuned for announcements about a pre-opening party and about our Grand Opening. Starting this weekend, we'll be doing a few weeks of simple work on the space, and would love your help, be it physical labor, or just dropping by to wish us well. Here comes Philadelphia Community Acupuncture!

!!! Philadelphia Community Acupuncture's new website is.....

www.phillyacupuncture.com

Here's an idea of what part of our space will look like. This is a photo from Portland, Oregon's Working Class Acupuncture, a big inspiration for Philadelphia Community Acupuncture.

With your help: Philadephia Community Acupuncture

The "community" in Philadelphia Community Acupuncture means we need everyone's help to get started. PCA will be literally a physical manifestation of our relationship to our different West Philly and citywide communities.

PCA is not a non-profit. Whereas public health clinics rely significantly on government subsidies, community supported acupuncture clinics (named with community supported agriculture in mind) rely on the very low  fees charged to the patients. While our whole mission is to make acupuncture affordable for everyone, we choose this fee-for-service model, because health care should not be given as charity, but shared as a human right. But in order create this resource with very little start-up capital, and in order to sustain a clinic where people can recieve treatments for as little as 15 dollars, we need donations: of money, time, ideas, and other odds and ends.

Here is an evolving wish list, written with huge gratitide for all that people have already contributed and for all that people will contribute.

Please email me at korbenp@yahoo.com

ODDS AND ENDS
Floor lamps
a book shelf at least 72 " tall and wide
office supplies
a beautiful door for our extra office which other practitioners can rent
beautiful and clean rugs (large and small)
waiting room chairs and furniture
sound system

LABOR/SKILLS
help with simple jobs
carpentry
expertise with building materials
outreach

DONATIONS Give what you can. You're contributing to a kind of people's health insurance: natural medicine and social connection helping us prevent illness, disease, addictions, hopelessness.

February update on West Philly's People's Neighborhood Health Center

Since the summer, I’ve been building a small team of West Philly folk committed to creating a health center which will be rooted in a community supported acupuncture clinic. Mostly, we've been really getting to know each other, our visions, the skills we bring. Occasionally, a friend will ask “hey, you got a building yet?” which is their way of showing interest and curiosity about the project. But, I want to say to them “stop asking about a building. Ask me about how it’s going with my collaborators.” I only want to do this if it's about buildings relationships, movements and webs and networks to be a part of and supported by. And, it feels like this is going well.

Things have really moved steadily since I attended  the October conference on community supported acupuncture hosted by Portland, Oregon's Working Class Acupuncture. The conference and it's organizer's book,  "The Remedy: Integrating Acupuncture into American Health Care" made space in my mind for some answers I couldn't get to before. Answers about getting to be fully a Doctor of Chinese Medicine in my community and in a society that needs what I have. I had some working models and visions in my mind already of an acupuncture-centered neighborhood health clinic where the emphasis was on the health of the neighborhood. Where I got really challenged and liberated in Portland was the stuff about what I can go ahead and give up on: having to create a spa-like environment for individual treatments, and, relatedly, needing to get 60 or 70 bucks a treatment from at least some of them, and waiting for funding from someone who doesn't know me, etc.

I came back to Philly with tons more clarity about my project. Of course, it was Working Class Acupuncture's economic model making acupuncture accessible to working and poor people that made the difference. Every person I now talked to about my dream was not just casually interested but wanted to know more and was ready to talk about how they could be involved. The right people seem to be coming to me as word gets around to those who are natural allies to the project.

We’re a group that includes myself, a yoga teacher/nutritionist, a pilates/creative movement teacher, and an acupuncture student who has administration skills. All of us have really good Philly roots and a love of this part of town. Everyone has read Lisa Rohleder's "The Remedy", and no one is unclear about what we’re going for. The other three are women in their twenties. They bring energy and hopefulness and leadership and organizing abilities along with their individual critiques of the stuff we’re up against. I feel most blessed about this.

I’ve been trying to facilitate our really knowing each other, so we’ll be able to support each other, and think well about each other (therefore others), especially around issues of class and race. We’re four white people, so far, working in a neighborhood which is an interesting ntersection of class and race, and has historically been home to many more African-Americans (and Africans) than whites.

A lot of our discussions, including those about location, are about how we can put lots of attention on having a clinic that’s useful and attractive to populations with identies different than our own, while trying to always come from an authentic place. Obviously, we won’t figure this all out before we open. Being raised in a racist culture makes this a life’s work.

Here’s an example of trying to strike this balance between authenticity and being thoughtful about what we’re communicating/offering. When I came back from Portland, I felt super committed to the community supported acupuncture having the central role in the center, with maybe yoga having a peripheral role. The idea of partnering with Pilates in the same building seemed way out of the question. I wantavoid doing anything that will make a patient feel like a consumer in a spa, instead of a community member with the Right to good powerful natural medicine. But, I love what my collaborators in this project, including the pilates instructor, bring to that idea of community medicine; and, they are inspired and committed to the CSA model. Now, I feel like we should just support each other to be our biggest, baddest healer selves.

Things are moving along at just the right pace. None of us have money, but significant financial resource for purchasing and renovating a building or for rent has appeared in a kind of miraculous, or, at least, surreal form. I don’t know what you call this kind of fortune. But, I’m knocking on a lot of wood… and metal, snow and mud. I don’t knock on fire, but I wink when I walk by.

We need your help:
green builders, homeopaths, pro-bono legal assistance, bookkeepers, artists, gardeners, property owners, activists, etc.

Community Supported Acupuncture

I just attended a conference on Community Supported Acupuncture led by the folks at Portland's Working Class Acupuncture. I see their hugely succesful clinic based on ideas of transforming healthcare in the U.S. as the key model for creating a Cedar Park health collective. Here, we'll be able to really insist in our practice(s) on radical change in the delivery of and access to health care. Soon, anyone who can get to the clinic will be able to get great acupuncture for 15 - 35 dollars. This means I'll be able to tell people to come once a week for the next 4 months, for example, and have them be able to do it.

A large community of acupuncture patients, who also may be volunteers, means that the health information we make accessible, the other modalities at the clinic, the space to gather we provide will all be well used, which will further expand the community of patients and people interested in contributing to the clinic.

The question for me was how can ALL people in my mixed neighborhood of middle class, working class, and very poor people get as many treatments as they need? How can I move beyond my profession's whining about not being recognized by the Western medical establishment and not being covered by insurance. The point is that acupuncturists have an incredibly useful and marvelously simple and cost effective way of treating most of the health conditions that underlie illness in this country. What we need to do is to follow acupuncture's Taoist roots of simplicity and altruism. Get acupuncture to people. Treat people. Really open our doors to my whole community. And, my community is full of tradespersons, artists, the unemployed, whole families, college students and professors, bike messengers and mechanics, gardeners, clergy, activists, etc.

So far, acupuncturists in the U.S. have looked at setting up our clinics and fee structures as an impossible choice between charging people 75 a session, or treating people for free. The former is prohibitively expensive for almost every patient, and isolates and exploits the practitioner. The latter is financially unsustainable for the practitioner and actually disrespects patients, most of whom do not want charity for health care.

The way its going to happen is neither to go for the wealthiest patients nor to rely on outside funding. It's going to be a simple fee-for-service relationship that everyone can afford. Turns out, that in order to lower treatment fees that much, what I have to do is to treat ALOT more people, which of course is exactly what I want. My most satisfying and effective work has been treating people in group settings (post-Katrina Louisiana, Aids Care Project and Dimock Health Center in Boston). Every time I do this work, I wonder why we're not making these group treatment settings available at a permanant community level, not just to respond to social and individual crisis. Of course, this is a very traditional East Asian model of doing this medicine.

Working Class Acupuncture in Portland, www.workingclassacupuncture.org,  has kind of revolutionized this approach by bringing it smack dab into U.S. mainstream culture. Go to their website and check it out. They treat hundreds of people every week in a group setting. As a patient, your care is not less because you're not getting private attention, per se. It's dramatically more because of the opportunity to sit in clean, quiet, peaceful, safe, healing space with neighbors and strangers. It's more because you can afford to come and see your acupuncturist weekly or daily for that matter, to have a long-term relationship with Chinese Medicine, and all the ways it can help you. The effect of each treatment multiplies with the abundance and intermingling of people's qi in the room. Every patient, as well, has the opportunity to volunteer at the clinic, which adds to the aspect of healing the whole community while healing your body.

More to come on these pages and in the neighborhood.

I need a space, by the way, between 42nd and 58th and between Woodland and Lancaster, preferably right around Cedar Park.

I would like to share space with a yoga or Tai Qi / Qi Qong studio, and/or nutritionist(s), or possible others.

West Philly Neighborhood Health Collective. Help build it now.

I am a Philadelphia acupuncturist trained at the New England School of Acupuncture. I'm committed to connecting the best preventive and holistic health care to working class and  poor people, and to making acupuncture financially accessible, attractive and available to EVERYONE in my West Philadelphia (Cedar Park) community. To that end, I plan to start a neighborhood health collective here.

The center's aim will be the improvement of the health of the neighborhood itself, where a "healthy neighborhood" is an environment whose benign and nourishing components always multiply, and where there's an unstoppable trend of those components becoming accessible to and more the result of a wider and wider range of the neighborhoods members.

The health center's success will be measured not only by how well it "serves the community" but by how much neighbors are able to contribute their knowledge and energy to the collective, and how fully its able to evolve over time to reflect the community.

Chinese Medicine has a long established tradition of addressing the overall wellness of a patient and of his/her community. The inexpensive but invaluable intervention of needling acupuncture is even more powerfully effective when the patient also receives the kind of comprehensive health information that a Chinese pattern diagnosis can yield. The health center will strive to support the ability of every patient to be able to actually use  that health information over time. What would a patient need, for example, to be able to use the dietary suggestions given in their treatment? What would he need to be able to be known and know more people on his street, to be more physically active, to have a safe space to go tonight, to be able to translate the information for his family.

I've done community style acupuncture treatments (group setting/treating trauma and addiction) whenever and wherever possible (Boston's AIDS Care Project, Roxbury's Dimock Community Health Center, treating Katrina survivors in New Orleans with Common Ground Health Collective and Acupuncturists Without Borders). This kind of treatment needs to be available everywhere, and will be one way the center carries out its mission.