Gentle, Affordable, Effective
On the WESTSIDE
2109 Harrison Ave NW
Olympia, WA 98502
Community Acupuncture
Community Acupuncture is the practice of providing acupuncture in a group setting, at a low cost, while seeking to lower all other barriers to treatment. Privacy is maintained by placing needles on the arms, legs and head and keeping clothes on during the treatment.
Community Acupuncture brings people together to heal, breaks down hierarchies, and let patients define their health goals. It's about being a resource in the community as well as a comforting "third space".
Community Acupuncture is also a movement of patients and providers working together to increase access to community acupuncture by way of resource and skill sharing. Community Acupuncture is a form of health care reform - making healthcare widely available in practical and beautiful ways.
LIBERATION ACUPUNCTURE MANIFESTO
~ Because acupuncture does not have to be expensive in order to be effective ~
~ Because military budgets balloon while health care is cut ~
~ Because nothing breaks through the isolation of pain, illness and depression like healing in a room with other humans ~
~ Because our favorite way to spread the word about how well acupuncture works is to make it available to people ~
~ Because we are pleased to challenge the notion of value being attached to price ~
~ Because there aren't enough spaces where strangers switch off cell phones and slumber side by side ~
~ Because for thousands of years acupuncture has been practiced in groups ~
~ Because returning acupuncture to its roots makes us the happiest of humble radicals ~
~ Because the vast majority of us love our work so much we couldn't imagine doing anything else –
We are a part of the community acupuncture movement.
Want to find community acupuncture in other parts of the country?
Click Here!
Use the link above to find a map of affordable acupuncture for friends, family, or yourself near and far!
Thanks to West Philly Community Acupuncture for making this awesome resource!
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Community Acupuncture has a rich history full of brave, stubborn, deeply dedicated activist-practitioners like Miriam Lee and the Black Panthers and Young Lords at Lincoln Detox in New York who were steadfast in their determination to create healing for themselves and their communities. To read more about the history of acupuncture and its radical roots in the US, look here.
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NADA and POCA are two fantastic organizations that promote the expansion of access to affordable acupuncture. Olympia Community Acupuncture is a proud member of both POCA and NADA.
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NADA is the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association. NADA trains acu-detox specialists in a simple, powerful acupuncture protocol so that more people can get acupuncture and so that trusted members of their community can be the ones giving it such as peers, mentors, teachers, social workers, etc.
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POCA is The People's Organization of Community Acupuncture. POCA offers workshops, conferences, mentorship, robust forums, a wiki, microloans, and even runs its very own school entirely dedicated to the practice of Community Acupuncture.
Community Acupuncture would not be where it is today without the hard work and dedication of many POCA members. Olympia Community Acupuncture is a proud member of POCA and sustainer of POCA Technical Institute. If you want to know more about community acupuncture or how you can help make community acupuncture available to more people, we encourage you to join POCA to work with a network of punks and patients across North America working to expand access to acupuncture to everyone.
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Community Acupuncture IS
Health Care Reform because ...
...it is inclusive. By making the same service available to people with different financial
resources, community acupuncture breaks down the barriers of classism in health care.
...it is low-tech and low-cost. MRIs and CAT scans certainly have their place in health care, but our growing dependence on expensive technologies is part of what is driving up costs. Community acupuncture reverses this trend.
...it is preventative. Community acupuncture can precisely target the intersection of stress and disease, a zone that the big guns of conventional medicine miss by a mile. When acupuncture is cheap enough for patients to use in unlimited quantities, no one has to wait to get sick in order to use it.
...for at least some patients, it can reduce their dependence on Big Pharma. Not everyone can use acupuncture to get off their medications, but when it comes to painkillers, sleep aids, and anti-anxiety drugs, acupuncture is worth trying as a substitute.
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...it does not require the approval or the participation of Big Insurance. A community acupuncture clinic depends on the support of its local community, not a distant, enormous, for-profit corporation.
...it is easy to understand and easy to use. Patients do not have to wade
through a maze of bureaucracy to get care.
...it creates jobs rather than profits.
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...it breaks down the isolation that is rampant not only in health care, but throughout American culture.
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...it is radically transparent and radically simple. Acupuncture depends so much on the internal resources of the patient and so little on external props that it’s basically function without form — a nice change from health care that is form without function. All acupuncture is, is what it does. And all it needs are needles, cotton balls, and stillness.
...and finally, because it does not need the government or anyone else to fund it. If community acupuncture were readily available, it could save the health care system enormous sums of money by preventing the need for hospitalizations, surgeries, and
medication. It would be wonderful if the government recognized this potential — but even if it doesn’t, community acupuncture will continue to grow exponentially. Community acupuncture is truly a grassroots movement, and it flourishes outside of all existing systems. All that community acupuncture needs is more patients and more practitioners who are willing to try it and then apply it in their communities as we have applied it in ours. It is our hope that this book will help reach these people. Thank you for reading it.
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excerpt from Acupuncture is Like Noodles: The Little Red (Cook)Book of Working Class Acupuncture, by Lisa Rohleder, Et. Al. pp 125 & 126. www.WorkingCIassAcupuncture.org
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