Lisa Rohleder's blog

Check this out! A balanced, affirming, friendly article about community acupuncture in Portland from a mainstream source:

http://www.livepdx.com/Articles/Portland-Health-Beauty/?launch_pg=Aritcl...

I think we're making progress.

Dan Clements of the Alternative Health Practice Blog sent me an email saying that he had put up a post titled "7 Ways to Make Peace with Your Fees" in response to the dialogue that Burton Kent and I had. I like Dan and his writing, so I went and checked it out, and then it got me thinking. And I'm wondering what you all would think. Note: this is an acrimony-free conversation so far, and I'm pretty sure it will stay that way -- so all of you who are tired of fee- related acrimony need not fear.

http://alternativehealthpractice.com/2008/06/7-ways-to-make-peace-with-y...

The July/August issue has a lovely picture of Ellen and Philadelphia Community Acupuncture! Congratulations again to Pam Chang for her fabulous article, reprinted for an even wider audience!  Seriously, everyone -- if you're having any trouble at all explaining what you're doing and why you're doing it, Pam's article plus the photo of PCA is the answer to your prayers. www.utne.com

Last night at work I had one of those lovely moments of gratitude and fulfillment -- courtesy, of course, of a patient.  Bethany has been seeing me since early 2005; she just graduated from law school, so she's been dealing with all the different kinds of stress associated with that (physical, mental, etc.) for the last few years.  Acupuncture has worked really well for her.  When her stepmother and her little sister came to visit her last year, she brought them in to WCA too.  They live in Ashland; her stepmother was having some acute pain that really required a series of treatments right in a row, more than I could give in her brief visit to Portland, so I was very happy to be able to refer her to People's Choice Community Acupuncture in Ashland. "Go see Chad as soon as you get back home!" I suggested -- and she did!  

So for anyone who hasn't been following the conversation over at Burton Kent's blog (http://www.acupunctureclinicmarketing.com/sanborn-maxim/#comments), it's gotten, um, "animated". Which I think is a good thing.

There is potentially a lot to say about all of it, but I want to use this post to focus on responding to a specific set of comments, and to reflect back on some of the issues that started this conversation in the first place.

First, to Jared: I'm sincerely glad you figured out what works for you in your practice. I think it's great that you love your patients and that you listened to them. The more people who get acupuncture, in whatever setting they get it, the better. And thank you for saying that you tried the community acupuncture model and it didn't work for you. People need to hear that.

Not long ago, an alert reader pointed out a conventional acupuncture marketing blog (www.acupunctureclinicmarketing.com) that had a link to CAN and to The Remedy. Wow, that’s interesting, I thought, and decided to check it out. In general I find marketing to be an intriguing topic, maybe because it reveals so much collective unconscious material with so little effort of examination:  new car = sex = power,  antibiotic spray = maternal love, allergy medication = a joyful life, etc. The revealed material might be appalling but it’s almost never boring. When it comes to  reading about acupuncture marketing, I usually learn something about how the acupuncture world sees itself and how it sees patients, which is almost always useful to me when I teach workshops.
 

After reading Nora's excellent post on Myth-busting for May Day, I started searching the Internet for a link that I wanted to add to the comments. It was from a site called "Payday", written by and for people working jobs such as baristas, food servers, etc, and it was titled: "Things you will hear if you try to talk about class". I think there were 25 things, and one of those things that was included three separate times in the list was "Why are you so angry?"  Since it applies to Nora's observation of how resistant people can be to talking about class at all, and since it has definitely been my experience that when I talk about class, I tend to get asked that exact question -- or its variation, as instruction, "you shouldn't be so angry" -- I really wanted to include the link! But I can't find it.

However, I did find this:

So today is the day that we give free acupuncture all day long in honor of International Workers' Day! I am delighted to report that all six of WCA's acupunks graciously agreed to work today (including Moses and Christine, who normally have Thursdays off) and as of last night, we had 98 patients scheduled for acupuncture today!  We're pretty confident that 2 more will probably drop in, and so we will reach our goal of treating 100 patients in a day for the first time ever!

In response to the newly released Clean Needle Technique guidelines (http://www.nationalacupuncturefoundation.org/pages4-1-08/publications.ht...), which replace the earlier rule that acupuncturists may not touch the shaft of the needle during insertion with the new stipulation that acupuncturists may not touch the needle AT ALL  at any time during a treatment, WCA has decided to modify its clinic operations. The new Clean Needle Technique guidelines are similar to the previous ones in that they are not precisely clear how acupuncturists can implement them in an actual clinical setting, with actual human patients, so WCA has resolved to obey the letter of the law and embrace these regulations as an opportunity to create a fully automated clinic.

 The discussion around Ann’s post below, “To the Acupuncture Community”,  got me thinking about a discussion I’ve been wanting to have with you all for a while now. 

This past weekend Skip and I went to New York to do two workshops back to back:  a big workshop at PCOM on Sunday and a smaller one on Saturday for some students from the Swedish Institute who couldn't go to the one on Sunday. We took the redeye flight from Portland to New York on Thursday night and arrived bleary and mostly sleepless on Friday morning to find New York in the grip of what seemed to us (wimps from Portland) seriously nasty weather:  20 degrees, snow showers,  piercing wind. 

But it was a beautiful weekend.

Tonight when I was avoiding doing real work ( answering email, WRITING THE BOOK, finishing up the syllabus for the upcoming OCOM community acupuncture class, argh, any number of other potentially constructive things that I promised Lupine I would do this weekend, argh! argh!) I decided to indulge in something I do every so often, which is using Google's Blog Search to check for mentions of "community acupuncture". This is almost like real work because it's how I often find out about acupuncturists who have started doing community acupuncture without joining CAN -- so when people ask me how many community clinics there really are, I can make semi-educated guesses. I do this every few weeks and as often as not I turn up a couple of new converts I never would have known about otherwise. Tonight, though, I found something even better -- check out this blogosphere ode to the Grassroots Gals!