Hi friends:
I’ve put together a new presentation called A Simple Strategy for Taking Care of Yourself. Member Zoe Scaman was kind enough to share her reflection:
If you’d like to book me for your event, workshop, or guest speaking slot, hit reply to this email.
We’ve been poking ourselves for centuries
Humans are ingenious.
The ancient Chinese get credit for figuring out that inserting fine needles into specific points in the body can assist the body to do what it does naturally: heal.
I find the history fascinating. Especially the twists and turns that have made it possible for me to benefit from this wisdom.
I’m sending some gratitude today to the Chinese ancestors who left China because of the Taiping Rebellion, where 20-30 million people were killed. The resilience of the surviving ancestors brought them to the US, where, for example, they were 90% of the Central Pacific Railroad workforce, constructing the first transcontinental railroad.
They suffered incredible hardship, including The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first law preventing a particular group of people from immigrating to the US and denying Chinese-Americans citizenship.
And yet, many Chinese-Americans offered their wisdom indiscriminately.
People I’d never heard of, like “Doc” Ing Hay of John Day, Oregon is reported not to have lost a single patient during the Spanish Flu of 1919. When he died in 1952, his home was boarded up. But when it was unsealed in 1967, a box was discovered with $23,000 of uncashed checks he’d received from patients. He’d told a friend that he never cashed them because they needed the money more than him.
The Black Panthers also played a role
I went to school in Texas, so I expect you won’t be surprised to know I never learned about the FBI program, COINTELPRO, of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s that waged a drug war against Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous people by flooding their communities with heroin and other illicit drugs.
Demanding better health care, in 1970 The Young Lords, the Black Panther Party, and other allies took over Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. They established The People’s Drug Program, an extremely successful program that treated the root cause of addiction through political education, community service, and ACUPUNCTURE TREATMENT.
Hundreds and hundreds of people sought help from day one.
“The existence of the program was a thorn in the government’s side. We were revolutionaries and radicals doing work, recruiting people to do work the government didn’t want to happen.”
-Vicente “Panama” Alba
The Lincoln Detox center was shut down by a force of 200 police officers in 1979. Assistant Director of the program, Mutulu Shakur, (yes, step-father of Tupac Shakur), was one of the Acupuncturists! He created a new program in Harlem where over 100 students were trained as Acupuncturists and thousands of people were treated who would otherwise not have received care.
Fuck you, Ronald Regan
On April 15, 1974, then governor Ronald Regan vetoed a bill that would have legalized Acupuncture in California. Could he possibly have favored the profits of pharmaceutical companies and Western doctors over a method that is better for people?
The next day, police shut down Miriam Lee’s clinic for “practicing medicine without a license.” At her trial, patients overwhelmed the courtroom and demanded the right to make their own choices in service of their health.
Two years later, Acupuncture in California was legalized.
How did it get so pricey?
Today, Acupuncture is mostly for the rich. Many “health insurance” plans do not cover it!
There is a dwindling number of practitioners reducing supply. Perhaps good to know for anyone seeking their second act in life. Acupuncture training requires four years of schooling.
The cost is also high because Acupuncture has gone private. If you’ve even experienced it, you were likely fully dressed down, lying on a massage table in a private room.
But here’s the amazing thing: you don’t need to get fully naked to fully experience the benefits!
My friends, the “Punc’s”
The stories I shared from the history of Acupuncture are stories of community Acupuncture.
The tiny needles can do an excellent job of assisting the body when inserted just in the head and elbows/knees down. No nudity required.
I worked with several Acupuncturists while battling my chronic pain and adrenal burnout in Portland. I only knew about private Acupuncture and paid $150-200 per session.
When I arrived in Oakland and began searching for a practitioner, I discovered the Oakland Acupuncture Project was one of the closest options.
Here, you roll up your sleeves and pants and sit in a reclining chair to receive your treatment. My experience has been that the work is just as effective in a chair as it has been for me dressed down on a table. Perhaps more so, as one time in a private session the face cradle of the table became loose, I was face-down, my body full of needles, and my neck became strained as I panicked and yelled for help and no one heard me!
The best part about community Acupuncture? Like the revolutionaries before them, this service is accessible. They offer sliding scale at my clinic of $20-40 per treatment.
I’ve been going to my clinic for 2 years now. These revolutionaries affectionately refer to themselves as “Punc’s.” And when the private treatment room in their space became available for rent, I jumped on the chance to offer CranioSacral treatments and be a part of their good community vibes.
So, how does it work?
Yesterday, I pestered OAP co-owner, Jeff, for more details. He pointed me to this amazing 40-page book available online for free: Why’d You Put That Needle There by Andy Wegman.
On “how does it work?”, he writes:
This is really the million-dollar question. The easiest answer we can offer, in bio-medical terms, is that no one has a definitive explanation. There have been many attempts to nail down The One Reason acupuncture works, but to our knowledge no one has got it - yet.
In all likelihood there isn't one factor, but that many reactions going on at once involving different systems - including the central nervous system – that allow acupuncture to have such wide, strong and lasting effects.
Just like CranioSacral therapy, a lot of it is putting the body into the mode (parasympathetic) where it can bring in the groceries and take out the trash. Which makes Acupuncture an excellent tool if you’re generally struggling with something like your sleep or digestion.
The World Health Organization officially recognizes Acupuncture as a treatment for the following conditions:
Adverse reactions to radiation and/or chemotherapy
Allergic rhinitis (including hay fever)
Biliary colic
Depression (including depressive neurosis and depression following stroke) Dysentery, acute bacillary
Dysmenorrhoea, primary Epigastralgia, acute (in peptic ulcer, acute and chronic gastritis, and gastrospasm)
Facial pain (including craniomandibular disorders)
Headache
Hypertension, essential
Hypotension, primary
Induction of labour
Knee pain
Leukopenia
Low back pain
Malposition of fetus, correction of
Morning sickness
Nausea and vomiting
Neck pain
Pain in dentistry (including dental pain and TMJ dysfunction)
Periarthritis of shoulder
Postoperative pain
Renal colic
Rheumatoid arthritis
Sciatica
Sprain
Stroke
'Tennis elbow'/Golfer's elbow - epicondylitis
Abdominal pain (in acute gastroenteritis or due to gastrointestinal spasm)
Acne vulgaris
Alcohol dependence and detoxification
Bell’s palsy
Bronchial asthma
Cancer pain
Cardiac neurosis
Cholecystitis, chronic, with acute exacerbation
Cholelithiasis
Competition stress syndrome
Craniocerebral injury, closed
Diabetes mellitus, non-insulin-dependent
Earache
Epidemic haemorrhagic fever
Epistaxis, simple (without generalized or local disease)
Eye pain due to subconjunctival injection
Female infertility
Facial spasm
Female urethral syndrome
Fibromyalgia and fasciitis
Gouty arthritis
Hepatitis B virus carrier status
Herpes zoster (human (alpha) herpesvirus 3)
Hyperlipaemia
Hypo-ovarianism
Insomnia
Labour pain
Lactation, deficiency
Male sexual dysfunction
Ménière disease
Neuralgia, post-herpetic
Neurodermatitis
Obesity
Opium, cocaine and heroin dependence
Osteoarthritis
Pain due to endoscopic examination
Polycystic ovary syndrome (Stein-Leventhal syndrome)
Postoperative convalescence
Premenstrual syndrome
Prostatitis, chronic
Pruritus
Radicular and pseudoradicular pain syndrome
Raynaud syndrome, primary
Recurrent lower urinary-tract infection
Reflex sympathetic dystrophy
Retention of urine, traumatic
Schizophrenia
Sjögren syndrome
Sore throat (including tonsillitis)
Spine pain, acute
Stiff neck
Temporomandibular joint dysfunction
Tobacco dependence
Tourette syndrome
Ulcerative colitis, chronic
Urolithiasis
Vascular dementia
Whooping cough (pertussis)
A challenge
I challenge anyone whose first response to a condition is a pill or surgery. This is cultural conditioning aiming to shape us into profit generating CONSUMERS.
For those who have never tried Acupuncture, I invite you to search for “Community Acupuncture near me” and consider adding it to your toolbox so we can all make it to 100 together.
And for business owners, especially those looking to get employees back in the office, consider hiring a practitioner for a day per month or per week to offer this benefit to employees. A practitioner needs about 10 minutes per person to discuss the person’s body and insert the needles into the appropriate points. Then another three minutes to remove them after a 20-40 minute rest.
Is there such a thing as coincidence?
As I was finishing this week’s missive, I received this text from my bestie who is also a Project 100 member:
Emily, Working Class Acupuncture in Portland, Oregon is known for starting and spreading the Community Acupuncture movement, sharing their ways of working openly since 2002. But closer to your house, you might try North Portland Community Acupuncture. Or try this Groupon deal that popped up on my search at Little Pine Community Acupuncture over on Division. I hope you’ll give one a try and report back!
Ok ok. So many things pointing me to acupuncture of late. This seals the deal 🙏🏻