Communichi

(One Version of the Story)

by,

Jordan Van Voast, L.Ac.

In the summer of 2005, I had been in the acupuncture profession nearly 9 years. I had a comfortably profitable private practice in Eastern Washington, seeing 20-25 people per week at a fee of $65 per treatment on average. Most of my clients were middle and upper income white people, college professors and administrators from a nearby state university. It never really occurred to me to wonder about the Latino migrant workers from the nearby orchards. If I had bothered to think about it, I would have realized that manual labor produces plenty of aches and pains, which these laborers certainly were not receiving acupuncture for. How did I know this? I was the only acupuncturist in the county, and acupuncture was (and still is largely) expensive white people medicine.

In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina breeched the levees in New Orleans and as the TV news reports started trickling in, the images of suffering seemed almost impossible to believe. How could this happen in America? Why did the government rescue effort take days to mobilize? Why did the vast majority of those people caught in the devastation have dark skin pigmentation? These questions tugged at my heart, and when a friend sent me an email about a group of acupuncturists heading down to New Orleans to help, I applied in an instant.

A few weeks later, I was living in a FEMA Tent City in New Orleans, a volunteer with a newly created disaster relief group – Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB). At first, the reception from established organizations such as the Red Cross was tepid. “Acu whuuut‚” was a common response. Gradually though, as word spread about the powerfully relaxing treatments, as well as our diligence in showing up at government meetings and at community centers, street corners, churches, fire stations, etc., we won respect and acceptance from both the first responder agencies, as well as with residents and evacuees.

It was incredibly powerful to witness the healing. People sat in a circle of chairs. We gently placed 5 needles in each ear to balance the energies of the body and mind. Often people would cry and tell us they hadn’t felt that good in ages, as if a huge burden had been lifted. Over the next year, AWB delivered over 8000 free treatments in New Orleans. Self-assessment survey results showed an astounding 97% favorability rating.

It began to dawn on me that acupuncture had always been a medicine for the common man and woman. Historically, that was true in ancient China. Why should it be confined to upper income white people in America? During one conversation with a colleague at Tent City, I remember her mentioning the name of a new clinic in Portland, Oregon: Working Class Acupuncture (WCA).

WCA promoted a concept of community acupuncture which emphasized simple, effective acupuncture, delivered in a community setting, with a sliding scale of $15 to $35/treatment and a $10 one time evaluation fee. The sliding scale required no income verification, and many of the clinics that were eventually established as part of the Community Acupuncture Network model, employed an “invisible receptionist.” In other words, patients simply placed their payment into a box following the honor system.

After returning from my third trip to NOLA, I did a little internet research and discovered that WCA was hosting a conference for acupuncturists to learn about this business model. It was one of those seemingly rare periods in my life when events and circumstances were in some sort of cosmic alignment, allowing ideas to suddenly manifest into reality. I booked a spot at the conference and after the first morning, I realized that this is what I wanted to do.

In Seattle, I talked about the idea with a handful of other acupuncturists who were interested in community acupuncture. One of them – Serena Sundaram, L.Ac. – shared a similar vision and path.  We had both grown up in Maine‚ a land of poets and dreamers, as well as people with a “roll up your sleeves” practicality. Serena had also been to New Orleans on an acupuncture team with AWB. Over tea, we formalized a draft of our vision and soon found a beautiful space inside the El Centro de la Raza community center on Beacon Hill. With the help of many friends, we opened our doors within three months of our first meeting. Not quite two years and several thousand acupuncture treatments later, we continue to strive to fulfill our simple, powerful vision‚ affordable acupuncture for everyone. May the peaceful revolution of affordable acupuncture spread!