Yesterday was my birthday, and my best present was sitting at a newly opened playground in Jefferson Park, South Seattle…when suddenly about 35 kids from the community center came running. I felt the joy in their heart envelop me like a wave of bliss. Here are some photos of the joy: Happy Birthday Beacon Hill.
Jefferson Park playground opens September 2nd
Wisdom of the Elders
I had a lovely conversation in the hallway with a Native American man who has an art studio next to my clinic. I had always wanted to get to know him better, but for some reason, I was always too busy to make it happen. Three and half years of being busy. And besides, I’ve smiled at him and said hello, how come he hasn’t stopped to get to know me? Such is the dimly noticed chatter running through my white race conditioned mind. But when you think about it, we are guests. My ancestors first came here in the 1600s – perhaps 12 or 15 generations ago – with the Dutch colonization of upstate New York. His people have been here at least 10,000 years….or about 500 generations. Right! Like I said, we whites are guests here. And the polite thing to do when you are a guest – especially the descendant of conqueror guests – is to take an honest look at history and with renewed humility, act like a guest (instead of a conqueror).
More precisely, the great empire of America is teetering on the precipice of collapse…our economic system which holds as sacred personal profit, has resulted in such environmental plunder, that Planet Earth is in intensive care, and we continue to mortgage our children’s future on dead ends like “military diplomacy” (perhaps an oxymoron). We’ve made a mess of things and if we want to turn it around, we’d do well to listen to the wisdom of a culture that has been here for 10,000 years – even though nearly beaten into extinction. Well, that wasn’t what I set out to write about exactly, but it’s been six weeks since I blogged so I needed to put that out there straight away in order to set my conscience at ease.
Institutional racism is still a hidden evil among us. Why should that concern you? Well, for a more dynamic answer to that question, please consider attending the Seattle Race Conference this weekend. I’ll be giving a presentation there on how institutional racism manifests in my (very white) profession of acupuncture and what I and others are doing to fight and dismantle that. (My presentation is at 245pm in Rainier Hall, Room 210, South Seattle Community College). The short answer is this:
Chinese medicine, and many wisdom teachings such as the First People of Turtle Island (what we call North America) understand that all things live in a delicate balance. All life is part of an integrated, interdependent, mutually reinforcing whole. Therefore, whatever injustice or suffering befalls one person, one living being, on the circle of life, affects us all. Because institutional injustices are allowed to continue, conflicts arise, and these have wide repercussions. Okay, that sounds suitably vague such that if you dear reader consider yourself a person of good fortune, with all your needs and desires taken care of – your kids in a good school, your mortgage paid off, or being paid off, etc. etc. What’s the big deal? Why should you care? Because…and this may take some time to see clearly….until you connect with the struggles of the people around you…until you open to all life on the planet…to understand your, our, higher purpose, of bringing compassion to this planet, to help end the suffering for all, then you are living in a box. Yes, pretty strong words, but I say them knowing that most of the time, I am in the box too.
Time for another segue. Come to the conference if you can. Or at least, do something to see the box and start dismantling it. On a related note…back to my talk…the acupuncture profession has its share of dirty laundry. One of them is that acupuncture colleges in America have long milked the federal government (and your tax dollars), taking advantage of lenient policies to access federal student loan money, which, when combined with extremely unrealistic promises of six figure incomes for graduates, has corrupted our profession in so many ways. It’s time to change the system, and this is one place to start. Please consider submitting a comment to the Department of Education’s website on or before September 9, as they are investigating these abusive practices. Look for the little blue link “Submit Comment” in the upper right portion of the page. Here’s the link to get you there: DOE – Comment on unethical practices at acupuncture colleges.
Thanks, you are awesome – especially when you step outside the box!
Just to the right of the center on the blue green ball, is the Gulf of Mexico, where the now largest oil spill in U.S. history continues unabated. The zone of life on Planet Earth shrinks daily. If you haven’t seen the movie Avatar, check it out. The movie won three Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Visual Effects. The movie’s director, James Cameron of “Titanic” fame has poignantly captured the madness of the humans – engaged in profit driven resource extraction, utterly disconnected from the sacredness of life.
Things aren’t hopeless here on Earth though. Far from it! Each one of us has power – the power to dream, to imagine a different world, and to make that dream reality. There is no such thing as safe offshore oil exploration – it’s another corporate lie. Meanwhile – despite local variations, the planet is steadily getting warmer. That’s the real danger in our addiction to oil. Please lobby your elected officials to promote investment in alternative clean energy such as solar and wind.
As a pre-requisite to achieving a sustainable ecosystem that includes humanity, each one of us also needs to walk the path of personal balance, mindful of our physical-emotional-spiritual health. But our window of opportunity is short, the brief candle of this life blown out quickly. Chi tune up anyone? Make an acupuncture appointment.
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I traveled to Haiti recently, as part of a medical relief mission in the aftermath of the January 12 earthquake. I offered acupuncture to about 140 Haitians in 7 days, held two very cute babies in my arms, saw a lot of malnutrition, hunger and thirst, took hundreds of photographs of collapsed buildings, shanty towns, and abysmal poverty, made a lot of new friends, and then suddenly it was time to come home and attempt to make sense of my experience. Little did I know that it would lead me to become more involved in my own community here in Seattle.
Woman carrying goods - Haiti
In the days and weeks after arriving home, my mind struggled with seemingly unanswerable questions, compounded by a big dose of culture shock: Where did the suffering of Haiti start? What role can I play in supporting the ongoing healing of a battered nation from my seemingly isolated existence in the Pacific Northwest? How should I respond when people ask me, often quite casually, “how was your trip?” The more I reflected on the roots of the disaster, the more I realize that the shifting Earth is only one causal nexus. The real disaster is poverty and social injustice and that, unfortunately, is an ongoing global disaster since the dawn of humanity. With proper building codes and applied human intelligence, the death total would have been a small fraction of what it was. Even now, the disaster continues to unfold into further misery – a million people living under tarps, threatened by rains and hurricanes.
Alas, such a shame. And I could simply choose to leave it at that, hop on my plane, return to my privileged existence, and feel good about the time and resources I donated to a good cause. The next disaster will shift our focus elsewhere, and all of us can pour out our compassion and pocketbooks once again, ever keeping a safe distance from the gritty humanitarian issues.
Sometimes it seems that our culture lives somewhere between one crisis and the next. Certainly my own life is no different. Upon returning, it was time to attend to the daily comings and goings at CommuniChi, catch up with family and friends, swimming lessons twice a week with my daughter, and a myriad of life details, and personal plans. The vividness and shocking power of my time in the disaster zone faded quickly. Had I learned anything? Had I connected with any deep vision of healing the planet? Was I a changed human being? Or was I merely playing a conditioned role of first world hero, a vicarious tourist, intruding on people’s misery?
Waiting for water in front of the Presidential Palace
The more I engaged in such self-reflection, the more I actively searched for a way to carry this experience forward without merely enshrining it in a list of “good-deeds-I-have-done-in-my-life”. I got involved in Social Inclusion work at my daughter’s school. I started reading about White Privilege, and signed up for a two day conference on Unlearning Racism through People‘s Institute Northwest. I talked about Haiti with everyone I met, stayed connected with the medical team that I served with, checking in frequently with a friend who was having trouble re-entering her old life. I remembered to give thanks often – for clean water, air, nourishing food, good health, access to health care, meaningful work, sunshine, hope, smiles on children’s faces.
I followed Haiti in the news, looked at the pictures of the rubble, and remembered the faces of the people that still remain homeless, lacking the basic necessities of life, not forgetting them in my prayers. Three months later, little has changed for millions in Haiti, but the world has largely moved on. Earthquakes in Chile, Mexico, China, and a volcano in Iceland have all occurred in rapid succession. Haiti is old news.
The world is in trouble. Nature is under assault everywhere and many scientists agree that we are in a period of mass extinctions. Our atmosphere is heating up. Our global consumption patterns are unsustainable. Pollution, poverty, economic volatility, war, terrorism, inner city violence – all of these are on the rise. Will humans survive for more than another century? Now, more than ever, there is an urgent need for a new level of cooperation in the world, transcending all of our perceived differences. I often reflect on Margaret Mead’s famous quote about what “a small group of thoughtful people” can do to effect positive change.
Individual intentions and actions do matter, even the seemingly mundane actions we do repeatedly. Brushing one’s teeth, as Thich Nhat Hanh has written, can be an act of worship. Although the trip to Haiti was a sobering reminder of that for me, I pray that I do not waste a single opportunity to connect my deeds and intentions in healing my local community – whether that takes the form of involvement at my daughter’s school, listening to someone – stranger or friend, share their sadness or pain, spending a few extra bucks on my trip to the grocery store in order to place a can of soup into the food bank collection box, going the extra mile to help a friend, a parent, a patient, or even an earthworm struggling to cross the road in search of a patch of green grass.
Woman nursing in shanty town - Haiti
We, and our actions, are all connected. Happy Spring!
When I first graduated from school thirteen years ago, I remember joking to a friend about my “ego-wall” where I hung my diplomas, my Washington state license, and my national board certification. I had no experience in business and little preparation from my school. The ego wall was all pretense, puffed up ego hiding a desperate cry to my patients: “hey, I’m barely making it here and scared-you-know-what-less of facing the economic realities of running a business, but look at my credentials.”
And those diplomas look mighty fine – all the squiggly John Hancock signatures, gold embossed seals, expensive matte, polished glass, and banker’s black frames. The schools who print these impressive looking certificates are not dumb. By throwing their grappling hooks into the ego of the practitioner, they, and the profession, get pulled along for the ride. The practitioner is conditioned to think – it can’t be the fault of the school that my practice is failing, it must be because acupuncturists don’t have enough recognition from the mainstream medical establishment…and so we are told that we need a Doctorate to boost recognition, told to lobby for acupuncture coverage of Medicare….bandaid solutions for a broken system. I stopped buying those story lines when I decided to open a community acupuncture clinic.
Regardless of what social class an acupuncture graduate comes from, students are trained to imitate and appeal to the the codes of power of the wealthy, upper class – ways of dress, speech, professional appearance – hence, the “ego wall” which is fairly standard in most white coated medical practices. Please don’t misunderstand this as a rant against the mainstream. I’ve certainly met compassionate, skilled, and humble doctors. And I’ve made clear elsewhere of my respect for the value of primary care medicine. My reference to the “ego wall” isn’t any aspersion against any of that. Expectations of clientele, and perhaps even professional rules, will dictate such practices. My point here is that too often professionals do get snagged by their egos, and then forget that their original purpose was to help all people, not just those who can afford to pay top dollar. More specifically, we aren’t trained in cultural competency that is welcoming to people of the working class, diverse cultures and ethnicities. These blind spots take time and re-education to unravel.
Fast forward to 2007. After a successful (profitable) private acupuncture practice (as defined by the wealthy niche mentality), I realized (again) that my definition of success was helping as many people as possible, so I sold my private practice in Ellensburg and, with Serena, opened CommuniChi inside El Centro de la Raza on Beacon Hill – joining community hands with an organization with over three decades of social justice work. I even scaled down my ego wall somewhat, but not completely.
Fast forward to 2010. In another two weeks, CommuniChi celebrates three years in business and probably over 10,000 affordable acupuncture treatments. Even after an amicable partnership dissolution, a few bumps in learning to be an employer, and weathering the whims of a sour economy, my confidence in the sustainability of this model continues to grow. Businesses can succeed quite well while paying attention to social ethics, and leaving behind the Gordon Gecko “greed is good” mentality. So much so that when my brother offered me a new painting, I quickly realized right where I wanted to put it. It was time to dismantle the last vestiges of the ego wall. Down came the remaining bricks paying homage to officialdom. (Okay, I confess, I hung them up in the closet!)
My brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia three decades ago. His brush strokes are bold, unpretentious, and his paintings are full of wild colors. His art pays homage to no one – except God – but welcomes all. That is who he is, and a role model for me in that regard. It is a fitting tribute to the extraordinarily ordinary unpretentious lives of the 90% of Americans that a community acupuncture clinic aspires to serve. Thank you brother; letting go of the ego wall is a most auspicious beginning to the new Year!
Untitled, by Henry Van Voast
p.s. Thank you to everyone who signed the petition opposing the development of an entry level doctorate for acupuncture. The ACAOM rules on this issue this Friday. I will keep you posted.