Do you know of any acupuncture/alternative healing places in Ann Arbor/Ypsi that are good? I saw a couple of your posts about the community acupuncturist in Detroit, but I can’t make it downtown that often

I found out from my acupuncturist that the state of Michigan is considering requiring it’s citizens to get a doctor’s referral to go to an acupuncturists. So, in other words, rather than hearing from a friend that she went to acupuncture and that person deciding to give it a try too–Michigan wants to make it so that you have to go to a doctor first, and then, if the doctor is willing to actually give you the referral, you can go to the acupuncturist.

Many people who know about the history of midwives in the U.S. know why this is such an extraordinarily bad idea. But for those who don’t know that history–what this particular requirement would do is first and foremost, place an incredibly unfair burden on those people who don’t have health insurance. Those who are unable to afford a doctor would simply have yet another health alternative option removed from their already limited health arsenal.

In other arenas, it takes yet another independent profession and forces it under the control of a medical establishment that has proven already–it simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t *prevent* ill health, and in many ways, it actually encourages it. Again, to point to the midwives–as the process of birthing has become more and more medicalized, more and more women are becoming criminalized and subjected to unnecessarily violent births. Women who make the choice to refuse a cesarean (which is in a woman’s legal right to do) are getting children taken away for not submitting their bodies to the procedure.

The lives of the women are considered less important than a medical procedure.

Acupuncture is not necessarily subject to the same experiences. Until the community acupuncture model came to Michigan, it was something (and still is) something that simply isn’t widely available–and was only affordable to an elite group of people and/or people who were lucky enough to have insurance that covered the practice.

But now we have the community acupuncture model. We have dedicated women (interesting, huh?) who are finding ways to make the practice of acupuncture affordable and available to those people who are literally poorest of the poor. Detroit, for example, has an unemployment rate that rivals the Great Depression. It has people who simply don’t have the money to go to a doctor. Who often don’t have the 15$ it takes to go to acupuncture. Who are those people that everybody talks about–those ones who die from untreated cancer–because they didn’t have the money to go to the emergency room. A family member of mine had this happen–by the time he finally was vomiting blood and unable to work, he went to the Emergency room. About a month later he was dead.

We live in a system that deals with health care of poor and uninsured by keeping them out of the doctor’s office and hospital until they are dead. Then it pats itself on the back for it’s cancer treatment rates.

Community acupuncture models, while maybe not equipped to cure cancer–can extend the lives of people who deserve to live. I still get weepy when I read this story of a working class cancer stricken man interacting with community acupuncture. I think about my relative. And I wonder–How would things have been different? If every week he spent $15 dollars getting a treatment. Would the cancer have been so violent? Would he have had a few more precious weeks with his kids? Even a few more days?

Would he have been in so much fucking horrible pain at the end?

I’ve talked for a long time about what community acupuncture has done for my health. For those where it simply doesn’t work–it doesn’t hurt, either. Unlike so many medicines and doctors that at the best are struggling to do what they can, and at the worst, simply don’t give a shit. And it’s doing more than the system that doesn’t work. That simply doesn’t work.

This is a practice that deserves to expand and grow and become a regular part of every person’s life (if they want it to). Michigan’s new law would take away my ability to go to acupuncture–it would take away my daughter’s right to sit and take up space while she gets her health taken care of–it would make it impossible for all the thousands of people in Michigan who are out of work and without insurance to even *consider* getting help for their bodies.

Michigan has fucked with it’s citizens long enough. It needs to make self-referral to acupuncturists legal. And allow those of us who are regularly denied health care by the system they say they should be regulating acupuncture to find health and healing in a space that honestly really and truly does care if they live or die.

What you can do to help:
Sign this letter to send to Michigan legislators (even if you don’t live in Michigan! Or you haven’t used acupuncture!)
Forward this post
Read about why community health models are essential to revolutionary movements
Support community acupuncture clinics in your own state/Country!
Read Ouyang Dan’s post
Read Jaded Hippy’s post

Fun events – Back to School, Labor Day week, T-shirt party – etc.!

Hi all, check out the good stuff happening at the clinic over the next two weeks:

Celebrate Labor Day by getting a good rest in any day that week (Sept. 8 -12) – FREE first treatment for new patients! Find out how relaxing getting stuck with (tiny) needles can actually be! My colleagues in Ferndale and Livonia will be giving free treatments to new patients that week too.

Back-to-school special for new OR established patients: 2-for-1 treatments this coming week (August 31st – September 5th)!

Please note: we are happy to try to fit in walk-ins and same-day appointments, but we can’t guarantee them, so call ahead to schedule if you can: 313-831-3222.

Also, on September 12th, we’re going to have a “BYOT” t-shirt printing party, from 2:00 to 3:00, at the clinic. Bring a “blank” t-shirt (or other cloth item); we’ll have a screen ready with the DCA logo and a few different ink colors to choose from. (If you want a spanking NEW t-shirt, I will order one for you from No Sweat – click over to see what size & color you want – they have different unprinted shirts to choose from – and let me know by September 1st.)

A journey of health. A journey to discover health. A journey to contemplate health.

Not really sure which choice it is. I started off this past year’s journey not even really all that sure what “health” was, much less if it is or was a possible reality. The question I still have no answer to: is it possible to “heal” while your sitting in the middle of a war?

But even as I struggle, I do know several realities now.

* “health” has been defined by our society in the U.S.. But our individual selves rarely want the definition of “health” as defined by our society. But at the same time–we continually beat ourselves up with that society created definition–which prevents us from focusing on the needs we have to achieve our OWN PERSONAL definitions of ‘health.’

* The idea that there could be one “thing” that could bring “health” to our bodies is riddle throughout U.S. culture. Magic cure diets. Magic cure exercise regimes. Magic cure “holistic” “lifestyle” changes that focus on exercise and diet…If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past year, I’ve needed to do *multiple* things to help relieve or end symptoms/problems.

* For example, extreme chronic achy tired brought on by depression and hypothyroidism has only improved considerably after I got on medication, began acupuncture, started daily walks, began meditation, got OFF medication, increased acupuncture, increased walking to at least an hour a day, went back ON one medication, and then finally figured out that one particular way of needling during acupuncture makes me feel like a million bucks.

* It is only after a year of doing the previous “stuff,” that I finally even have the strength to sit and read a fairly radicalized book about how food in the U.S. has been manipulated to encourage addiction.

* In other words, it took a YEAR to really get me to the point I could even think about “diet.” How many doctors tell you to go straight to the “fix your diet and you’ll feel better” route?

* The book I am reading about diet (and, btw, just because I am reading this book doesn’t mean I have *fixed* by diet, it only means that I am arming myself with as much information as I can find before I fall into the full fledged “eating healthier” regime) is “the end of overeating: taking control of the insatiable american appetite” by David Kessler. I’m on part one section 4 right now, and so far, it’s a fairly disturbing interesting read. The basic argument of the book is that food in the U.S. is made up of three basic food groups, sugar, fat, and salt–all three of which are stimulants individually–and act as “hyperstimulants” when served together. As such, those of us who have a rocky relationship with food (even slender/thin folks) are often not actually lazy or lacking self esteem or unable to say no etc etc…instead, we are addicted to the high of the stimulation that high fat/sugar/salt foods provide us.

As somebody who has diagnosed diseases that erode at a person’s energy level on a daily and hourly basis…um, can we stand up and cheer at how our lifetime eating patterns now make sense?

I’ve always had depression, but it got really horrible right after I gave birth to my first child. And guess what started at that time? Extreme cravings for pints of ice cream. Is it any wonder, given what Kessler is arguing about sugar/fat/salt, that the *time* I craved the shit out of ice cream was on those two and three in the morning baby shifts that lasted for hours at a time because both of my children had illnesses? That some times I would eat ice cream first thing in the morning?

That now that I have been on serious treatment for hypothyroidism and depression, the extreme sugar cravings have really slowed down considerably (I can’t remember the last time I ate an entire pint of ice cream at one sitting).

The good thing so far about this book is that the guy who wrote it, David Kessler, is somebody who has also struggled with weight. So, thus far, I have not really encountered any fat phobic logic (outside of the fat that the whole book is written to confront the “fat epidemic.” sigh).

In fact, he started off the book with anecdotes about several people and their relationship with food–and one of the anecdotes centers on a woman who is considered “thin.” Her obsessive thinking when it comes to food is starkly similar to the way the overweight people in the anecdotes described their obsessing.

An interesting fact that Kessler incorporated in his “ohmygawdwereallsofat!” section was that researchers noticed in the 1980′s that there was a startling increase in weight throughout the entire U.S. population. That what had remained relatively stable throughout the *centuries* suddenly went through the roof in a earth shattering way in the 1980′s. According to Kessler,

“In fewer than a dozen years, 8 percent more Americans–about 20 million people, roughly the population of New York State–had joined the ranks of the overweight.”

The thing that keeps this statistic from becoming fat panic is that (unlike pretty much every type of media that I have ever encountered) Kessler uses the *statistic* of overweight numbers AND THE DATE as a point of investigation. In other words, what was going on in the 80′s that encouraged uncontrollable food eating habits? What was going on with *food* that suddenly a static inanimate object (like M&M’s or a hamburger) suddenly had so much control over ALL of us, regardless of our weight (cuz remember, it was slender people that were obsessing over food too, they just had different outcomes to the effect the obsession had on them than others did).

It isn’t, what made U.S. citizens suddenly get so fat and lacking of self control? Rather instead, it is, what happened to food, what happened to our culture?

Which has had the effect of *immediately* releasing years of guilt and obsession from my brain. It’s NOT. MY. FAULT. that I sat and gorged on a thing of ice cream at two in the morning when my son was in hour two of screaming.

As Kessler says in his introduction: YOU ARE THE TARGET. Companies *survive* on you and I and the world eating unhealthy addictive hyperstimulating food. They target your brain, your weakness, your life.

And for me–this may not be true of others–and I don’t expect it to be and I hope that anybody reading this realizes that every person’s body is different and that this analysis should not be used to judge anybody, not even your own self–eating high fat/sugar/salt diet helped me to survive undiagnosed conditions while living in high pressure situations (like early motherhood, graduate school, etc). Without medication, and without some sort of stimulation, I doubt I would have made it through those years.

But it ALSO led to a worsening of the diseases I live with. Not necessarily because those foods “made me fat,” but rather instead because once the “high” was gone, what else was there to do but to crash, to a deeper more intensely low level than what I started off at? Anybody who has been addicted knows what i’m talking about. When you crash, the aches are worse, the sadness is worse, the fogginess is worse, it’s harder to get up and do anything at all.

Anyway. Like I said, I am not reading this information with the intention of going on crash diets or anything like that. Instead, I’m thinking deeply about how to make this information a weapon in my “health” arsenal.

How can I use it to keep me at a point where I can get out of bed every day, play with my kids, go to work on a monthly/yearly basis without feeling like I must die, AND stay alive until I’m 120 in a quality and magnificent way?

Although Rohleder centers her answer to this question around acupuncture, in all reality, her answer is one that can very easily be fleshed out to understand the bigger picture of health care in the U.S.. For example, to start off with, Rohleder asserts that with class comes values–and with different levels of class comes different values. Rohleder very effectively brings home the point by painting a scenario of a woman getting ready to go out to a party. If she is rich, she more than likely will have gotten a nice glossy invitation and will have been invited by higher ups in her job. She will be going to the party because it will be a great way to network (i.e. make connections that will help her career) and because her boss will expect it of her. She will bring along her partner (if her partner is a “he”) and have a nanny stay with the kids. She will buy a new business outfit for the occasion and maybe go out to get her hair and nails done.

By way of contrast–Rohleder asserts that a working class woman would get a word of mouth invitation from a friend she works with. The party would be more “personal” in that it would probably be a baby shower or a wedding shower. She would more than likely not buy new clothes for the occassion and would bring kids with her rather than a partner (partner probably has to work and there’s no place to leave the kids otherwise).

By fleshing out this scenario of two women from different classes going to a party, Rohleder makes the conclusion that each of these women and their communities *value* something different. Rich(er) women value elegance, status, personal service, refinement, individuality, beauty, exoticism, and uniqueness. In other words, how can you get that promotion or raise if you aren’t unique? How can you show you are unique if you look like everybody else in blue jeans and a t-shirt?

Working class women value interdependence, creativity, hard work, resourcefulness, personal relationships, directness, and loyalty. Or, in other words, how are you going to get to that party and have a good time if you don’t figure out what to do with the kids? How are you going to figure out what to do with the kids if you don’t have a community of women to depend on?

So if you flesh out these values into the world of health care, you begin to see that health care is about a lot more than “getting insurance.” That it’s also about *values*. That, as Rohleder asserts, rich(er) communities are going to feel more comfortable going to a doctor that wears a white jacket, has an expensive stethoscope, uses big words, spends a lot of time asking questions and filling out paper work, and makes the patient feel as if s/he is the only patient that this doctor has or cares about (Individuality, uniqueness, etc, right?).

By way of contrast a person from a working class background will more than likely feel patently uncomfortable in those types of surroundings. Answering hundreds of questions? Filling out tons of paper work? All that attention on “me” when “me” knows from experience “we” is the only way to be creative and resourceful?

As a result of this class critique, Rohleder implemented the Community Acupuncture business model in her own practice. The community acupuncture model of practice has been around for a while (it is considered “normal” in China and was brought to the U.S. by various radical practitioners like Miriam Lee and NADA and the Black Panthers), but it is not necessarily recognized as a sustainable or “normal” way of practicing even within the acupuncture community. The main way most people in the U.S. learn acupuncture is through acupuncture schools–and acupuncture schools teach a business practice that encourages practices that model rich(er) class values: individuality, exoticism, multiple services in one place–and above all else–hugely expensive prices.

Community acupuncture models, on the other hand, center working class values. Interconnectedness is supported through multiple people in the treatment room. Mothers can bring kids, caretakers can bring loved ones, friends can bring friends. There is limited paper work. Few questions. The work is done by the needles and the client–so there really doesn’t need to be much talk between the acupuncturist and the client.

As I read this section of the book, I was really excited to see so much of my own personal experiences with health care acknowledged and respected. The number of times I have felt intimidated by all the questions and paper work of a doctors visit have been innumerable and have often led to bad situations where I was answering what I thought the doctor wanted me to say, rather than what was real for me. And I have definitely NOT gone to the doctor because I didn’t feel like dealing with the inevitable questions around weight or sexuality or drug use: when the hell was I going to lose weight? Oh, I don’t know, maybe when the doctor paid for my gym membership!

I’ve said it before, even if women of color all had free health care starting tomorrow, I really question if there would be a massive influx of women of color going to the doctor. Lack of access is NOT the only thing keeping so many of us away from the doctor, although it certainly is a huge obstacle.

I also come from a background of organizing that prioritizes intersectionality (race, gender, class, citizenship, all intersect and can not be seperated out of a person’s body. For example, you are NOT just white. You are a white upper-class white male citizen.), and so I constantly wondered, how might some of the “values” be changed according to other identities? In other words, a person who is in the U.S. without documents will really appreciate the lack of questions, the lack of paper work. At the same time, a woman of color who has been ignored and shunted aside by health care workers her entire life may find the lack of questions to be alienating. Or, just another example of health care workers not caring about her (I am thinking, by way of example, of the black woman who was ignored when she fell out of her wheel chair and then went into seizures, all while right in front of hospital workers). I also wonder at how many older people who have lived under the “doctors know best” rule would feel uncomfortable, or even stressed out, by the more free flowing “stand back” values of community acupuncture. If you don’t have the skills or strategies to trust yourself and what your body is doing to heal itself (because those ARE skills–skills that are purposefully challenged and destroyed by authoritarian structures that are modeled on “control” and “obedience” [i.e. schools, doctors, the army, police, etc]), it can be like free falling into hell to be told “trust yourself.” What happens when the last time you trusted yourself, you wound up being beaten until you passed out? What happens when what you really need to trust yourself is the presence of a person?

But in the end, I think that these are questions of practice. That is, they are questions that need to be dealt with on an individual level within the practice rather than incorporated into the actual theory. The *theory* of Acupuncture is like Noodles is sound, and can function on its own even without the race/gender/citizenship/etc analysis added in–namely because it is addressing the structural problem of ‘capitalism,’ and capitalism effects everybody who is not in the top five percent of the economic structure.

But I do think that if community models of acupuncture are going to be working with very specific communities (for example, native peoples who have gone through boarding schools, or older black folks who lived through apartheid in the U.S., Hurricane Katrina survivors, etc), it would be really good to open up the community acupuncture model just a bit–to allow the space to say, working class people of color who went through Hurricane Katrina may need a hand to hold onto while they work on recovering and healing themselves.

Cross posted at Detroit Community Acupuncture

And a weird thing happened while getting poked today.

*Immediatly* after a needle went into my upper leg (in the area right under my knee cap)–*instantaneously*–a weird flash went into my brain, and I remembered that I had to email somebody.

The feeling was so forceful, that I couldn’t stop my mouth from saying “Oh, shit, I needed to email **.”

My poker lady told me, “that’s where you’ve been storing that memory!”

I laughed a little bit, because who knew that all somebody needed to do to get me to email them was rub my knees?

But I also it made me wonder where I’ve stored other memories. Like the first time I was slapped. The first time I smelled a blueberry field. The first time I touched a worm. The last time I hugged my children.

I wondered what happens when the area that stores a memory like “hugging my children” is beaten relentlessly by “husband’s fist” or “hard work” or “chronic repetition.”

Do you forget how or why you love your children? Do you forget how good it feels to get hugs? Do you forget what makes you happy? Do you get cancer?

Miriam Lee Week
July 20 – 25th
2-for1 treatments
Detroit Community Acupuncture

“[Acupuncture] can be done for fame or for wealth…if the intention is wrong, if you are concentrating on earning money, treating fewer patients and charging higher fees…you may get some results from your treatments or you may not….If you intend to cure, you use
all your might to treat patients.”
Miriam Lee, Insights of a Senior Acupuncturist

Dr. Miriam Lee (December 8,1926-June 24, 2009) was a pioneer in the field of acupuncture, and was a major force leading to its legalization in the U.S. She was very dedicated to her patients – often seeing as many as 10 patients an hour during her 80 hour weeks – and was generous with her knowledge as well (many of the current U.S. acupuncture teachers studied with her). Please help us honor this amazing woman, by experiencing her famous protocol!

July 20 – 25th, schedule with a friend for 2-for-1 “Miriam Lee’s 10 Great Needle” treatments!* This protocol, designed by Dr. Lee, is famous for its effectiveness in addressing a wide variety of common health complaints, as well as for promoting general well-being.
It’s a perfect introduction to acupuncture!

Mon. & Wed. 3:00 – 7:00, Tues & Fri. 2:00 – 6:00
Sat. 10:00 –2:00 (Thursday & Sunday closed)
87 E. Canfield St., Suite 1300 (at John R)
For more information call 313-831-3222 or visit
www.detroitcommunityacupuncture.com
*(New and returning patients welcome; our usual fee is $15 – $35 per treatment, whatever works for your budget.)

A snippet:

So in writing the following posts, I am going to be talking to people who are interested in acupuncture and may possibly choose to become a patient–but I am ALSO (and probably mostly) going to be talking to people who are struggling to deal with health care type spaces in ways that are relevant to them. In other words–these posts will not so much be about how great I think acupuncture is (um, hello, it’s a given!)–but about interacting with a radical analysis of the health care world in a way that I wish I personally had access to when I was chronically sick, without insurance, and prone not to go to the doctor anyway, even if it was free.

Comments are open at that blog!

One of the problems with acupuncture schools is that they often create the impression in students that what will make them good acupuncturists is being shining specimens of perfect health themselves. They will then presumably be in a position to offer guidance to all of the less-than-healthy patients who will be irresistibly drawn to their perfect example. They will provide help, healing, and long lectures to the poor benighted American masses, with their food allergies, their poor posture, and their weakness for caffeine and carbohydrates. The idea of perfection as applied to human beings tends to be problematic in general, and in the case of acupuncturists, the unhappy outcome is what one of my coworkers describes as “Malibu Barbie, L.Ac.”: a practitioner who is fake, plastic, rigid, shiny, and impossible for normal human beings to emulate.

Malibu Barbie doesn’t know anything about suffering, and somehow, I don’t think she gives a fuck.

The Malibu Barbie, L.Ac. theory of attracting patients is that patients are drawn to your (perfect) image. In my experience, that isn’t true. Most patients are not seeking perfection in their own lives or in yours. They are seeking relief from suffering. Here is my personal experience: I have always been a patient magnet, and I have never put any energy into my image. This is my theory about why: I know about pain, and I have space for people in pain. People can feel this.