Acupuncture is like Noodles #2

The first big question that must be answered before really digging into the theory that forms Acupuncture is like Noodles (AILN’s from now on), is “Why was this book written to begin with?”

If you’ve never been to an acupuncture clinic before (and most of us in the U.S. have not!), this question wouldn’t seem very important. We don’t know anything about acupuncture except that it’s something we can’t afford and something that we wouldn’t know where to look for to begin with.

But for those of us who are in the acupuncture “community” (such that it is) or have been able to access acupuncture at some point–we know a little bit about acupuncture.

For example:

* How expensive it is (generally runs between $90 and $200).
* How if insurance covers treatments, it only covers a specific amount (like a series of 20 treatments).
* How there are a lot of “personalities” in acupuncture that really rely on “guru” mystical shaman stereotypes.
* How those guru personalities often lead to kinda weird instances where the acupuncturists is speaking, but you don’t really have any clue what that person is saying.
* How acupuncture may feel good–but it doesn’t really seem to *help*.
* How there always seems to be pictures of the Buddha and other cultural artifacts in the treatment center that just seem like they have no reason or right to be there.

And we could go on and on.

This book (and the Working Class Acupuncture clinic) were both created in reaction to those things. AILN’s was written because Rohleder et. al. come from working class backgrounds–and they all knew people who could USE acupuncture, who, in fact, desperately needed it–but wouldn’t go even if it was affordable for them. Why? Well, how many of us here in Detroit would feel comfortable sitting in a polished high shine sort of room with expensive artifacts and Buddhist chanting? How many of us would know what to do if somebody in a position of power started telling us our problem is that we have too much damp wind?

Rohleder recognized that the factory workers with steal shavings in their lungs not only don’t give a crap about “damp wind”–but that that kind of language and atmosphere would make those people patently uncomfortable.

And more than anything, Rohleder wanted to treat the people of her community: the factory workers, the restaurant workers, the nurses, the hotel cleaners etc.

So how could she do that?

How could she make a space where our old, tired, no-nonsense granny who has breathing problems would feel just as comfortable as our uncle that works at the insurance company,drives a Porsche, and has problems sleeping?

How could she do that when everything about the community and culture of acupuncture in the U.S. is heavily invested in catering to the rich uncle–or even more specifically, the rich uncle only *if* he has an interest in being lectured to about Taoist principles from a real and true guru?

AILN’s is written in reaction to that community and culture of acupuncture that does its best to ignore the no-nonsense granny.

It’s important to note why this book was written–because the focus on the goings on of the acupuncture community/culture may be 1. uninteresting to outsiders and 2. cause people to assume that the book can not be relevant to them as readers. That is: it is written for acupuncturists or health care providers–not patients, activists, or people just interested in understanding health in general.

For people like me, or maybe even most of us in Detroit–we are SO disconnected from the acupuncture community, the radicalness of the Detroit Community Acupuncture clinic or the community acupuncture model may not translate right off the bat because what we see is just “normal.”

What other acupuncturists, regular acupuncture patients, and people from California (hee hee) see is a radical, possibly even threatening, type of treatment that goes against everything they have ever been told acupuncture is.

And it’s that “radicalness” that I want to focus on in continuing posts about Acupuncture is like Noodles. How is what the community acupuncture movement doing *relevant* to the rest of us? How can the community of radical acupuncturists be connected to the community that doesn’t even know how radical their movement really is?