FAQ : What is the difference or benefit of semi-private vs private treatments?
a little bit of how, why and when
In this FAQ series, inspired by the amazing Tamara Santibanez, I’ll be elaborating on some questions I often get about the the modalities of acupuncture and bodywork.
“MEDICINE IS DIVINE NOT AS IT IS SHOWN BUT HOW IT SHOULD BE”
-Ariana Reines (from A Sand Book)
Why am I offering semi-private and private treatments?
And in the same space, no less. I get some form of this question often and I’m hoping that it will clarify more in time as I’m able to expand my days and schedule. But for now, I’ll hit the first layer of this answer and we’ll go from there : since I have to pick a career related dream, mine is to offer effective treatment to people in the same room at the same time. There’s more detail and logistics to this, but since dreams are best declared in their most simplistic form, there’s one of mine plunked out on the table for you. Furthermore, my dear friends at Black Dolphin Tattoo have been the first to enable this dream by letting me use their space where this kind of thing can be possible. I have the entirety of the space on Mondays and Tuesdays and it is my goal to have these days be primarily for semi-private acupuncture sessions and keep my private massage and acupuncture combined sessions to days when I’m in a smaller office. For now, I’m mixing it all together while I build up my acupuncture clientele and arrange my other sublet.
Now that I have the plunking down of the dream out of the way, I’ll delve into why I want things to look this way. Essentially, with more people being treated at once, I can see more people in a day, which provides the kind of volume that allows me to offer a sliding scale. This approach to volume is pretty standard among acupuncturists, whether they take insurance or do sliding scale models; in contrast, as a massage therapist, I am booked anywhere from 1 to 2 hours at a time where I am actively working on only one person for the duration as is the nature of the work: to be there for the entire time. With acupuncture, the sessions are a bit different: there’s an information exchange and then there’s me doing a lot of hands on assessment in the form of palpation, pulse taking and bone listening. From there I choose where I’m going to needle and the patient lies there with them still inserted while things move around. I’ll do some checking in, but really the magic happens in the resting and, as some may call it, “the cooking”.
If you’ve gone to an acupuncturist before, you may notice that they come in and out of the room and have other patients in other rooms they are attending to, which is why I said earlier that this kind of stacking of treatments is quite standard. Taking this idea even further, there is something called community acupuncture. For those who are unfamiliar, this is the kind of acupuncture where not only are multiple people being treated at the same time, but you’re all in one room without walls. There is a very specific reason for this kind of set up and its rooted in a very specific history here in the US.
In the past, if I was ever regularly receiving acupuncture, it would have been in a community style clinic. Back when I was working in Fremont, I went to Fremont Community Acupuncture (RIP) about twice a month to manage the physical pain from my job as well as chronic insomnia, anxiety, depressive episodes, substance use management, plantar fasciitis…you name it and I was treated with acupuncture for it.
The community model is designed to make it more affordable, yes. The goal is volume; you want more people in there to keep the business solvent, but there’s also the added effect of group healing. In my previous post, I talked about how that first experience of acupuncture ignited a new kind of feeling, feeling my tissues and energy move around as a result of the needles. With regular visits to the community clinic, I was exploring this more but also sitting in the presence of this happening to others. In the community acupuncture world, this is often referred to as “group qi”.
The “acu-nap” is a term you also hear a lot and it’s honestly a wonderful, deep sleep crammed into 10-20 minutes at a time. There are times I don’t exactly fall asleep fully during acupuncture, but I always get transported somewhere else for a spell. During these community sessions, I remember waking up and looking around the room; there’s something about seeing other people with their needles in and eyes closed that feels therapeutic. Like, thinking of all the time we spend smashed in with one another, on transit, planes, stores, traffic etc. This is one of those rare occasions where everyone’s intentions line up and you’re here together even though you may not know each other. I remember seeing someone softly crying with the needles in and someone else talking quietly in their sleep. Recently, to get through my board exams, I started going to the The Pin Cushion Clinic on Capitol Hill. This place is always quite busy and I kind of love it. I find myself exchanging smiles with others as they get up from their recliners like a more reciprocated form of people watching. It’s a really cool way to be with people and part of why it works. It’s discussed and written about often in community acupuncture theory, namely through groups like the People’s Organization for Community Acupuncture (POCA). POCA remains the largest network of cooperative community clinics nationwide and operates their own Community Acupuncture school in Portland, OR.
I feel it is important to touch on the history of Community style acupuncture as it is a multi-faceted and beautiful story, however, it is one that has already been told so well by others, namely Alondra Neilson in her book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination , the resources from the National Acudetox Association (NADA) and the work of Dr. Matulu Shakur and his contemporaries as told through the film and podcast Dope is Death directed by Mia Donovan. I cannot recommend these resources enough, but I’ll do my best to summarize the story here; while acupuncture had gained some traction in the US through some prolific and beloved practitioners (namely Miriam Lee and Dr. Ju in CA), it was still technically illegal to practice. In the 1970s, Community clinics sprang up in the Bronx and LA from activist groups The Black Panthers, Young Lords and other radical leftists to address an urgent need in their communities. Without proper access to medical care and facing a government-facilitated drug epidemic, these groups sought to take matters into their own hands and open their own free community clinics. The orientation of these groups toward Marxism is what established their connection with mainland China and some were able to travel there in order to learn about acupuncture and Chinese medicine. The result was the Lincoln Detox Clinic in the Bronx which saw thousands of patients in its tenure and remains central to acupuncture as a fixture in today’s drug treatment centers, methadone clinics, prisons and various outreach programs. In addition to substance abuse, I would be remised not to mention community acupuncture clinics that thrived in San Francisco during the AIDS epidemic, namely the Quan Yin Healing Arts Center.
I put this here not to serve as an exhaustive history of community acupuncture in the United States, but as a condensed sampler to show what’s possible with this form of intervention. It truly can and has opened up a world of possibilities in terms of how effective treatments can be administered in a variety of settings and spaces. These principals are upheld by groups like POCA throughout their various clinics nationwide as well as though NADA, who provides ear acupuncture training to any practitioner who wants to include it in their toolkit.
I mention all of this because learning this history was highly motivational to me deciding to study acupuncture, not in the sense that I wanted to replicate this, but to inspire me to make my own model for who I want to serve in my community. As I described in my first Substack entry, I was someone who was in a lot of pain but didn’t have a lot of options. This is where I want to start. What I intend to offer with my semi-private sessions is just a slightly different riff on the classic community acupuncture model. I love community acupuncture and have worked in this style of clinic before and hope to do it again. Semi-private is somewhere in between a private session with me and one where everyone is being treated together at the same time. I want to treat people on tables instead of reclining chairs as it gives me the option to offer back or front treatments. I will also be spending a bit more time at each table for my assessments; as I am a massage therapist first and acupuncturist second, I rely on a lot of hands-on assessment that will be a lot like bodywork. I employ techniques that help me find lines of tension, feel the quality of channels, listen to bones as well as taking pulse. This is how I prefer to work now and it’s how I feel most effective.
What I aim to provide is a more affordable treatment and perhaps a session that is more versatile for you. As this offering is available on Mondays and Tuesdays, I hope this option appeals to those in the service industry, who would otherwise find seeking out this kind of thing daunting and cumbersome, even when you’re in a lot of pain and have to keep showing up for your shifts.
More lengthy answers to some FAQ are on the way, thank you for reading.