A patient’s commentary after seeing: Community Acupuncture: The Calmest Revolution Ever Staged
The most important thing for me is to see Americans moving out of the individualistic illness which has characterized this society for a long time. Therefore, now it is starting to shift into the community movement with Community Acupuncture and Occupy and many other forms by getting together as a group to solve our problems. The way to go…
When people get together their creativity threatens the ones in power for that reason, all those good qualities that are a natural assets of humankind needed to be suppressed by the Establishment which manipulated the society to become more and more individualistic and consumer driven.
It makes me very happy to be here now and witness the big change that is happening. It confirms my believes in the goodness of human beings when they start to pay attention and look into each other’s eyes and see that we all share the same pain, the same happiness, the same needs, the same compassion.
We have similar experience in Argentina when in the 70s from the National Universities the professors and students started to go out in the community and helped to build better lives for people. Doctors, architects, dentist, social workers etc all went out to the neighborhoods working with the community through those programs.
Well, of course that was as the movie said: “A Revolution” and it spread really fast throughout South America. Then the School of the Americas sent their specialist to access the situation and the massacre started. 30000 disappeared people and a very repressive military government killed the seeds of freedom, compassion and solidarity in my country.
Hope the movement to build community in USA keeps growing and changes forever the American “way of life” for the better. ~MP
Author: Tatyana Ryevzina
<p> I grew up in the Soviet Union and immigrated to the United States as a teen, living in New York and Chicago before moving to the Bay Area in 1998. I began as a Yoga instructor and as a practitioner of Ohashiatsu bodywork and have been practicing Acupuncture/Chinese Medicine since 2003. Before switching to community acupuncture practice model I had a sporadic and struggling private practice, worked as an herbal pharmacist, as an instructor and clinical supervisor at an acupuncture school, plus did a two-year stint doing acupuncture at a public health clinic, working with mostly HIV/HCV+ populations in San Francisco. </p> <p> My discovery of Community Acupuncture practice model (via Lisa Rohleder's Acupuncture Today columns) profoundly transformed my life -- not just my work life but many other aspects of it. I gained a vocation, a community of friends and the most stable and rewarding job I have ever had. I see community acupuncture practice model as the most sustainable and most fitting to my values. It makes sense to me from the point of view of healthcare access, social justice, spirituality, and as an antidote to isolation. In 2008, together with another stellar acupunk Pam Chang I...
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