acu high school

yesterday, amid my busy schedule of many other things going on, I gave a fun and interactive talk for a local high school class. We talked for an hour about acupuncture in general and then community acu specifically. As i prepared for the talk, it occurred to me that the most important message i wanted to share was pretty simple: all humans are under some form of stress on a regular basis, sometimes good stress and other times no so good stress. Due to the nature of stress being an every day thing, it stands to reason that we ought to release stress on a regular basis. Basically matching intensity of stress to frequency of relief. There were more details, and acupuncture was given as one way of relaxing mental and physical stress; yet, the over all message was: find ways to release stress regularily by doing whatever you can do that makes you feel good (as long as this doesn’t interfere adversly with other people). As we CAN folks know, acupuncture is one easy, comfortable, and effective way to calm stress.  Since we are under stress regularily and acu helps to relax us both mentally and pysically, we can use acu as a regular relaxation/ health management routine. Since acu is so darn effective to calm stress, if it were easy enough to afford for regular once or twice a week use that would make it a viable option—enter the CAN discussion. Anyway, it was fun. I fumbled here and there, but was mostly just excited to share some health basics with high schoolers. Viva la revolution!

Author: Moses Cooper

hello POCA family, I found community acupuncture in the early days of Working Class Acupuncture. I was lucky enough to be the first trial employee at WCA in 2005 after Lisa and Skip survived a string of uncomfortable independent contractor acupuncturists. I remember showing up during a clinic expansion painting moment and grabbing a brush. I was feeling grateful to be working with folks that were so obviously helping people of all kinds afford pokes. That was a very attractive bottom line at the time, and still is! I consider my family roots working poor where I come from, so I was both familiar with and willing to 'walk through the fire' to figure out how to punk. I was a well-meaning, yet slow and mentally mired punk in the early days. I made all the communication mistakes you can make as a newbie poker... It took all of my energy to develop a punk mindset and clinic awareness. I often felt like I was on trial both from my employers and my patients as I figured out the basics of being a real punk. Having solid boundaries instead of being over-comforting; connecting with subtle body language as much as...