Community Acupuncture at the ICCM

royg March 6, 2011

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ICCM = International Congress of Chinese Medicine, held in Israel between February 27 to March 3, 2011.

Last week started with me fracturing my foot, in an attempt to find my way between the pots and pans that lay on the steep staircase in my mother in law’s house. Cast, crutches – the whole thing. How am I going to treat patients now? I had to cancel Monday’s shift, but Friday was less booked so I gave it a try with the rolling stool and managed quite nicely, Thank God…

But it was the congress I was more worried about. For the last couple of months I’ve been planning our community acupuncture booth and practitioners meeting that were to be held on the last day there. The international congress was held for the 3^rd time in Israel, with lectures and workshops given by some of the best in the field nationally and internationally. This year the congress appealed to the general public as well, offering calligraphy, health food, and a special screening of the film: “9,000 Needles”- an event organized by Yael Ernst, that also served as a fundraiser for the Devin Darth Foundation.

This was accompanied by nice publicity on community acupuncture in the weeks preceding the congress – an interview I gave to a local radio station, two articles on the internet, and a joined interview I gave with Assaf Feldman of Community Acupuncture in Tel Aviv to a national economic newspaper.

Our big day finally arrived Tuesday, and with a lot of help from my friends and colleagues, it was quite a success. We were given a large space (a tent, actually) where we gave treatments (not me, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to move around too much…) and presented materials on community acupuncture for practitioners and the general public.

We sold some “Noodles” and presented a map of Israel on which we marked CA clinics across the country with flags on a needle (my creative wife’s idea) – we had 23 of them obliquely needled…

Traffic was a bit slower than I hoped for. I guess we missed the earlier busier days, but many came in for treatment and information. It was really fun!

At 15:00 we held our very first CA practitioners meeting, where we finally got to meet each other. It was very exciting to get to know one another, and we discussed some questions and issues regarding CA, including ideas on how to move forward collectively. There were about 18 people there from all over Israel, with quite a few variations in the way CA is practiced. One of the conclusions from this meeting, is that there is an obvious need to set certain standards in order to define correctly what community acupuncture means, so as to be clear as a group on who we are and what we do.

It was a great day for community acupuncture in Israel!

You’re invited to view some pics on Facebook.

Enjoy!