Swept Into Action

Devastation blew into New York City, our campus, and our hearts on September 11, 2001. At first the city stopped, as all eyes turned toward the blazing fires atop the twin towers. When they began to crumble, people watching nearby instinctively raised their arms, as if trying to hold the buildings up with their hands. Alas, a greater force was at work. The buildings, and many lives inside them, were gone in a rush.

That day the Swedish Institute, responding to the emergency, closed. Morning students and staff left feeling stunned, bereft, frightened. Nevertheless, they reached out to help one another plan safe strategies for getting home or staying overnight, if necessary.

By Thursday, September 13, when school resumed, a way to help the city respond became quickly apparent. The benefits of bodywork for stress and muscle fatigue are well documented, so it occurred to many of the staff, students and alumni, that massage therapy and acupuncture could be part of the volunteer effort. Bodyworkers near and far wanted to use their hands as a way to help. The voice mail was already full of offers when school reopened.

Headquarters

Some alumni and faculty had gone downtown immediately on September 11 to provide relief for rescue workers. As independent efforts to communicate with volunteers was coordinated with efforts at school, a network was formed. A notice for volunteers was posted on the school web site and calls started to pour in from therapists around the country

Volunteer Central was born, as the Swedish Institute took on the task of coordinating a massive volunteer effort to supply massage therapists and acupuncturists to aid rescue workers. An office was taken over and converted into a hub, where volunteers dispatched therapists twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The wall was covered with lists of places where they could go: Stuyvesant High School, Chelsea Piers, St Vincent's Hospital, Jacob Javits Center, the Salvation Army, the Armory, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. More would be added later. Volunteers signed up for four, eight, twelve hour shifts. Sometimes they had to stay for twenty-four hours, if a high security area was involved. In the first weeks, nearly 1,000 massage therapists were sent to over fifty sites.

Acupuncturists had responded quickly also, setting up sites at the Javits Center and St. Vincent's Hospital. Members of our faculty worked at the sites, along with licensed practitioners from other schools and professional organizations in the area. Acupuncturists at the relief center at the Javits Center initiated a relationship with FEMA that led to the creation of a national emergency team called PART, the Professional Acupuncturists' Response Team. This is their counterpart to MERT, the Massage Emergency Response Team.

At first, some of the rescue workers--firefighters, National Guard, Army and Naval reserves, police and medical personnel-- who had never had a massage before were skeptical. However, those who gave it a try soon spread the word about the difference massage could make. Attitudes changed so quickly, in fact, that when city administrators came in at the end of the week to remove unnecessary personnel from the area, asking massage therapists to leave, rescue workers quickly gathered hundreds of signatures for a petition that insisted the massage teams were vital. The massage therapists stayed.

As if taken by the wind, volunteers were carried into encounters they might have otherwise never chanced. Openings occurred and barriers were broken, as the benefits of massage and acupuncture were suddenly seen in a new light. As a result, we have a deeper appreciation of the work we do, and a new awareness of the potential created by working together.

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