|
|
Acupuncture About the Institute Professional Continuing Education | |
Massage Therapy Clinics News & Special Events Contact Us | |
Personal Training Community Education Resources Home |
THIS ISSUE:
Corridors
of Health
and Power
Swedish Institute on-line newsletter for our students, faculty and community.
A woman earning $195 for a 25-hour workweek was recently profiled in the New York Times Neediest Cases. The woman, who had just had an operation and was on unpaid leave, needed help paying the rent on her Bronx apartment. Her neighborhood might have been the one served by Montefiore Medical Center, located at the end of the line on the 4 train.
The group of healthcare providers at Montefiore’s Pain and Palliative Care Service understand that the
emotional turmoil caused by poverty — social isolation, anxiety and depression — can exacerbate pain. They
know high quality medical care can address the physical causes, but there is also a great need to attend
to the inner anguish patients may experience. Social work is a routine part of the Service’s care. Yet,
Program Manager Ronit Fallek was looking for more.
“I saw an article on acupuncture internships and thought, ‘why not here?’” Ms. Fallek said. “Dr. Sean O’Mahony, the Medical Director of the Pain and Palliative Care Service, was very supportive right away. Acupuncture is well accepted by the health care community, as there is a body of medical literature available on its effective use for a number of conditions, especially pain.” (Link to research.)
Ms. Fallek contacted the Swedish Institute and negotiated for an offsite internship that allows a group of third-term students, supervised by a faculty member, to provide acupuncture treatments once a week. The agreement was key to Ms. Fallek’s efforts to launch a new program called Alternatives for Pain Relief and Improved Living (APRIL).
As part of the outpatient pain clinic, the program provides free acupuncture treatments to patients who might otherwise not be able to afford them or may be too incapacitated to travel any distance for treatments outside of their neighborhood. Ms. Fallek’s vision is that acupuncture will provide help not only with physical pain, but will also support the psychological, emotional and social well being of patients. After the first ten months, Ms. Fallek reports that the acupuncture treatments are having the effects she had hoped for. “Our patients love it,” she said. “Just creating a safe space for patients to come and receive this modality, to be cared for in this way and to receive a lot of individual attention, that’s very beneficial.”
“The doctors also have been favorably impressed. All of the patients receiving acupuncture have to be
referred by a physician. One of the doctors emailed me about a patient who told her that the sessions
have had a profound emotional effect with a significant reduction in negative feelings.”
Ms. Fallek added, “As a complementary modality acupuncture fits in very well with the multi-specialty model we embrace here.” She hopes to expand the modalities that APRIL offers the Montefiore community, perhaps adding a self-management educational component and massage therapy. “We are especially interested in collaborative efforts that unite the strength of different organizations with our strengths,” she concluded, “so we can offer the best care available to our patients.”
An offering is a good way to describe the efforts of the acupuncture interns. Giving freely, with
support of faculty and medical staff, they can be motivated purely by their desire to serve people in
need.
Photos:
Top: Pictured at Montefiore’s APRIL Program are, from the left, Offsite supervisor William Casalaina,
L.Ac., APRIL Program manager Ronit Fallek and student intern Kit Keung Lam.
Middle: Offsite supervisor William Casalaina, L.Ac., discusses a treatment strategy with student intern
Tammy Day.
Bottom: Student intern Tatiana Philippova reviews a patient chart before her next session.
Acupuncture alleviates chronic pain(1)
In a German study, 104 patients with chronic pain associated with movement were treated with a single session of acupuncture using only scalp points. Treatment sessions lasted from 3 to 9 minutes. Results were calculated by topometric comparison of patients’ movement before and after treatment, and by their subjective sensations. All patients were followed up by phone to document the long-term effects.
Results showed that 45 patients (43.3%) reported relief and 52 participants (50%) reported freedom from symptoms for different periods of time. The maximum period of relief of symptoms was 113 days and of freedom from symptoms, 382 days. Seven patients (6.7%) did not experience any relief.
Schockert,T. MD; Schumpe,G.,MD; and Nicolay, C., MS.: Effectiveness of Yamamoto New Scalp Acupuncture (YNSA) for the Relief of Pain of the Locomotor System: An Open, Prospective, Topometrically Controlled Study, American Academy of Medical Acupuncture (AAMA) Online Journal 15 (1), 2003. Read the journal report.
(1) Many research studies have shown acupuncture to be effective for alleviating pain. It should be pointed out, however, that in practice an acupuncturist looks at the patterns an individual presents, rather than treating an isolated symptom. Read more about acupuncture research.
Helder Coelho
Before starting acupuncture studies, Helder Coelho had been a public interest lawyer for 15 years. He has brought his strong sense of caring for those in need to his new profession. As a third-year student, he is now an intern at both the school clinic and at Montefiore’s APRIL program. He feels that acupuncture, as part of a basic education in human physiology, offers a perspective that places unique value on the human body.
“An important part of acupuncture, I believe, is to make people aware of the treasures within — qi, blood and spirit — which we all possess,” Mr. Coelho says. “The key to accessing these treasures is to first of all realize they exist, and then to know that they can communicate with one another. Restoring communication within the energetic flows of the body is one of the key strategies in acupuncture.
“I believe my role as an acupuncturist is not to be a service provider solely concerned with alleviating symptoms; my focus is on educating people to become self-aware and empowered.”
Bob Altheim
A Taoist defiinition of power
Meditative exercise, also known as qi cultivation, combines with acupuncture, herbs, therapeutic massage and dietary principles to form the system of Chinese medicine.
When Jeffrey C. Yuen, Dean for Academic Affairs for the Acupuncture Program, created the curriculum, he included the practice of Taiji Quan. He considers this form of meditative exercise, also a martial art, an integral part of the study of acupuncture. It is also a great way to balance the intellectual demands students face.
Bob Altheim, the faculty member who teaches Taiji, has been practicing it for 30 years. In his class for beginners, the basic movements of Taiji are done slowly and meditatively. The exercises work to bring body and mind together, a state that enriches the inner life while enhancing physiological functions. “Qi is always flowing through the body,” Mr. Altheim explains. “However, with Taiji practice you move in certain ways that enhance the flow of qi. If qi is not moving freely, if it’s stuck in muscle tension, Taiji can help restore its circulation. It may look simple, but it’s a sophisticated method of prevention as well as therapy.”
For acupuncture students, Taiji can provide a calming effect that increases their sensitivity when
palpating and treating patients. Mr. Altheim explains, “The more practitioners develop, the more grounded,
more sensitive and more aware of their energy they are. That is what leads to powerful effects. It’s not
a matter of being powerful in the sense of being hard, or tough. The key with Taiji is to be both.”
Taiji practice advances into a martial art when speed and timing are introduced. “Masters can be soft as well as hard, slow as well as swift,” says Mr. Altheim, whose own Taiji teacher, William C. C. Chen, is well known for his fighting prowess. “Someone who goes from tense to more tense will have a limited range of responses. Masters have the ability to go from one extreme state to another in an instant; that differential is the source of their power.”
The Remedy: Integrating Acupuncture into American Health Care, by Lisa Rohleder, L.Ac.
Published by Kulia Waiwaiole, 2006
Making acupuncture affordable and therefore more widely available concerns many practitioners and patients. At present, though the list of benefits is long, acupuncture is usually not covered by insurance. Most people have to either be able to afford it as an out-of-pocket expense or be fortunate enough to receive acupuncture at a free or low cost clinic. (See APRIL article and our Clinic information.)
One woman who has explored an alternative model for practice, Lisa Rohleder, L.Ac., has written about her experience in The Remedy: Integrating Acupuncture into American Health Care. Ms. Rohleder found an answer to the issue of affordable acupuncture in the traditions she had embraced while studying it. “Taoism tells us that true power comes only through attention to the common good,” she writes.
She set out to return her practice of acupuncture to its roots as a “peasant medicine” by making it simple, low cost and delivered in a community building so it could be afforded by the people in her neighborhood. The result was her Portland, Oregon practice which she calls Working Class Acupuncture(WCA). She sees patients on a sliding scale and for very low fees (typically $15 to $35 per session). She makes this a viable option for herself by seeing more than one patient at a time in a communal room, using a limited number of acupuncture points.
It has worked well for Ms. Rohleder and the community she serves. It has led others to emulate her in a grassroots movement that seeks more social justice in health care. As an acupuncturist, Taoist and activist, her definition of wealth includes richness in all aspects of her life. “What is money really and why do we want it?” she asks. “Basically money means power, value and freedom…there is another way to enjoy power, value and freedom, and that is by cultivating community.”
As proof of her statement, she points to clients who hold jazz concerts as fundraisers, the word of mouth publicity that has made her known locally and nationally, and the fact that she earns her living by working four days a week at a profession that makes her feel happy and useful. Living by her spiritual principles has not meant making material sacrifices either: The yearly budget of WCA is approaching $250,000 a year.
For more information
Read more about Working Class Acupuncture and its mission of creating social change in health care at www.workingclassacupuncture.org.
.Clinics across the country who are joining the movement are listed at www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org.
In an article for the New York Review of Books (Nov. 16, 2006) entitled “How Close to Catastrophe? Saving the Planet Will Require Community Effort”, ecologist Bill McKibben said, "The technology we need most badly is the technology of community — the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done." Read the article at www.commondreams.org/views06/1023-24.htm.
In a lecture on the therapeutic use of stones, Jeffrey C. Yuen, Dean for Academic Affairs, said that the forces within the earth form and polish the raw elements until they are transformed into gemstones. He theorized that in alchemical terms, “everything in life wants to become something precious.”
Gold is a valued symbol of that process because it is non-toxic and incorruptible. With no further need to change, it is seen as having achieved a state of perfection.
As such, gold is a symbol, and should not be confused with the refinement of the self that is the true goal Taoists undertake. Taoists value every aspect of life, even illness and negativity, as “base” elements that offer the potential for future internal power, understanding and compassion.
Gold as a substance, however, is valued for energetic properties used in Chinese medicine. Mr. Yuen cited the great naturalist Li Shizhen, a master from the Ming Dynasty, whose famous book Compendium of Materia Medica includes information on the therapeutic properties of plants, animals, minerals, gems and metals, including gold. Mr. Yuen is currently conducting a year-long continuing education class on the therapeutic use of these substances.
Seeking gold in
New York City
Gold, in its most elemental form and examples of ways it has been used through the ages, is featured in a special show at the American Museum of Natural History until August 19, 2007.
More on their website at www.amnh.org.
