What is Community Acupuncture?
Community acupuncture is delivery of acupuncture by a qualified practitioner to a group of people all at one time. Treating a group of individuals enables us to offer lower costs so more people in our Spring Branch/Memorial (and beyond) community can benefit from acupuncture treatment.
With a brief intake to understand an individual’s treatment needs, we use points on your arms and legs. We can also use scalp acupuncture or auricular acupuncture on ears to treat the entire body, so there is no need to undress. After removing your shoes and rolling up your pants legs and sleeves, you sit in comfortable chairs during your treatment that generally lasts less than 30 minutes.
You are in a quiet place surrounded by others receiving treatment at the same time. Not only do patients benefit from lower acupuncture treatment costs, but also through relaxing in the presence of peers. Since each person accepts the small, but unobtrusive lack of privacy, the experience can be a way to offer and receive support from family, friends, or the general community. Often, the shared experience makes individual treatment more powerful.
Who Participates in Community Acupuncture?
Because of the shared medical treatment, most people feel comfortable only with family and friends with whom they don’t mind sharing information about challenges they face with their health. However, we also find that those brought together by trials of life are also open to and benefit greatly from community acupuncture. Here are some examples:
- fellow cancer survivors facing nausea and pain of chemotherapy or radiation
- a team of police officers or firefighters experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to the daily demands of their community service
- a senior citizen community interested in improving their quality of life to reduce pain and inflammation of typical aging conditions such as arthritis
- a group who has banded together to overcome the challenges of digestive disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome
- an informal group of like-minded people who seek health and wellness through alternatives to pharmaceuticals
We find that community acupuncture often strengthens the patient’s role in their own healing.
