5NP Kismet (Acupuncture School Version)
how working on a 5NP law helps POCA Tech
On Sunday May 12 at 2 pm, the film Dope Is Death is showing at the Hollywood Theatre, sponsored by The AfroVillage PDX, as part of the 2024 Portland EcoFilm Festival. Dope Is Death is about the history of 5NP and I can’t recommend it enough! (If you’re not in Portland or can’t make it to the screening, there’s also a podcast version.)
WCA and POCA Tech had nothing to do with making this happen — we just found out about it a couple of weeks ago. In terms of our 5NP outreach work, though, the timing couldn’t be better. I think of this as another example of 5NP kismet. There’s been a lot of that.
Advocating for a 5NP law for Oregon has been a gift to our little acupuncture school. Let’s count the ways.
From the time that Cohort 8 decided that their capstone project would be to work on legalizing 5NP, everyone knew that the outcome wasn’t guaranteed. The students were aware that the labor involved might be thankless, difficult, and worst of all bureaucratic. They also knew (because I never shut up about this) that one reason many acupuncture practices don’t get off the ground is that acupuncturists don’t have enough tolerance for all the thankless, difficult, and sometimes bureaucratic labor that goes into running a small business in a highly regulated profession. So working on a 5NP law was a chance to build some tolerance, while at the same time promoting the common good. Win-win!
Or as Noni of Cohort 8 put it, “(D)uring one class my cohort decided we were up for taking on the risk of changing the law in Oregon. I can guarantee it’s not a typical experience that a small class of students decide they can manage the risk of taking on the state capitol as their capstone project. But I can also guarantee that POCA Tech isn’t a typical school. We were built on risk and we know better than anyone what can be built from it. The decision making and effort involved isn’t just modeled, it’s experienced. And while we can’t provide certainties, we can provide passion.”
Cohort 8’s passion for 5NP carried us through a lot of challenging coursework. Early on, we talked about the need for the students to craft a 5NP “elevator speech”: a one minute version of why 5NP is such a valuable intervention and why Oregon needs an acudetox law, to be deployed with anybody who was willing to listen! This turned out to be a lot harder than any of us expected. Why should anybody care about an ear acupuncture protocol? Once the students started practicing, it became obvious that there’s a big overlap between this kind of elevator speech and the kind where you explain to a stranger that you’re an acupuncturist and here’s why they might be interested in your services. Which is daunting and scary for most new graduates starting a business! It’s hard to put yourself out there.
But as Noni observed after the pop-up clinic at the capitol, it’s easier to have these conversations once you’ve had a bunch of them. Telling your personal story helps you to believe in it, and talking about 5NP to strangers builds your passion for it.
Talking about 5NP helps new acupuncturists to believe in acupuncture. What acupuncture school wouldn’t want that?
Working toward a 5NP law has also been an exercise in social entrepreneurship for Cohort 8. In my experience, entrepreneurship is an intoxicating, sometimes bewildering swirl of fear and excitement, risk and opportunity, that’s almost impossible to describe — you have to experience it. Opportunities for students to actually feel that heady combination while they’re still in school are precious.
To quote Noni again, Cohort 8 got the chance to practice “wielding a business card to make things happen”. They got to experience what it’s like to build a network, to navigate around obstacles, and to seize opportunities.
From the beginning of POCA Tech, we’ve taught the history of 5NP, NADA and acudetox. We’ve emphasized to students that this protocol is a gift from the past; it represents survival, resilience, devotion. 5NP is a manifestation of community across generations. But it’s one thing to teach that in class and a whole other thing for the students to contribute to that inter-generational work themselves. To get a taste of what it’s like to try to make acupuncture more accessible in the face of potential opposition, knowing that the opposition we face now is the palest shadow of what the people who created 5NP were up against. Action is a more meaningful context than passively sitting through a lecture, if you want to appreciate the sacrifices that the activists of Lincoln Detox made in order to share acupuncture with their communities.
Finally, advocating for a 5NP law has given POCA Tech students the chance to experience what it’s like to put yourself out there and then have something — the universe, fate, kismet — meet you with chances and opportunities you couldn’t have predicted. Like next weekend’s screening of Dope Is Death. We’d love to see you there.