On Personal Transformation

should it be part of acupuncture school?

Art by A. Cohen

Reminder: The hearing on our 5NP bill is happening this week … If you want to testify for it either virtually or in person, please go to HB 2143’s web page starting at 3 pm TODAY and click “register to testify”.

(There was a mix-up where the hearing was briefly moved again (to tomorrow! Eek!) but now it’s back on Thursday. The website should be updated shortly.)

Noni Vaitekunas has helpfully created a guide to submitting written testimony for anyone who can’t testify on Thursday.

How To Write And Submit 5np Testimony

1.33MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

From the moment the public hearing occurs on January 30th, you’ll have 48 hours to submit written comments to the Oregon Legislative Information System (OLIS). After that point, the portal closes for submissions to the record. Tell our legislators why you want them to vote for 5NP 4 OR!

Next, a bit of housekeeping: Apologies to anybody who didn’t get the last couple of newsletters. I tried to do something creative with the mailing list, which was a mistake. I hope I fixed it. Going forward, I expect there will be about one post per month with paywalled content. Thank you to everyone who’s supporting WCA with your subscriptions!

Following up on the last post about woo and spirituality, I want to try to tackle the idea of personal transformation as a necessary part of becoming an acupuncturist (and/or a small business owner). It’s a common feature of acupuncture schools’ marketing to describe their programs as “transformative journeys” involving “inner development” and “personal growth” (possibly with a side of “ancient wisdom”, but that’s a different post). It’s generally accepted that acupuncture education involves challenging students “to transform emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually.”

As you’ve probably noticed, I use this newsletter to think things through, including things that bother me. Quite a few of those are connected to social class; maybe the newsletter should have a tagline, like “working-class girl walks into the acupuncture profession”? I’m sure there’s a punchline somewhere, but I don’t know what it is.¹ Though I suspect the joke is on me and the acupuncture profession.

One of the recurring dynamics in my acupuncture career is, when someone says something aspirational like, “acupuncture education is a transformative journey”, my immediate response is, “but what does that mean?” I know I’m supposed to agree automatically with statements like this because they sound good. There’s a social cost to admitting that I don’t get it, that apparently my low-class sensibilities aren’t up to the task. But I’m used to paying that price and at this point it’s a relief to be more genuine, like: wait, what? I don’t understand. Also: that statement is lofty and vague and I don’t like it. I realize I’m supposed to like it, but I don’t.

The upside of this response is (sometimes) clarity. Sometimes asking bluntly, but what does that mean? gets me a clear answer. The downside is my own reflexive impatience with aspirational statements, because some of them might actually have value. Like maybe there’s a grain of truth in all the fuzzy language about transformation, and I should think about it? For example: A couple of weeks ago a student sent me their reflection paper on the 1000 X 25 entrepreneurship exercise (where most of the people at POCA Tech, including me, took on the project of collectively asking 1,000 people for a $25 donation, and then the students had to write about the experience.)² Here’s an excerpt from that paper:

I hated this exercise…my future self will thank you for it and also for bringing shame to my attention.

This assignment SUCKED. When we were given the directions in class I got flushed, sweaty and my heart started pounding out of my chest. I had NO idea that I was in full blown shame attack mode. I didn't know that shame was a thing that actually provoked physical symptoms. I KNOW that feeling well – I just never had a name for it.

I had absolutely NO idea that that disgusting hot flushed anxious feeling that sometimes overcame me was an actual universal feeling with a name – an actual feeling that EVERYONE feels. (I am not even really convinced this is true, if everyone feels shame — why am I only hearing about this now?)

…Now when I feel this shame attack in acupuncture business land – I can name it and realize that I am not an outcast freak and that this is an actual named emotion with actual physical symptoms. WOW. And hey, there is probably a root to this emotion that I may want to explore… Or maybe it’s high time I see a therapist? Maybe that is a prerequisite for small business ownership?

Art by A. Cohen

Is therapy a prerequisite for owning a small business? Or practicing acupuncture?

Lots of small business owners can’t afford therapy or can’t find time for it (see also, “necessity entrepreneurs”³). But maybe the bigger question is: Should POCA Tech be guiding students toward working on themselves, as part of preparation for practicing acupuncture and being small business people? And if so, what should that look like?

Recently two different students described both the experience of being an intern in clinic AND the leadership classes as “confronting”. As in, practicing acupuncture and being a small business owner brings you face to face with your own personality, your own struggles, your own limits. Being an acupuncturist (especially in a small business) leaves you vulnerable and exposed. You’re not just wearing your heart on your sleeve, you’re standing on a rooftop and waving it like a flag. People might laugh at you or turn away in disgust or throw rocks (actually, it’s my experience that if you persevere with the flag-waving long enough, all of those things will happen at some point). (The rocks are both the metaphorical kind and the other kind; WCA Cully has had to repair its windows more than once and then there was the time when someone accidentally drove an SUV into WCA Rockwood’s reception area — but I digress.) There are so many opportunities for emotions to come up, and so many opportunities for fear or shame to derail you from your work. That’s a good argument for therapy.

On the other hand, though — speaking of aspirational statements — I once had an internet fight with a famous acupuncturist who said, “It seems to me that the minimal requirement for being a healer ought to be having come to a place in one’s own life where no more time is being taken to overcome one’s past and all attention and effort is placed on creating a more wholesome future.” (Emphasis mine.) I said: Can I trade childhoods with you? I think I’d prefer yours and I think you’d find mine educational.

The idea that you have to work on yourself, and in fact you have to meet a certain standard (possibly unrealistic) with regard to personal growth, isn’t something I want to promote at POCA Tech.

It bothers me that there’s an implication that acupuncture education represents a sort of pinnacle of self-improvement, after which you’re automatically qualified to improve everybody else. I think acupuncturists do need to figure out how to take responsibility for their own feelings and their own self-care, but that’s not the same thing. “Transformative journey” sounds like there’s an endpoint, like you’ve arrived somewhere and there’s no more work to do.

Simply being alive involves transformation for everybody, not just those of us with an acupuncture education. When you work in a community acupuncture clinic, you meet people navigating transformations that they didn’t choose, that nobody would. Someone who experienced an acute injury in the context of a busy, active life, who’s become someone with chronic pain that drastically limits their world.⁴ Someone who thought they’d be married forever, who’s in the midst of a destructive divorce. Someone who had what they thought was a stable job, who’s now sleeping in their car. Someone who was pregnant, who’s lost a baby.

Art by A. Cohen

Showing up for these people does change you, but not in a shiny, marketable kind of way. My partner Skip, who used to be a geologist, calls it “the glacial grind.” When a glacier moves over a landscape, it abrades and erodes the bedrock. It picks up boulders and moves them; it sculpts mountains. Witnessing other people’s suffering and courage and resilience and humor, day in and day out in clinic, is not unlike allowing something huge and slow to grind your awareness into a different shape. I think the cumulative effect equals less ego and more humility. After working at WCA for twenty years, I’m not the same person I used to be — but that process isn’t something I want to advertise to anybody as a “transformative journey”. (“Come to POCA Tech, we’ve got a glacier that will grind your ego!”)

Up next: a possible answer to the questions, Should POCA Tech be guiding students toward working on themselves? And if so, what should that look like?… a conversation with the leader of POCA Tech’s Student Circle.

1. The punchline might be the acupocalypse. Or the part of the acupocalypse where POCA Tech is the last viable acupuncture school. *lolsob*

2. I’m going to write about 1000 X 25 too, I promise. By my count we raised over $16,000 for the school and it was super interesting! I’ve thought about the value of asking quite a lot lately as a result of our 5NP legislation. For me, working on that project has been pretty much nothing BUT asking various people to do various things; some of them said yes and some of them said no, but overall it confirmed my belief that getting anything done requires putting yourself out there and asking for help in uncomfortable ways.

3. Necessity entrepreneurs, also called “survival entrepreneurs” are people who create businesses not because they want to but because they have to, because they don’t have better options for employment. Some examples are immigrants, people with histories of incarceration, people with caregiving responsibilities, and many acupuncturists.

4. The New York Times Magazine just published a really good long article on chronic pain.