On Woo

plus an important 5NP update

Lady of Light by Corita Kent

Please note: The hearing on our 5NP bill has been rescheduled for Thursday January 30th at 3 pm! If you want to testify for it, please go to HB 2143’s web page on Monday 1/27 after 3 pm and click “register to testify”.

Courtesy of 5NP advocate Susan Williams, here’s an example of testimony prepared for both written delivery and in person delivery (which has to be much shorter!) Thank you Susan for the template!

Susan Williams 5np 1

67.9KB ∙ PDF file

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This post is by request from a paid subscriber. Thank you, Derek, for the writing prompt of, how much woo should there be in an acupuncture program? And what are the pros and cons? Merriam-Webster defines woo as “dubiously or outlandishly mystical, supernatural or unscientific” so obviously there’s overlap between woo and (at least in some people’s minds) acupuncture itself. Making an acupuncture school brings you face to face with all the messy parts of the acupuncture profession. One of the messiest is our collective relationship to spirituality.

When you’re preparing laypeople to step into a new role as licensed professionals working with the public, you need to pay attention to boundaries at all different levels, including clear parameters around what you’re teaching. You have to ask: What do we think acupuncture is? What’s in an acupuncturist’s job description, and just as importantly, what is NOT in an acupuncturist’s job description? What parts of the job are personal and what parts are impersonal? Especially for acupuncturists in community clinics, the more diverse your patient base is, the clearer your boundaries need to be.

Back when I was in acupuncture school, I picked up the idea that my job included being a kind of spiritual guide. The outline was vague but my school’s narrative went something like this: Modern biomedicine is fragmented and soulless. People crave holistic healing, to be seen and touched on every level of their being. People who seek out acupuncture specifically are suffering from a lack of meaning in their lives, including a lack of spirituality. An acupuncturist’s job is not to put in needles in a mechanistic way¹ it’s to tend to the patient’s mind-body-spirit connection. That’s what patients really want.

Hmmm.