Remembering Laura Cooley, L.Ac.
Longtime 5NP advocate and trainer Laura Cooley, L.Ac, passed away on March 23. Laura was one of the Founding Subscribers of this newsletter and a generous supporter of POCA Tech. There’s nobody else like her — she was in a category all her own — and lots of people miss her already, including me. If there’s anyone who lived the belief that acupuncture can change the world, it was Laura.
It was hard to find published photos of Laura. Self-promotion was not her thing.
Here are some highlights from her biography (she accomplished way more than I can fit into this newsletter):
Laura became an acupuncturist via a four-year apprenticeship in Austin, Texas. She was mentored by NADA founder Dr. Michael Smith for 15 years and she personally trained over 700 people in 5NP. When the Texas Medical Board tried to pass an Acupuncture Practice Act that would have excluded allied professionals from practicing 5NP, she sued them and won. After Hurricane Katrina, she worked with the Medical Board and local officials to pass an Acupuncture Practice Act that included the ability for non-acupuncturists to practice 5NP. Until then, acupuncturists in Louisiana practiced in the shadows or under the supervision of a physician. Additionally, Laura played a role in advocating for 5NP legislation in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the Province of Quebec.
She reached out all the time to all kinds of people working in public health. I was grateful to be one of them. She was generous with her time, energy and knowledge in a way that isn’t common among acupuncturists. For example, she produced and directed a 17 minute documentary about using 5NP for trauma, particularly related to disasters. Here’s a link:
If you’re like WHAT is all this fuss about 5NP?!? you should watch at least the first four minutes and listen to a nurse, a couple of MDs, and a peer counselor with the New York Fire Department talk about using 5NP after 9/11, and why it’s great for helping all sorts of traumatized people.
You can also listen to Laura talk about New Hampshire’s 5NP law in this interview on New Hampshire Public Radio.
I met Laura in 2018 and I mostly had an email relationship with her, which was a unique experience. Some of her emails were pages long with no paragraph breaks, while others were just a couple of sentences — but I could always hear her voice. Here are some quotes, representing the range of things she wrote about, to give you a sense of what it was like to correspond with her.
Spoiler: it was fun. (Once she wrote just to announce that she was refusing to pay the NCCAOM as an act of civil disobedience.) Also, content warning for swearing. Laura had zero fucks to give and not much of a filter.
The number of acupuncturists I feel like I can rely on to not do and say stupid, profession destroying things seems to grow smaller by the day. I’ve done my best to support the ones that have some vision. Thanks for doing the same. Best of luck.
HI, I found this quote about licensing bullshit I had saved, I saved it because it was about licensing. “30 years ago 1 in 20 Americans in any profession had to get a license, now it’s 1 in 3……… REQUIREMENTS THAT DO NOT DO MUCH EXCEPT PROTECT THE CARTEL OF PEOPLE IN PLACE AND THAT HAS THE EFFECT OF EXCLUDING PEOPLE FROM RISING AND GETTING INTO THEIR OWN BUSINESS.” You never know when this might come in handy.
I don’t catch typos, etc so lots of my emails have a bunch of mistakes in them ( I was punched in the head for an hour when I was younger). As a person with a robust trauma history for someone who didn’t grow up in a war zone, I can comprehend trauma’s many layers of impact.
The psychological violence hurled by acupuncturists towards other acupuncturists is stunning to outside professionals… our regulatory practices have harmed all of us. The intentional parts of our policies are incredibly demoralizing. The unconscious motivations appear to be driving and really need some light. “Good people can do really bad things without conscience, using their peer group as their guide”, paraphrase of Bert Hellinger. The inability to examine our motivations and practices has taken us down the road to nowhere, as evidenced by the numbers leaving and not entering the acupuncture profession.
RE: DENMARK FYI. License is voluntary, anyone can get trained and do acupuncture. You can get a license if you qualify and want one, but dont have to. that! is the way it can be handled. Denmark has over 900 5NP programs, about 300 free or almost no cost. thats what can happen without strangulation and stagnation. Per capita, that would be about 214 5NP clinics in New Hampshire. We could definitely make a dent if we had 214 ear clinics in New Hampshire…
My work very much depends on being independent from many of the vocal players, and almost no one knows all that I have laid the groundwork for. I remain, as always, completely dedicated to POCA Tech’’s mission, and remain committed to facilitating POCA Tech’s sustainability with a strong role in the US.
Thanks for having in through all the grinds and challenges… I, for one, appreciate your dedication and perseverance as I know so well how hard it is.
oh, and great job you are doing educating. Keep the faith. POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
I can’t quite believe I’m never going to get another all-caps screed from Laura. Or another unexpected pep talk. Or a surprise infusion of kindness and understanding, with a side of exasperated cursing about the acupuncture profession. I never knew what I was going to get when one of her emails landed in my inbox, but I always felt accompanied, and I’m going to miss her.
It’s true that almost nobody knows all that she laid the groundwork for. But least we don’t have to wonder how to honor her memory.
5NP 4 EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE
Big thanks to Elizabeth Ropp for help with this newsletter, especially for the links and information about Laura’s biography.