Category Archives: Community Acupuncture

The Community Acupuncture movement is catching on nationwide. To learn more about community acupuncture and to find a directory of clinics, visit POCA (The People’s Organization of Community Acupuncture.)

Oakland Acupuncture Project is modeled after the Working Class Acupuncture clinic in Portland, Oregon. The Working Class Acupuncture website has more information.

You can also find lots of great articles about community acupuncture on our blog. Enjoy!

Temporary Closure begins Tuesday, March 17th

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With heavy hearts we have made the decision to temporarily close our clinics beginning Tuesday, March 17th. We don’t take this decision lightly. We are closing because we take our mission to promote community health seriously. Evidence regarding COVID-19 shows that the best way to ensure that this epidemic threatens as few in our area as possible is to limit its spread through physical-distancing. As you all know, we are typically open 7 days a week. This is the only time we have closed our clinics for this long in over 12 years of operation. But, playing a role in helping to “flatten the curve” of COVID19/coronavirus is paramount at this time.

 

To be clear, we are not aware of any confirmed case of COVID19/coronavirus in our staff or patient community. We are doing this as a precaution and to follow public health advice to limit gatherings of people. We hope that our closing will be part of the momentum of people staying home to prevent a severe outbreak. If ours and others’ measures to encourage physical distancing are successful, we may never see COVID19 become as widespread and destructive as it is in other places.

 

In two weeks, we hope to be open, but we will be evaluating and assessing this situation as it continues. We thank you in advance for your support and patience, and look forward to seeing you when we open our doors again soon.

 

If you would like to support the clinic through this tough time, consider buying one of our pre-paid Easy Cards. For the next two weeks we will be selling these at the discount price of $65 for a 5 treatment card or $125 for a 10 treatment card. You can purchase these either through our paypal account or by mailing your check to:

Oakland Acupuncture Project

440 Santa Clara Ave.

Oakland, CA 94610

 

Your purchases of pre-paid treatment packages are going directly to keeping our expenses covered so that we can return to normal clinic operations as soon as possible once we re-open our doors.

 

We hope that you all will stay connected to your communities and support networks in whatever ways you can, from a distance, and that you will reach out to local resources if you need support. 

 

Warmly,

OAP Staff

 

Sarah on Marin POCAfest 2019

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Sarah (left) with Evelyn from our Laurel Ave. clinic at POCAfest 2019

I have been working at OAP for almost 7 years now, but have somehow never been able to attend more than one day of the People’s Organization of Community Acupuncture’s (aka POCA’s) bi-annual POCAFest.  This year though, the stars aligned and I was able to attend a full weekend of POCAFest in the beautiful Marin Headlands, and it was fantastic! For those who don’t know, POCAFest is a special occasion in the community acupuncture world where AcuPunks from all over the country, and occasionally from other countries as well, get together and dance to polka music for 3 days straight, it’s freaking crazy!  Ok, maybe that is a big fat lie, I actually did not hear one piece of polka music, though we did talk a lot about all things community acupuncture. There were classes on neuroscience, medical cannabis, community outreach, bookkeeping, and working with kids in a community setting, just to name a few. There was even a class where we talked about bands like Wu Tang and Crass and how their music and culture started underground movements to make big changes in their communities, and how that related to community acupuncture and our underground movements past, present, and future; pretty cool right?!?

I think my favorite part of Pocafest though was getting to spend some quality time with all my wonderful co-workers.  Though we all work in the same buildings, it is actually pretty rare that we spend more than a few minutes together between shifts, and this time is usually filled with logistics, eating, and maybe a few jokes to make each other smile.  This year 9 out of our 12 current punks, and a few of our old buddies like Cait and Roselle, came out to POCAfest! You could almost say it was a SOAPfest (Sacrament / Oakland Acupuncture Project), though maybe not quite so clean. Together we not only took some great classes, but hiked up into the bluffs, soaked up some sun, wind, and drizzle at the beach, ate delicious food, and hung out around the campfire. It was a great chance to catch up on each other lives, share a few funny stories, and commiserate about all the highs and lows we experience as community acupunks.  I left feeling more connected than ever to my SOAP family and am stoked that we have so many gifted and amazing acupuncturists in our community. I feel pretty lucky to be part of this community that we have all created together at SOAP and hopefully you do too.

Overall, I left the weekend with some great ideas on how to improve both my practice and our clinic, and with a rekindled desire to get more involved with the POCA community and help make acupuncture accessible to even more people.  If getting more involved and helping spread the community acupuncture love is something you would like to do as well you should check out POCA’s website. There are opportunities for you to volunteer, share your thoughts, and can also become a member.  For as little as $25 you can join POCA, support a good cause and get some great kickbacks as well.

This month we are even offering $10 to treatments to all POCA members all month long. What a deal!