Sticking Together

Two West Philly needlers make the case for community-based acupuncture.

by Andrew Zitcer

I LIKE THE WAY QI MOVES: Ellen Vincent, looking sharp. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

For most Philadelphians, the acupuncture option is not on the table. It's either too esoteric (needles?!) or too expensive (expect to pay about $85 or more per session, not covered in most insurance plans). But the procedure is widely endorsed by health-care professionals and alternative health advocates as an effective treatment for a variety of disorders. According to the National Institutes of Health, one-third of Americans use alternative medicine, including acupuncture, as part of their health regimen. But for many people, pricey "boutique" treatments are out of reach.

A movement has begun, designed to change the way acupuncture is perceived and delivered, and Philadelphians Korben Perry and Ellen Vincent are on board. They're part of the Community Acupuncture Network, a group of more than 60 clinics throughout North America which abide by a few simple, but trailblazing, rules on display at Perry and Vincent's Philadelphia Community Acupuncture at 50th and Baltimore. There is a sliding scale from $15 to $35 per session; treatments are done in the round, with multiple patients sitting in chairs receiving treatment in full view of one another; and the vibe is low-key and volunteer-driven, designed to bring acupuncture to a broader variety of patients.

Prior to opening Philadelphia Community Acupuncture in August 2007, Perry and Vincent had the two most common kinds of acupuncturist experiences. Perry had a private practice, seeing one patient per hour and charging accordingly. Vincent worked with an M.D. in North Philly, doing pain management for a population with personal injury or workers' comp claims; the focus was limited. Neither were entirely comfortable in their work settings.

It was a trip to a post-Katrina New Orleans that sparked Perry's imagination. He worked for several weeks giving free treatment to storm-tossed New Orleanians with a group called Acupuncturists Without Borders. They treated people wherever and however: on sidewalks, in makeshift settings. Upon returning to Philadelphia, Perry joined the Community Acupuncture Network and started looking for a partner. The following day, Vincent found him online, and Philadelphia Community Acupuncture was born.

PCA and other community clinics have a common ancestor: Working Class Acupuncture in Portland, which has been around since 2002, and sees more than 300 patients per week. WCA experienced early success with this model and began to publicize it vigorously in 2006 using blogs, social networking tools and a self-published how-to book. Perry and Vincent are part of the restless group that picked up on the Working Class spirit and decided to put the community model to work in their hometown.

Philadelphia Community Acupuncture is on the third floor of an old firehouse that also houses a cluster of other local businesses, including Dock Street Brewery and Restaurant, Firehouse Bicycles and the Satellite Café. To get your treatment, you walk up a few flights of stairs (the elderly and infirm are out of luck for now) and enter a hushed space supported by dark-stained exposed beams and tall ceilings. A volunteer processes the fee (you pay according to means, using the honor system). Your first visit includes a private consult with either Perry or Vincent off the main room, and then it's time to sit in one of the reclining chairs and get "needled," as they like to call it. (I have received treatments from both Perry and Vincent, as well as other acupuncturists around Philadelphia.)

Perry and Vincent move in near-silence from patient to patient, checking in by listening to the patient's pulse through the wrist, looking at the patient's tongues, and observing each person's qi — energy flow. If it all sounds a bit mysterious, that's because it is. Nobody is quite sure why acupuncture works; devotees are satisfied that it does.

The first written account of the technique is the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine and it is believed to be more than 2,000 years old. The ideas go back much further. Acupuncturists can tell if the qi is flowing properly through the body's system of energy meridians if there is a proper balance of yin and yang. The method is called "pattern-based diagnosis," and frustrates Western practitioners, with their analytical mindsets, according to Portland acupuncturist Lisa Rohleder. In her book, The Remedy: Integrating Acupuncture into American Health Care (Kulia Waiwaiole, $15), she explains that "the context is more important than the cause." Once the context is established, the goal is to restore flows and balance using the needles.

That's where PCA's 120 or so weekly visitors come in. The patient base is local, hailing from every direction around the firehouse, says Perry. He admits that they are hoping for more participation from low-income communities in West Philadelphia, but word of mouth is the main way people find out about PCA, meaning that each new community needs to have some early adopters who will spread the word and convert the skeptics.

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Vida Mia Ruiz, a midwifery student at Penn, has been receiving treatments on a weekly basis. An allergy to ibuprofen left her without alternatives to treat her chronic back pain. "I was amazed that on my graduate-school budget I would be able to get the treatment that I needed," she reflects. People often think that she got into acupuncture because she is a midwife, but she attributes it to "a failure of Western medicine."

Perry and Vincent are cautiously optimistic about the viability of their project, about their ability to make a living giving tons of low-cost treatments. Rohleder and her partners founded the Community Acupuncture Network, and recently visited PCA to do a training for East Coast practitioners.

"PCA is going to be where a lot of East Coast/Mid-Atlantic acupuncturists get the vision and the inspiration and the ideas for how to make community acupuncture a reality." says Rohleder. "Being able to see a model which really works makes all the difference when you are trying to implement a new idea." You can see a U.S. map dotted with community acupuncture locations hanging in PCA's lobby, evidence of "the revolution," as it's known to insiders. Perry and Vincent call it "sustainable health care." Time will tell.

(editorial@citypapaper.net)