Why community acupuncture?

You've learned a little bit about community acupuncture if you read through our "About Us" page, but we also wanted to go more in-depth into why this type of acupuncture can be life-changing. 

In Western medicine, and even with acupuncture in private practice, you may feel like you lose your voice when it comes to speaking up about your health. Because of this, a lot of patients feel like community acupuncture takes some getting used to! You can choose how long to stay, what to pay, and what you'd like to focus on each treatment. Let's go deeper into each of these:

How long would you like to stay? If you stay long enough during an acupuncture treatment, you might reach a point when you feel like you're "done". Acupuncture puts the body into a parasympathetic ("rest and digest") state, and most patients feel very, very relaxed or even fall asleep! When you feel your body start to wake up, that's a good place to end your treatment. We suggest patients plan on staying a full hour so this happens naturally. That being said, if you know you only have half an hour because it's your lunch break and you have other errands to run, some acupuncture is better than no acupuncture. Just tell the Licensed Acupuncturist and your treatment can be cut short that day.

How much to pay? You know your finances better than anyone (or at least you should...), and you'll know what you can afford. We appreciate you paying full price when you can, but if you have a big expense coming up or are budgeting for a certain amount of treatments, we completely understand that you'd want to pay less. Having a sliding scale makes it easy to adjust the costs of each of your treatments as well. If you budget a certain amount of money for acupuncture per month and can't come in one week because of traveling or whatever other reason, you can adjust the prices of your other treatments. Also, because treatments are less expensive, you can afford to come in as often as you need. Have a killer headache that isn't going away? Come in a few times that week to make sure it's gone by the weekend. Fighting a cold? Come in to make sure we kick it out in as short a time as possible!

What to focus on? If we're consistently treating your knee pain but then one day you come in fighting a cold, we can put a hold on the pain treatments and work on kicking out that cold! (Or sometimes we can even work on both.) If we're treating your digestive issues but one week you're ridiculously stressed and want to focus on relaxation, we can do that as well. In community acupuncture we usually work on one or two things at a time, and you can call the shots at each treatment.

We encourage our patients to be their own best health advocates! Speak up during your treatment and get used to having more control of your health. It's empowering :)