“Everything is made of fire,” claimed Heraclitus. What is fascinating about this ancient remark is how it turned out to be so improbably true. Werner Heisenberg, one of the twentieth century’s most important nuclear physicists, wrote in Physics and Philosophy that “modern physics is in some way extremely near to the doctrines of Heraclitus. If we replace the word ‘fire’ by the word ‘energy’ we can almost repeat his statements word for word from our modern point of view.” Twenty-five hundred years after Heraclitus, Heisenberg found his thinking much closer to modern physics than any philosopher who had followed him. Furthermore, Heraclitus did not try to separate himself from the natural world as philosophy has done from Socrates up to Descartes. It was Descartes, most profoundly, whose philosophy created a terrible sense of separateness between mind and body, human beings and the natural world. He destroyed the Logos, the gathering principle, by reducing the world to a set of objects that had little connection to one another.

Read the whole article here:
Notes from a Very Small Island
A practice in belonging to this world
by Erik Reece

Fiddle Workshop at PCA

Crossroads Music presents:

a fiddle workshop at Philadelphia Community Acupuncture.
Sunday, April 7, 11 am to 1 pm.
with APRIL VERCH BAND
Ottawa Valley fiddle and stepdance.

There will be a concert Saturday, December 6 at 7:30 pm
Calvary Church, 48th St. and Baltimore Ave. in West Philadelphia.

You can get all the event info and sound samples @
www.crossroadsconcerts.org.
Please look at the amazing series of music that
Crossroads Music brings to our neighborhood.

Free acupuncture for veterans in Philadelphia

Check out the website for Philadelphia Area Veterans Acupuncture Project.

Obama, The Electric Slide, and acupuncture theory

Here's a link to Korben's piece at The Community Acupuncture Network.

Community Acupuncture Network board meeting

Ellen an I traveled to Portland last week with my wife Amy for the board meeting of the Community Acupuncture Network, or CAN. It took place at the mothership, Working Class Acupuncture in Cully.
The board is working on a lot of things related to figuring out how to create affordable acupuncture, how to get acupuncturists out of theory land and get related to the people in their communities, and how to get more non-acupunks leading CAN. If you're interested in any of the business of the board, check out these articles on CAN's blog.
General description of meeting and members.
A new manifesto for emphasizing the "community": in community acupuncture.
Critique"integrative medicine" vis-a-vis acupuncture.

But, mostly our visit was just tons of fun being around a lot of great people who are really serious about our small part of the revolution, and serious about having fun.

Rebecca Parker: new acupunk at Philly Community Acupuncture !

We are so so pleased to introduce Rebecca Parker. She is a delight, as a person and a practitioner. (I actually just got a treatment from her, and am feeling like a million bucks.) She has already been seeing patients for two weeks, working every Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. Ellen and I dreamed about Rebecca working with us when she finished her studies. And, it happened!

Rebecca wrote the following to introduce herself.

Working at the Firehouse is like coming home for me. Before my life as an acupuncturist, I was a bicycle mechanic. I worked toward the health of my community as a wrench at Firehouse bikes, and facilitator at the Bike Church bike coop. I started hanging out on Baltimore Avenue over a decade ago, and came back to visit periodically while away at acupuncture school. This neighborhood is a unique place where passion, creativity and community sensibility mix, and I’m thrilled to serve as a neighborhood acupuncturist here. As a practitioner, I think of myself as a facilitator who guides the acupuncture recipient through the process of rediscovering their own resources. As my teacher used to say, we just direct traffic, it’s the patient who is driving the car.

One of the things I love about PCA is that it’s a place that encourages people to take responsibility for their own health, empowering the patient as much as possible. People are given types of agency over their care that they don’t get in places where they are told exactly how much to pay, taken to exactly the treatment bed that the practitioner designates for them, and told how long their treatment will last. Here the patient is encouraged to pay attention to their body, because through this relationship comes the information needed to be healthy. I love acupuncture because it reminds my body of what it could feel like. It moves my stuckness, and sticks my moveness. I love it because it’s a simple, safe, cheap, effective medicine. With Big Pharma and Big Insurance making healthcare less and less accessible, it’s really important that we have ways of reducing our reliance on these sometimes unavoidable monstrosities.

So big thanks and gratitude are due to the amazing Korben and Ellen who turned this space, that was once a dumping ground for old bike frames and a tangle of wheels, forks, and banana seats, into a peaceful sanctuary for group nap-time. Much gratitude to my current and future patients, who teach me so much about human resiliency, and to all my teachers who shared their wisdom with me. And finally, much gratitude to West Philadelphia.

Pay-what-you-want fundraiser for Studio 34

Experimental performers The Missoula Oblongata present "The Last Hurrah of the Clementines" as a fundraiser for neighborhood art/yoga space Studio 34. Check Puppet Uprising's website for details.