Community Acupressure
Why CORE HEALTH?
Why Community Acupressure Self Care?
On the grounds that a healthy well-balanced individual is the core of a healthy society, Core Health is established to support development of that core, by making the prevention/ life-cultivation approach of Traditional Asian Medicine available to the general public in a cost effective and culturally acceptable form. CORE stands for Coactive Organic Resonance Enhancement- our definition of health building activity.
* The NADA (National Acupuncture Detox Association) five point ear acupuncture protocol upon which our CHI Bead protocol is based, is well established by published research and over 30 years successful experience in drug and alcohol detox treatment settings all over the world. It has also been shown effective in psychiatric hospitals and community health clinics in supporting staff as well as clients who are drug users or who have been traumatized by natural disaster, war, terrorism, or who suffer from acute and chronic mental illnesses. Research has shown both acupuncture and acupressure to be effective for pain, insomnia and anxiety.(see: Richard Harris, Ph.D., et al,: Journal of NeuroImage, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2009)
* We wish to free the modality from the constraints imposed by legal control of who has the right to use needles, which has limited the wider application of the NADA (see: National Acupuncture Detox Association: www.acudetox.com) program, by teaching people to use acupressure which does not involve the use of needles, on themselves and their families and friends. Using and teaching others to use seeds and beads and hands for the protocols avoids both legal and hygiene issues and expands the potential impact of this simple safe effective modality on the communities, neighborhoods and service personnel who need it most.
* The Community Self Care Acupressure Program has evolved in order to: Address the challenge of social transformation, one person at a time, while community building and creating a felt sense of community through regular Community Acupressure Self Care Circles in which participants will receive weekly auricular acupressure treatments which have been shown to increase relaxation & stress management, while providing relief from trauma, addictive behavior, attention deficit, psychological and behavioral problems, insomnia and pain. (See: www.CoreHealthInstitute.com)
* We wish to contribute toward addressing the healthcare crisis in our country. Those of the underclass, who are institutionalized or drug users can access the NADA) ear acupuncture/acupressure detox protocol in funded programs, whereas those in the working and lower middle class do not or will not access those services and cannot afford to access the spa or medical acupuncture type services which cost $100-200 per treatment.
* These working and lower middle class people, who need support in continuing to work, and raise their families, despite trauma and pain and limited resources, are the underserved, endangered and exhausted backbone of our society.
* We intend to make acupuncture/acupressure, which are primarily available to the affluent and highly educated as exclusive personalized alternative or complementary medicine, available in an affordable model, to the rest of society, by teaching people to treat themselves and each other. Treatments and/ or trainings, can also in a group setting, potentially be administered by personnel already being paid for providing other services. (see: www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org )
* In addition, we wish to support the work of existing educational and human service agencies and programs by providing
treatments as well as trainings for individuals and groups which provide immediate relief and practical stress response modulation skills that can reduce unhealthy behaviors connected to trauma and unhealthy response to daily stresses, increase future stress resiliency, and promote focus, self sufficiency and greater life or job satisfaction
* We hope to promote resource sustainability, both personal and social: Programs which have been well designed and executed have often failed because of resource depletion. They often lack money or energy enough to continue over a long enough time period to make a significant social impact. Community Self Care is directed to train and support the self care and self cultivation of staff, who will then serve as role models and coaches for their clients and fellow staff members.
* One of our commitments is to network with other experts in their fields of health and wellness in order for them to teach techniques for managing stress and promoting physiological health as well as a felt sense of wellbeing. Employees of organizations who participate in Community Self care programs, are thus trained and supported to establish health and wellbeing enhancing habits, will be able to act as role models for the community which they serve and will be able to avoid burnout themselves. The existence of internet access within participating programs allows for a very economical and efficient dissemination of expert teaching through the use of teleconferencing facilities.
* We have honored our intention to design and employ research models to validate the efficacy of the said approaches. We have consulted with researchers at the U of Michigan and a research design is being submitted.
* In the future we hope to replicate and validate research that has already been performed in order to continue to establish these approaches as “tried and trusted” modalities for the general public as they are already used and respected by the drug detox , psychiatric and acupuncture communities
* We will translate research results into meaningful, easy to understand and easily assessable techniques which will have substantial immediate and long term positive impacts on the individual as well as the community at large. Maximizing both the community accessibility to acupressure and stress resiliency training and the impact of that training on the staff of community service organizations is the goal of the project, so the final product should be effective , simple , cost effective, and easily reproduced.
The Core Health Community Acupressure Model Components:
* Auricular acupressure
* Body/mind acupressure & awareness techniques
* Food /Nutrition awareness ( identification & replacement of stress induced comfort eating), urban food sourcing, farmers markets, food co ops,
* Movement , Brain Training, and Sensory Integration methods
* Addiction Prevention and Detox
* Trauma resolution
* Burn-out Prevention/ Stress Resiliency development
* Community building/ Environmental Awareness
* Personal Integrity/Energetic self-sufficiency and Sustainable Vitality
