This post began as a brief comment on Jennifer Armstrong's puff piece Massage, Acupuncture and Yoga May All Be Part of Your Health Plan on Alternet.org yesterday, and I decided to cross-post and expand here since I found I actually had a lot to say. Several things came up for me, and I'm still kinda incoherent, but here it is:
What got up my ire (in addition to the Style-sectionish tone) was something probably not even meant as a dig, which almost makes it, well...even more demeaning to practioners and unhelpful as far as changing public acceptance of alternative care to the serious medicine they are. I know the intent of the piece was not to educate on what modalities like massage and Chinese medicine could treat(I know! More's the pity--maybe this is what she should have written the article on instead...but I digress).
Although Armstrong seems enthusiastic about acupuncture and massage, she denigrates them by dubbing them "indulgences". First, neither is an "indulgence". Traditional Chinese medicine is a whole-body medicine that not only uses needles, but custom-blended herbal prescriptions without the nasty side effects of pharmaceuticals, diet and nutrition, meditation, tai chi and bodywork. We successfully treat a wide variety of ailments besides pain and stress, including infertility, gynecological problems, allergies, asthma, arthritis, cold/flu, and sleep disorders to name a few, and we often treat them more effectively and at lower cost than Western medical drug therapy can. Of course, there is also a protocol for "facelift" acupuncture and herbal preparations to treat not only acne but rashes, wrinkles and other skin problems as well.
As for massage, it is not a fluff luxury (although even my clients who get them regularly refer to "treating themselves"!). The medical and health benefits have been well-documented. It reduces the effects of stress, boosts the immune system, relieves pain, improves sleep and athletic performance, again to name a few. Some bodywork that is highly specialized, like Rolfing or Feldenkrais, can perform seeming miracles on long-standing injury or stroke sequelae that confound standard physical therapy.
The second article aspect that bugged me was the premise: find out if your insurance or 125 plan covers these services. Now, I know the article was not meant to do just that, but there are a whole lot of people in this country who either don't have insurance or have deductibles so high they may as well not have it for routine or wellness care. What are those people like me to do? (Yeah, I know--a whole separate series of posts for that subject). The bitter comments of those with no insurance or only medicare were quite revealing, and further proof that without access these healing modalities will remain the province of, as one commenter put it "yuppie bullshit". And yeah, I don't necessarily want acupuncture and massage and yoga to be medicalized the way allopathic medicine has been, and I very much understand the problems inherent in going that road (also fodder for another series of posts for later).
If you are lucky enough to have insurance coverage, which is after all what the article is about, then great. Poke about in your benefits, and let your carrier know that you want these things covered (or covered better) if they aren't. However, if you are uninsured (like me) and this article is a non-starter, you still may have access to these great therapies. Find out if you have any acupuncture or massage schools in your area--most run low-cost community clinics that are supervised by licensed practitioners. My school Yo San also places supervised interns at a few free clinics (like the Venice Family Clinic) in Los Angeles that offer alternative care like acupuncture and chiropractic. As for bodywork, (at least around LA) there are lots of low cost (around $44/hr) massage-only "spas" that staff with experienced and fully licensed therapists, if you don't have insurance and can't get access to massage through your chiropractor. Here in SoCal we also have the Heart Touch program.
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