A few weeks ago I had the honour of giving the commencement address at the Pacific Rim College. I don’t have a lot of experience with public speaking before a large group of folks but I decided to say yes to the invitation anyway. Here is what I shared with them…
Good afternoon to you all. Thank you for inviting me, and a big thank you to all the friends and family who are here to witness this important moment in so many people’s lives. Congratulations to all of you who are graduating – it is an honour to be invited here to share thoughts on this special moment. I welcome you as a colleague. It feels somewhat surreal to be looking back at you all from this podium. In 2004 I was sitting in your place. I struggle sometimes to comprehend how I went from being an enthusiastic graduate to someone who has been practicing for 20 years.
Many of you have never met me or know who I am but I have a fairly long history with the College. I can remember having dinner with one of the founders of the College back before its inception. We were discussing our dream version of a school for alternative medicine. I had a passion for teaching and for Acupuncture and so when the college opened in 2006 I taught courses in acupuncture theory and technique. I loved teaching and was steeped in the study of the medicine. After a few years of working in the classroom however I made the decision to focus my work in clinical practice – to spend more time learning instead of teaching.
In my first few years of practice I felt a fair amount of discouragement. I knew that this medicine, which I had spent so much time and energy learning, had great value, but I struggled to find a way to bring my newly acquired skills and knowledge into community. I had some sense of the potential value of what I learned but no idea how to share it – how to introduce it to my community.
One of my first glimpses of its potential happened while I was volunteering at a detox centre in Vancouver. Working alongside Les Moncrief – an acupuncturist who provided ear acupuncture to people detoxing from various substances. Each day Les and I would sit in a room while a dozen or more folks wandered in. Each one would wait their turn for us to carefully insert tiny needles into 5 points in their ears. After everyone would sit in a circle in a quiet room, while soft music played. The participants would sit for 30 to 60 minutes in silence. I can still remember how moving it felt, observing them all and later listening to each of them share with me how helpful the treatment was – how it eased their cravings, and helped with withdrawal symptoms. For the week that I volunteered I would see them come in each day – in recovery and appreciation. This experience planted important seeds for my future practice.
Remember to stay alert for these seed planting moments.
In 2007, after 3 years of working in private practice I stumbled upon a workshop on community acupuncture that was being held in Portland Oregon. (For those of you who are not familiar with community acupuncture it is the practice of offering acupuncture treatments in a shared space. This gives the acupuncturist the ability to treat 6 or more people an hour – a method that had been used in other cultures but not in North America.) The teachers turned out to be the founders of the community acupuncture movement in North America – Lisa and Skip. The workshop was held over a weekend. I signed up for it – a mixture of curiosity and a need for some continuing education credits. The workshop was even more inspiring than my experiences in Vancouver. Here was a model of acupuncture that I felt had a real chance to make a big contribution to my community and the medicine. I came home, found a location, signed a lease, and started building the clinic of my dreams. We opened in the fall of 2007, the first community clinic in BC and the 19th clinic of its kind in North America. We had 8 comfy recliner chairs arranged in a circle in a quiet cozy room.
The collegiality I experienced with my fellow community acupuncturists was awe inspiring. All of us sharing our ideas and inspiration feeling like we were making a real impact with our profession – really putting it to use. I had know idea how all this would be received. Would people even come? Could this even work?
10 years later hemma was giving upwards of a 1000 treatments a month and more than 300 plus clinics, spread throughout North America, were giving more than a million treatments a year. We saw health conditions of all sorts, and people of all ages, from all walks of life. I’ve had up to four generations of family in my clinic at one time, moms’ and their babies, couples before their wedding, young children, people with end stage cancer. Health conditions of all sorts. During these past 20 years I have been very blessed. I found a way to offer this medicine – to provide a meaningful contribution to many peoples lives.
Many of us enter this profession from a desire to serve. My own inspiration came from watching my sister live with a chronic auto-immune disease that finally took her life at the age of 49. I am sure many of you have similar stories and events that have motivated you to embark on your journey of study. I feel lucky to have found such a meaningful and productive way to share my skills and knowledge. I encourage you all to hold on to your motivations and inspirations as you go forward into practice.
So what does my personal story have to do with you and this moment you find yourselves in? You are at the junction that I found myself in 20 years ago and I am here to welcome you, to share some of my experience with you, and to encourage you to put your knowledge and experience to use – to its fullest expression.
I always say one should give advice sparingly – one of my favourite teachers – Richard Tan – always used to say, “how the hell should I know?” That said, here are a few insights I have from my experience that hopefully will be helpful to you as you begin this next chapter of your lives.
- Stick together – these practices can often feel lonely, even competitive. But the truth is we can accomplish so much more when we work together as a team in solidarity. Find your tribe and work together to share your dreams. There is no shortage of need right now.
- We need you – our communities need your medicine, maybe more than ever before. Our health care system is struggling to cope with the increase in chronic illness, mental health, and health conditions that do not respond to conventional treatment. Our offerings can make a real and significant contribution to peoples health and well-being, and to the health and well-being of our society.
- Think outside the box – Individually and collectively find creative and innovative ways to deliver your services to the community in a way that is simple (easy for folks to understand), effective, and accessible.
- Be persistent – don’t be afraid to fail, and know when to try a different approach. Be prepared to work long and hard to build your practice.
- Practice – most of your learning from this point will come from practicing as opposed to studying.
- The practice is about people and relationships – as students we spend most of our time studying the medicine but much of our essential work is about caring for and connecting with people.
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In closing I would like to share a quote that has always been a source of inspiration to me by William Hutchison Murray, a Scottish mountaineer and writer.
”This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no one could have dreamt would have come their way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”