Studies Confirm that Acupuncture is Not Safe in the Hands of Non-licensed Acupuncturists

Duh. You can read about the study here

New Thursday hours starting in June

In part based on the ups and downs in patient volume throughout the week (Some days I'm real busy, some days I'm real not busy),

in part to better accommodate getting more stuff done in my personal life (Gardening, home projects, getting time in with my 92 year old mother),

and in part to have some after work hours for those of you who can't get away during the day...

We're going to try something different:

Beginning in June, our Thursday hours will be 12 - 8, starting late and ending late.

Montgomery Burns by any other name...

We just paid our old landlord several thousands of dollars to go back into whatever dark hole he crawled out of and leave us the hell alone. So it goes... This, the culmination of three plus years of absolutely the most ridiculous crap one could ever imagine from a landlord. Suffice it to say, he ain't from around here...


This is a huge hit to a micro business such as ours, but we'll survive. We survived being this jerks tenants for three years. We'll survive this.

We had a dispute over a two months difference in interpretation of our lease and went to small claims court trying to get back our $2400 security deposit. For all my efforts, I can't say I did a very good job at conveying my arguments. I was simply too emotionally invested, and I should have called witnesses. We lost.

While our landlord got to keep our deposit, he was not awarded any other monetary damages because he failed to file a counter claim. I thought this represented a fairly perfect symmetry of justice.

Of course, he would not stop there, and further threats of legal action ensued. To the end he was up to his old tricks, trying to get us to pay for things that were not ours to pay for, such as the replacement of a set of exterior double doors, which were upgraded for his new tenant.

That we put about ten grand into refurbishing his building, and left him an immaculate, beautiful space meant nothing to him.

Ultimately, it came down to paying more in attorneys fees to keep going and still have the hassle of this mess in our lives - and still possibly lose, or stop it all now and buy peace.

We chose the latter.
I would rather lose and have my integrity, than to win at any price.

Ironically, we missed out on a property across the street from where we wound up on South Lamar. The owner of that property is one of the sweetest old guys you could ever hope to meet. His name is Ben, and he is a real deal, old school South Austin landlord. It is heart warming that he became a friend and patient. He brought his wife who was undergoing treatment for cancer to us for acupuncture. 


The day I got word we lost in small claims court, I also got the sweetest note from Ben letting me know his wife had passed away and how much she enjoyed her time at the clinic. The duality was striking: The love and humanity of this sweet old guy who could have been our landlord contrasted against the unbridled greed and arrogance of the landlord we wound up with. 

First Free Friday Coming Up

We've resuming First Free Fridays after a holiday break. The first Friday of the month, new patients are free. Coming up: Friday, February 5th...

There are a few reasons we host First Free Fridays:

We want to introduce folks to acupuncture, and the work that we do at South Austin Community Acupuncture.

We want you to spread the word about South Austin Community Acupuncture.  

We are a community acupuncture clinic. Community acupuncture is community supported acupuncture.
Community acupuncture isn't about being free or about being cheap, it is primarily about community - and it is only with the support of the community that we are able to do what we do.

Acupuncture is particularly well suited to treatment in a group setting > treating in a group setting makes it possible for us to see more people > seeing more people, in turn, makes it possible for us to charge less > charging less makes it possible for you to use acupuncture more realistically.

Acupuncture is typically not a one treatment kind of thing. It depends on what you are working on, but generally acute problems require a few treatments in close succession, whereas a more chronic situation may require longer term, on gong treatment. And always, acupuncture is just good at relieving stress. It's very relaxing. So if acupuncture isn't prohibitively expensive, you can actually use it in a way that is most beneficial to you - as often, or for as long as you need to.

So come on out, and spread the word...

Living and dying and community acupuncture

My oldest brother, William, passed away on December 5th. I shut the clinic down down for a couple of days to be with my family and bury my brother. Just incredibly sad. One of my first thoughts was that I really couldn't afford to close again ( I had just been closed for five or six days straight for Thanksgiving ) - a sad testament to the world we live in. Of course I did close. I was, however, grateful to have work to return to, to occupy myself with.

William taught me art, my first love. As he was being lowered in the ground I noticed a 'T' had been left off his last name on the vault the casket was placed in. He would have appreciated this attention to detail, and the application of the letter with silver spray paint. A fitting final moment.

I have thought about community acupuncture as a great leveler before, but this thought seemed particularly poignant upon my return - my senses heightened by raw grief. In one chair is a patient who ultimately will die from the cancer they are fighting, in the next someone with a broken heart. One is just stressed, another has a headache. All receiving acupuncture together. All human. All suffering, each in their own way.

In the community acupuncture setting all these beings converge, each ones story unknown to the other - participants all in the large group nap that happens in the treatment room at South Austin Community Acupuncture. It is a profoundly dignified thing, in it's own perfectly messy way.

So community acupuncture brings us together. We hardly even have to talk about it. We are all human.
We all know what that is.

THANKSGIVING

We will be closed for Thanksgiving Nov. 25th - Nov. 30th, and re-open Tuesday Dec. 1.
Our first break of the year!

Thanks Mary!

Mary Lowry, patron and friend of the clinic posted this on her Dog Canyon blog recently... South Austin Community Acupuncture: the Other Healthcare Revolution