Seattle Community Acupuncture
What is different about the Green Point Acupuncture L.L.C.?
- We treat in a community setting -
In our clinic we primarily use 5 tables in a large, quiet, soothing space. Treating patients in a community setting has many benefits: it’s easy for friends and family members to come in for treatment together; many patients find it comforting; and a collective energetic field becomes established which actually makes individual treatments more powerful.
- We have a sliding scale -
The only way that we can make acupuncture affordable and still make a living ourselves is to streamline our treatments and see multiple patients in an hour. This is exactly how acupuncture is practiced traditionally in Asia.
Our Commitment to You
We want to make it possible for you to receive acupuncture regularly enough and long enough to get better and stay better. We want our community to be welcoming to all different kinds of people. We want to give you the tools to take care of your own health so that you will not need to rely on corporations like Big Insurance or Big Pharmaceuticals for costly, high-tech interventions. We will provide a safe environment with experienced practitioners.
What We Need From You
♦ Responsibility
Green Point Acupuncture L.L.C. does not provide primary care medicine! If you think you have a problem that is not “garden variety” (meaning, you are worried that you might have a serious infection, a malignant growth, or an injury that won’t heal), or if you want someone knowledgeable to go over the details of your medical history with you, you need to see a primary care physician (ND, MD, or DO).
Green Point Acupuncture L.L.C. does not receive grants, state or federal money, or insurance reimbursement. It exists because patients pay for their treatments – it is a sustainable community business model.
♦ Flexibility
The community setting requires some flexibility from you. For instance, we have a few patients who snore. Other patients who dislike snoring bring earplugs to their treatments. We are grateful for this! Some of our patients even bring favorite pillows or blankets from home with them, because they prefer theirs to ours. That’s fine with us. Basically, we need you to participate in making yourself comfortable in the community room before we arrive to treat you.
♦ Community-Mindedness
The soothing atmosphere in our clinic exists because all of our patients create it by relaxing together. We appreciate everyone’s presence! This kind of collective stillness is a rare and precious thing in our rushed and busy society. Maintaining this reservoir of calm requires that no one talk very much in the clinic space. If you want to have a substantial conversation, we will probably need to schedule that separately and might need to do it by phone.
Part of our success is that our patients learn the “routine” and take on a lot of responsibility for the appointments. Re-scheduling and making payment happens at the front desk BEFORE each treatment, so you can relax and enjoy treatment. Please take all personal belongings, (bags, shoes, etc.) with you back into the treatment room. And of course, please turn off your cell phone.
♦ Commitment
Acupuncture is a PROCESS. It is very rare for any acupuncturist to be able to resolve a problem with one treatment. In China, a typical treatment protocol for a chronic condition could be acupuncture every other day for three months! Most of our patients do need a course of treatment, rather than a couple of treatments, in order to get what they want from acupuncture.
One big reason that we are able to keep our prices so low is because of the extraordinary amount of marketing our patients do on our behalf. We cannot express how grateful we are for this. Our patients are such effective marketers because they have first-hand experience of how well acupuncture works. All of our satisfied patients basically made a commitment to a course of treatment.
On your first visit, your acupuncturist will suggest a course of treatment, which can be anything from “we’d like to see you in the next two days” to “we’d really like to see you twice a week for the next three weeks”. This suggestion is based on our experience with treating different kinds of conditions. If you don’t come in often enough or long enough, acupuncture probably won’t work for you. The purpose of our sliding scale is to help you make that commitment. If you have questions about how long it will take to see results, please ask us, or if you think you need to adjust your treatment plan, please let us know. We need you to commit to the process of treatment in order to get good results.
Green Point Acupuncture L.L.C.