Published: April 05, 2008 08:47 pm      

World Health Day is Monday

Community Acupuncture Berea hosts events

BEREA — Community Acupuncture Berea (CAB) will host a day of free ear acupuncture treatments, Tibetan pulse readings and qi gong demonstrations Monday in celebration of World Health Day.

The event, conducted in collaboration with acupuncturists from Lexington and Georgetown, is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at WaysMeet GreenSpace, 105 Jackson St., in College Square.

An affiliate of WaysMeet Healing Arts Center, CAB developed from a collective of health practitioners, teachers and workshop facilitators who began meeting together in 2000 and started offering services as WaysMeet in March 2004.

“There is minimal pain with insertion of the needle,” Maureen Flannery of CAB said about acupuncture. “After that, most people feel incredibly relaxed. I have trouble with people snoring. For people who are phobic about needles or for people who have bleeding problems, we use little titanium pellets into those same points. We just attach an adhesive and don’t break the skin.”

The ear acupuncture treatments will be available from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and participants are asked to eat before the 30- to 45-minute treatment.

“It’s been developed as a simple treatment,” Flannery said. “It’s good for reducing stress and anxiety, improving overall well being and it helps with sleeping.”

“The important thing is that points in the ear treat the whole body,” she said.

Tibetan pulse readings will be offered from 1 to 2 p.m. and 4 to 6 p.m.

“The Berea College labor student who works with me in my community clinics was trained before she came to this country to go to Berea College as a Tibetan medicine practitioner,” Flannery said. “She actually worked in a clinic there in the same community where the Dahlia Lama has his headquarters.”

“She has a way of checking pulses on each wrist and giving you some sense of what might be helpful for you in terms of your health,” she said. “It’s very non-invasive and people seem to find it very useful.”

Qi gong demonstrations also will be conducted at noon and 5:30 p.m. 

“We have a practitioner affiliated with WaysMeet who also is nurse practitioner who had studied in China several times to learn this form of moving meditation,” Flannery said. “It’s actually part of the health care system in China. It would be something that would be prescribed just like a medication for stress. It’s non-aerobic. It’s something older people in Asia often times do.”

Information also will be available on the theme of this year’s World Health Day, the effects of climate change on health, and there will be opportunities to learn more about the Berea Rain Barrel Festival, scheduled for April 26. 

All donations for services will support the work of Acupuncturists Without Borders, a nonprofit organization which provides free acupuncture to communities and individuals in crisis.

“I went to a training in January to be part of a team, and I was incredibly inspired by the way in which it can effectively complement what the Red Cross and the emergency workers offer in a situation like Hurricane Katrina,” Flannery said. “The nice thing about it is that it can be helpful not just for the people who are affected by the crisis, but also for the people responding to it. To me, it’s really powerful that you have a treatment that can apply to a community when the community has been stricken.”

No appointments are needed and parking is available in the Boone Tavern lot.

For details, call 986-0098 or go to www.caberea.com.