We are delighted that you have decided to join us for acupuncture! Here are a few things that we think it's helpful for you to know.

• WCA provides community acupuncture. This means that you will receive your treatment in a large, quiet, comfortable room; you will most likely be sitting in a recliner, rather than lying on a table; you do not need to disrobe, you just need to roll your sleeves up to your elbows and your pants up to your knees; you and your acupuncturist will speak briefly in whispers before you get treated; you can stay as long as you want; and last but not least, there will be other people getting treated at the same time, in the same room, in the same way. We love community acupuncture because it makes it easy for people to get treatments whenever they want, to be treated with their families and friends, to feel comfortable rather than isolated, and to create together a collective energetic field which makes the individual treatments more powerful and clinically effective.

• WCA has a sliding scale. For many thousands of years, acupuncture has been a “people's medicine”: low-tech, inexpensive, easily available, and very quiet. Only in the US in the last thirty years did acupuncture become a luxury item for wealthy people, with a cost of $50 to $250 per treatment, individual treatment cubicles, and lots of talking. We have eliminated the unnecessary talking and the unnecessarily high prices. Please pay us whatever you feel comfortable with on our scale of $15 to $35, keeping in mind that you may need a series of treatments. If the cost of treatment is an issue, please let us know. We want you to come in for acupuncture frequently enough and regularly enough to really feel better.
• WCA has no relationship whatsoever with insurance companies, because insurance companies don't like sliding scales! If you have insurance that covers acupuncture, we can give you a receipt to submit, but we cannot bill your insurance for you. If you have questions about insurance in general, please ask the receptionist; we have a longer letter that goes into more detail on this topic.
• Acupuncture is a process. Every now and then, acupuncture will act like a “miracle cure”, and a person will have all of their symptoms disappear after only one treatment – but that is a rare event. Acupuncture works by stimulating the body's own self-healing mechanisms; it is gentle and safe and usually gradual. Almost everybody who gets acupuncture will need a series of treatments to get good results, which is one big reason we came up with our sliding scale. If you don't come in often enough or long enough, acupuncture probably won't work well for you. Your acupuncturist will suggest a treatment plan to you, meaning, how many treatments we think you will need to get good results; please let us know if you have any questions about your treatment plan, and please stick with it to the best of your ability.
• A few housekeeping details: if you need to be up by a certain time, please tell the receptionist when you check in – NOT your acupuncturist, because receptionists are better at keeping track of these things than acupuncturists are! Please bring whatever you need to make yourself comfortable, such as earplugs or headphones; we have pillows and blankets, but if you prefer your own, you can bring those too. Please take all personal belongings with you into the treatment room, and please keep your shoes on until you sit down in your chosen recliner. And please remember that our community works best when everyone is reasonably flexible. One of the things we love best about our clinic is how many different kinds of people enjoy coming here for acupuncture – but some of them do snore, it's true.
• If you like, please come early or stay late and have a cup of tea before or after your treatment! We make our own tea, and though it's not a recliner, it's pretty relaxing too.
• Yes, WCA started the community acupuncture “revolution”! We opened our clinic in 2002, trying out what was then a daring experiment in treating people in recliners and using a sliding scale. Two things happened very quickly: other acupuncturists wanted to know what we were up to, and our patients wanted to know if there were similar clinics in other cities for their families and friends who needed acupuncture. In 2006 we founded the Community Acupuncture Network, a nonprofit organization to encourage a more accessible, sustainable way of providing acupuncture. We started calling what we did “the community acupuncture business model”, and hundreds of acupuncturists are now using it. There is a website, with a list of clinics similar to ours, at www.communityacupuncturenetwork.org; see the “Locate a Clinic” page if you would like to find a clinic like ours in another city. New clinics are opening all the time!
• If you want to learn more about acupuncture, please read our book, Acupuncture Is Like Noodles. We wrote and published it ourselves, and it answers most of the frequently-asked-questions we get about acupuncture, such as: how does acupuncture work? And what can acupuncture treat? And why do you do it like this, instead of the way that some other acupuncturists do it? You can have a cup of tea and read one of our copies, or you can buy your own copy to take home.
• How you can support us: WCA is a community-supported business. We do not receive any grants, state or federal money, or insurance reimbursement. When we started our clinic in 2002, we treated about 12 patients per week. As of 2009, we are treating over 500 patients a week in two locations. This huge growth is due entirely to all of our wonderful patients telling everyone they know about how great acupuncture is, and how well it works when it's not too expensive. Treating so many people allows us to keep our prices low, so the main thing you can do to support us is to help us spread the word! Our goal is to open more WCA clinics in areas of Portland that do not currently have community acupuncture. The main way we raise money for new clinics is our merchandise – t-shirts, tote bags, and especially our book, Acupuncture Is Like Noodles. If you would like to support new WCA clinics, please buy a book!

Call and make your first appointment today:

Cully - 3526 NE 57th Avenue Portland, Oregon 97213
PHONE: 503.335.9440

Hillsdale - 4410 SW Bvrtn-Hillsdale Hwy, Portland, Oregon 97221
PHONE: 503.244.7525

Click here to download new patient paperwork.