After a few years in practice, I discovered a way to get people to see beyond the Western medical model so they understood that natural health care was a positive alternative. For the last 25 years, I've been helping natural health care professionals lead people to discover that they could restore their life, their energy and their health from the inside out, without unnecessary surgeries or harmful drugs. By taking these same steps, you, too, can convert hundreds of people who previously knew nothing about natural health care into new patients.
How many people you are able to help depends on what you are willing to do. I've found that every practitioner has a varying level of what they feel comfortable doing; therefore, the first element that must be addressed is to determine your comfort zone.
Your comfort zone can be defined by the things you are comfortable doing. If you feel comfortable in one-on-one settings, then talking to patients is within your comfort zone. If you feel a little withdrawn or inhibited delivering workshops, then public speaking is outside of what you are comfortable doing.
Limits such as this can hold you back from being on purpose and spreading the message of Oriental medicine to people who could benefit from care. You need to tear down those walls. In doing so, you will reach more people, so you can help them naturally!
There are elements that can be implemented into your practice that will help you reach more people. Start with one element, and gradually incorporate the others into your practice over the next several weeks. Once they are all working in your practice, you'll find yourself reaching out and offering quality care to more people than you ever imagined! The key is to make yourself known to the people in your community. This can be done systematically, using the following guidelines:
1. Reach Out to Those Around You
How many times do you pick up something from the dry cleaners or a local coffee shop? The next time you are going through the line, say something nice about the business or store and tell the people in the store why you chose to shop there. Introduce yourself and tell them that your acupuncture practice is nearby. Invite them to come by your office to find out what you do.
2. Visit Local Community Groups and Organizations
Make a list of the groups and organizations in your community, then set aside time each month to visit one of the groups. Introduce yourself to the president, manager or director. Tell them about your practice and that you'd like to hold a "Wellness Day" for their members. Wellness days give you the opportunity to educate groups about acupuncture and to explain how it can help treat a variety of conditions.
3. Help Local Charities
Make a list of charities that you could help in your community - the local food bank, the Salvation Army, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, etc. Arrange a meeting with the director and offer to give a lecture or workshop at an upcoming function. In exchange, offer to do a screening or "Patient Appreciation Day" and donate all proceeds to their organization.
4. Utilize Your Own Patients and Employees
The next time you have someone waiting, be it a parent of one of your younger patients, or a caregiver to an elderly patient, be sure to acknowledge them and welcome them to your practice. Explain the purpose of your practice with them, and find out if they have any questions about acupuncture or Oriental medicine. You could even offer a free consultation as a gift.
If you want to help more people with natural health care, you need to get out in your community and make contact with people, even if it seems a little uncomfortable in the beginning. Once you do, you'll find that the more you talk about Oriental medicine, the more on-purpose you will be. If you are on purpose, you will be even more willing to share your message with others!
This will fuel your energy and make you on fire about helping people through natural health care. This energy will help you get better results with your patients. Your patients will notice and will be even more satisfied with their care! Get out in the community and tell people what you do. Replace your comfort zone with a stronger purpose - to help even more people though natural health care!
Chronic pain afflicts over 20% of the adult population. Sadly, most MDs have essentially no education in treating pain, beyond offering a few toxic medications. Then they tend to steer people with pain away from those health practitioners who are trained. This puts the acupuncture community on the front lines for addressing this epidemic.
When the body is going through a stressful event, the sympathetic system is activated. This activation will help the body with a life-threatening situation. If this state is activated for prolonged periods of time, it starts to consume energy. These traumatic events that generate stressors in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) will eventually become internalized.
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One of the things that makes acupuncture so difficult to measure is that the medicine actually does contain some esoteric aspects. There have been numerous studies that demonstrate the neurochemical reasoning behind why acupuncture points stimulate the autonomic nervous system to enact change However, not all the benefits of TCM can easily be measured by randomized, controlled trials. But does that make them fundamentally and definitively untrue?
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