I am a new patient. How do I get started?
Welcome! We're glad to have you! Please book your first appointment by calling us or using our online scheduler. You will be emailed our secure, electronic intake forms. Please complete those before coming in. That helps us reduce traffic in the clinic towards safe social distancing.
There is a $10 one-time new patient fee due at your first appointment along with your sliding scale payment of $25-$50.
Please allow at least an hour for your first appointment, if you can.
Is your clinic accessible?
We are located on the first floor of the Mills Building. There is designated handicap parking spaces in the parking lot adjacent to the building. There are a few steps up at the main entrance. As of May, 2020, there is a brand new, ADA compliant ramp! Please call with any concerns about accessibility.
Do you accept insurance?
No, we do not deal with insurance. Instead we keep the cost simple and low, close to the cost of a copay. We are happy to provide you with receipts if you need them.
How does the sliding scale payment work?
For a single treatment our sliding scale is $25 - $50. We want you to use the scale to make it possible to come in often enough to really get better and stay better! You decide what you can afford; we do not need any type of income verification. The sliding scale is part of our business plan, and we understand that everyone’s situation is different. Kindred accepts payment in cash, check, or credit.
How long does a treatment last?
Most people stay between 40 minutes and an hour. Though we are happy to wake you at a specific time, we think the acupuncture is most effective if you let yourself drift to a sleepy or relaxed place until your body starts to wake up. At this point you will catch the eye of the acupuncturist and they will come remove your needles. Most people stay between 40 minutes and an hour.
What should I wear?
Please wear comfortable and relatively loose fitting clothes. We usually only need access to your feet and legs up to the knee, and your hands and arms up to the elbow. We ask that, given allergies and sensitivities, you refrain from wearing strong scents like perfume or cologne. Please try to have a little food/calories in your system when you come for acupuncture.
How does acupuncture work?
Acupuncture is the healing tradition of using small, fine, solid needles to stimulate points in the body as a way of enhancing the body’s ability to heal itself.
What does acupuncture feel like? Does it hurt?
Acupuncture typically does not hurt. Most people feel relaxed or sleepy once the needles are in. Some folks feel a slight pinch on some points while others don’t feel a thing. We are all different but acupuncture needles are much the same: solid, flexible, and about as thin as two hairs together.
What is "community acupuncture"?
Community acupuncture is the practice of treating people together in the same space, similar to the way it is practiced in east Asia. In our clinic, we use recliners grouped in a quiet and soothing space and treat people using points on the arms, hands, legs, feet, and head. We use white noise machines, blankets, and pillows to make the space as cozy and relaxing as possible.
In the U.S, outside of some East Asian communities, acupuncture has become known as a boutique treatment, performed on tables in individual cubicles. This model has less to do with any traditional understanding of the best way to receive acupuncture and more to do with our cultural training as individualized consumers in a psycho-medicalized market. 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. We also believe that a collective energy field becomes established which makes individual treatments more powerful. Many people fall asleep, and wake feeling refreshed, energized, clear-headed.
Community acupuncture is about improving results by expanding access. It’s about the patient being able to get more, and therefore more effective, treatments by virtue of our sliding scale. If the practitioner knows she or he might see you 6 times instead of once, the treatments can be simple, relaxing, geared towards long range goals as well as immediate relief.
The other kind of access which is important to us is that of each patient’s connection to community and to collective healing. Much of our modern illness and injury is related to isolation and oppression, and the antidote to this is not more separation but more connection, more caring and more community.