July Practitioner Spotlight: Katrina Hanson

“My favorite part of my job is watching people regain ownership of their healing process, reconnect with their bodies, and make positive changes in their lives.

”

I came to acupuncture through a love of herbal medicine, sparked by my botanist father who taught me a deep appreciation for plants. On road trips growing up, he’d suddenly pull over to the side of the road, jump out of the car, and sprint up a hill to a tiny rare flower that he somehow spotted while driving. Hikes with my dad were (and still are) less about going somewhere and more about stopping and looking at the plants and fungi along the way, noticing which ones are blooming earlier or fruiting later than usual this year. My first word was ‘yucca’ and by the age of 12 I knew more Latin names of native Pacific Northwest plants than most of my dad’s students. My dad knows all about how these plants are related to each other, how they change from season to season, how they rely on each other, and which are edible. He never learned about herbal medicine, though, and this has been something I could share with him.

The women in my family taught me the value of taking care of others, and growing up I was often in a caretaker role due to my dad’s health issues. This led me to study public health and gender studies for my undergrad, through which I become involved with groups on campus that led DIY herbal medicine workshops for women and LGBTQ folks. I also worked as a caregiver for adults with developmental disabilities, and—after graduation—as a health educator and clinic receptionist, which gave me a taste of working in various parts of the health field. I realized that I wanted to be on the practitioner side of things, and for me this meant herbal medicine. I liked the Chinese Medicine diagnostic system, their holistic way of working with a person’s constitution and intricate balanced combinations of herbal medicines, so I started studying at the Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College, Berkeley. Coming out and being a part of queer community had brought my attention to the disparities in access to safe, inclusive healthcare for LGBTQ people and I went into the acupuncture program with the intention of focusing in LGBTQ medicine. This continues to be a driving focus of my private practice.

I had only had acupuncture once, on a whim, before starting acupuncture school and I didn’t really know if I’d like it. I decided that if I didn’t like practicing acupuncture, I’d just study the herbs and skip the rest of the program. While in school, I interned at UCSF Benioff’s Mission Bay Children’s Hospital and the San Francisco Homeless Prenatal program, as well as AIMC’s teaching clinic, which allowed me to practice acupuncture in a variety of environments and with a broad spectrum of patients. I loved working with patients and being able to offer them not only herbal medicine, but also acupuncture, cupping, moxa, and so many other amazing modalities. It turns out I love being an acupuncturist and I’m so glad I started this journey. My favorite part of my job is watching people regain ownership of their healing process, reconnect with their bodies, and make positive changes in their lives. I love being a part of a medicine that allows people not just to be taken care of or fixed by others, but to take care of themselves and listen to their bodies.

In addition to maintaining a private practice, I also teach an eight-hour series as part of AIMC’s Master of Science and Professional Doctorate curricula -instructing students on gender vocabulary and pronouns, western and eastern transgender medicine, and approaches for creating an LGBTQI-inclusive practice. I also teach an annual workshop for the faculty and staff of AIMC and a workshop for the students at ACCHS. In my spare time, you can find me hiking or camping with my partner and our dogs.

Survivors Speak 2018 (blog by Jenna Frisch)

“Community issues deserve a community response,” said Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement, during the opening panel of Survivors Speak on April 9. The annual conference, organized by Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, hosts more than 500 survivors of violent crimes to share their stories, heal together and advocate for change.

Less than a week after returning from New Mexico (click to view more about BCA Pop-Up Clinic in NM), Thuy and I (and my friend Carlos, offering Reiki) were on the road to “pop up” at the Survivors Speak conference in Sacramento as part of the healing team. For many survivors, this conference offers a space to tell their stories for the first time. Storytelling can help us shift from victim to survivor and help us integrate and reclaim the pieces of us that feel stolen, broken and abused.

When there is trauma, we splinter. Some part of our consciousness separates and stores the experience in the body to be integrated when safe conditions are available. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect us. The trouble in our policing culture is that safe conditions are rarely provided to victims of violent crimes. Police force is employed with enthusiasm but healers are not; victims are further isolated by a narrative made for headlines not healing. We alienate our neighbors and continue the psychic and emotional trauma when we begin to wonder what they did to put themselves in the situation leading to the violent crime. If healing is done at all, it is done in private away from the scrutiny of the public eye.

Community, like touch or acupuncture, reconnects us when we shut down for preservation. When trauma or injury occurs, we might seek shelter for a time but if we stay away for too long, isolation becomes a formidable wall to scale and deepens the wound. Community is the army that has your back when faced with adversity or oppression from society at large. Community spirit recognizes that an offense against one is an offense against all, to which all of us must respond.

After going to Navajo country and Survivors Speak, I have experienced the potency of community medicine in a new way. In both settings, the trauma was serious and the pain was deep and the community setting helped hold all of us. At Survivors Speak we set up in one room and everyone was cared for together. We saw 60 survivors in 6.5 hours. Within the first hour of receiving attendees, we were booked until 6 o’clock without pause. What made this possible was the energy that brewed while we treated roughly 10 people per hour.

For so long I thought of privacy and one-on-one treatment as necessary conditions for bodywork but my feelings have changed, and I’m excited to see what more is possible when a community heals together.

* Read more about Jenna's blog here

We are the Keepers

““And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.””

— The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

In describing our inseparable connection to all of life, Thich Nhat Hanh talks about seeing the cloud in a piece of paper. Without clouds, there can be no rain, without rain, there can be no trees, without trees, there can be no paper. So within a piece of paper, there is a cloud. He calls this Interbeing. I’ve been thinking about Thich Nhat Hanh a lot lately, wondering how he is capable of seeing a cloud in a piece of paper after all that he has actually seen with his very eyes: the senseless destruction of his Motherland, the systematic murder of his friends, the bombing and poisoning of women and children. He has developed a sense of seeing beyond what we see with our eyes.

In some ways, the practice of Chinese Medicine is a practice of seeing beyond what is apparent to our eyes. This past month, when I was in the Navajo lands treating patients, many came suffering from layers of pain that burrows in their bodies. A Western doctor might see diabetes, obesity, poor food choices, slipped discs, insomnia and depression. My eyes are trained to see through the diagnostic principles of Chinese Medicine: yin deficiency, excess dampness, qi and blood stagnation. Beyond mere diagnosis, however, I look deeper. And in looking deeper, I see the effects of white supremacy: genocide, rape, poverty, and the systematic attempts to erase Native Peoples. Their bodies carry history of unimaginable pain and profound grief. If pharmaceuticals and surgery are the answer to what the Western doctors see, how do I respond to what I see? What is the medicine for the violence, isolation, destruction around us? Do I offer needles and herbs instead of surgery and pharmaceuticals? What is the medicine that takes into account the whole picture and what is the whole picture?.

For years I’ve advocated Chinese Medicine as not just a set of tools, but a way of seeing. A way of seeing that connects everything around us, much like Thich Nhat Hanh’s thoughts on Interbeing. If we don’t hold steady to that way of seeing, then even with needles and herbs, we may be just trying to fix a symptom. Without seeing deeper into all the connections that make a person, we are not truly practicing Chinese Medicine. To see the Whole person is the beginning of healing. To reclaim all parts and to see the body as not just a set of  symptoms but as witness to history, our shared history and to understand all the forces that are currently affecting us is understanding the Whole person. When we can see that, there is a natural healing response in both the patient and I. The patient’s response may be one of affirming and allowing the flood of held back emotions and in seeing clearly, engaging the whole self in self-care. Often, my response is as witness, to hold space for what comes forward for healing and then through the medicine to honor the body’s innate healing process.

Sometimes, when I see the injustice that gives rise to sick bodies, a great anger grows inside me. When I feel this rage, my response is aggression--to fight a system, a disease, a person that represents those things to me. I have to remind myself that although my response is anger, my responsibility is to heal. They are almost opposites and yet they inform one another. The former gives rise to greater pain, the latter gives rise to true peace. For a long time, I have been trying to figure out the best action as a response and a responsibility towards what I see. For me, when I see a piece of paper, sometimes I see deforestation more readily than I see a cloud.

After the second full day of clinic on Navajo lands and seeing pain and grief in so many bodies of all ages, I felt that I myself was becoming the embodiment of pain, anger and despair. My shoulders felt weighted, my ankles ached, my jaws clenched, and my heart felt like a stone. I took a walk into the desert to shake this feeling. I could feel that the heaviness inside me was going to make me sick if I didn’t do something about it. As I walked, I talked to the Creator and asked for help. The Creator’s response was silence. I suppose She was holding space for me.

I sat beneath the shade of a tree. The Navajo desert is bewitching in its beauty. The mountains and hills, brush and canyons transfixes me in quiet awe. The ball of despair and anger in my chest started to disintegrate and I started to feel the breath come back inside me. I felt the hard smooth rock beneath me and its unwavering support and I felt a great gratitude for the cool shade that sheltered me from the afternoon sun. My body became lighter and lighter, my mind became softer and softer, my heart grew bigger and bigger and I become as light as the clouds in the sky.

I can see the wisdom in seeing the cloud in a piece of paper although I cannot always see it where it is not apparent. To see the cloud is to see what heals. And as long as there are those that see the clouds in everything--the Keepers of wisdom, I believe there is hope for us. The Keepers of wisdom see the clouds, the desert, the mountains and rivers. They are people like Thich Nhat Hanh insistent on peace with every step. They are the Chinese sages who understand the rhythms of Nature and our place in it. They are the Navajo elders and Medicine People who hold onto Native wisdom and knowledge. These Keepers hold steadfast to the Truth for their people and for all of us.

Thinking back on the families that made the trek to see us for healing, I see beautiful people, open, curious and strong.  They trusted our Medicine and allowed us to treat them and listen to their stories. They brought their children, who weaved laughter in and out of clinic, played in the rocks and brush and grabbed us all by the hands, urging us to join them under open desert skies. Medicine is as much a way of seeing as doing. Healing is a coming together, making us Whole again. And the Keepers are not only the Medicine People and the Wise Ones. They are the Children and You and I when we have the courage to open our eyes and see with our hearts.

In Health and Community,