Sarana History
Sarana Community Acupuncture was founded as a general partnership in March 2008. In July, 2015, we restructured as an employee-managed (IRS-approved 501(c)3) nonprofit corporation. For more information on how you can support our mission of making low-cost acupuncture widely available in our community, please see our Support page.
Why Community Acupuncture?
Community acupuncture is a social justice movement that makes acupuncture affordable and accessible for people of ordinary incomes and creates sustainable living wage jobs for acupuncture practitioners while building community. Pioneered by Portland, Oregon’s Working Class Acupuncture, and supported by POCA Co-op (People’s Organization of Community Acupuncture), community acupuncture makes this safe, simple, effective, 2,000-year-old medicine widely accessible in the West. In the U.S., acupuncturists often treat patients on tables in small private rooms. The community acupuncture model gets back to the roots of how acupuncture has been practiced in Asia for thousands of years – in a group setting. In our clinic we primarily treat clients in recliners, clustered in an open and peaceful space. Receiving acupuncture in a community setting has many benefits.
- Friends and family can be treated together
- It is comforting and relaxing to see others resting
- The group setting creates a collective healing energy that helps to strengthen each individual treatment.
- Treatments in a community space are affordable because we can see multiple clients per hour.
For more information about community acupuncture and to find other community acupuncture clinics, please visit POCA Co-op website.