By Lisa Payne | Writer
Through Mindful Medicine Worldwide, Grainne McKeown has been able to treat patients who responded immediately to acupuncture and Chinese herbs. She treated and healed people for chronic back pain who could then go back to their fields and work. “It was very moving to see the medicine in motion. You go to school for four years and you work in a suburban clinic and patients come in with a thick file, with sometimes ambiguous results. To travel to Nepal and to treat patients who were so highly affected immediately by acupuncture was transformative for me personally and professionally,” she said. “In Nepal, people are often simply deficient and so the acupuncture helps right away.”
MMW Volunteer Alumna, Amy Babb L.Ac., shared this about her experience volunteering with Mindful Medicine Worldwide, “Just knowing you’re giving them a day of relief is very meaningful. So, when they come and say they’ve had a week free of pain or even longer, that they’ve been coming for acupuncture, and it’s been helping them significantly to do their work or live their lives...it has a different feeling to it,” she says. Since many people are working twelve or more hours a day in the fields, MMW’s acupuncture efforts helps them get back to work and living life pain-free. “It has a different feeling to it than a lot of times in the West where we have struggles and suffering of course and there’s a lot of people in pain but there’s so many options and there’s so many comforts in the West. You have a soft bed, you have running water, and here you don’t even have that.” Amy volunteered in Nepal for three months.
“We created MMW so that the significant financial obstacle of volunteering would not be on the volunteers. We ask them to fundraise in their community for $1,000 and that’s it,” she said. The $1,000 covers the volunteers’ supplies for one month. MMW covers the second month of supplies and housing for volunteers. If volunteers choose to stay for five months, MMW will pay for all their supplies and housing. And the longer you stay, the more healthcare volunteers can bring to people. “Our clinic is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Anyone can come in at any time to get care.”
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